The Mind of God: Algorithmic Agnosticism and Religious Belief

Hawking hoped that a complete theory would let us know the mind of God. Algorithmic Agnosticism argued that no theory of everything can be known to be final. This paper asks the parallel question of religious belief: not whether God exists, but whether any worldview can be established as the true account of what is. It adds one premise, in two clauses: a worldview that claims to be true is an account in the sense of Algorithmic Agnosticism; and any account that goes beyond the evidence, a worldview included, has a rival consistent with the evidence and the truths of reason on which it is false. A second premise classifies every element of a classic argument as evidence, an account, a judgment, an imposed constraint or a truth of reason. With it, the paper locates the decisive element of twenty-two classic arguments for and against theism and naturalism, and for the skeptical hypothesis. Three conclusions follow. No worldview can be established as the true account. Worldviews that agree on all possible evidence are never separated, even by final evidence. What selects among the worldviews the evidence leaves open is a choice the evidence does not determine. These conclusions concern what can be established, not what it is reasonable to believe. They amount to agnosticism in Huxley's sense: theism, naturalism or the skeptical hypothesis may be true, but no argument from experience or reason can establish that any of them is.