An unsustainable argument in favor of God

 In theology the base assumption is that there is a god and then all arguments are based on it. It tries to solve the philosophical problems based on this belief. Philosophy takes nothing for granted and everything has to be scrutinized- even god has to prove its existence or non existence. Everything needs an argument and a debate. This differentiates theology and philosophy. Even the most sacred belief has to be examined. One area which many take as beyond debate is faith, but for philosophers even faith is also a matter of examination, nothing can be taken for granted.

Before going deeper first let us see what philosophy of religion is not:

• It is not what your parents taught you to be the truth. It can give you a certain belief but certainly not the truth.

• It is not the study of books like the Bible or Quran because whatever written in the books cannot be proved to be the truth just because it is written in a book.

• It is also not the physiological understanding of what we believe.

Can we give an argument that god exists? In 11th century Anselm a French monk gave an argument to conclusively prove that god exists- as per him.

Our image of god is mostly a long white flowing beard with a robe, a nice guy looking over us but you don’t have his mobile number. Anselm said that god is the best possible thing we can ever imagine. The best of the best of the best thing you can imagine of- and god is better than that. He said that something can exist in two ways – only in the mind like the Santa – both in the mind and in reality also like the dog and the cookie. He said any good thing will be better if it exists in both our mind as well as in reality- true indeed. If Santa was real it would be great. You idea of your dream girl friend- hot, sexy, romantic, rich, understanding, compatible would be great if it was in real also. So he claimed that if we think god as the best thing we can think of then the only thing that can be better is the real version of it. So therefore god has to exist- both in our imagination as well as in reality.

If it looks too confusing then let’s recap it in bullet form:

• God is the greatest thing we can possibly think of.

• Things can be in our imagination or in our in reality.

• Things in reality are always better.

• If god is only the creation of our imagination then it won’t be the greatest thing.

• God in reality would be better than god in imagination.

• Therefore god exists in reality.

But we can prove anything if we follow this line of argument. His contemporary monk Guanilo was not satisfied with this argument and said that he can prove a lost mystical island this way. He said my best possible mystical island is where I could swim in the ocean as well as ski in the snowy mountains in the same day. So if I can imagine it therefore it must exist, otherwise it won’t be the best island.

Anselm responded by saying that his argument only works for necessary beings and that is only god. So here we have a fallacy- a flaw in reasoning which destroys an argument. When Anselm adds this idea of a necessary being he makes the argument in favor of god as a part of god.

After this for centuries philosophers have tried to prove and disprove Anselm’s argument. In 18th century German philosopher Kant also objected to it, saying that existence is not a predicate. For him Anselm had mistaken in thinking that existence is something that can be predicated on a thing or can be used to define a characteristics. Let’s see with an example- for a triangle to exist it must have three sides but it could be that no triangle exists at all. The idea of existence is not the part of the definition of triangle. Likewise if god has to exist then he must be the greatest being but it does not mean that god exists.

British philosopher came up with a thought experiment- the parable of the invisible gardener. It says that suppose John and Tom return to their garden after a long time and sees that the plants are still growing and have not died. John says that some gardener must have maintained it in their absence, but Tom disagrees. So they wait out to see if any gardener comes, but no one comes. John says that the gardener must be invisible so he puts up traps and brings in the dogs to smell and catch the gardener. But still no one is found so John says that the gardener must be intangible as well as unsmellable. Tom asks is there any difference between being invisible, intangible and unsmellable and no gardener at all.

I hope you get whom we are talking about.