And you thought Anselm was absurd?

I must admit, I’m a fan of Anselm’s Onto­log­i­cal argu­ment for the exis­tence of God. Well, to be more exact, I’m a fan of Plantinga’s mod­i­fi­ca­tion of Anselm’s proof. I’m reminded of my fond­ness for this proof as ear­lier today I was skim­ming through The God Delu­sion to find some­thing to write on and Dawkins wrote some­thing which peaked my interest.

Before quot­ing Dawkins I think it best to out­line Anselms orig­i­nal argu­ment. As approx­i­mated by Planti­nga, Anselm’s argu­ment goes as follows:

1. God exists in the under­stand­ing but not in reality.
2. Exis­tence in real­ity is greater than exis­tence in the under­stand­ing alone. (premise)
3. God’s exis­tence in real­ity is con­ceiv­able. (premise)
4. If God did exist in real­ity, then He would be greater than He is. [from (1) and (2)]
5. It is con­ceiv­able that there is a being greater than G0d is. [(3) and (4)]
6. It is con­ceiv­able that there be a being greater than the being than which noth­ing greater can be con­ceived. [(5) by the def­i­n­i­tion of “God”][1]

Dawkins, in response to the above, says the following:

The most defin­i­tive refu­ta­tions of the onto­log­i­cal argu­ment are usu­ally attrib­uted to the philoso­phers David Hume (1711−76) and Immanuel Kant (1724−1804). Kant iden­ti­fied the trick card up Anselm’s sleeve as his slip­pery assump­tion that ‘exis­tence’ is more ‘per­fect’ than non-existence. The Amer­i­can philoso­pher Nor­man Macolm put it like this: ‘The doc­trine that exis­tence is a per­fec­tion is remark­ably queer. It makes sense and is true to say that my future house will be a bet­ter one if it is insu­lated than if it is not insu­lated; but what could it mean to say that it will be a bet­ter house if it exists than if it does not?’ Another philoso­pher, the Aus­tralian Dou­glas Gask­ing, made the point with his ironic ‘proof’ that God does not exist (Anselm’s con­tem­po­rary Guanilo had sug­ges­tion a some­what sim­i­lar reduc­tio).

1. The cre­ation of the world is the most mar­velous achieve­ment imaginable
2. The merit of an achieve­ment is the prod­uct of (a) its intrin­sic qual­ity, and (b) the abil­ity of its creator.
3. The greater the dis­abil­ity (or hand­i­cap) or the cre­ator, the more impres­sive the achievement.
4. The most for­mi­da­ble hand­i­cap for a cre­ator would be nonexistence.
5. There­fore, if we sup­pose that the uni­verse is the prod­uct of an exis­tence cre­ator we can con­ceive of a greater being — namely, one who cre­ated every­thing while not existing.
6. An exist­ing God there­fore would not be a being greater than which a greater can­not be con­ceived because an even more for­mi­da­ble and incred­i­ble cre­ator would be a God which did not exist.
7. Ergo: God does not exist.

Need­less to say, Gask­ing didn’t really prove that God does not exist. By the same token, Anselm didn’t prove that he does. The only dif­fer­ence is, Gask­ing was being funny on pur­pose. As he real­ized, the exis­tence or non-existence of God is too big a ques­tion to be decided by ‘dialec­ti­cal pres­tidig­i­ta­tion’. And I don’t think the slip­per use of exis­tence as an indi­ca­tor of per­fec­tion is the worst of the argument’s prob­lems. I’ve for­got­ten the details, but I once piqued a gath­er­ing of the­olo­gians and philoso­phers by adapt­ing the onto­log­i­cal argu­ment to prove that pigs can fly. They felt the need to resort to model logic to prove that I was wrong.[2]

Now, whether or not Hume, Kant, Guanilo and oth­ers were or are suc­cess­ful at refut­ing Anselms proof (Gask­ing is com­pletely off base) the fact remains that the argu­ment has been widely revised. As men­tioned above I’m a fan of Plantinga’s ren­der­ing, so before I address Dawkins believed refu­ta­tion of the Onto­log­i­cal argu­ment, let me out­line Plantinga’s proof:

