Gödel’s Second Theorem and the Provability of God’s Existence

According to a common view, belief in God cannot be proved and is an issue that must be left to faith. Kant went even further and argued that he can prove this unprovability. But any argument implying that a certain sentence is not provable is challenged by Gödel’s second theorem (GST). Indeed, one trivial consequence of GST is that for any formal system F that satisfies certain conditions and for every sentence K that is formulated in F it is impossible to prove, from F, that K is not provable. In the article, I explore the general issue of proving the unprovability of the existence of God. Of special interest is the question of the relation between the existence of God and the conditions that F must satisfy in order to allow for its subjection to GST.