Trying to wrap my head around this: from a historical point of view, it is curious that although the pictures for the existence of God have all been refuted at one time or another, somehow they keep reappearing. In the 20th century the dominant philosophical trends have generally been nontheistic, if not openly atheistic, and the proofs for the existence of God have been discounted accordingly. In theological circles the influence of Barthianism has provided another reaction against the proofs, which has contributed to a general lack of interest in them among protestant theologians. Yet all the while there was a steady revival of Neo-Thomism in the Roman Catholic Church which lasted until the second Vatican Council (1962-65), and which attempted to restate the proofs in modern terms. Today, Roman Catholic theologians have largely abandon these attempts in a welter of confusion, which makes many observers wonder whether Rome has any definable theology at all. On the other hand, there are signs of renewed interest in the proofs among Protestants who have recently become interested in them in a way which should have surprised the generation of Barth. Richard Swinburnes study, the existence of God (1979), has sought to validate the proofs taken as a whole, rather than individually– i.e. Not as decisive in themselves, but as steppingstones to an argument from probability. Similar views are now being expounded by other philosophers of note, and it may be that the pendulum is swinging back in favor of an approach which only a short time ago seemed to be irredeemably discredited. The ontological argument: this argument was first developed by Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) and it was later expanded by the great scholastics. The basic premise is that God is the being than whom no greater being can be conceived. This sounds reasonable enough, and most people would probably be inclined to agree with it in principle. Yet the premise has two major weaknesses which makes its usefulness somewhat questionable. The first weakness is contained in the word greater. Is God greater than anything else quantitatively I. E. Is he bigger?, Qualitatively I. E. Is he better?, Or both? If God is merely bigger than anything else there is no real problem unless I still bigger object can be found or imagined, which is always possible, since quantity can theoretically be increased to infinity. If greater refers primarily to quality, the difficulty becomes one of measurement. Christians would want to argue that God can be measured only against himself, but in that case that outcome of the argument is decided in advance. Greatness might be understood in terms of power, but that would not necessarily have implications for Gods size or character. The adam for example, is more powerful when split then almost anything else, but it is also smaller and lacks any moral nature by which its quality could be judged. Is God to be thought of like that? And what about forms of greatness which are conceived along lines which are incompatible with the being of God? It would be a poor theologian who would argue that God is the greatest liar or thief imaginable! Greatness suffers in the & from being too subjective a concept and one which may be applied without reference to moral criteria. The second difficulty with the ontological argument is the word conceived. To conceive a relative greatness is to assume that the scale is open-ended; it will always be possible to conceive of something greater than the maximum. These conceptions may not exist in actual fact, but we have no means of proving this one way or the other. Conceivability also implies that there must be limits to God, and that in itself makes it highly suspect, as the mystical tradition reminds us. If we answer that this objection is not valid because we conceive of God as the absolute being, we are still left with serious problems of definition. How can we conceive of God as being omnipresent, if there are creatures which exist outside of him? Or how can God be omnipotent, if other powers exist, some of which are actually opposed to him? What is indeed can such terms mean if we have nothing to measure them against? It is one thing to say that human beings are inferior to God, but we cannot say that God is superior to humans to the point of being absolute, if our standard of measurement is human capacity alone. In the final analysis, the absolute cannot be measured except by itself space – space a conclusion which seems to invalidate the Ontological argument for Gods existence.
Posted on: Sun, 30 Mar 2014 23:45:57 +0000
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