What’s up with the New York Times? In a single day they published not only Robert Wright’s accommodationist op-ed, but also a piece by Nathan Schneider on Anselm’s ontological proof of the existence of God.
The proof, which would come to be called the ontological argument, purports to demonstrate the existence of God from ideas alone: the concept of a God that doesn’t exist wouldn’t be much of a God. A true concept of God, “a being than which nothing greater can be conceived,” would have to be a God that exists. Therefore, God exists.
This is one of the dumbest of all arguments for God, though many theologians (and a few readers of this website) seem to find it pretty sophisticated. But not Schneider, who demolishes it in just a few words:
I started to remember the echo of Kant’s devastating complaint against Anselm: existence is not a predicate. God seemed to disappear.
So did this make Schneider an atheist? No way!
I was reminded it wasn’t God’s existence that plagued Anselm — of that, he had no doubt — it was the phrasing. Modern arguments and evangelists and New Atheists have duped us into thinking that the interesting question is whether God exists; no, what mattered for Anselm was how we think about God and about one another.
Ah, those nasty New Atheists again, duping us all by claiming that the question of whether God exists really matters to people!
And Schneider shows handily that if you don’t like the answer, the best strategy is to change the question and obfuscate:
Setting off for a new place, I was saddled in the past, in what I had been and done. My conversion, and with it God, is not a thing I can live down, but something I’ll always have to live in, through and around. The very fact of it, that it happened at all, is a proof for its own ongoing existence.
____________________
UPDATE: Over at EvolutionBlog, Jason Rosenhouse is equally puzzled.
The silliness of the ontological argument can be seen by applying it to anything other than “God”, as Dawkins applies it to the Great Stinker in TGD.
Or as I might put it,
“I can think of the greatest thing ever.
“To be the greatest thing ever, it must be real.
“Therefore, whatever I just thought of is real.”
But the fact that such silliness is still trotted out as “proof” after all these centuries shows that theism just has nothing to say anymore. It never did, really.
From that argument, it seems all too much like wishful thinking. Words become things, as if words were magic. No wonder the Ontological Argument sounds rather childish.
The sound of believers clutching for straws is getting ever louder. This kind of thing is SO ridiculous one wonders about their sanity.
A few days ago the Archbishop of Canterbury appeared on a Brit TV documentary. Mostly it was soft soap and soft questions. Then he was asked where the souls of an Alzheimer patients go to. His response was such a cop-out for someone of his supposed importance, I wrote it down:
“What happens isn’t that body’s left and something goes somewhere else, but that god may very well be dealing with people at levels we can’t begin to imagine or understand. It’s the best sense I can make of it…”
Another example of religion addressing the big questions (= that science can’t) and coming out with a vacuous pile of steaming nothing.
Lordy. So if he realizes we can’t begin to imagine or understand, and that’s the best sense he can make of it, then what kind of thing is it that he is the head of?
My god is bigger than your god, so there.
/snort
Exactly my reaction to this ‘argument’ when I first heard it.
On a related matter, when will “special pleading” be listed as “aka the theological fallacy” in Wikipedia?
The more ‘sophisticated’ a religious argument becomes, the more like an elaborate Sokal-type hoax it sounds.
I suspect we are currently missing a verb sufficiently adequate to describe this type of verbal gymnastics, where the speaker deftly leaps from facts to untestable metaphysical whimsy at a moments notice.
How about ‘bunting’ (to bunt, he will bunt, they bunted, is madelaine bunting again?)
I second that motion! “Bunting” it is!!
For me the ontological argument reads: “God exists because I say so!”
Maybe I’m just not sophisticated enough.
My conversion, and with it God, is not a thing I can live down, but something I’ll always have to live in, through and around. The very fact of it, that it happened at all, is a proof for its own ongoing existence.
Wow. So every religious view to which someone has converted has “proof” of its accuracy, including Jehovah’s Witnesses, Scientology, Jim Jones-ism, David Koresh-ism, Raelism, and, yes, atheism. How can they all be accurate? It’s a mystery.
so that is the “Mystery of Faith” Catholic priest always talk about…
Anselm’s Ontological Argument was shot down Reductio ad absurdum almost immediately by Guanilo’s Perfect Island. Anselm’s response was special pleading.
This is one of the dumbest of all arguments for God…
Pascal’s wager is also in the running.
Yeah, but I think we have to disqualify Pascal’s Wager on the grounds that it’s not technically an argument for the existence of god. It’s an argument for pretending to believe in the existence of god. In the hopes, presumably, of “fooling” an omniscient entity. So it’s certainly got the “dumb” part locked up.
It’s more an argument for deciding to believe in the existence of god, on prudential grounds – which in a way is much more absurd than an argument for pretending to.
Isn’t this the first paragraph of Charles Manson’s autobiography?
God is a perfect being.
A being made of pork is more perfect than one not made of pork.
Therefore, God is made of pork.
Oink!
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1449
Bacon.
Therefore, Islam is wrong.
Even if the ontological argument was proof of the existence of a ‘perfect being’, it wouldn’t be of much help to theists, or even deists. After all, a God isn’t merely a perfect being, it’s a perfect being that has created (or ‘sustains’, or whatever) our universe. So if the ontological argument was convincing, we’d have to believe there’s a perfect being somewhere out there in the vastness of reality, but with no good reason to believe It has anything to do with us!
