Anselm’s Ontological Argument – What Ought To Be, Isn’t
22 November 2009 by KAThe consciousness of God is the self-consciousness of man; the knowledge of God is the self-knowledge of man. Man’s notion of himself is his notion of God, just as his notion of God is his notion of himself – the two are identical. What is God to man, that is man’s own spirit, man’s own soul; what is man’s spirit, soul, and heart – that is his God. God is the manifestation of man’s inner nature, his expressed self; religion is the solemn unveiling of man’s hidden treasures, the avowal of his innermost thoughts, the open confession of the secrets of his love. – Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence Of Christianity
The ontological argument is one of those strangenesses of religion – it is indeed an item that illustrates the essential difference between believer and non-believer. The believer cheers! The non-believer says, you gotta be kidding.
In summary:
The argument examines the concept of God, and states that if we can conceive of the greatest possible being, then it must exist. The argument is often criticized as committing a bare assertion fallacy, as it offers no supportive premise other than qualities inherent to the unproven statement. This is also called a circular argument, because the premise relies on the conclusion, which in turn relies on the premise. It is no wonder that the human animal thinks in circles. The world rotates: the sun goes down, the moon comes up, this reverses, and goes again. There are four distinct seasons, readily apparent (except for perhaps Manipoor, which has five), that come and go in intervals. Circles are ubiquitous – they’re everywhere. This would also go to explain why we’re such a dizzy species. Anselm’s ‘argument’ is as follows:
- 1. God is something than which nothing greater can be thought.
- 2. God may exist in the understanding.
- 3. To exist in reality and in the understanding is greater than to exist in the understanding alone.
- 4. Therefore, God exists in reality.
As ridiculous as that sounds, Descartes (of course!) comes up with some real head-splitting sophistry:
- Whatever I clearly and distinctly perceive to be contained in the idea of something is true of that thing.
- I clearly and distinctly perceive that necessary existence is contained in the idea of God.
- Therefore, God exists.
Interestingly enough, some have employed Hume to dismantle this:
In David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, the character Cleanthes argues that no being could ever be proven to exist through an a priori demonstration:
- [T]here is an evident absurdity in pretending to demonstrate a matter of fact, or to prove it by any arguments a priori. Nothing is demonstrable, unless the contrary implies a contradiction. Nothing, that is distinctly conceivable, implies a contradiction. Whatever we conceive as existent, we can also conceive as non-existent. There is no being, therefore, whose non-existence implies a contradiction. Consequently there is no being, whose existence is demonstrable.
Though this criticism is directed against a cosmological argument similar to that defended by Samuel Clarke in his first Boyle Lectures, the point applies to ontological arguments as well.
I’m going to employ Hume in a little bit, in a different way (hence the title of this essay), but first, let’s expound on the problem of evil:
Classical theism states that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. Ontological arguments, both old and revised, have also assumed this explicitly or implicitly. Many philosophers are skeptical about the underlying assumption, as described by Leibniz, "that this idea of the all-great or all-perfect being is possible and implies no contradiction."
For example, moral perfection is thought to imply being both perfectly merciful and perfectly just. But these two properties seem to contradict each other. To be perfectly just is always to give every person exactly what he deserves. But to be perfectly merciful is to give at least a person less punishment than he deserves. If so, then a being cannot be perfectly just and perfectly merciful.
To resolve and dissolve this, I’m going to employ Hume’s Is/Ought problem. Using the guillotine, we can pare this down accordingly.
We ought to live in a perfect world – but it isn’t. We ought to be perfect in some way (though this can digress into multiple subjective observations) – that is to say, we shouldn’t become ill, catch viruses, ever go hungry or homeless or jobless. Nothing’s perfect. Then again, perfection is a hollow fantasy, entirely contingent on the individual’s perception.
Perfection is, broadly, a state of completeness and flawlessness.
