Introduction to God's Existence: Anselm's Ontological Proof & Traditional Views, Study notes of World Religions

Download Introduction to God's Existence: Anselm's Ontological Proof & Traditional Views and more Study notes World Religions in PDF only on Docsity! REL 100 Lecture 4 1 In this session we’re gonna talk about an idea that you really can’t separate from religion and that’s the idea of God, or a supernatural reality or supernatural being or transcendent being. Rather than getting bogged down in the terminology of that, I’m gonna just use the term God in this discussion. As we’re talking about that, for you or for broader understanding, that just may be whatever you understand God to be. And so that could be multiple, that could be abstract, that could be an energy, it could be a being, but I’m just gonna use the term God. So it’s not to try to limit it to any particular world view but just to make it simpler so I don’t get bogged down in terminology. So we’re gonna talk about this idea of the existence of God some today. Today we’re gonna look more on the side of it, of just throughout history. What are some of the traditional ways, traditional arguments, traditional understandings that people have had about the existence of a God. What are the reasons that people would say God might exist. In a future session, the next session or two, we’ll look more at the flip side of that, the main reason that people would say that it’s hard to believe that a God really exists. And that’s about the problem of suffering, the problem of pain. So we’ll talk about that but this session is more on why have people said that maybe a God does exist. Now, again generally in class I will ask students to divide up. And one side is the side — I mean, I don’t really care what their personal perspective is, but for that moment all that side of class is arguing that there is a God and the other side of the class is arguing there is not a God, whatever that might be to you. And so we end up with long lists on both sides of the board that people use as their establishment for why there is or REL 100 Lecture 4 2 why there might not be a God. A lot of those reasons that people believe that there is fit under some of these traditional perspectives that we’re gonna look at in these sessions — in this session. So, first of all, as far as the existence of God, if we look at that throughout time — you know, an ancient thought the question of whether there was a God, whether there was a supernatural dimension or not, doesn’t really seem to be a question. That there was a supernatural dimension seemed to be understood in ancient times. It seemed to be assumed in ancient times. There wasn’t really a question in ancient times from what we can tell, from the best that can be reconstructed from ancient times. That it was just assumed that there was some sort of transcendent reality, some sort of supernatural dimension, some sort of other dimension beyond this human, worldly dimension that we’re in. The concern in ancient thought seemed to be more concern of how do you respond to that reality, how do you interact with that reality, how do you appease that reality, how do you evoke a response from that reality. The concern was much more about relating to and gaining the blessings and benefit and avoiding the punishment of that supernatural reality than about whether it existed or not. It’s when we come into the Middle Ages that people start to say, “Well, can we really know that there’s a God? Can we really argue logically that there’s a God?” This would have been before the time of scientific revolution. Certainly scientific work was being done in this time period in the Middle Ages but a lot of the thinking here was much more along the rational, logical lines than along any sort of scientific study. REL 100 Lecture 4 5 greater, we have that idea, then existence has to be attached to that being. Because then we could conceive of any other beings that are greater simply because they have existence. Let me look at it another way with you. This is not an Anselm example; this is my example. But let’s say that Anselm and I were doing a relationship seminar with you and so we ask you to make a list of the ten qualities that you want in that person that you spend the rest of your life with. Now, some of you may already kind of have that mental list that you’re kind of trying to find the right person. Some of you might even already have it written down somewhere. But if you’ve not located that person, then you could make a list of these ten qualities that you would want in someone. And if we just ask you that point blank, without any other discussion before that, Anselm and I just say, “Give us a list of ten things,” my guess is that once we collected people’s lists that we would go through those and we would come back, operating out of an Anselm mentality — that we would come back to you and we’d say, “Okay. A fine list. But there’s one quality that you forgot and it’s the most important quality. If they don’t have this quality, then all these other qualities don’t matter.” And that quality would be existence. Because you can have all these tall, dark, handsome, sensitive, considerate — you can have all these descriptors, all these characteristics, but if existence is not a quality that that person or this idea possesses, then the idea carries no force, carries no meaning, carries no influence. It’s just a nice idea. You know, probably there was a time in maybe your life, certainly in the lives of others than you know — there was probably an area of time in their lives when their REL 100 Lecture 4 6 parents could manipulate their behavior. Oh, from say Thanksgiving to — excuse me — from Halloween until around Christmas, the parents could manipulate a kid’s behavior with the idea of a Santa. But once that kid found out that there was no existence attached to that idea, even though it’s a great idea — once they found out there’s no existence attached to that idea, then that idea no longer has any influence over that child, no longer has any impact over that child. I mean, my guess is for you sitting there right now — you know, your parent is not gonna be able to come to you and say, “You better get a good grade in Religion 100 or Santa’s not gonna bring you anything.” Well, that’s not gonna carry any force because you know there’s no existence attached to that idea. It really doesn’t have any impact on most people because we know there’s no existence attached to that idea of Santa. So if we have this idea of a being