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Comment by jfengel | Hacker News Reader

I'm afraid I'm still perplexed. The argument is just plain bad. Even the most steelmanned versions of it are bad.

That's fine. Anselm doesn't really need to prove the existence of God. Christians don't need to prove it; they have a Bible that they take as fundamental revelation. They know that this argument isn't going to convert anybody on its own.

What I'm perplexed by is why philosophers keep treating it as if its worth steelmanning. It's not going to get any better. The "better-than-all-other-things" definition is meaningless and doesn't tell us anything we want to know about God. Nor is it Biblical; it doesn't prove anything at all about the Bronze-Age-Middle-East deity Anselm believed in.

It feels like philosophers really enjoy beating a dead horse.

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I think it's fun to think about.

Start from the premise that Anselm was serious, and wasn't an idiot. How must he have seen the world for this argument to make sense? (This is, very loosely, the approach of the Cambridge School in the history of ideas.)

Looking back from several centuries, we can think the argument is obviously bad. (We might have heard, for example, that "existence is not a predicate" so you can't just talk about existence as something that God may or may not possess.) But Anselm didn't have that. His argument was a step on the way to where we are now.

And sometimes if you squint hard enough at it, you come to see why and how it might make sense, and the arguments don't seem so stupid. Plato does that to you sometimes, for example.

Yes, when I first encountered this argument I was indeed perplexed because it seemed so incoherent I thought I must not be understanding it. Only after reading a some different formal explications was I able to conclude, "Nope, I understood it correctly the first time!"

I feel that it's the kind of argument you devise when you think language is the fundamental basis of reality rather than a (flawed) way to model it. There are many logical deductions you can make that only tell you things about language, but nothing about reality.

> I feel that it's the kind of argument you devise when you think language is the fundamental basis of reality rather than a (flawed) way to model it.

I think it's both - unless ~everyone is secretly playing a gag and joking about everything they say (as opposed to being mostly sincere about their claims, as I believe the case to be, and I've never once encountered someone mentioning it), I can't see how it is otherwise.

Indeed, it makes sense in the philosophical mindset of the time, because they seriously really believed this, or a form of it.

"In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word (Logos) was with God, and the Word (Logos) was God"

It's the bread and butter of the Neo-Platonism of the time. And to the Christians of the time, Jesus Christ was the literal embodiment of the Word of God.

Isn't "logos" a term with quite a few different translations? It also seems to mean "reason", "argument" and "law". Perhaps the word "Word" has a special meaning here. "In the beginning was the Word" - what does that mean? Which word?

You can ask a similar quesion about the phrase "the Word of God": did he really only ever utter a single word? Or does the phrase really refer to the entirety of Christian teaching? Is that barking street-preacher with a megaphone speaking the Word of God when he declares me to be a sinner? But the things he's saying are his words, they are not scripture.

I think "In the beginning was the Word" is the most mysterious passage in the Bible. I used to think Revelation was mysterious. But Revelation is explicitly a description of a hallucination; the author doesn't claim to know what it means, or even that it means anything. The opening passage of John's gospel, on the other hand, purports to be stating unqualified facts.

I think of the ontological argument as a kind of pointless philosophical roundabout which only connects in a circle for some because they already believe God exists and can't -- emotionally or physically -- truly posit a world where He doesn't.

The argument "works" because they simply can't/won't think of atheism as a legitimate position. I've had exactly that kind of "debate" with the religious where in the end it falls down to either "how can you actually think that?!", or, worse, "you're crazy/silly."

In that mindset, the argument seems self-evident. Or something.

And I tend to think of the intricacies of the words of Anselm and others of his era like this:

We sit on these forums debating programming languages, or go off and write code, or play with mathematics, or etc. because our human brains love intellectual puzzles.

However in the middle ages, dark ages, whole swathes of intellectual paths were essentially off limits, or not even imaginable.

So if you were of the intellectual bent, and love brain puzzles, you naturally engage in the form available to you in the dominant ideology and permitted by society at the time. Theology, theological philosophy, religious music, poetry, and art. They had all sorts of fun reinterpreting (pre-Christian) Aristotle and Plato to try to puzzle a way to get a Christian spin on them, for example.

