After seeing Star Wars or another movie on extra-terrestrial
space, one needs a few minutes to adjust to the real world. We can so easily
immerse ourselves in a world of total fancy. For some time, purely fictitious
people, objects and events appear to be real. Leaving the cinema we pinch
ourselves, and look dazedly at familiar scenes in the street, realizing that
our exploits in outer space were just imagination. If we do not bring ourselves
down to our contemporary pavement, with both feet firmly on it, we may well be
run over by a bus.
It seems to me that philosophers run a similar danger. By their speculation and abstraction the metaphysicians of the Middle Ages created a world of their own in which it was difficult to discern what was real, what was not. The danger was even greater when they talked about God who, by their own definition, in any case lay beyond the mind’s full grasp. The result has been centuries of intellectual reasoning and counter-reasoning that have left most people confused. Since our thinking about God is still in many ways influenced by the old polemics, I want to present in a nutshell what the argument was all about.
Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) deserves to be called the arch-metaphysician of Europe. He formulated the most daring logical proof for God ever put into words. For him, everything should be judged from God’s point of view, not the other way about. If God is God, then he must exist; it is simply part of his definition.
Whereas the classical argument for God’s existence took its beginning from the factual world, Anselm’s argument starts from the idea of being. It became known as the “ontological proof”. Put in a nutshell, its reasoning comes to this: The very fact that I can think of the most perfect being proves that it exists. Because, if it could not exist in my thought, I could not have the most perfect idea of being. Therefore, if it must have existence even in my thought, it must also exist in reality.
For it is one thing for an object to be in my mind, another for me to know that the object exists. When a painter conceives an idea of what he will put on canvas, he has it in his mind, but does not yet know it to exist because he has not yet executed it. But after finishing the painting he both has it in his mind and he knows that it exists because he has made it.
Now even a fool must admit that he has in his mind the notion of the greatest being (God) that could possibly be thought of. Because when we tell him about it, he grasps the idea. And when he grasps an idea, it has a place in his mind. But here we get the contradiction. Surely the greatest being that could possibly be thought of cannot exist in the mind alone. For if it existed in the mind alone, then we could think of it as existing in reality; and the latter would be greater. This would mean that if the greatest being that could possibly be thought of, exists in the mind alone, we could think of something greater than this greatest being that could possibly be thought of. But obviously this is impossible.
Hence, there is no doubt that there exists the greatest being that could possibly be thought of. It exists both in our mind and in reality. (1)
It does not require a genius to see that Anselm’s argument is not valid. However much he may argue about the necessity for the idea of God to include its existence, he may not, from the mental “idea" of God, conclude that God really exists. Anselm actually maintains that the idea of the existing God is self-evident; it needs no other proof than the idea itself. It is self-evident that “every woman is a human being" because the predicate “human being" is implicitly contained in the subject “every woman". But when we say: “God exists", the predicate “exists" is not self-evident of God, because we do not know God directly. His existence or non-existence is not obviously implicit in our idea of God, but must be proved from actual beings. In short: the fact that something exists in our mind does not prove that it exists in reality. This also applies to the idea of God. (2)
Battles of the mind
Today most philosophers outside the mainstream religions reject the metaphysical argument for God’s existence. Their reasons are: the believer argues from his own ideas to facts which he cannot observe; the law of causality may not apply to the whole universe as such; belief in God cannot be verified or falsified; evolution has proved that the universe can explain itself.
Many of these objections were formulated first by David Hume (1711-76), but it is through Kant (172-1804) in particular that they have come to be almost universally accepted.
Immanuel Kant held that the metaphysical argument for God’s existence, as it was used by Thomas Aquinas, depends on the ontological argument and is, therefore, equally invalid. The argument from contingent being, Kant said, has two parts: first one argues from unnecessary beings to the existence of a necessary being; then one deduces that this necessary being must be infinite and perfect. The first part of the argument is based on experience and leads to some kind of valid conclusion. From the contingent beings in the world we can deduce that there must be some cause which is not of the same contingency. The second step, however, leading us from the necessary to the perfect being is, according to Kant, a disguised form of the ontological argument. For in this part of the argument we are no longer in touch with observable objects, but from the idea of the non-contingent being, we argue to the fact of an infinite and perfect being outside our observable world. (3)
Kant stated that it is impossible for us to demonstrate God’s existence in this way because we are caught in the categories of our own mind. Our intellect is based on the perception of sense knowledge. Once we move outside the realm of our observable categories our thinking becomes purely speculative, “self-made", subjective, unverifiable and consequently unreal. If God is outside and above our earthly reality (as we presume when we call him infinite), he falls outside the scope of our valid human argument. “God is a fancy of the mind", said Dennis Diderot (171384). “If you want me to believe in God, you must make me touch him."
