Thursday, May 20, 2004
Yes Virginia, there is a God
One of my favorite things about the history of philosophy is the many attempts people have made to prove God's existence. I am personally of the opinion that this is impossible, and I think most modern people would agree. Reason is a hell of a tool, but besides theoretical science, its usefulness in proving things beyond the realm of possible experience is dubious at best.
Anyway, out of the several proofs of God's existence, here is my favorite. It's called the ontological argument and it goes like this:
By definition, God is a perfect being. He contains within himself every quality (or predicate) to perfection -- perfect goodness, omniscience, you get the idea.
Existence is a predicate of things. Therefore, God must also contain the quality of existence perfectly, or, he must exist.
Convinced? Me neither. But this was a very common proof and thought to be correct by many people for a long time. People seriously believed that by the use of reason alone you could prove metaphysical beliefs with the same degree of precision and certainty as you could mathematical truths or scientific facts.
There are problems, though:
Problem 1 is that the definition of God put forward in this proof is not self evident by any means and open to debate. How, for example, could God be perfectly blue and perfectly red? Some cultures may regard humility as the ideal, so God would be humble, others courage. Then you could say that God has perfect moderation, but that's pretty lame.
Problem 2 is more interesting. According to this argument, existence is a predictae assigned to objects. Kant would argue more persuasively that existence is not a condition applied to something, but a precondition which is necessary for the object to be comprehensible.
For example, there is no such thing as a square which does not existence. Squares exist, even if just as ideas. If squares did not exist, then we could not comprehend them at all, AND we could not draw or otherwise construct a "real" square.
So as an idea God is quite real, even if just as a fiction. However, proving God's actual physical existence is impossible based solely on the fact that the idea of Him certainly exists. The only way to "prove" God's "real" existence would be to perceive Him experientially directly or indirectly.
The result is not atheism but the recognition that belief in God is based on faith, not knowledge -- because just as you can't prove God does exist, you also can't prove He doesn't.
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Anyway, out of the several proofs of God's existence, here is my favorite. It's called the ontological argument and it goes like this:
By definition, God is a perfect being. He contains within himself every quality (or predicate) to perfection -- perfect goodness, omniscience, you get the idea.
Existence is a predicate of things. Therefore, God must also contain the quality of existence perfectly, or, he must exist.
Convinced? Me neither. But this was a very common proof and thought to be correct by many people for a long time. People seriously believed that by the use of reason alone you could prove metaphysical beliefs with the same degree of precision and certainty as you could mathematical truths or scientific facts.
There are problems, though:
Problem 1 is that the definition of God put forward in this proof is not self evident by any means and open to debate. How, for example, could God be perfectly blue and perfectly red? Some cultures may regard humility as the ideal, so God would be humble, others courage. Then you could say that God has perfect moderation, but that's pretty lame.
Problem 2 is more interesting. According to this argument, existence is a predictae assigned to objects. Kant would argue more persuasively that existence is not a condition applied to something, but a precondition which is necessary for the object to be comprehensible.
For example, there is no such thing as a square which does not existence. Squares exist, even if just as ideas. If squares did not exist, then we could not comprehend them at all, AND we could not draw or otherwise construct a "real" square.
So as an idea God is quite real, even if just as a fiction. However, proving God's actual physical existence is impossible based solely on the fact that the idea of Him certainly exists. The only way to "prove" God's "real" existence would be to perceive Him experientially directly or indirectly.
The result is not atheism but the recognition that belief in God is based on faith, not knowledge -- because just as you can't prove God does exist, you also can't prove He doesn't.
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