We ought to be complete and flawless, but we are (subjectively speaking) most certainly the opposite. And given that we live in a world where there are counterpoints, Yin to a Yang, hot to cold, solid to fluid, we assume that there has to be a polar opposite of our existence – in other words, a perfect being that has none of the flaws and foibles we manifest (and likely doesn’t drool in its sleep). But the other problem arises: perfection is static. It would have to be. Interaction with the imperfect would introduce flaws into the hypothetical flawlessness. Nothing escapes creeping entropy, after all. Even a hypothetical flawlessness would eventually be worn down to a sliver – and then the hypothetical flawlessness would be flawed, as that item or person would be much less than itself and ergo, not perfect.
And, as I am a non-reductive materialist, understanding (See Anselm’s #2) is entirely contingent on the physicality of the brain, and when that brain is gone, poof! so is the understanding. Not that imagining something makes it real (would that it were – Angelina Jolie materializing in my apartment dishabille would certainly make a believer outta me!), but humans tend to reify these illusions.
So hopefully, much of this (or I’d settle for some of it) has been useful to the gentle reader, and perhaps it can be used to mystify and stupefy any religious folks (usually pretty easy to do) who use this supercilious piece of fluff as a talking point.
Till the next post, then.
22 November 2009, on 7:13 am
This has always confused me. Why is omniscience or omnipotence a requirement for a god? Never mind benevolence.
Having read the Bible, and most of the Qu’ran I would say the Abrahimic God was anything but omniscient (Garden of Eden) and certainly not omnipotent.
A much better fit is that the God of the Israelites was a childish God, a young, petulant, jealous God, unsure of his place hence the first 3 Commandments. The New Testament God is one of more maturity, trying to do His best for what he sees as His children, hence the stick and carrot approach of heaven and hell. The Islamic God is a grumpy old man, nasty and vindictive at times, reflective and wise at others. But definitely senile. A thousand years have passed since this Abrahimic God deigned to communicate with the human race, He may have tired of us, or He may have died, either way we’d do better to ignore Him and live as best we can under the assumption He’s not coming back.
22 November 2009, on 11:53 am
Keddaw – I think the omniscience/omnipotence nonsense was because the Israelites needed to wrap up all the smaller attributes into 1 package. Easier that way. More economical. Just a mono god for all their worshiping needs.
22 November 2009, on 12:39 pm
Anselm States: “The argument examines the concept of God, and states that if we can conceive of the greatest possible being, then it must exist.”
Ayn Rand took it a step farther: “God – whatever anyone chooses to call God – is one’s highest conception of the highest possible. And whoever places his highest conception above his own possibility thinks very little of himself and his life. It’s a rare gift, you know, to feel reverence for your own life and to want the best, the greatest, the highest possible, here, now, for your very own. To imagine a heaven and then not to dream if it, but to demand it.”
I’m with Ayn.
22 November 2009, on 4:53 pm
I heard a response to this in a chat room that went thus: Giga God.
22 November 2009, on 6:12 pm
Good post. I enjoy the philosophical leanings. Descartes’ argument is a bit more in depth than you give him credit for, and there is a lot of debate over whether or not he was a closet atheist. In his philosophy, especially what he laid out in Meditations on First Philosophy and Discourse on Method, use knowledge of god as an allegory for true knowledge. He makes a distinction between everyday common knowing and a higher sort of knowing. This is clear and distinct knowledge, or perception. Descartes also uses the perfection of a triangle, or certainty in mathematics to demonstrate this point. Basically, clear and distinct knowledge is knowledge which cannot be doubted. From an epistemological standpoint this does not have to be god, but this was a handy image he could use.
22 November 2009, on 9:09 pm
Fester: that’s 1 of the few things I agree w/Rand on. I actually saw that interview on Donahue where she says that.
Piuvodku:
I’m not a huge fan of Descartes (J’ccuse! He did more than any other philosopher to promote dualism in the Western mind), & he was a Roman Catholic by his own admission. He pissed off Pascal, which is pretty cool, but an atheist? Dubito, ergo sum.
22 November 2009, on 9:15 pm
Nice essay.
My take on the whole of philosophy is that one can prove anything and its opposite by simply waving words. The admirable philosophers are those that tell us what they see and make no pretense of proof or otherwise.
