The Ontological argument, the ultimate argument if you want to fry your friends noodle. A couple of disclaimers before we go any further... I do not think this argument *works* (whatever that means) I do however quite enjoy it and wish I could understand it even better. So, fly with me into this elaborate, wordy and complicated argument that relies entirely on logic.
So, without further ado lets see what this argument actually is.
Anslem discusses psalm 14:1: 'The fool says in his heart there is no God..." and then he proceeds to give a reason as to why the person who says there is no God is a fool...
Basically it goes like this: Anselm first defines God as 'the being than which no greater being can be conceived.' So the fool says 'yes'. Now Anselm says that he is a fool because Anselm seems to think that the very idea of God entails existence. Because, after all, it's better to exist than to not exist. Therefore if God exists in the fools mind than any God which exists in reality is greater than the being conceived in the fool's mind. This is why the fool is a fool, because he is contradicting himself by saying God does not exist while at the same time affirming his existence by conceiving of him in order to make that sentence.
So, imagine talking to your friend at a party and doing this! It would be great to see their reaction, but most people think it is a word trick. And we will get to that some time in a future post.
Today I want to share with you something that is fairly interesting, fairly funny and also kinda sad (in an amusing way).
First, lets start off with this ripper from prominent Atheist author and spokesperson, Christopher Hitchens:
"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."
Thats from his article on Mother Theresa which can be found here.
Now, lets turn to the topic at hand. With the success of the scientific method and humanities new found ability to discover the truth apart from God, we decided, heck, lets just do away with God entirely. Enter: Logical Positivism. Logical Positivism was a movement in the first half of the 20th Century that was lead by philosophers such as A.J. Ayer. Basically it was the idea that no hypothesis can be treated seriously if it does not have some empirical evidence entered into the equation somewhere, and also, more importantly it has to be directly related to the object of the hypothesis. (I hope that makes sense).
The effect of this was to be devastating for theistic belief among philosophers. It was not that God had been disproved, but that the statement "God exists" became completely meaningless. It was unverifiable, therefore one could not say anything about it. It was a bit like making this statement "aglup mart unadapop". Thats basically what it amounts to.
However, by the 1960's it was undermined by the realization that the statement 'everything must be verified by empirical evidence' is itself a meaningless statement. So the whole world view became horribly self refuting. So, if we return to Christopher's aforementioned quote, well I would like to deny it because I have no evidence to suggest that its true, thank you very much.
But, I have noticed that among many of my peers this idea lives on... most frequently repackaged as the so-called 'law of falsification' the idea that if a hypothesis is non falsifiable then we can dismiss it. (In this case the falsifiability has to come in the form of empirical evidence usually), and also, if one were to take this as an axiom of their world view, then they could hold no other axioms and technically their only axiom would be self refuting. (We cant falsify the 'law of falsifiability'). This leaves me in the humorous position of discovering an argument that was refuted 40 years before I was born being told to me by someone who considers me illogical and stupid, and himself to be the very paradigm of rationality and critical thinking!
So, before I go, I want to leave you with this little video of Bill Craig humiliating Peter Atkins.
So, next time you come across this argument, don't make a pithy argument based on the fact that we cannot see the wind, instead expose the foolishness of the unbelieving worldview!
(Gosh, that sounded a lot more cavalier than "So put that in your pipe and smoke it.")
In my earlier post I mentioned that I found none of the traditional theodicies very compelling, and in fact I called them 'weak', as in they had little persuasive power to non-Christians also. I figured, that as a result of making such a claim, I should tell people why I find them un-compelling and then maybe give someone a chance to defend them also. So, to that end I will examine the theodicies that are out there and give reasons as to why I find them unconvincing.
First up is one that often floats around on emails for some obscure reason. I think its the worst answer, and in some ways the most belittling of the whole problem.
The solution, according to this defense, is that evil does not 'exist'. Essentially, the claim is that evil is not actually 'something' its merely the absence of goodness. Much like darkness is merely the absence of light. It, by itself has no intrinsic properties and does not properly belong in a list of things that have 'existence'.
Therefore, this defense states, God has nothing to do with evil, he did not create it and so how can we blame him for that which he could create, since, after all it non-existent things cannot be 'created'. Evil, in this view is an 'illusion'.
Now, the first reason I find it to be severely lacking, is that it does not take evil very seriously, and seems to really be a play on words. When we speak of 'Illusion' we usually mean fake and contrived. However, when the person who is proposing that evil is an 'illusion' he is meaning it does not have the properties of existence, not that it is contrived or a 'fake'. Then, on closer inspection, we discover that this 'illusion' of evil is actually fairly malicious, most magic tricks do not have such cosmic consequences or are so universally feared, as those things/people/events that we consider evil. Even if we decide that evil indeed is not something metaphysically classifiable, it is still an 'illusion' that causes great pain and anguish to people all the time, and as such I see no good reason to see this as an appropriate response to the problem. I see no good reason for why God should permit an 'illusion' to exist anyway so it does not even remotely respond to the problem.
