Anselm's Ontological Argument

St Anselm (1033-1109) was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by William Rufus, successor to William the Conqueror. At that time, there was something of a debate going on in scholarly circles about whether or not theology could be speculative—that is, was there room in theology for philosophizing about God, or was it beyond the realm of analysis? Could the faith be shown to be reasonable? Anselm is clearly in the camp that saw a role for philosophy as a tool for understanding the faith—hence his motto, fides quaerens intellectum: faith seeking understanding.

Two of his most important works are the Monologion (1075; the title means ‘soliloquy’) and the Proslogion (1077; the title means, ‘address’), both of which include arguments for the existence of God and both works represent an attempt to unite faith and reason.

In Chapter 65 of the Monologion, Anselm’s asks: if God is transcendent, how can we use reason to understand him? And, on the other hand, if we can rely on reason to understand God, how can we say that he is transcendent? When we speak of God, we seem to be caught in a paradox (it is precisely this paradox that in the 20th century A.J. Ayer seizes upon in his critique of religious belief). Anselm’s answer is that we can speak of God through a kind of analogy; when I speak of God’s wisdom, he is not wise in the creaturely sense of the word, but the analogy allows me to get a glimpse of the truth about God.

Anselm draws a distinction between knowing God’s essence and existence. In God, there is no distinction between essence and existence: God’s existence is his essence. For humans however, we cannot directly infer God’s essence—but we can know of his existence.

In the Proslogion, Anselm writes that God’s existence is necessary. In other words, God’s existence can be deduced from an understanding of what God is: a necessary being. God is necessary by definition, and it is therefore a short step from understanding what God is, to that he exists.

Of course, one may immediately object that Anselm has made a huge leap here in asserting that God is necessary and therefore must exist. But Anselm’s argument is a bit more subtle. For if a critic were to insist that God might not be necessary, Anselm could reply then that the critic does not have a concept of God in mind—for the concept of God is that he is a necessary being.

For this reason, Gaunilo’s counter-argument does not really pose a problem to Anselm’s initial argument that God is a necessary being. Gaunilo’s argument—that by the same logic a perfect island must exist—does not hold water, since an island is, by nature, contingent. God is not contingent: God is necessary.

Deus et Machina

"Deus ex machina" and "God of the Gaps"...

Both these expressions refer to the way in which God is often invoked as an explanation for things only because no other reasonable explanation can be found. "Deus ex machina" means "God out of the machine". Originally, it referred to a weak literary device in which an author would use some sudden and unrelated plot device to bring about a quick and speedy resolution to a crisis in the story (for example, the world is about to be destroyed by a massive meteorite, when suddenly—“dues ex machine”—some discovers the perfect weapon that’s been lying around just for this sort of occasion. Doctor Who is notorious for its dues ex machine plot resolutions, although they are a bit more forgivable in science fiction!)

“God of the gaps” is an expression which refers to the way in which people attribute things to God, just because no better explanation can be found. Wherever there is an absence of scientific information about a given event (such as the cause of the big bang) some theists are too quick to jump in with God as the solution to the cause for every unknown event.

The problem with assigning God a ‘deus ex machina’ or ‘God of the gaps’ role is that God is reduced to a plug for human ignorance rather than being a positive explanation. In other words, God becomes the cement that we use to plug up gaps in our knowledge of the universe. In time, as more and more scientific discoveries are made, God is replaced in these gaps by sound scientific analysis.

Any Argument for the existence of God, or an argument for or about religion, must avoid becoming an argumentum ad ignorantiam: an argument based on nothing more than our own ignorance. This sort of argument is always weak.

How theory of knowledge influences arguments for God's Existence

Three philosophers—Bob, Sue and Jim—are sitting around discussing whether or not they think they there is life on other planets. Before the argument begins and before each of them starts putting forward their views, they lay their cards on the table. Bob says that he is neutral on the question; he doesn’t know whether or not there is life on other planets—but that he is open minded and willing to be convinced. Sue starts by saying that there must be life on other planets while Jim says he doesn’t think that there could be life on other planets at all. So the argument gets underway, and the three of them hammer it out for an hour or so: Sue and Jim give arguments for and against while Bob asks clarifying questions waiting to be swayed one way or another.