The excerpt from Frederick Feuerbach says some of what I posted in my blog but says it better. Thank you for the reference, I should read from him.
22 November 2009, on 10:00 pm
KA: You are free to doubt it, but there is debate on the topic. Many of his papers were revised, cut, and edited by Claude Clerselier after Descartes’ death in an effort to make him more acceptable to catholics, and also in an attempt to have him sainted. Of course he admitted to being a catholic, he lived in 17th century France, one of his main audiences were catholics, he was educated by Jesuits. In short, he had a lot to lose by admission. Many of the papers mentioned above have been destroyed or lost, so it is impossible to actually know.
I took a graduate seminar on Descartes with Richard Aquila about a year ago, and this is a topic he broached but didn’t discuss broadly. I guess what I’m saying is that I trust his interpretations and his scholarship.
22 November 2009, on 11:52 pm
I remember Anselm’s so-called proof for the existence of God from my Philosophy classes at DePaul U., circa 1961. Historically (hysterically), previous to the Catholic Church’s later borrowings from Aristotle’s “proof”, by way of Thomas Aquinas, it seemed immediately fraught with one outrageously obvious flaw. Knowing the end concept of deity to which it was aimed at particular existential proving…that being, obviously, the Bible based notion of that awful, rather unimaginative, blatantly unjust, mean spirited, even incredibly silly, Abrahamic god; THAT particular notion falls FAR short of the “greatest possible being” even a relative idiot could conceive of.
On the other hand (the left, of course!), it seems to me, no matter WHAT philosophical, human brain sourced arguments…a priori, a posteriori…or WHATEVER; in no way would the arguments, even if logically flawless, would prove the existence of the Abrahamic notion of deity. Perhaps, albeit possibly CLOSER, to some nebulous Deist notion, having no subjective, preconceived, obviously bonkers, “Revelatory” aspect; but certainly not any of the current batch of the World’s religious god notions.
With Descartes of course, one has the old perennial problem of even getting beyond a rather stubborn, nagging, form of Solipsism, and the serious problem of trusting ANY sensory data. A situation, that has never, in my opinion, been philosophically solved to every philosophical ‘afficionado’s’ satisfaction; especially with today’s more Scientifically evolved understanding of the human brain…STILL, albeit, a rather mysterious physical organ.
And, for that matter, “nobody”, practically speaking…in our everyday “Common Sense” world, really gives a passing shit about that Philosophical conundrum.
Yeah…’like’…try arguing on THAT level with a “rapture-ready” fundie…?
Soooo…after living an extra…what!…48 years; I say…
Fuck Anselm…he’s WAY long dead!
As to Descartes…(I’m being very selective here, I know)…I’ll let him pass.
[I have, after all, at least SOME (but admittedly very little) modicum of respect for the dead.]
I do kinda like using his famous “Cogito ergo sum!” (I think, therefore I am!) quote; twisting it quite a bit, as a musician, in (sh)mock translation to…
“I stink, therefore I Jam!”
OT, as usual…
I must say though, these days, at my age (almost 70 & semi-retired), I don’t get the chance to exercise that joking sentiment very much…if at all.
IOW, my jamming days are, somewhat regrettably, long gone.
[These days, however...as some of you might know...using computer programs (like Band-In-A-Box, f'rnstance); one can essentially...jam at home, with oneself. Yada, Zama.]
23 November 2009, on 1:07 am
I’ve come across this ontological argument a fair bit (a sad thing for a 20 year old. Shouldn’t I be out partying hard rather than debating philosophical truths?). I find a lot of people who are drawn into the ontological argument are unfamiliar with syllogistic reasoning. Basically, they don’t know that a faulty premise is a logical fallacy. To many, if the conclusion follows, it’s true, regardless of the assertions it’s based on.
My favourite way of pointing out the contradiction of this is to employ the Socratic method a little bit. My usual argument is:
1. A being so perfect that no better could be thought of, necessarily exists
2. A perfect being would be able to do the seemingly impossible under the most difficult circumstances.
3. Creating a universe is seemingly impossible.
4. The hardest circumstance under which to create a universe is the condition of not existing.
5. Therefore, a perfect god would have created the universe without himself existing.
Anyone who thinks God is incapable of non-existence denies the all powerful aspect of God’s attributes. The contradictions come flooding in, and yes, the fundies have no idea what’s going on.
