Anselm on God

Anselm’s Proof

This piece is one of a number of articles on belief:

Anselm on God

The Manufacture of opinion

Aspects of the psycho-sociology of belief

The Irrelevance of the Extremists of Belief I.html

The Irrelevance of the Extremists of Belief II.html

The Irrelevance of the Extremists of Belief III.html

There is a relatively systematic discussion of belief in Journey in Being-New World-2007

This is a very short but interesting blog. It shows the importance of meaning. Generations have discussed ‘Anselm’s Proof’ of the existence of God. The brief proof below shows incontrovertibly that God must exist on Anselm’s definition: although Anselm may not have intended it his definition of God—at least for the purpose of his proof—is and must be identical to the universe defined as all being. It then follows that God and universe are identical and therefore that God exists. This is shown to follow from paying attention to the meanings of God and Universe; the proof is quite different and much simpler than Anselm’s proof. Both proof and what is proved are trivial. However, what is trivial often requires pointing out to be seen and is, on account of its triviality, not necessarily lacking in depth. The proof—my proof—reminds me of when a professor set a homework exercise to proof a fundamental theorem in ‘Real Analysis;’ the professor intended, but did not specify that we should use the properties of real numbers in the proof. Instead, I came up with a proof via a theorem from logic that I proved for the purpose. It is amusing to come up with trivial proofs instead of intricate ones

Given the stated meanings of God and universe, the proof is simple and the consequence, the existence of God is trivial. It is a simple example of proof and consequence that are simultaneously trivial and deep. In this example the depth is of course somewhat suspect. The point that the universe must be considered to be ‘all being’ is important. Other meanings may be allowed but the common result is that this meaning is relegated to obscurity among the dazzling results of modern cosmology. In http://www.horizons-2000.org (Journey in Being-New World-2007) attention to the meanings of the ideas such as ‘being,’ ‘universe,’ ‘absence of being,’ ‘reflexive criticism,’ ‘empirical,’ lead to trivial proofs and assertions that are simultaneously profound, deep and broad without being suspect…

Of course, most people when discussing / arguing about God have a particular meaning in mind and it is usually this meaning that motivates them. No doubt, Anselm and the Christian Apologists have the Christian God in mind and a leap is made, post-proof, from the abstract God of Anselm’s Proof, to the existence of the Christian God. This typical error is of course very common in theological and other thought

The proof

Let the universe be the being that is all being. Every 'other' being is part of the universe. Whatever another being can do, the universe can do. But, since there can logically be no being without power (effect) the universe can do things that other beings (parts of the universe) cannot do. The universe is therefore the most powerful being. Similarly the universe knows more than every other being... I.e., the greatest being is the universe which is also the greatest conceivable being. Therefore, on Anselm's definition of God, God exists and is the universe. These thoughts have some interesting consequences that I can already see but I'm going to think about them a little more and post them to my website when I come back from my vacation. I haven't decided where I'm going upload the page but check http://www.horizons-2000.org/weblog/weblog.html in about three weeks

Final observations

Oh! I forgot to add. There's a proof on my website http://www.horizons-2000.org that every consistently conceived being can and must exist. This obviously seems to do violence to common sense but the paradox is resolved in the essay 'Journey in Being' which is linked from the above home page. The essay clarifies the statement 'every consistently...' and works out numerous consequences