I remember in my 2nd year philosophy of religion class going through all the theodicies, and in the end summarized with: there are profound holes and problems with all of these. But in the end the only real argument for religion and God that works is the argument from experience. If people feel they experience God ... I can't really argue or debate that. That's for them. Which is why I leave my heavily religious sister and parents alone on this topic.

Hold on there. You've conflated a number of things here.

> Anselm doesn't really need to prove the existence of God.

I cannot comprehend this statement.

> Christians don't need to prove it; they have a Bible that they take as fundamental revelation.

Why trust the Bible? Its authority must rest on extra-biblical knowledge (in Catholicism called Tradition). The Catholic Church compiled the text in light of Tradition. It didn't fall from the sky. But regardless, the point is that knowledge of the existence of God is not a matter of revelation. Indeed, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (a kind of summary of the beliefs of the Church, not a didactic manual or comprehensive text) teaches as much [0]:

  Our holy mother, the Church, holds and teaches that God, the first principle and last end of all things, can be known with certainty from the created world by the natural light of human reason. [...] Without this capacity, man would not be able to welcome God's revelation. Man has this capacity because he is created "in the image of God".

If you're going to write a check like that, you better be ready to cash it! And there are many ways to cash it (like these, to name a few [1]).

> They know that this argument isn't going to convert anybody on its own.

While many people aren't persuaded by proofs about most things, this does not make proofs worthless. First, those who are moved by proofs will benefit. Second, proofs can lead to greater clarity of what we mean by "God". This is because in order to understand a proof, one often needs to discuss presuppositions and ancillary propositions to appreciate it. You are also given a point of departure for further discussion that can deepen your grasp of the subject matter. Third, those who aren't moved by proofs can still benefit from some reassurance that such proofs do, in fact, exist. This is still true for those who do not know or understand them, just as one need not have a comprehension of medicine to take comfort in the claims of one's doctor.

> The "better-than-all-other-things" definition is meaningless and doesn't tell us anything we want to know about God.

You're confusing the question of whether God exists with what God is like. Why? Knowing about God is certainly desirable, but to establish God's existence through reason alone is a worthy enough exercise. I don't understand the compulsion to dismiss the value of establishing existence. It's not either/or, it's both. Existence and essence. (Of course, we come to understand that God's essence just is existence: Ipsum Esse Subsistens.)

> Nor is it Biblical; it doesn't prove anything at all about the Bronze-Age-Middle-East deity Anselm believed in.

I have no idea how you arrived at this claim. How is it not Biblical? This frankly sounds like some strange 20th century concoction of Protestantism. Reason has always been central to Christianity, certainly in the Catholic tradition. This is just basic knowledge ("fides et ratio"). As reason is what is the most essential and definitive characteristic of human beings, and the basis for understanding anything, it would be absurd to assent to any faith that opposes it. Not only that, but the very first verse of the Gospel of John, for all intents and purposes, equates Christ with Reason itself (the Incarnate Logos). The God we're talking about here is not some mere "Bronze-Age-Middle-East deity", one being among many, one ubermensch among many pagan alternatives, but Being Itself.

(Also, here's a take on Anselm [2] that you may find will clarify things.)

[0] https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__PB.HTM

[1] https://a.co/d/7SnyEST

[2] https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2010/11/anselms-ontological...

>Why trust the Bible?

Mystics have inclination for mysticism, and bible provides that.

>can be known with certainty

Doubtful.

Romans 11:33 "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!"

Isaiah 55:9 "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts."

The argument is indeed so bad, all it proves is that the church was so powerfull at the time that they could spout any ludicrous nonsense and still have people bow in obedience.

The argument was created by a churchman for churchmen, it wasn't intended or used as a popular argument, but it's worth understanding that c. 1000 CE this argument seemed compelling to literate folks who were introduced to it. If people had thought it was ludicrous nonsense they actually were free to say this, this is a philosophical argument, not doctrine, and the Church didn't have too much to do with supporting/opposing such things other than opposing philosophical arguments seen as heretical.

At the time, in Europe, atheism was simply not a permitted intellectual path to take. It was basically inconceivable. So nobody truly needed to "prove" God, and the argument "works" for some thinkers because its presupposition and ends confirm what they already "know" to be true.

And even Aquinas, who did not think Anselm's argument worked, thought it worthy enough to engage.

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