Edward Gibbon and Anselm's Ontological Argument

People continue to accuse Gibbon of being unfair to Christians, a charge which from one point of view is about as true or false as it's ever been. After 15 years of New Atheism, one might be inclined to chime in and say that Gibbon is just annoying already -- if you forget that Gibbon was writing in the eighteenth century, and fighting for freedoms of expression which people by 2004 had started taking for granted.

Freedoms somewhat less in evidence in Anselm's day. I find it very difficult to believe that his ontological argument (Google anselm ontological argument, cause I just can't get into the details right now without endangering the serenity for which I am so famous) would not have been about as savagely criticized as it is today, had Anselm's contemporaries been as free to speak and write about it as we are. About as difficult as it it is for me to believe that he had a horror of every worldly advancement, this Archbishop of Canterbury.

I had already encountered Aquinas' fivefold proof of God's existence, and rolled my eyes aplenty at it. Still, I felt quite positively disposed toward Aquinas as I heard about his attack on Anselm's proof, even cheered him on a little bit. Did Aquinas develop his fivefold proof because Anselm's ontological argument seemed embarrassingly flimsy to him? Was there no more to it than that?

I find it quite hard to conceive of anyone who doesn't already believe in God having their mind changed by Aquinas, and much more difficult still to imagine them having their mind changed by Anselm. I find it quite easy to imagine people rolling their eyes back when Anselm and Aquinas were alive, and holding their tongues because it wasn't worth being tortured and then burned alive.

A few days ago, I was made aware of the title of Richard Dawkins' latest book, by walking past it in a bookstore: Outgrowing God: A Beginner's Guide. And I felt quite embarrassed, as an atheist. As with Aquinas and even more so with Anselm, but in reverse, I thought about Dawkins' lack of appeal with non-atheists. Even a lot of us who are atheists find Dawkins thoroughly obnoxious. Is a believer going to see a book with a title like Outgrowing God and feel any way except personally insulted and less well-disposed toward atheists than they were a moment before?

It's hard for me to imagine.

And Dawkins doesn't have the excuse which embarrassed defenders of Anselm or Aquinas -- if any of them ever do feel embarrassed. I can't think of any such at the moment, but than again I haven't subjected myself to many of their fans -- always have at hand: that Anselm and Aquinas rarely came into contact with someone who is allowed to say that they think differently.

Anselm with his argument and Aquinas with his proofs, were they answering Lucretius? Or their own subconscious minds? That's one thing which still puzzles me: to whom were they talking? Were they actually trying to change anyone's mind, beyond some purely imaginary mind of some non-believer who was not ever at hand? Is this the Glass Bead Game I've wondered about my whole life, the one they played (and still play) just because they loved the game so much, with no further point to it at all?

Thomas Aquinas' 5 Proofs Of God

!f I were asked for a list of the things I dislike about Christianity, the high regard many Christians have for Aquinas TO THIS DAY would be high on the list. What a Bozo! The following are Aquinas' 5 proofs of God, summarized.

l) The Proof from Motion. We observe motion all around us. Whatever is in motion now was at rest until moved by something else, and that by something else, and so on. But if there were an infinite series of movers, all waiting to be moved by something else, then actual motion could never have got started, and there would be no motion now. But there is motion now. So there must be a First Mover which is itself unmoved. This First Mover we call God.

2) The Proof from Efficient Cause. Everything in the world has its efficient cause--its maker--and that maker has its maker, and so on. The coffee table was made by the carpenter, the carpenter by his or her parents, and on and on. But if there were just an infinite series of such makers, the series could never have got started, and therefore be nothing now. But there is a maker for everything there is! So there must have been a First Maker, that was not itself made, and that First Maker we call God.

3) The Proof from Necessary vs. Possible Being. Possible, or contingent, beings are those, such as cars and trees and you and I, whose existence is not necessary. For all such beings there is a time before they come to be when they are not yet, and a time after they cease to be when they are no more. If everything were merely possible, there would have been a time, long ago, when nothing had yet come to be. Nothing comes from nothing, so in that case there would be nothing now! But there is something now-the world and everything in it-so there must be at least one necessary being. This Necessary Being we call God.

4) The Proof from Degrees of Perfection. We all evaluate things and people in terms of their being more or less perfectly true, good, noble and so on. We have certain standards of how things and people should be. But we would have no such standards unless there were some being that is perfect in every way, something that is the truest, noblest, and best. That Most Perfect Being we call God.

5) The Proof from Design. As we look at the world around us, and ourselves, we see ample evidence of design--the bird's wing, designed for the purpose of flight; the human ear, designed for the purpose of hearing; the natural environment, designed to support life; and on and on. If there is design, there must be a designer. That Designer we call God.

I've asked it before on this blog, I'll ask it again: whom was Tommaso d'Aquino (1225 – 7 March 1274) addressing with these celebrated so-called proofs? We can only infer about people's private communications from the written record which has survived, and one person can never know with certainty what any other person is thinking, except through telepathy, whose existence I regard as about as convincingly proven as God's. But to judge from the surviving written record, no one within hundreds of miles of Aquinas, during his lifetime, could express the faintest doubt about God's existence without being gruesomely tortured and burnt alive for it. Those whom Aquinas regarded as his most evil adversaries, Muslims and Jews, believed in a God with just about exactly the same attributes as those Aquinas imagined. Well, it's possible that Aquinas didn't know that, although it boggles the mind. And some scholars contemporary with Aquinas had had the temerity to write some positive things about some Muslim authors such as Averroes, occasioning one of the most angry of Aquinas' depressingly numerous books.