of who none is greater, that many call God, and if that idea is an idea that has impact and influence across cultures, across time, among varying kinds of people — if that idea has that kind of influence and impact that endures, then basically Anselm was saying there must be an existence attached to that idea. God must surely exist or that idea would not have impact, influence, would not make a difference as an enduring difference like it does. Well, that’s a little bit of Anselm’s argument. There’s some other things we could say about that but I think that’s all we’ll say in this session. But if we have an idea of a greatest being, that really to be truly that greatest being it demands that that greatest being has existence as one of the qualities. Because without that there are other things REL 100 Lecture 4 7 that would be greater than God simply because they exist. That’s Anselm’s. The next argument is a little more linear, moves more in a straight line for us, and that would be Thomas Aquinas and his cosmological argument. Aquinas lived in the 13th century, early Middle Ages again, and probably his argument, as far as logical, rational arguments, is the one that has been most reworked over the years. There’s probably some aspects of his argument that you’ve heard or maybe even that you’ve used in relation to this idea of whether there exists an ultimate reality or not. So Aquinas talks about the cosmological argument — cosmos — you know, the universe. What we know to be in existence. And he basically says if you look at the world, if you look at the universe, if you look at the cosmos, and if you look at several different aspects of the cosmos, it points to the possibility that there’s a God. It points to the logical conclusion that there is a God if you look at different dynamics of the cosmos. And he has five parts to this cosmological argument and each of these are looking at a different dimension of the cosmos, a different perspective of the cosmos. So the first of those is what might be called the unmoved mover or the prime mover. The unmoved mover or the prime mover. And what Aquinas says is that this is looking at the aspect, the dimension of motion in the cosmos. Looking at the dimension of motion. That there’s movement everywhere. There’s things spinning, rotating, pulsating, beating. There’s all this movement. And we logically know that where there’s movement, something initiated the movement. Movement doesn’t just start without something initiating it, without a mover. And so Aquinas says, first of all, if you look at the motion of the universe, REL 100 Lecture 4 10 To go back saying this is dependent upon this, is dependent upon this, is dependent upon this, infinity, doesn’t make sense. But there has to be a starting point back there. There has to be a place where the first thing happened, the first event happened. What he would call the necessary thing, the necessary element, the thing that can stand on its own that did not need to be contingent upon something else. That it was contingent only upon itself. Another way that he talks about that sometimes is dependency, independency. That you have all these things that are dependent upon many — none of us get where we are except that it’s dependent on many other things happening and maybe even many other people. But that somewhere back there there has to be the independent element, the independent reality. That thing that exists in and of itself and initiated the first event upon which all other things are contingent. Again, Aquinas says that necessary element, that independent reality, is what we call God. Then he talks about what might be called the gradation values or grades of excellence. What Aquinas says is that we have these ideas about things like being noble, just, pure, compassionate, merciful. We have these ideas and we have ideas about what the most excellent of those might be, and then we can grade those. You know, I mean, I could ask you — okay. Make a list of the five most honest people that you know. So you make a list of the five most honest people that you know. So, first of all, you’ve been able to grade this value, this virtue of honesty, by saying, “Okay. There’s all these people. There’s some that are most honest and some that are less honest. And so these are the most.” And there’s some sort of standard you have REL 100 Lecture 4 11 in your mind about that. You could do that about justice or compassion or kindness or nobleness or nobility. And then if you had that list of five and I said, “Okay. Now take those five most honest people that you know and rank them. Who’s most honest, who’s least honest? Who’s most compassionate, who’s least compassionate? Who’s most just, who’s least just?” You could do that because you have in your mind an idea of what perfect justice would be or perfect honesty or perfect compassion, and then you can rate based on that. Well, to be able to rank, you have to have the standard, the perfect standard, the excellent standard. In this class you take exams and generally those are multiple choice exams that are scored by computer, Computer Services here at the university. And so you take your exam and you’ve got a scantron sheet and you fill in the bubbles with your responses to the test. And then if I take yours and others in your class, and I take your scantron sheets over and give them to the computer lab, they can’t grade those. They can’t say who was closest to the standard because there’s no standard if I just take them your test. They have to have a standard. So I give them a standard. I make a key and I take it over as well. And so they feed all this in the computer and it spits out all this information that gives you a grade based on the excellent standard that I’ve given. And, you know, there’s even — in the computer printout you can get some printouts of that, and I usually get those, that even has a list of everybody in the class and who’s closest to the standard and who’s furthest from the standard. And hopefully you’re up here somewhere, but closest to furthest REL 100 Lecture 4 12 from the standard. But without a standard, you can’t grade. You can’t decide what’s most or least. You can’t decide that. And so Aquinas says to have these ideas of perfect compassion, perfect justice, perfect kindness — you know, perfect morality, and to be able to grade within those ideas, there has to be a standard, a standard that we call, according to Aquinas, God. The fifth of his arguments is the divine designer argument. The divine designer argument. Or the