But how neutral is Bob really? He says that he hasn’t made his mind up yet and that he’s waiting to be convinced one way or another, by whichever argument is most compelling. But what will actually convince him? What are his criteria for “convincing arguments”? What will count as being the clincher in a debate? Perhaps Bob is thinking: “I’m open-minded until I actually see an alien for myself”; or maybe he’s thinking, “I like Sue’s argument more: she’s much more passionate about the topic.” Bob’s neutrality has a limit and a context: he is neutral but only until his own predispositions to the question are fulfilled. He is neutral according to his own criteria.

The same in fact goes for Sue and Jim too. Either they’ll be so stubborn that they’ll both seek to find flaws in each other’s arguments no matter what. Even if Jim were to produce an alien autopsy report, Sue could still question the validity of the autopsy: coroners after all are not infallible. Both Sue and Jim will bring to the argument an attitude towards the question and will try to find arguments to support that predisposition.

But let’s imagine for a moment that Jim in fact is also open-minded enough to be swayed by the debate and concedes that Sue has raised some compelling mathematical calculations that makes him reconsider his position. But in this case, Jim has his own set of criteria that serve as a reason for him to reconsider his position. Jim is swayed by a mathematical probability argument: “Out of the billions of galaxies out there, chances are that some of them have life on them just like earth.” Jim is swayed by the probability argument—but at the same time, Bob is not. In order to accept the probability argument, you have to accept that life is just a random occurrence he reasons. Since he does not believe life on earth is random, then a probability argument does not sway him at all.

Everyone approaches an argument—even if they claim to be neutral and open-minded—with a predisposition to those arguments. Either our minds are already made up or we have a set of criteria by which we will allow our minds to be made up.

All arguments for the existence of God—including the cosmological, design and ontological arguments—are, at their root, arguments which rely on a theory of knowledge. Whether you are for or against God’s existence, or for or against the cosmological argument, your reasons for accepting or rejecting such arguments will be drawn from ideas about how you can go about knowing something.

Scientific Realism

The following notes are based on the “Philosophy Bites” podcast in which Nigel Warburton interviews David Papineau of Kings College, London, on the meaning of scientific realism and scientific scepticism.

Scientific realism is the belief that unseen causes of seen (empirically testable) effects are just as real as those effects. It is similar to philosophical realism, which maintains that the world and reality is independent of our minds and mental constructs: in other words, truth corresponds to something in reality independent of the mind. Scientific and philosophical realism stand in opposition to scepticism and empiricism.

With the dawn of the Enlightenment period, speculation about causes at work in the universe were considered unverifiable, and hence to be consigned to the epistemological bin. Newton had taught that the universe followed a set of demonstrable laws. While there were consequences of his science—or at least questions raised by it—that could not be verified as such (as with the ontology of light or gravity), these were considered to be too speculative to be of concern to science.

However, the inability of science to answer all questions about the nature of the physical world lead to an increase in scepticism (one can see the influence of scepticism in Hume, Russell, Ayer and other philosophers we have examined).

Two sceptical positions that arose to challenge scientific realism were (1) underdetermination of evidence and (2) Pessimistic meta-induction.

The first position—that of underdetermination—holds that for every position, there at least two and sometimes many plausible theories to support the evidence (consider for example, the different theories about the nature of light or gravity). Consider scientific data that can be explained by more than one theory. Consider that these theories cannot be empirically verified. There seems to be no reason to accept one of these theories over another.
The pessimistic meta-induction claim holds that since our empirical knowledge is constantly subject to improvement, and that many scientific theories are proven wrong our outdated, we never have sufficient reason to believe that any one scientific theory is totally reliable.
Papineau regards both these challenges as answerable.

In the case of the underdetermination argument, theories do conflict and abound it is true, but they also get established and, as knowledge improves, solve objections. Just because there are many competing theories does not mean that they are all equal: the truth will out.
As for the pessimistic meta-induction argument: some scientific disciplines seem more prone to confusion than others, such as psychology which frequently is challenged and contradicted. However, there are also many scientific disciplines in which discoveries are well-established, as in chemistry and physics for example, which have excellent track records.