But no, although Aquinas flew into any number of hissies about what he saw as the errors in the descriptions of the attributes of God written by Christians and Muslims, he definitely knew that they all believed in God's existence.

Is it possible that the thing against which Aquinas was mightily struggling with such things as his 5 proofs were the faint murmurs of common sense inside his own brain (which he undoubtedly would describe as the efforts of Satan to drag his eternal soul down into Hell forever)? The thing is, I haven't yet found anything else which it possibly could be. To many Christians, Aquinas' writings represent the pinnacle of human wisdom. To me, they look like very much the opposite: an attempt to oppose clear thought at every turn with every available means, a desperate battle against the free use of yr brain.

In Which I Hand CS Lewis And GK Chesterton Their Butts

(Very often, amazingly, Christians point proudly to these two fellas. Obviously, Lewis and Chesterton aren't the very brightest of all the billions of Christians there have been. But maybe they're the best of the Christian equivalent of New Atheists: Christians who've made a career of defending their side. Well, enough of their supposed brilliance! Watch as I decimate their "arguments" with ease! [Plus one each by Aquinas and William Lane Craig while I'm here.])

“Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning." -- CS Lewis "Rejecting the meaning you assign to the universe, CS, doesn't mean it has no meaning. To some degree our lives mean what we are able to make them mean. This means you're weren't listening to Jean-Paul Sartre, even if that sounds mean." -- The Wrong Monkey

“A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.” -- CS Lewis "A young Christian who wishes to remain so -- Christian, that is. Young is more difficult -- does not need to be careful about how much Lewis or Chesterton he or she reads. One page of Nietzsche or Twain or Russell or Sartre or The Wrong Monkey or Schopenhauer or Marx or the Bible or Augustine or Aquinas or Kierkegaard or Carlin or Napoleon or any of thousands of other authors, on the other hand, could instantly and irrevocably mess that plan up. But only if this young Christian really wants to learn, which most of them don't, which is why they end up old and stupid and unbearable like you!" -- The Wrong Monkey

“To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.” ― Thomas Aquinas "That must be why you spent so much time and effort writing those proofs of God's existence. Have I told you I'm a big fan, Thomas? Well I'm not, and anyone who's told you otherwise is a stinking liar! I find your writing unbearable at best! On the question of the existence of God, arguments for are easily ripped to shreds by an average atheist who is not yet full grown, and arguments against are generally ignored by the best of you, when they're not they're distorted into strawmen. Debating with Christians is a waste of an atheist's time, time much better spent warning others about people like you." -- The Wrong Monkey

“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such a violent reaction against it?... Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too--for the argument depended on saying the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. Thus, in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist - in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless - I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality - namely my idea of justice - was full of sense. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never have known it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.” ― C.S. Lewis "See what I wrote above about meaning. Other than that -- wow, what can I say, except: You really can talk some mess! And maybe you should've checked out some other people's arguments against the existence of God, instead of just assuming that yours was state-of-the-art, and that when you thought you'd found a hole in it you were done." -- The Wrong Monkey

“‎"If there is no God, then man and the universe are doomed. Like prisoners condemned to death, we await our unavoidable execution. There is no God, and there is no immortality. And what is the consequence of this? It means that life itself is absurd. It means that the life we have is without ultimate significance, value, or purpose.” ― William Lane Craig "You had a couple of deep thoughts and scared yourself, and instead of continuing to think, which often, perhaps more often than not brings some consolation with no sacrifice of intelligence, you retreated to the standard conservative-Christian fall-back position and dedicated your life to interfering with those of us who are trying to continue to think." -- The Wrong Monkey

“For when we cease to worship God, we do not worship nothing, we worship anything.” ― G.K. Chesterton "Speak for yourself, Fatso!" -- The Wrong Monkey

“The defiance of the good atheist hurled at an apparently ruthless and idiotic cosmos is really an unconscious homage to something in or behind that cosmos which he recognizes as infinitely valuable and authoritative: for if mercy and justice were really only private whims of his own with no objective and impersonal roots, and if he realized this, he could not go on being indignant. The fact that he arraigns heaven itself for disregarding them means that at some level of his mind he knows they are enthroned in a higher heaven still." ― C.S. Lewis "Atheists aren't mad at the cosmos, CS. We don't arraign heaven. In order to be able to do so we would first have to believe that heaven exists. We are impatient with morons like you, and we are angry that you still have power so grotesquely unproportionate to your intelligence and skills. As powerful as you Christians still are, and as fat as Chesterton was, very few non-Christians ever confuse or conflate you with the entire universe" -- The Wrong Monkey

“If there were no God, there would be no atheists.” ― G.K. Chesterton "If there were no diseases, there would be no physicians. If there had been no Chesterton, there would have been much more cheese for everyone else. (He was very fat.)" -- The Wrong Monkey

“Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it.” ― G.K. Chesterton "You must have had some very powerful connections, the way you prattled on endlessly about it. Unless what you really meant, and I think it was, is that you wished you lived in a Medieval world where no-one was allowed to breathe an un-Christian word in your presence." -- The Wrong Monkey

“There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions.” ― G.K. Chesterton "I've never met anyone like that. This is the very first time I've ever even heard of someone like that, and I'm 52 years old and astonishingly well-read. It's clear why being a Christian interferes with someone's ability to be a good novelist much less than it interferes with other things: both activities require that one constantly make stuff up. Of course, Christianity also requires that one insist that the made-up stuff is true, while the novelist admits that it is fictional." -- The Wrong Monkey