Questions about the Ontological Argument

I’ve done some reading on Anselm’s Ontological Argument - and the various counters etc - but have some questions that I have not seen answered anywhere - which suggests either I am a genius in raising them or, almost 100% more likely, I have missed something…

Anselm’s OA basically defines God as:
A being greater than which nothing can be conceived

Right - my questions…

I understand creation as implicitly indicating a want.
e.g. you build a chair because you want somewhere to sit.
Noone creates without an underlying want.

A being who creates is thus a being that wants.

A greater being than this would be one that has no such want - it has all it needs already.

The God of Anselm’s OA is thus not the God that supposedly created our World/Universe etc - as the Creator-God must have had a want - and is thus not the “greatest”.

Is there anything flawed with this assessment - that the God of the OA is not the same Creator-God of Christianity?

Secondly:
The definition merely says that God is that which nothing can be conceived of as greater.
What does this actually tell us about “God”?

Is this not merely equating “God” with “everything” - or with “existence” itself?
Is this label of “God” actually adding anything to our understanding?

Now I’m presuming there is something obvious I’ve missed - or possibly something I am just not aware of.
Any replies would be welcome - even if just a link to where this has been discussed / answered before.

Thanks.

To paraphrase Terry Eagleton, God could have created the universe out of “sheer love” or just “for the hell of it.”

God adds to our understanding of just how little we understand.

But then you run right back into the problem; love can’t exist with out an object. So what does that say about God, especially if you think we haven’t always existed?

As for that last sentence, a “God” isn’t necessary for us to come to that conclusion. One small look at the cosmos says that very thing, except perhaps with more mystery, wonder, and excitement (at least for me).

That’s a well-thought out point, but I would argue that you get into much yuckier problems before even this. God, “a being greater than which nothing can be conceived” would indubitably have to include omnipotence and omniscience, two ideas which inescapably contradict one another in the same being.

Too true. I can easily conceive a God greater than the Creator-God Christianity posits.

Saying you can conceive a God greater than that conceived by Christianity is not the same as doing it. So kindly share your lofty conception with us and let ILP judge if is greater or not. Not that that is Anselm’s point.

Gladly.

For one, I wouldn’t create people just to throw them in a dark pit along with the hungry epitome of evil comfortably pacing around them and threaten to light them on fire if they don’t do fastidious commandments that I chose, then throwing a ‘beloved’ one of mine in the pit, sicking the hungry devil on said ‘beloved’, lighting HIM on fire, all because I have some odd appetite for wrath that must be appeased, and THEN saying to the created, “See? I spared you. Aren’t I good? Praise me!”

Nor would I show them a way out of this somehow unrecognizably insidious situation by encouraging and showing them how to behave like me only to restrict their ability to do so to so that they can only try to be like me at best; the ultimate position that could possibly be achieved by my creations being a frustrated and inadequate representation of my shadow.

Or how about creating some just to send them through life either ignorant to my ruse or made so that they reject it, ensuring that they inevitably burn for eternity in a hell I designed out of my benevolent mind?

Perhaps I wouldn’t choose humans who are bound to screw up (by my design) to be the stewards of my holy word, which I’ve also penned to contradict what said humans can directly observe in the world via rational thought and science.

Or perhaps instead of having Jews crucify my son on a piece of wood, using my omnipotence to find a way to reconcile my people to me WITHOUT instigating such antisemitism that I would have known would permeate following generations and just mess things up further.

Or how about this? When crafting the infamous “Lucifer”, removing the free will for him to chose to rebel against me, which I once again would have known would be the first domino of all evil, which by the way, is something that I turn a deaf ear to mostly in the world and seem to be loosing dramatically to in my cosmic battle (that I set the rules up for…oops!).

Ah, explaining the Genesis a teensy weensy bit more thoroughly would probably remove a lot of confusion, and subsequently save the lives of countless individuals who dared to question its ambiguity and the authority of the day who were no less intolerant, bloodthirsty, genocidal, or unforgiving as I am.

…these are just things that popped out of my head off the cuff. I could go on if you wish.

But nevermind all that, what would you say to my earlier response to you? I know from dormant observation of this board for months that you are one of the smarter theists on this board; I honestly am interested in what you make of this observation.

very clever.

I’m interested to know why you’ve concluded that “a being greater than which nothing can be conceived” must exist without desire. Or put it this way: why is wanting less great than not wanting? Why is needing less great than not needing?

I can’t respond to your earlier response regarding love without going into a realm of pure speculation that I find unprofitable. That still leaves the possibility that God created the world for the hell of it. I agree that the appearance of the cosmos is a mystery. That leaves open the possibility of God. Your “greater” conception of God greater is merely the negation of a caricature of the God of Christianity.

Simply put - a want/need implies an existing lack - an absence that the being will seek to fill through action/creation etc - an absence/lack that is a dent in its perfection.
A being without this lack must surely be greater - as it would have no gaps in its perfection.

To act / create is to do so out of want/need for something - to reach perfection - even if just to prove to oneself that one can create - or even if out of boredom (in that case the lack is of things to do).

The “perfect” being will… no, CAN… have no such imperfections / lacks.

Well yeah, I thought that as the goal. I agree with the possibility of God, but just that, the possibility. If talking about his love is a realm of pure speculation, then so talk of God in general.