An Argument from Design

Argument from Design
By Peter Kreeft

The argument starts with the major premise that where there is design, there must be a designer. The minor premise is the existence of design throughout the universe. The conclusion is that there must be a universal designer.

Why must we believe the major premise, that all design implies a designer? Because everyone admits this principle in practice. For instance, suppose you came upon a deserted island and found "S.O.S." written in the sand on the beach. You would not think the wind or the waves had written it by mere chance but that someone had been there, someone intelligent enough to design and write the message. If you found a stone hut on the island with windows, doors, and a fireplace, you would not think a hurricane had piled up the stones that way by chance. You immediately infer a designer when you see design.

When the first moon rocket took off from Cape Canaveral, two U.S. scientists stood watching it, side by side. One was a believer, the other an unbeliever. The believer said, "Isn't it wonderful that our rocket is going to hit the moon by chance?" The unbeliever objected, "What do you mean, chance? We put millions of man-hours of design into that rocket." "Oh," said the believer, "you don't think chance is a good explanation for the rocket? Then why do you think it's a good explanation for the universe? There's much more design in a universe than in a rocket. We can design a rocket, but we couldn't design a whole universe. I wonder who can?" Later that day the two were strolling down a street and passed an antique store. The atheist admired a picture in the window and asked, "I wonder who painted that picture?" "No one," joked the believer; "it just happened by chance."

Is it possible that design happens by chance without a designer? There is perhaps one chance in a trillion that "S.O.S." could be written in the sand by the wind. But who would use a one-in-a-trillion explanation? Someone once said that if you sat a million monkeys at a million typewriters for a million years, one of them would eventually type out all of Hamlet by chance. But when we find the text of Hamlet, we don't wonder whether it came from chance and monkeys. Why then does the atheist use that incredibly improbable explanation for the universe? Clearly, because it is his only chance of remaining an atheist. At this point we need a psychological explanation of the atheist rather than a logical explanation of the universe. We have a logical explanation of the universe, but the atheist does not like it. It's called God.

There is one especially strong version of the argument from design that hits close to home because it's about the design of the very thing we use to think about design: our brains. The human brain is the most complex piece of design in the known universe. In many ways it is like a computer. Now just suppose there were a computer that was programmed only by chance. For instance, suppose you were in a plane and the public-address system announced that there was no pilot, but the plane was being flown by a computer that had been programmed by a random fall of hailstones on its keyboard or by a baseball player in spiked shoes dancing on computer cards. How much confidence would you have in that plane? But if our brain computer has no cosmic intelligence behind the heredity and environment that program it, why should we trust it when it tells us about anything, even about the brain?

Another specially strong aspect of the design argument is the so-called anthropic principle, according to which the universe seems to have been specially designed from the beginning for human life to evolve. If the temperature of the primal fireball that resulted from the Big Bang some fifteen to twenty billion years ago, which was the beginning of our universe, had been a trillionth of a degree colder or hotter, the carbon molecule that is the foundation of all organic life could never have developed. The number of possible universes is trillions of trillions; only one of them could support human life: this one. Sounds suspiciously like a plot. If the cosmic rays had bombarded the primordial slime at a slightly different angle or time or intensity, the haemoglobin molecule, necessary for all warm-blooded animals, could never have evolved. The chance of this molecule's evolving is something like one in a trillion-trillion. Add together each of the chances and you have something far more unbelievable than a million monkeys writing Hamlet.

There are relatively few atheists among neurologists and brain surgeons and among astrophysicists, but many among psychologists, sociologists, and historians. The reason seems obvious: the first study divine design, the second study human undersign.

