Proof of God
While the great souls have been blessed to travel to the holy places on pilgrimage to Vrindaban and Govardhana, I have been asked to develop a series of articles giving philosophical backing for for some of the ideas found in Vaiṣṇavism. I hope these musing may be useful in developing faith. While these arguments are not conclusive, they may help bolster conviction in the divine reality as a foundation for faith in our journey to surrender.
One of the early arguments that makes a claim as a "proof" for God's existence is called the ontological argument. It was first forwarded by St. Anselm. Anselm felt, as did Augustine, that understanding culminates in faith, and so did his best to justify the ways of God to man.
Anselm’s proof for God is as curious as it is audacious. He says that God is that thought of which nothing can be greater. Atheists are fools, but even an atheist knows what we speak of when we say “the thought of which nothing can be greater.” They scramble with laptops and pencils, scrawling equations on blackboards to avoid this construction. How could something exist where nothing is greater than that something? Even fools understand fully. We’re speaking of God.
And try as they might to escape that conclusion, to ridicule it, they find a certain powerful logic in the reasoning of Anselm. They are certainly great thinkers if they are not great doers. They can easily conceive of something the thought of which nothing can be greater. They can easily think of that thing and know we mean God. Anselm’s next part is the audacious part. He says that if we can think of that thing that is greater than anything else, it must exist. The Being of God is found in his Conception. There can be no conception of God without His Being.
The immediate counter-argument is that many things exist in the mind but not in reality. We can think of a unicorn, but a unicorn or a flying dragon. But a unicorn does not exist, so the argument is ridiculous on it's face.
Well, before going further, we might insist that in the first place, unicorns do exist. A rhinoceros is a unicorn, an animal with one horn on its nose. Also unicorns exist in film and in Disneyland. Since perception is reality, there is a certain reality in films and Disneyland. A unicorn might exist, in a possible world created by Disney. After all, "perception is reality." Again, the unicorn might have existed in the past and have become extinct, leaving no fossil evidence behind.
But, leaving aside the “perception is reality” idea, a unicorn or a flying dragon doesn’t fit Anselm’s definition. A unicorn is not the “greatest thing we can think of,” and won’t do as a stand-in for his ontological argument. Anselm says God’s Conception includes his Being. If you can think of a Being beyond material reality, who is all-encompassing, all-pervading, eternal, infinite--he must exist, by definition. It is an argument easily mocked, but not well-understood.
A meme is an idea held in common by a wide variety of human beings. It may be argued that when everyone has the same meme there must be some veracity to it. Of course, the counter-argument is there, vox populi is not vox dei. Just because everyone thinks the world is flat doesn’t make it so. An idea may be widely held, and yet be wrong, as we have seen with the paradigms of Ptolemy and Copernicus.
Anselm, however, is not arguing that an idea is true because it is widely held. He says the very idea of God proves His existence. The infinite being of the Absolute truth is apparent from the very transcendental thought. I confess that I was baffled when I first heard this argument. I thought, "I can't argue this point. People will laugh." So, this idea seems easily refuted on its face as flying in the face of reason: There is no evidence for the existence of the absolute. We have no mathematical model. And yet, Anselms argument is much subtler than it appears. It must be considered carefully and thoughtfully. And its contemplation will reveal its truth.
As arguments go, Anselm's seems weak, compared to others. Everyone understands the teleological argument; the “argument from design.” It is much easier to see: The evidence for a supernatural power is found in the organization and design we see everywhere around us. But this is an argument “after the fact.” I see what God has fashioned and admire his craft. Who but a divine, supernatural power could have crafted this world? Just as a detective studies the scene of the crime for evidence of its author, we can study this cosmos for evidence of its creator.
And yet, the author has left the scene. We may make a forensic study: we look for God’s fingerprints, His DNA, evidence of his handiwork and in the end shout “Eureka, I have found it!” But where has he gone? Has he wound up the world like a clock and abandoned us? We are left unsatisfied by the teleological argument, since after admiring the artist’s work we want to meet the artist. But the ontological argument allows us to reach the same conclusion through meditation. God exists because we can think of Him. Not the cogito of Descartes, “I think therefore I am;” Anselm says “I can think of God, therefore He is.”
