Classical Argument # 4 - The Ontological Argument

The last major classical argument that I'm going to look at is the Ontological Argument.  The word ontology refers to the study of being or existence.  This argument was first proposed by Anselm of Canterbury in 1078 in a written prayer called "Proslogion."  Anselm defined God as "that than which nothing greater can be conceived." The argument goes if God did not exist then it would be possible to conceive of something greater which is a contradiction and therefore God must exist.  Most people think this is some sort of trick with word play, but interestingly almost every major thinker in the history of philosophy has dealt with this argument.  While Anselm's version has largely been abandoned, some modern versions have resurrected the argument and today it is not only alive but surprisingly flourishing. 

For this argument, we are defining God as the "greatest possible being."  As the greatest possible being, God is by definition a necessary being.  A necessary being is by definition a being that must exists if its existence is possible.

#1 If it is possible that God exists, then God exists

#2 It is possible that God exists

#3 Therefore, God exists

"You cannot be serious!" is probably what you are thinking, but the argument might surprise you even if it does not convince you.  The argument is valid, meaning the conclusion follows from the premises.  The only way to argue against the conclusion is to challenge the premises.  Almost everyone, including most atheists, would agree with premise #2 (at least initially).  So the whole argument falls on premise #1.  But as stated above, if God did exist He would be the greatest possible being, and the greatest possible being would have the attribute of necessity, and something that is necessary exists if it's existence is possible.  Sounds like a stretch? It it is interesting that this is relatively uncontroversial because one definition simply leads to the next.  But if premise #1 is true, then the only way to deny the argument is to go back and deny premise #2.  An opponent of the argument must show that the concept of God is incoherent or otherwise impossible. Otherwise, the argument is sound and the conclusion is true. Or at least, so goes the argument.

Strengths:

• Most skeptics would say that God probably does not exist.  But to say that God probably does not exist is just to say that God possibly exists and therefore concedes premise #2.
• The argument makes the issue black or white - God's existence is either true or impossible. 
• If successful, the argument poses a few interesting situations.  For instance every agnostic alive would have to believe that God exists in order to be consistent with agnosticism, thereby contradicting himself.

Weaknesses:

• The argument is very abstract (and silly to some) and consequently hard to take seriously.
• It is easy to deny premise #2, which is what most opponents of the argument do.
• The argument does not argue for Christianity as revealed by Jesus, but only for the greatest possible being.

Bible References:

• Psalm 14:1, 53:1, 145:3

If successful this argument leaves you with the greatest possible being.  This greatest possible being would have every great-making property.

Do you think this argument is successful?  What are some common objections?  Perhaps you have a question.  Feel free to leave a comment so that I can respond and not be bored at work!

Abortion - is it Wrong?

The election is done, but I thought now is as good a time as ever to share an argument against abortion that I heard from Greg Koukl.  So this is a temporary break away from the chain of classical arguments that I've been posting.  However, the argument is still in deductive form and which means that the conclusion relies on the truth of the premises. It is simple:

#1 It is wrong to kill humans for the reasons that people give for abortions.

#2 An abortion kills a human.

#3 Therefore, it is wrong to do an abortion.

As a reminder the argument is deductive and I think it is also valid, meaning that the conclusion follows from the premises. The question then is are the premises true?  Premise #1 should be obviously true.  A few reasons that are given for why abortions should be legal are:

• An individual's rights for personal and private choice in a free society
• Inability to support a child 
• Genetic defects
• Rape or incest 
• Unwanted pregnancies lead to ruined and unhappy lives for both the mother and the child

Now at this point I'm not talking about abortions yet.  All I am saying is that none of these reasons are good reasons for killing another human being. For instance, it does not make sense to argue that my father can kill me because he has "rights for personal and private choice in a free society" or because he has become unable to "support a child."  It should be obvious that it is wrong for anyone to kill another human for any of these reasons.  Now consider premise #2. If it is true that a fetus is a human being, then the conclusion follows and abortion is wrong.  In fact, it is not just wrong, it is bona-fide murder. So what is the unborn?  If the fetus is not a human being, then no justification is necessary.  Bernard Nathanson, a medical doctor who co-founded the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (but later became pro-life), states:

    "There is simply no doubt that even the early embryo is a human being. All its genetic coding and all its features are indisputably human. As to being, there is no doubt that it exists, is alive, is self-directed, and is not the same being as the mother–and is therefore a unified whole."

Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and a pro-choice advocate, says:

    "There is no doubt that from the first moments of its existence an embryo conceived from human sperm and eggs is a human being."

Jerome LeJeune, Professor of Genetics at University of Descartes says:

    "After fertilization has taken place a new human being has come into being. [It] is no longer a matter of taste or opinion...it is plain experimental evidence. Each individual has a very neat beginning, at conception."

Even if you think there's too much scientific speculation for the average person to know for sure (which is not the case),  we can still ponder the question of when life begins.  Is it at consciousness? Is it at birth? Is it when the "thing" becomes self-dependent or fully developed?  All of these things seem arbitrary.  If it is consciousness, what about unconscious babies?  If it is at birth, then what does a few feet of distance from inside to outside the womb have to do with making you a person? If it is self-dependence or full development, then no one becomes a person until their early twenties.  No one argues that it is okay to terminate a living baby five minutes after it is born. But what is the defining difference about the same baby six minutes earlier, or six months earlier, that makes its termination permissible?  The only defining moment of a person's life that can be pointed to as their definite beginning of life is conception.  But if that is correct then premise #2 is true.  If premise #2 is true, then the conclusion follows and abortion is morally wrong.

All of the quotations above can be found at http://www.abort73.com/abortion/medical_testimon

Collision - A Movie Review

   
I finally saw the movie Collision the other day and I thought I would do a little review about it. First I'll write a little summary about it. Second, share my thoughts about the movie.  And third, I will discuss the arguments in it.

Summary:
Collision is a documentary film released in 2009 that follows a tour of debates between Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson following the release of their co-authored book Is Christianity Good for the World?  The title of the book also serves as the premise for the movie.   Hitchens, who had previously released a book called God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything argues not only that God does not exist but that the world would be better off if religion was eliminated.  Wilson, a Presbyterian pastor, argues that Christianity makes the most sense of the world and has provided the basis for much of Western culture's progress.   A camera crew follow these two men as they go on tour debating at different locations such as King's College in New York and Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.  The movie interchanges from shots of the two men debating to scenes of their personal life to scenes of their informal conversations together.  The movie is noticeably stylish, often employing black and white camera shots, quickly zooming in on a subject, and in-and-out-of focus shots.  By the end of the movie there is no decisive winner, which suggests that the director intended the movie to be an introduction to the differing arguments, leaving the viewer with the responsibility of looking into the questions on his own in order to make up his own mind.

Thoughts on the movie:
Personally, I did not think the movie was very well made.  The whole movie is basically snippets of arguments without an outline.  This makes the movie feel more like a jumble of sound-bites than a documentary.  There were times when I felt like I was watching a never ending trailer and I think this is because there was no narrative or story to follow.  The snippets of arguments feel like they are floating around on air and arranged randomly.  The music is also over dramatic in places (sometimes laughably over dramatic). Is the movie still worthwhile?  Yes, but mainly because the subject matter is just that darn interesting and the dialog between the two speakers can be very fun.  I personally found the informal, candid exchanges between Wilson and Hitchens to be the highlights of the movie, even when they're just laughing and quoting literature at each other.

Thoughts on the arguments:
This is an example of when a debate focuses on who has the best one-liners rather than overall argument.  Let me say this about Douglas Wilson (the Christian) and Christopher Hitchens (the atheist) - both men are witty and have quick tongues, but Hitchens is wittier and quicker.  In his published work, Wilson does a good job at matching Hitchens' overbearing personality, but in a public, spontaneous, debate setting does not stand a chance.  This being the case I think the movie goes out of its way to cater to Wilson in order to make both sides seem even (I think Wilson even appears to come out on top at the end).   Neither man is very formidable in their argumentation, but rather rely on quick one liners.  Hitchens is pure rhetoric and appeals to your emotions and common sense, but almost completely without any real arguments.  Douglas Wilson does not do a much better job.  Wilson is a presuppositionalists which is an apologetic method popular to reformed Christians. Unfortunately, I do not think he does the apologetic method justice.  He rightly points out that Hitchens has no grounding for his moral complaints against the Bible, but that's pretty much it.  He almost never argues directly that God exists or that Christianity is true via the impossibility of the contrary.  At best Wilson argues that Christianity is more consistent than atheism.  But that only proves that Christianity is more consistent than atheism, not that Christianity is true. 