argument from harmony is another way that that’s said sometimes by Aquinas. The argument from harmony or design. And what Aquinas has said is if you just look at the harmony of — whether it’s the human body of the world, of the solar system as we know it — and again, he’s talking 13th century and we know a whole lot more about that kind of stuff now, the ecosystem and all that. If you look at the harmony of that, then Aquinas says it seems like there had to be intelligent design behind that, something that created that harmony, something that created that design, something that created that uniformity and how it all works together. And that creator, that designer, again, Aquinas says, we would call God. So he looked at these different dimensions of the cosmos: motion, substance, the course of history, the course of events, our idea of values of virtue, and just the design of the cosmos. And in all those he says, you know, you look at all that logically, something had to be the first mover, something had to cause the first substance, something had to initiate the first event, something has to be the standard by which we decide what is excellent, and something had to be the intelligent designer of all this REL 100 Lecture 4 15 purpose: to tell time.” So who did? If that is a logical question, if that’s a logical conclusion for finding something as simple as a watch, then how much more logical would it be to ask that about the human body or the world or the universe and how much more absurd would it be to say, “Well, it’s just always been there. Well, it just happened. Well, there’s really no purpose in that.” When it seems to function and work purposefully with some sort of design, with some sort of order. You know, Paley goes on in his argument and he says, you know, this argument holds true that something with a little bit of complexity or a lot of complexity demands a designer. That that argument holds true even if, one, the object doesn’t work right. If you found a watch as you’re walking across the heath — I need to find out what a heath is for sure. I think it’s like a meadow maybe. But if you find this watch as you’re out walking and the conclusion is that there had to be a designer, and then you look at it and you go, “Well, no, it doesn’t work right so I guess it wasn’t designed.” That wouldn’t be the conclusion. The conclusion would be the designer wasn’t a really good designer. A conclusion might be that something flawed the design process. The conclusion might be that something came along later and caused a malfunction of the object. But you would not design there was no designer just because it didn’t work quite right. And he also says that he believes his argument holds true, that it makes sense that anything as complex as a watch or even more complex than a watch demands a designer even if you don’t understand how it works. I mean, if I stood in my garage and waited to acknowledge my car when I knew exactly how it worked — people have tried to explain to me how those engines work. And I can understand a lot of things and for REL 100 Lecture 4 16 some reason that does not click in my mind. So even if I don’t understand how it works, that doesn’t take away from acknowledging that somebody did create it — even if I don’t understand it. And so Paley’s argument that he went on to develop was this argument based on an analogy of a watch. But if a watch demands a designer, if it’s absurd to say that a watch does not have a designer, that it just happened to come to be, then how much more absurd to say that about the human body, the world, or the universe that we live in. Another argument that comes in around the 19th century is the moral argument for God’s existence established by Immanuel Kant and it’s likely you’ve run across Kant in a philosophy course or an ethics course. But Kant in his moral argument basically says that because humans are moral beings, because we have a moral component about us, because we have a sense of what is moral and what is not moral, one, that sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. I mean, I’d like to think that my little dog has a moral standard about his behavior but he doesn’t. It’s all behavioral modification. It’s all conditioned response. He doesn’t have a reasoning ability with morality. I mean, I have a horse and I’ve worked with some horse trainers some and they tell me horses can’t reason. But we have the ability to reason and decide what is moral and what is not moral. And at different levels, but humans by and large have a sense of an obligation toward doing what’s moral, toward not doing what’s immoral. And so Kant asks first of all where does that moral component that we possess come from and to whom or to REL 100 Lecture 4 17 what do we feel this moral obligation. And what would explain the common sense or morality that all humans have, no matter where you find them in the world? You’re not gonna find a culture anywhere that morality is not important, that immorality is not recognized, but that is a human element. And Kant suggests that there has to be something outside the human system that’s the source of this morality, that is that to which people feel this moral obligation, and that unites this kind of universal morality that you find from culture to culture. And so Kant says that would establish it. One last one that we want to look at in this session is probably the main reason, the main thing that causes people to have a belief in something, and that is what we’ll call the argument from special events. I don’t mean like concerts and stuff, but special events as far as revelations. Or a term that we’ve already used and that you’ve read about that would equate here would be numinous experiences using Otto’s terminology. That these are unexplainable events or unexplainable experiences that are attributed to a supernatural source. Unexplainable events or unexplainable experiences that are attributed to a supernatural source. These are probably the primary initiator of belief for most people. Most people who are people of belief, of authentic belief, when you ask them, “Why do you believe in God?” or “Why do you believe in this supernatural reality?” or “Why do you believe in this object of faith?” — for many people it’s because they’ve had some sort of experience with that. That they can’t explain any other way except to say it must’ve been God or some sort of transcendent sort of reality. And that initiates belief. And again, for many people that’s the primary initiator of one’s belief. Now, even though