God = ?
Just to share - this is part of my homework. The posting that I was talking about in the last post. My reply to #206 is #216.Message no. 206
Author:RACHEL RYAN
Date: Thursday, October 9, 2008 12:34pm
Anselm claims that we can not conceive of a thing that is greater than
that which can be though (i.e. God). But we can not even conceive of God.
The 'perfect island' objection invokes comprehensible, worldly ideas.
And these ideals can be conceived of, for they are real, and relatively
tangible. God, however is not tangible, and no human could possibly
conceive of him. So, even if in our imagination we can conceive of this
great being, how is it remotely legitimate to suppose that such a
thing’s existence would be ideal? We have no reason to believe. Who
are we to try and conceive of this being? Granted, Anselm stipulates
that you must be a believer to understand, but if every argument were to
have a similar stipulation, you would rule out all possible opposition.
In essence, I can't see how Anselm's argument is even remotely
legitimate and discussed by philosophers. It seems so close-minded and
uselessly simplistic.
Message no. 216
Author: HIU YEUNG LAU
Date: Thursday, October 9, 2008 2:18pm
You have brought up very interesting points, and I do think that today's
lecture has enlightened me enough to put forward some points that might
address these issues.
There is an issue regarding human limits here. Anselm's first premise
defines God as 'something in which nothing greater can be thought', and
subsequently Guanilo's reply built on this point and made that
'something' tangible. Prof. Gross mentioned that a valid reply to the
objection will require that the reply addresses relevant differences to
these two variants of the same argumentative form, and from what I have
gathered, there seems to be a fundamental problem with Anselm's first
premise which generated the perfect island problem.
When Anselm said 'something in which nothing greater can be thought', he
probably unknowingly placed limits to the world that he is talking
about. If you think something as 'the best', it will have certain
qualities which you assigned to that object to make it 'the best'; and
since it is 'the best', you can't think of anything better already.
Of course, such things can be conceivable and understood, and of course,
it might or might not exist - the only way to prove it is to find it,
and finding it is a simply game of probability, because this 'the best' is
based on a limited, finite world. To add on to that, 'the best' is almost
always subjective as well.
However, God is different. Let's change the first premise to 'God is a being
that is absolutely perfect and infinitely great' (assuming that it is true -
Anselm will agree with me I suppose). Now the point of contention comes
to premise 2 (God exists in the mind): to believers like Anselm,
premise 1 is not a difficult concept to grasp; to unbelievers, this is also
a concept that is possible to grasp. Thus, it is not necessary for premise 2
to be false even if that is the case - we might not be able to imagine God
as exactly how He is like, but it is possible that we can comprehend the
concept that God is 'absolutely perfect' and 'infinitely great'. And the rest
follows, because there is no such thing as more perfect and greater than
'absolutely perfect' and 'infinitely great' - and just to bring the
argument down a little, to individuals, isn't the existence of something
'good'/'great' (can even be subjective, need not be absolute/infinite)
better than not?
It also follows when Anselm suggests that God exists in reality that he
might not have meant a physical existence. By means of God having a
physical existence, He will NOT be 'absolutely perfect' and 'infinitely
great', because anything physical has LIMITS. The world (assuming the
world has no limits) is not only limited to things that are 'physical'
and 'imagined' - an example would probably be TIME. 'Real' doesn't equate
to 'physical'. Thus, we can see God as existing in a realm whereby He's
neither 'physical' or 'imagined', but yet He is still real - probably
some kind of metaphysical existence that we can grasp but not fully
comprehend.
Lastly, yes it is true that we can never fully comprehend God, because
we have limits and by that definition God is infinite; infinity divided
by a finite number = infinity. However, the job of a believer is not to
fully comprehend God, but to approximate as much as we can, which is
possible - in mathematics we have this idea of the 'asymptote',
something we can get closer and closer to but never fully reach. That is
what people like Anselm spends all his life doing - to understand God as
best he can. There is this whole set of Christian theology that
addresses your question regarding 'who are we to try to conceive this
being'; I won't go into that here.
Of course, for this argument to be sound, the first premise has to be
true, and honestly there is no way I can prove to you that it is true.
As a result, Anselm's notion regarding the pre-requisite for this
argument to work is that you must be a believer is true. This argument
cannot prove God's existence if you do not believe that God is
absolutely perfect and infinitely great (premise 1), or refuse to
understand the notion (premise 2); but to a believer it makes complete
sense. This can only serve as a means of 'faith seeking understanding' -
by pondering over this believers can better understand what they are
believing in, but it cannot serve to prove to an unbeliever that God exists.
Labels: Philosophy and Religion