Another interesting thing about the movie is how your theology influences your apologetic.  Wilson is a preterist (Preterism is the belief that most of eschatology has already happened in the past) and an amillennialist.  When pressed that Jesus incorrectly predicted his own coming and failed to fulfill it (Matt. 24:34), Wilson responds by saying that Jesus figuratively came in judgement on Jerusalem in 70 AD.  Wilson also explains to Hitchens that the anti-Christ was a false teacher in the early church named Cerinthus and the Beast of the book of Revelation was the Roman Emperor Nero.  It is interesting to see how these beliefs help Wilson create his defense of the Bible. 

So in conclusion, the movie is not the best movie out there, but it is still interesting.  Not to mention it is free on YouTube.  Com'on, at least watch the trailer:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLbVhAS5KFs 


Leave a comment!

Jesus Had a Wife

On September 18, Professor Karen L. King announced at a conference in Rome that she had come into the possession of a papyrus fragment that included the shocking words "Jesus said to them, 'My wife.'"  Dr. Karen King is Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  She says she obtained the fragment from an anonymous source who in turn acquired it from a German artifact dealer.  The New York Times gives this description of the fragment:

"The faded papyrus fragment is smaller than a business card, with eight lines on one side, in black ink legible under a magnifying glass. Just below the line about Jesus having a wife, the papyrus includes a second provocative clause that purportedly says, “she will be able to be my disciple."*

This controversial discovery has been the source of a lot of talk recently.    The Telegraph reports, "Ancient papyrus could be evidence that Jesus had a wife"*  The Title of a Huffington Post article declares, "'The Gospel Of Jesus' Wife,' New Early Christian Text Indicates Jesus May Have Been Married."*  And apparently the Smithsonian magazine declares the discovery to be “apt to send jolts through the world of biblical scholarship — and beyond.”* 

So what are we to make of this great revolutionary discovery?  Absolutely nothing. For one, the fragment is thought to date to the fourth century, about three hundred years after the life of Christ.  Two, it contains only fragmented sentences consisting of eight separated lines and totaling thirty words with no surrounding paragraphs or context. Three, it is the only surviving text that suggests that Jesus was married which means that it was not a believable idea to those closest to the historical Jesus. Moreover, it is written in Coptic (an Egyptian language) which means the most that this fragment can prove is that a small sect of Egyptian Christians made it a part of their religion to believe that Jesus had a wife.  

This is why Dr. King herself admits that the fragment says nothing about whether or not the actual historical Jesus had a wife.  According to her,

"This is the only extant ancient text which explicitly portrays Jesus as referring to a wife. It does not, however, provide evidence that the historical Jesus was married, given the late date of the fragment and the probable date of original composition only in the second half of the second century."*

This is coming from Dr. King who is not a conservative by a long shot.  There are other problems too.  Like whether the fragment is even genuine to begin with. Even the Huffington Post has recently speculated on a forgery.*     

So what about all this media hype about Jesus' wife?  William Lane Craig calls it - "lazy and reckless reportage," and Al Mohler says it is "sensationalism masquerading as scholarship," but I think my favorite response was from New Zealand philosopher Glenn Peoples:

"So is there anything shocking here? No. Does this change anything in regard to what the overall body of evidence on the life of Jesus has to show us? Not in the least. Will it get people excited, bloggers blogging about the orthodox Christian cover-up of the real Jesus and the suppression of the truth? No doubt. Prepare yourself. Suddenly, people are going to read a sensational article about a tiny scrap of parchment and become experts on early church history."*

-LittleGoose
P.S. leave a comment



* http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/us/historian-says-piece-of-papyrus-refers-to-jesus-wife.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.www

*http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9553178/Ancient-papyrus-could-be-evidence-that-Jesus-had-a-wife.html

*http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/18/the-gospel-of-jesus-wife-_n_1891325.html

*http://www.albertmohler.com/2012/09/20/the-gospel-of-jesuss-wife-when-sensationalism-masquerades-as-scholarship/

*http://news.hds.harvard.edu/files/King_JesusSaidToThem_draft_0917.pdf

*http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20120921/us-scholar-jesus-s-wife/

*http://www.beretta-online.com/wordpress/2012/the-gospel-of-jesus-wife/