The argument seems naive, but is more subtle that it appears at first glance. Easily defeated by school-boys, the ontological argument haunts their professors. Refuted by Kant, the argument survives him. Bertrand Russell admired the argument, but rejected it after signaling its value: “The real question is: Is there anything we can think of which, by the mere fact that we can think of it, is shown to exist outside our thoughts. Every philosopher would like to say yes, because a philosopher's job is to find out things about the world by thinking rather than observing.”
(Russell, Bertrand, The History of Western Philosophy, Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1972, p. 417)
But Russell’s version is more superficial than he realized. Subsequent philosophers have demonstrated that the reasoning in the ontological is more subtle than it appears at first glance. Let’s take another look. We can frame the argument in a simpler way.
One of the interesting defenders of this argument today is a respected and influential philosopher named Alvin Plantinga who is the John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of Notre Dame. His version of the ontological argument for God relies on modal logic, which deals with the logic of possibility and necessity.
Platinga puts the argument like this: It is possible that God exists. Even a true agnostic can’t rule out the possibility. In fact, it is logically impossible to rule out the possibility of God’s existence, since to do so one would need to study all the available evidence in all possible worlds. So let’s just stick with this point for a moment. It is “possible” that God exists. Now, if it is possible that God exists, that means that God might exist in some possible world. Hawking himself posits the idea of imaginary time, and quantum mechanics explores the possibility of parallel universes. So let’s just posit that it might be possible for God to exist in some possible world. Now here’s the logical problem. If God exists in some possible worlds, then God exists in all possible worlds.
The important thing to keep in mind is the definition of God. God is infinite and all-pervading. So if he exists in some possible world, by definition he must exist in all possible worlds. This means that God exists in the actual world, that is: God exists. Now, as we mentioned above, a sophomore, or clever fool, will suggest that we apply the idea to a unicorn. “If we can think of a unicorn, a unicorn must exist.” They will say. But since unicorns don’t exist, the argument is invalid. There are many things we can think of that do not exist. The idea that we can think of God and that therefore He must exist is therefore absurd, they claim.
Platinga’s argument is sticky. A unicorn might exist in a possible world. But if a unicorn exists in a possible world, there is no necessity for a unicorn to exist in all possible worlds. A unicorn is a contingent being, not a necessary being. Whereas God is a necessary being. If He exists, His existence is absolute and extends to all possible worlds. A parallel universe may exist somewhere entirely populated by unicorns, but there is nothing in the definition of “unicorn” that implies that such a fantastic being must exist in all possible universes. God however is a distinct idea: The idea than which no greater idea can be thought.
By definition of God is infinite, absolute, all-encompassing. If he exists, he must exist in all possible worlds, by definition. Therefore the only way to deny his existence is to reject any possibility of his existence. But this cannot be a logical proposition. We must admit that God could exist in some possible world. His existence in any possible world means that by definition he exists in all possible worlds. This is Platinga’s defense of Anselm, as I understand it. If God’s existence is possible, it is necessary.
Now this argument may not be absolute convincing, but its logic is interesting to reflect upon.
While Bertrand Russell felt that Anselm had been conclusively refuted, others have left the door open to possible worlds. Anthony Kenny ended his New History of Western Philosophy with a warning to those who feel Anselm t has been refuted: “Plantinga's reinstatement of the ontological argument, using logical techniques more modern than any available to Russell, serves as a salutary warning of the danger that awaits any historian of logic who declares a philosophical issue definitively closed.” (Kenney, Anthony, A New History of Western Philosophy, vol IV. Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 318)
For an interesting article on the ontological argument see:
The article reviews an interesting book by Kevin J. Harrelson, who has written a welcome historical and critical analysis of the ontological argument in early modern European philosophy.
KEVIN J. HARRELSON
The Ontological Argument from Descartes to Hegel
Kevin J. Harrelson, The Ontological Argument from Descartes to Hegel, Humanity Books, 2009, $39.98 (hbk), ISBN 9781591026396.
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