The ontological argument is a house of cards. It’s impossible to resist knocking it down.
23 November 2009, on 2:10 am
Piuvodku – well, debate or no, unless someone has clear direct evidence (i.e., personal letter declaring non-belief, close personal friend diary disclosing discussion where Descartes admitted to unbelief, etc), I’ll have to take a pass on it.
Hume was 17th CE too, & a pretty hardcore skeptic. You may have a valid point considering the times, but again, in lieu of hard evidence, it’s conjecture.
23 November 2009, on 3:10 am
I will admit that in the first Philosophy class I took, I was very briefly taken in by this argument. (Of course, at that point in my life I was really reaching for reasons to believe.)
Then I thought for about 5 minutes more about it and noticed that it was full of shit. I realized that I had always thought of things and situations that didn’t exist that were better than the ones that did. Unfortunately, that didn’t mean that any of those things existed. Pretty childish argument if you think about it long enough.
23 November 2009, on 12:11 pm
KA: Fair enough. But there are degrees between hard evidence and conjecture.
23 November 2009, on 11:04 pm
I give this philosophy five great big horselaughs. When this was written their conception of heart, soul, brain, spirit and consciousness were far from what we have been able to perceive today.
And it is almost certain that what we will be able to do in the future utilizing our technology and scientific acumen will challenge our favored conceptions. In the future materializing Angelina Jolie or someone like her may become a common place phenomena. But if it happens in my lifetime it will not make a believer outta me!
24 November 2009, on 1:43 am
Me neither, but hoo boy, how happy I’d be anyways!
24 November 2009, on 3:12 am
fester60613: “To imagine a heaven and then not to dream if it, but to demand it.” I’m with Ayn without a doubt!
28 November 2009, on 7:55 pm
I happened upon this blog accidentally, but was immediately impressed by the ignorance in evidence here just as it is in relioious circles. Feuerbach’s given name is Ludwig, not Friedrich (perhps you were thinking of another irrationalist pseudo-philosopher named Nietzsche; would that be a ‘freudian’ slip?) Also, Anselm’s argument is fallacious because it asserts the consequent-called ‘begging the question’. Feuerbach’s writngs are fallacious becaus they are bare assertions, a pseudo-philosophical tradition upheld by Nietzsche and Freud as well. Adrian has commited a violation of the law of non contradiction: a “being” cannot be nonexistent, no matter what power it has. An honest (and dilligent) student of philosophy will find that every philosophical system of note has been effectively refuted on logical grounds, including Hume’s, leaving us without a consistently logical epistomology.
29 November 2009, on 7:30 pm
inquistori62:
You mean religious, right? So, are you this big an asshole in person?
It was a minor error – mine. Corrected.
I was trying to use a different approach.
That sounds like a bare assertion in itself. Provide proof.
I think Adrian’s using the circular logic to confuse folks. So there’s no such thing as a ‘non-existent’ being? Obviously there isn’t – semantically I mean.
So you pretty much wasted your money on all those classes?
Gotta say, you’re fairly ignorant yourself there, fella.
29 November 2009, on 8:42 pm
I never took a philosophy course, I studied it independently for about 3 years, but ignorance is the human condition and as far as philosophical systems will get us. For evidence to support my statement about nietzsche et al, see Clark ‘Thales to Dewey’ for a starting point. There is no proof of such satements, only evidence. Proof is possible in mathematics and formal logic, but not philosophy. I also am no tpist, to be sure.
29 November 2009, on 8:49 pm
By the way, I’m not a big fan of the kind of sophistry that takes in people who havent time or ability to critically anylize an argument. Adrian’s is of this kind.
29 November 2009, on 10:57 pm
So…Gordon Clark is who you recommend, or is that the starting point of the path you took? I’m not a big fan of Nietzsche, but I admit I’m somewhat fond of Feuerbach (even if I never get his 1st name right).