1. It is pos­si­ble that a max­i­mally great being exists.
2. If it is pos­si­ble that a max­i­mally great being exists, then a max­i­mally great being exists in some pos­si­ble world.
3. If a max­i­mally great being exists in some pos­si­ble world, then it exists in every pos­si­ble world.
4. If a max­i­mally great being exists in every pos­si­ble world, then it exists in the actual world.
5. If a max­i­mally great being exists in the actual world, then a max­i­mally great being exists.
6. There­fore, a max­i­mally great being exists.

With respect to this ren­der­ing of the Onto­log­i­cal argu­ment, I believe Dawkins is wholly mis­taken. Before going any fur­ther it’s best to note that Planti­nga for­mu­lates his argu­ment in terms of pos­si­ble worlds.  William Lane Craig explains ‘pos­si­ble worlds,’ “by ‘a pos­si­ble world’ one doesn’t mean a planet or even a uni­verse, but rather a com­plete descrip­tion of real­ity, or a way real­ity might be. To say that God exists in some pos­si­ble world is just to say that there is a pos­si­ble descrip­tion of real­ity which includes the state­ment “God exists” as part of that description”.[3]

To start, then, Kant and Hume’s ‘trick card’ can be put to the side as with Plantinga’s proof, there is no pre­sup­po­si­tion that exis­tence is more per­fect than nonex­is­tence. Fur­ther­more, Gasking’s mock­ery of Anselms argu­ment, which is a reduc­tio ad absur­dem widely misses the mark — the alter­na­tive is not sup­posed to be coher­ent than the propo­si­tion, which is Gasking’s case. Craig explains, ” Iron­i­cally, this par­ody, far from under­min­ing the onto­log­i­cal argu­ment, actu­ally rein­forces it! For a being who cre­ates every­thing while not exist­ing is a log­i­cal inco­her­ence and is there­fore impos­si­ble: there is no pos­si­ble world which includes a non-existent being which cre­ates the world. If the athe­ist is to maintain—as he must—that God’s exis­tence is impos­si­ble, the con­cept of God would have to be sim­i­larly inco­her­ent. But to all appear­ances it’s not. That sup­ports the plau­si­bil­ity of pre­miss (1) of Plantinga’s argu­ment. William Lane Craig concludes:

I think you can see that Dawkins doesn’t even under­stand the logic of the onto­log­i­cal argu­ment, which moves from the log­i­cal pos­si­bil­ity of God’s exis­tence to its actu­al­ity. A par­ody of the argu­ment that moves from a log­i­cal impos­si­bil­ity to actu­al­ity is not par­al­lel to the argu­ment […] Dawkins chor­tles, ‘I’ve for­got­ten the details, but I once piqued a gath­er­ing of the­olo­gians and philoso­phers by adapt­ing the onto­log­i­cal argu­ment to prove that pigs can fly. They felt the need to resort to Modal Logic to prove that I was wrong’. This is just embar­rass­ing. The onto­log­i­cal argu­ment is an exer­cise in modal logic—the logic of the pos­si­ble and the necessary.[4]

On that, we’ll leave Guani­los objec­tion to Anselms argu­ment for another day. How­ever, from the above it should be con­cluded that Dawkins is mis­taken and Gask­ing is well, a bit foolish.

[1] Alv­ina Planti­nga, God, Free­dom and Evil (Grand Rapids: Eerd­mans, 1974), 87.
[2] Richard Dawkins, The God Delu­sion (New York: Houghton Mif­flin, 2006), 83–84.
[3] William Lane Craig, Dawkins’ Cri­tique of the Onto­log­i­cal Argu­ment, http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=6831
[4] Ibid.

Related posts:

1. Fur­ther Thoughts on Anselm
2. Argu­ments from evil
3. But you can prove a negative!
4. Quick Thought About Evangelism
5. Gaunilo’s Island