Just to kick dirt in the air, A.N. Whitehead suggested the possibility that the creator God was of necessity, a lesser God, in that to create, one must have something from which to create out of. The postulate suggests that the creater God was more of the “middle man”, as a potter who molds clay, but doesn’t create the clay itself…

Of course, all of this assumes that the created would be able to ‘know’ and understand the motives and movements of such an entity. It is the usual anthropomorphic projection that mind can encompass all knowing, which certainly removes uncomfortable doubts but might, just might be wrong. :astonished:

Supposing that a creator created does not mean that a creator had a purpose. It could all be an accident. This could have been a belch.
If there is one superior being then it would only make sense that there is another or more. We understand micro, but, do we comprehend macro yet? Nope.

Reasoning why or if creation was created at this point in our evolution is the equivelent to twiddling our thumbs. Its too early in our development to be able to see any real answers. It does make a fun game though.

I don’t know if this has been said already (yeah, I know I should have read the whole thread), but a God that does not contain all can never be Anselm’s God. The Christian idea of God distinguishes “Creation” from the “Creator”. This means that there is always something greater than this Creator, namely this Creator plus his Creation.

The concept of Satan is necessary in order for the concept of God to make sense. There wouldn’t be one without the other, not if they’re to reflect that which distinguishes humans from all the other beasties, our innate self-awareness.

The Koran describes Satan as an angel who wouldn’t bow down to God’s creation of Adam because Satan viewed Adam as inferior to himself, again a metaphor for evil as sense of ego-self versus ‘other’, and the cause of his banishment from God’s side. As his revenge, Satan vows to tempt humans on earth, beginning with Adam and Eve. They taste the fruit, their realization of separate self arises. We arise from the primordial ooze and evolve with this capacity to create an “I” that realizes it will never fulfill its needs completely. It drives us to build (good), but also to destroy (evil).

According to Stephen Batchelor (Buddhist author, from his book “Living with the Devil”), Satan is in the spirit of the earlier tradition of one twin son of the pre-Biblical Zarathustra’s god Ohrmazd, the son who followed lies and thus remained in opposition to his father. The opposing forces of good and evil, a tension that lies at the core of human existence. Nietzsche gives Zarathustra credit for understanding this: “Zarathustra was the first to see in the struggle between good and evil the actual wheel in the working of things.” Batchelor describes this as a ‘vicious circle’ or, in German Teufelskreis, the ‘devil’s circle’, an “endless round of compulsive flight and fixation.” Its origin is the beginnings of self-awareness and struggle to cope with the emerging sense of separation from the natural flux and the awareness of the internal and external forces that threaten to overwhem us. The path of all religions is to confront and learn to live with our ‘devil’ natures, a way “opened up in the fabric of existence that may at first seem like a rupture, a fissure, even a collapse or breakdown. What is familiar and secure is abandoned in favor of a seductive but disturbing unknown. For when you proceed upon the open space of a path, you encounter the turbulent rush of contingency.”

Snarky has hit on that which is common to all religions, need and desire as the cause of our suffering. Abrahamic religions offer external means for addressing this, just give up one’s will to the will of the Creator. Rectify Satan’s mistake (not God’s) of screwing up the gift of ‘free will’ he’d been given because he didn’t understand that his ‘freedom’ was only possible through the giver of freedom. I think ‘salvation’, or turning over one’s will to a Creator God, in lieu of holding onto it, symbolizes the acceptance of human imperfection as unchanging. Evil in contrast to the god’s eternal goodness. I think one big weakness of this is in the establishment of this standard of unchanging perfection in the first place, which I interpret as symbolic of the complete fulfillment of our needs and desires. Yet they can never be fulfilled, it’s not how life works. The means one chooses to deal with it is either external (which is why some ex-drug users find religion a natural transition, lol) or you journey inside all by yourself, and without any expectation of meeting God in there.

The Buddha awakened to see the illusion of our idea of a self separated from the flux and so his ‘salvation’ (end of suffering) was through an inner means of dealing with the dilemma of our delusion, through observing and understanding the human mind. He taught that the innate sense of separation from the flux, an isolation, was the cause of our existential anguish and so his path was to break that down and reconnect to the “endless play of interacting, mutually creating processes.”

There is duality and then there is seeing duality. One is either caught up in the former or flows with the latter. “I” is the curse of "“me” Now if we could just hold that realization for more than a few nanoseconds…

The challenge was to conceive of a God greater than the Christian conception not merely to negate the Christian conception. If you close the Christian conception with the New Testament as the fundamentalists wish to do, it’s not hard. In the 20th century it was discovered that the creation was far greater than previously believed. Thus, our understanding of the creator can be far greater. Consequently the sciences have, for enhanced the theist’s appreciation of the greatness of God.

As far as the love of God, that for me is a self evident perception for which I am thankful daily. What is speculative are God’s “thought processes” prior to creation. One can search the scriptures, look toward divine revelation, or make inferences from the creation. It seems to me that only the latter is justifiable in our presnt context.

As far as the existence of God being speculative, for me as I have said, God is self-evident, for the atheist He is not. So your assertion does not advance us from square one on this board game.

Is infinity plus one greater than infinity? I’m just asking.

Yes, I follow your argument but do not accept your definition of perfection. For one thing, your perfect being exists without the impulse to create. This is, to borrow your words, “an absence/lack that is a dent in its perfection.”

Can infinity be conceived?

Only as the horizon of quantity.