That your 1st recommendation is a Calvinist theologian, tells me you’re someone on the other side of this, yes?
29 November 2009, on 11:53 pm
I have been a Calvinist, a Christian, but am now an agnostic. I began with Clark because of his tremendous grasp of logic and the history of philosophy. He is a pariah to mainstream Christians and even other Calvinists because of his strict insistance on logical consistancy. (eg: belief in an omnipotent, omniscient god means if a man gets drunk and murders his family, it is necessarily god’s will….from ‘God and Evil, Problem Solved’) However Bertrand Russell is another good one: ‘The Problems of Philosophy’, or ‘The History Of Western Philosophy’ (the latter being somewhat more advanced than a starting point). As for sides, I’m on the side of civilization. The Christianity extant in the U.S. today fails to provide the fantastic benifits to civilization that Historical Protestantism did (see Max Weber, and even Ludwig Nietsche….or Fred… even though he didnt see it that way, he saw what the decay of those ‘values’ would mean.) The connections are there to see. Ultimately I think we all simply believe what we believe, and can prove nothing. I believe I’ll read some Joseph Conrad and go to bed. He’s much more enjoyable than the Bible or Darwin, and more lucid than either.
30 November 2009, on 12:58 am
Another Friedrich, Engels, wrote:
“Then came Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity. With one blow it pulverised the contradiction, in that without circumlocutions it placed materialism on the throne again. Nature exists independently of all philosophy. It is the foundation upon which we human beings, ourselves products of nature, have grown up. Nothing exists outside nature and man, and the higher beings our religious fantasies have created are only the fantastic reflection of our own essence.
“The spell was broken; the “system” was exploded and cast aside, and the contradiction, shown to exist only in out imagination, was dissolved. One must oneself have experienced the liberating effect of this book to get an idea of it. Enthusiasm was general; we all became at once Feuerbachians.”
The future of many millions was doomed to marxist hell thereafter, Feuerbach having given an alternative to the idea “thou shalt not steal” (the basis of private property).
“
1 December 2009, on 1:16 am
That’s some pretty interesting info, inquisitor.
Holy crap, & people say I’m a cynic?
An ancient Korean philosopher once said, “Ignorance is the beginning of wisdom, wisdom the knowledge of ignorance, and stupidity the function of mankind.”
But how do you reconcile the fact that you’re on the side of civilization, but ignorance is the human condition?
3 December 2009, on 2:15 am
Sorry for the delay, long hours at work. I think man is best served by a sort of epistomological humility, but not the relativistic kind and not the sort where one wears one’s deference for other ideas like a laurel wreath, but one that acknowledges our common plight as contingent beings, as well as our inability to be sure of the exact nature of that contingency. I contend that it seems unlikely based on our material experience that this universe is uncaused, but without perfect knowledge of all things I how can one know whether there are uncaused phenomena or not. Given that, a dogmatic insistence on the existence or non existence of god would at the very least have to be tempered by the inner admission that it is simply a belief I prefer, and though I like to think I have chosen it, I would not know it if it were determined either mechanistically by nature or ultimately by god. By the way, I think your Korean Philosopher called it fairly closely, I myself can account for a generous portion of stupid actions.
3 December 2009, on 3:05 am
inquisitor, I agree in most part w/what you’ve said, except for:
This isn’t a ‘dogmatic insistence’ on my part – I’d honestly prefer otherwise. But what I prefer has no bearing on reality. Or, to paraphrase Twain: “If one is to look around the world, one would judge that God is a malign thug.”
Plus the teleological argument comes apart under close scrutiny.
4 December 2009, on 1:15 am
I didnt mean to say that you had insisted dogmatically, only that since beliefs about the nature existence are ultimately unprovable and that alot of horrible acts might go undone if this were inwardly acknowledged by more people. I’ve been from crackhead to calvinism, from privilege to rescue-mission-poverty, but I dont know of many things more destructive than the inner certainty that ‘I know for sure’ and those who think something else are dumb-asses.
4 December 2009, on 1:17 am
and I know that for sure….