But doesn't evolution explain everything without a divine Designer? Just the opposite; evolution is a beautiful example of design, a great clue to God. There is very good scientific evidence for the evolving, ordered appearance of species, from simple to complex. But there is no scientific proof of natural selection as the mechanism of evolution, Natural selection "explains" the emergence of higher forms without intelligent design by the survival-of-the-fittest principle. But this is sheer theory. There is no evidence that abstract, theoretical thinking or altruistic love make it easier for man to survive. How did they evolve then?
Furthermore, could the design that obviously now exists in man and in the human brain come from something with less or no design? Such an explanation violates the principle of causality, which states that you can't get more in the effect than you had in the cause. If there is intelligence in the effect (man), there must be intelligence in the cause. But a universe ruled by blind chance has no intelligence. Therefore there must be a cause for human intelligence that transcends the universe: a mind behind the physical universe. (Most great scientists have believed in such a mind, by the way, even those who did not accept any revealed religion.)

How much does this argument prove? Not all that the Christian means by God, of course—no argument can do that. But it proves a pretty thick slice of God: some designing intelligence great enough to account for all the design in the universe and the human mind. If that's not God, what is it?

Existence & Essence

“What a thing is” and “that a thing is” refer to a thing’s essence and existence. The “what” is its essence; the “that” is its existence.

Consider the case of the Sasquatch. For generations, people have claimed to have caught glimpses of this half-man, half-ape like creature lurking about in the forests of Canada. “What is it?” someone asks of the beast; “what does it look like? What does it eat?” This line of questioning is focussing on the creature’s essence, its traits. What makes a Sasquatch different from a big ape? When we establish what a thing is, we are establishing its essence.

But notice that in establishing a things essence we are not establishing its existence. You could become a world expert in the nature of the Sasquatch: where the legend originated; what height it is supposed to grow to; what it would likely eat; how many people have claimed to have seen it; that is is smelly; that it has big, dirty toenails; what parts of Canada it is likely to inhabit. But all this information about its essence doesn’t bring us any closer to the question: “Does the Sasquatch exist?” It may or may not exist, but knowing lots of stuff about its essence does not help us answer questions about its existence. It may be more likely that it does not exist. Or perhaps we will all be surprised and excited one day to find that such a creature has indeed been shot and bagged.

So we can say that essence and existence are two distinct things. “What a thing is” and “that a thing is” are not the same thing: at least in reference to the Sasquatch and—for that matter—all creatures, real or not.

But notice how this separation of essence (“whatness”) and existence (“thatness”) does not apply to everything. It does not, for starters, apply to the sum, 3 + 5 = 8. What the sum is and its existence cannot be separated. In essence, it is a sum. Specifically, its essence is the sum of 3 + 5. Does it make sense to say that this sum might not exist? The fact that we understand it’s essence implies that there is something we understand. There must be something that exists in order to be understood.

Of course, the sum does not exist in the same way that donkeys and cabbages exist. It has a purely conceptual existence: it exists in the mind. But to know its essence is the same thing as knowing its existence.

So there are things for which essence and existence are different as in the case of Sasquatch, lasagne, the Prime Minister and cornflakes. And there are also things for which essence and existence are the same as for sums and ideas.

Anything in which existence and essence are not the same are called contingent things. It is possible that they do not exist; and if they do exist, it is possible that they can go out of existence. On the other hand, things in which existence and essence are the same or occur together are necessary. They are necessary because the fact of their existence cannot be separated from the fact of their essences. You cannot say that 3 + 5 is a sum which equals 8, and then deny that there is such a sum.

Arguments against ID: Genetics & Physics

Some have argued against Intelligent Design based on the principles of genetics and physics.

Apple seeds grow into apple trees because of their genetic material. This genetic material has evolved over time. Through natural selection, those things which found a way to reproduce, survived (most defenders of the teleological argument, however, do not see this as being a decisive blow against the argument, because it doesn’t explain away the argument, but simply proposes a different way in which intelligent design might be at work).

Newton’s law of gravity and Johannes Kepler’s (1571-1630) laws of planetary motion are often used to try to demonstrate that physical laws can account for the operations of the universe. For example, a falling brick from the sky is not so much an indication of a designer as it is a demonstration of gravity. Thus, intelligent purpose is thought to have been replaced by laws of physics (however, the counter-argument to this of course is that gravity and laws of physics can also be explained in terms of design).