Not to mention that this supposedly perfect being clearly created an imperfect universe.
I can conceive of a Perfect Refutation of the Ontological Argument. Since an argument can only be perfect if it exists, such Perfect Refutation must exist. (I of course can’t specify the actual details of such refutation, but ineffability doesn’t seem to bother theologians, so it doesn’t bother me.)
Outstanding!
LOL!
There’s a technical name in mathematics for this kind of argument: it’s a nonconstructive proof, where something is shown to exist, but no method is given to actually find it.
But here there’s an added twist: the proof itself is shown to exist, though it is not displayed.
There’s a good discussion on the ontological argument on skeptico.
As for Schneider’s article, it appears he’s saying that the ontological argument is not proof of anything, but just a bit of mental masturbation for people who already believe in God. Sounds about right to me.
I think the Ontological Argument is very silly.
I do not think that Pascal’s wager is silly.
“I do not think that Pascal’s wager is silly.”
I agree, which is why I worship Odin, Ahura Mazda, Quetzalcoatl, Zeus, Brahma, Wiracocha, Amon-Ra, and Tom Cruise. When the afterlife is at stake, one simply can’t be too careful.
I do not think that Pascal’s wager is silly.
Perhaps, after you die, Thor can beat some other thoughts into your head with his hammer.
Your response was 5 words too long.
In Anselm’s time this appears to have been suspected, but not certain. And actually, in Boolean logic, existence is again a predicate, but not in the same sense as it was in Anselm’s day.
Oh my, an 11th century cleric didn’t doubt god’s existence? What better argument for god could I possibly need?
That’s the proper answer, but the fact is that Anselm did appear to wrestle with “god’s absence,” which is about as close as an 11th-century cleric could come to doubting god. This is how he prefaces his “ontological argument” that god has to exist:
The problem of god’s existence, let alone god’s presence, was indeed a great deal of what Anselm was addressing.
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Has anyone ever Sokaled theologists?
Why bother? They do it to themselves *ALL* the time.
—
Martin
It would be like a Poe, in that you could never tell the difference between the fake and the real thing.
How about:
– God is an idea (like “equality”).
– An idea exists because we believe in it (faith).
– The fact that it has no physical manisfestation (does “equality” exist) is irrelevant.
– As long as people believe the “affect” of God is real.
– As soon as the last person stops believing God will be dead.
Terry Pratchett beat you to it.
See “Small Gods”.
Tinker Belle is god?
Oh, but for the definitive proof of God’s existence, one simply must read Russ Martocci’s devastating masterpiece, “One Plus One Equals God”.
And for some added philosophical name-dropping, it’s even subtitled “An Ontological Proof”!
Hahahahahahahahahahahah
Modern arguments and evangelists and New Atheists have duped us into thinking that the interesting question is whether God exists
No, it’s just the most relevant question.
Yep. It’s the question we need to answer to determine whether we are engaging reality or else something on par with The Lord of the Rings.
Not that I find fault with the latter, but it’s important to know one is into fantasy if one is.
Jerry, how are you planning to spend the afternoon of this coming Saturday, October 31st?
In the Max Palevsky Theater listening to
2:15-2:55 Joel Kingsolver (University of North Carolina): ”Strength and Mode of Selection in Natural Populations,”
or in the 3rd Floor Theater enjoying
2:15-2:55 Michael Ruse (Florida State University): ”Is Darwinism Past Its ‘Sell-by’ Date? The Challenge of Evo-Devo”?
GUESS! Actually, I am co-organizer of this conference.
I know you are – I got your email via EvolDir. I tried to guess, but I really don’t know. Are you so interested in Kingsolver’s talk and despise Ruse so much that you choose the former, or are you going to confront Ruse at his talk?
Naah, not interested in confronting anyone, though Ruse might, for he likes to do that. I’m just more interested in the science stuff than in the history & philosophy stuff, though I will go to some of the latter talks. The sessions are simultaneous.
I would choose the same, but must admit that you going to Ruse’s talk would provide better blogging-material.
“The important question is not whether unicorns exist, but what the proper way is to think about unicorns and man’s relationship with unicorns.”
The Unicorn Test: Works every time.
The puzzle of Pascal’s wager is why it is so unsophisticated given his major contributions to mathematics and interest in gambling. Despite this he treats the bet as a simple either/or, when some sort of accumulator or spread-betting system would have to be used just to keep up with all the variations in christian doctrine, let alone all other possible religions.
Pascal also presumes a ‘perfect’ god who’s incredibly cruel to non-believers but is too damned stupid to tell the true faithful from those who only pretend just in case there’s a god.
The either/or aspect, I think, results from the infinities involved. Infinite heavenly benefit – finite earthly cost = infinity. Similarly, infinite heavenly benefit * non-zero probability (because heaven is unfalsifiable) = infinity.
No, I’m not convinced either, but it is interesting to think about. How should a rational cost-benefit strategy handle unfalsifiable propositions of high magnitude?
“Ontological arguments” (now there’s an oxymoron) are so damned stupid I can’t even classify them as infantile – they must be deliberately stupid.