The Thomistic philosophers of our century have made gallant efforts to defend the validity of the metaphysical approach to God. Everything hinges on a correct understanding of analogy, they say. Kant would be right in rejecting the metaphysical argument if this could be claimed to lead to an idea of God such as we have of other persons or objects which we have experienced. As we have no direct experience of God we can have no positive idea of him. We only have an analogous idea of God, an idea constructed from comparison with other things that we do have ideas of. I cannot have a positive idea of my own death or of myself flying in outer space, because I have not experienced them. But from what I know of other people dying or flying in space I can have an analogous idea of what my death or my participation in a space programme would mean. This analogous idea is limited, of course (or, “partly wrong"), but that does not mean that it is totally useless or totally false. In the same way the idea we build up about God as the necessary being derives from our knowledge of other beings. The idea is very limited and partly distorted, no doubt, but still it contains a valuable kernel of truth. (4)
Kant’s objection could also be put like this: the principle of causality holds good in our world, in the world which we can observe; we may not, without evidence, apply this principle to reality outside this world. From causality “within" the world we may not legitimately conclude that there is a causality "outside" the world. They are two different logical spheres. Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) illustrated it in this way: every human being who exists has a mother, but this does not mean that the whole human race should have a mother. Similarly although we can say that within the universe one thing is next to another, or over or below other things, we could never say that the universe itself is next to something else. It belongs to a different category in which the same principles that affect inner-universe objects are no longer valid. From the fact that objects within the universe are caused by one another we may not conclude that the whole universe as such is caused by something else. (5)
The Thomists have an answer to this objection too. “What you say is true of individual objects and their mathematical totals", they would say. “Even though every person has a mother, it does not follow that the added totality of all human beings has a mother. Even though every soldier wears a helmet, it does not mean that the whole army as such wears a helmet. But our question does not concern the mathematical totality of beings but the depth and totality of being as such."
“Your argument", they would continue, “really means this: About things within the universe we may and can ask questions, but not about the universe as such. But this is surely illogical. For the philosophical question regarding the origin of being.and order is nothing else but going deeper than mere physical or biological questions”.
“Let me give you an example. Suppose a railway accident has happened. A train has run off the rails and many people have been killed as a result. The committee of investigation may find out that the cause of the accident lay in the engine driver going too fast round a bend. The investigation could stop there. But the committee might also carry on to ask deeper and more general questions: ‘How sharp are the curves in our railway lines? What is the maximum safe speed at which trains can travel when taking those bends? Have sufficient safety measures been taken?’ These questions do not concern trains as a mathematical totality (all trains together can’t fly off a curve!), but as a totality of being.
“Questions about the totality of being are very useful and can be answered", they would conclude. “The causality of a more fundamental mistake underlies the particular causality of one accident. The causality of being as such must underlie the causality of particular things within the universe. (6)
No falsificationl?
Another way of putting Kant’s objection has been expressed by Anthony Flew. He says that we can prove the metaphysical argument wrong because it cannot be “falsified". In modern science it is generally accepted that every proof must be such that anyone could handle the same proof, either proving it to be correct (by verification) or proving it to be wrong (by falsification). The demonstration that a molecule of water contains two hydrogen atoms can be verified or falsified by any competent person. But what philosophers say about God, the necessary, infinite and perfect being, can neither be verified nor falsified. “What evidence should there be" Flew says, “for the metaphysician to accept that there is no God?"
Flew devised a parable in which he illustrates this. Two explorers come to a patch in a forest where many plants grow and flourish. “This plot is tended by a gardener", says one (the metaphysician). “There is no gardener", maintains the other (the scientist). They watch day and night to see whether a gardener comes. They notice nothing. “But perhaps he is an invisible gardener." They put up a barbed wire fence, use bloodhounds and try every possible means, but still they find no trace of the gardener, and the plants keep growing. But the metaphysician continues to maintain: “There is a gardener, but he cannot be seen, felt, touched, smelt or heard. Invisibly he comes and tends his garden.” The scientist then exclaims: “What can I do to falsify your statement about the gardener? How is your invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener different from an imaginary gardener or no gardener at all?” (7)
Thomists answer this objection, pointing out that every argument should be verified or falsified in its own way. In physics, proofs which rest on experimental observation should be proved right or wrong by the same kind of observation. But philosophical arguments, which are based on logic and the grasp of being, can only be accepted or rejected in terms of the same logic and reason. “It is stupid", they would contend, “to try to see an invisible gardener! Moreover, if we were to compare the First Cause with a gardener, we should certainly not think of his care for the garden in terms of external actions such as pruning or pouring water. As the First Cause he establishes the plants in their being, and this dependence cannot be demonstrated or falsified by putting up barbed wire or keeping bloodhounds."
For many scientists the fact of evolution has become another reason for rejecting the metaphysical proof of God’s existence. Evolution seems to imply that a Creator is no longer needed. A scientist such as Gordon Childe (18821957) would explain his point of view as follows:
The proof for God’s existence rests on the assumption that the universe depends on something outside itself for its order and being. However, this assumption is unfounded. Modern science has demonstrated that the universe can explain itself:
We can show how from very simple atomic material the universe slowly connected into stars and galaxies. We can prove that life and the higher forms of beings arose through evolution. We can follow the path of development from the formation of the first chemical molecules to the first living cells in the ocean, and then up the ladder of plant and animal life. Even man himself and his power of thinking and dominating the world can be explained by natural growth. There is no need to accept a Creator. Man made himself. (8)
Believing scientists do not find it difficult to counter this line of thinking. Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) was both an eminent palaeontologist and a theologian. He maintained that an evolved world needs a creator all the more. “Both evolution and the balance of matter”, he would say, “increase rather than diminish the necessity of accepting a creator. They haveunderlined as never before the absolute submission of matter to the higher principles that govern it . (9)
“What do you mean when you say that the world ‘can explain itself’? Let us take an example. The reasons for the working of a thermometer are in the thermometer itself: if the temperature rises, the mercury will automatically expand. A living seed will, in favourable circumstances, naturally grow into a plant. In this sense it explains itself. But in another sense neither the thermometer nor the plant can explain itself, because they cannot understand their own operation (they have no mind), nor could they bring themselves about (they are contingent beings).”
It is difficult to evaluate correctly the present state of the debate, but some kind of stalemate has been reached. Both Thomists and Kantians speak their own language. Both sides make a valid contribution to our search for God—the Thomists by insisting that we can say something meaningful about God; the Kantians by pointing out that discussing God or inner-world objects involves different thought processes, and that these cannot simply be equated. God is not an object in the world. It would seem that the deadlock can only be broken by a fresh approach to the problem such as is presented in functional thinking.
1. My own version. An English translation of Anselm’s De Veritate was published by R. McKeon, in Selections from Medieval Philosophers, Vol. 1, Charles Scribner’s, New York 1929. Excerpts are found in C.H. Hartshorne and W.I. Reese (Ed.), Philosophers Speak of God, University of Chicago Press, 1953, pp. 96-106 (with introduction and comment). In The Existence of God, Macmillan, London 1964 (p.b.), pp. 23-47, J. Hick (Ed.) published side by side all the classical texts related to the ontological argument: excerpts from Anselm, Descartes and Leibnitz in its favour; the arguments of Aquinas, Kant and Malcolm against it.
2. K. Barth has revived Anselm’s argument in a strictly theological understanding: Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum, SCM, London 1931. A thorough discussion of the original argument and its interpretation in: E. Gilson, God and Philosophy, Yale University Press, New Haven 1941; H. Bouillard, The Knowledge of God, Burns and Oates, London 1969.
3. The following works are representative of the Kantian stand: I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, by N.K. Smith (Ed.), Oxford 1935; J. Laird, Theism and Cosmology, Allen and Unwin, London 1940; A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic, Gollancz, London 1946.
4. The Thomists have replied in publications such as these: H.S. Box, The World and God, SPCK, London 1934; God and the Modern Mind, SPCK, London 1937; R.P. Philips, Modern Thomistic Philosophy, Burns and Oates, London 1935; H. de Lubac, The Drama of Atheistic Humanism, Sheed and Ward, London 1949; Id., The Discovery of God, Darton, Longman and Todd, London 1960; C.A. Coulson, Science and Christian Belief, Oxford University Press, 1955 (also in p.b.).
5. B. Russell, History of Western Philosophy, Allen and Unwin, London 1946; Id., Why I am not a Christian, Allen and Unwin, London 1957.
6. E. A. Sillem, George Berkeley and the Proofs of the Existence of God, Longmans and Green, London 1957; Id., Ways of Thinking about God, Thomas Aquinas and some recent problems, Darton, Longman and Todd, London 1961; D. Jenkins, The Christian Belief in God, Faber and Faber, London 1964.
7. A Flew (Ed.), Logic and Language, Blackwell, Oxford 1955; Id., God and Philosophy, Hutchinson, London 1966; A. Flew and A. Maclntyre (Ed.), New Essays in Philosophical Theology, SCM, London 1955; H.J. Paton, The Modern Predicament, Allen and Unwin, London 1955; A. MacIntyre, Difficulties in Christian Belief, SCM, London 1959.
8. V. Gordon Childe, Man makes Himself, Mentor Paperback, New York 1951.
9. T. de Chardin, Hymn of the Universe (1964), The Phenomenon of Man (1965) and The Future of Man, (1969), all with Fontana/ Fount, London.