Alternative Culture: God's Philosophers review

I have to confess-- I'm a fan of history, philosophy, theology and science. When this book was published, I had to have it. So my friend bought it for me for my birthday in 2011. After all, it combined my interests together.

Basic premise
[God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science has another title. It was released as The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution in the United States]

This book challenges the paradigm that the medieval ages of Europe as the "Dark Ages" were a period of ignorance and regress when nothing of technological and philosophical importance happen. Listing over 100 medieval scholars, the author James Hannam protrays the medieval ages as some sort of Golden Age, where Christian Europe was supreme in both science and thought.

Furthermore, he brings into contention whether the Roman Catholic Church stifled free enterprise and research. According to the author James Hannam, the Roman Catholic Church did not ban zero, forbid human autopsy or even persecuted Galileo for his scientific views (they persecuted him for other reasons). However these modern myths continue to persist.

In this post I want to bring up some things I found enlightening in God's Philosophers.

European Languages
One of the practices of Christianity is the sending of missionaries. As Christian beliefs are rooted in the Bible, there was need to invent languages and translations of the Bible to make Christianity accessible to much of Europe.

Having a common root, most European languages contain about 25 letters and have similar grammar. The ease of learning such languages allowed the facillitation of ideas across Europe. Hannman constrasted this with Asian languages (such as Mandarin). Despite a unified written language across China, the pictorial Chinese language had more than 500 symbols that made the communication of ideas more tedious across Asia. Furthermore, China had little motivation to increase its literacy rate (unlike Europe, which had a religious basis).

Spectacles
Another key invention in the medieval period was the eye-glasses, or rather spectacles. With the development of glass and the studies of light in Europe, corrective lenses were inevitably invented. Spectacles allowed ageing scholars and workers to continue reading and working, allowing the retention of knowledge within the European populations.

Logic
Another aspect that was further developed was logic. Formal logic was first introduced by the ancient philosopher Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC), and medieval philosophers had little qualms about incoporating Aristolian logic to Christianity. Hannam records St. Anselm of Cantebury (1033-1109)'s ontological argument as one of the earliest attempts to rationalise Christianity. The famed St. Thomas Aquinas (1225- 1274) also features as a champion of Aristotle.

However, the medieval scholars also showed that they weren't just blindly following to Aristotle and the other classical Greek philosophers. The Reformer Martin Luther (1483-1546) often challenged Aquinas's (and hence Aristotle's) view on morality and the Roman Catholic Church had once declared Aristotle's works heretical in the Condemnation of 1277.

These challenges to the Greek's idea of the world eventually led to experimentation and the development of science. Hannam advocates the idea that the philosophy of science emerged from the rationality of Christianity. [While other civilisations came up with great scientific discoveries like gunpower, they failed to come up with a philosophy of science which pushed for improvements.]

Overall
While I'm no historian, theologian or philosopher, I really enjoyed God's Philosophers. I highly recommend it to anyone with at least an interest in church history. Hannam's style of writing is simple and engaging, and supported with diagrams for better understanding. I give it a 92/100.

Theology 1.0: What is the ontological argument for God?

[Author's note: The author attempts to present the ontological argument as he best understands it. The author is not in anyway, a philosopher or a theologian. He has a Masters in Biology. He is simply a Christian trying to make sense of the world. This post is also dedicated to his two philosopher friends, Guojun and Mitchel, who helped him immensely through this thought process.]

The Ontological Argument often leaves my brain scrambled like my laptop screen

An argument for the existance of God
One of the arguments for the existance of God is called the ontological argument for God. One unique thing about this philosophical arguement is that we are able to trace its origin to St Anselm of Cantebury. Around 1077-1078, St Anselm wrote Proslogion. This work is where the ontological argument first appeared (Hannam, 2011).

 St Anselm wrote that there is a "conception of God in our minds that is greater than any other thing we can conceive. However, in order for God to be the truly greatest thing He must also exists. A real greatest thing is certainty greater than an imaginary one. If God did not exist he would not be the greatest thing we can conceive and hence he must exist" (Anselm, 1973).

From the wording (and historical research), this argument was not intented to prove God's existance, but rather to show believers why God's existance was necessary. Nevertheless, it has been modified by many philosophers such as Rene Decartes, Gottfried Leibniz and Mulla Sadra as a proof for God's existance (Hannam, 2011).

As with many philsophical agruments, this argument has been refined over time. In this post, I will be exploring the Alvin Platinga's version.

Platinga (1998) argues

1. It is possible that a maximally great being exists.

2. If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some possible world.

3. If a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world.

4. If a maximally great being exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world.

5. If a maximally great being exists in the actual world, then a maximally great being exists.

6. Therefore, a maximally great being (i.e. God) exists.

If you're like me, you'll confess that it does not make any sense the first time you heard it.. This is why I chosen to write this post-- to explain it clearer, and hopefully, it'll make sense to you and me.

The difficulties
What does "possible worlds" mean?
One of the difficulties of the argument is to understand what the word "possible worlds" mean. It does not mean alternate universes or alien worlds. They simply mean hypotheses of how the world might have been (Craig, 2008).

Using this idea of possible worlds, any entity can either be impossible (exists in no possible worlds), contingent (exists in some possible worlds) or necessary (existance in all possible worlds).

Examples of impossible entities include the proposition of squared circles, or that the prime minister of Singapore is a prime number.

Examples of contingent entites include extant elephants (there are possible hypothetical situations where elephants became extinct) or that the prime minister of Singapore is related to me (not true in the actual world, but is possible in other worlds).

Examples of necessary entities include the concept of mathematics, or the proposition that square contain four sides.

What does maximally great mean?
A maximally great being is one that possesses all qualities (such as necessity) which are considered better to have. Furthermore it not only possess such qualities, it possesses them to the maximum extent. This means it possesses maximum power (omnipotent), maximum knowledge (omniscience) and maximum good (omnibenevolence).

Having these qualities, one would call this maximally great being "God". Since this "God" would be omnipresent (as part of its maximal powers), if He existed in even one possible world, he exists in all.

Strengths of the argument
The summary of the argument is simple this--  if it is even possible that God exists, then God exists. In other words it shifts the onus of proof of God's nonexistance to the atheist. This is because if the atheist even concedes a slight possiblility of God's existance, then God exists.

To debunk the ontological argument, one must show that it is IMPOSSIBLE for God (or rather, a maximally great being) to exist.

A maximally great rubber duckie?

Objections to the argument
As with any argument, there are always people who disagree with it. I shall go through more famous ones.

The unicorn alternative
A common objection to the ontological argument is that it can be applied to anything. For instance, in this youtube video, an atheist ridcules the argument, stating it can be applied to unicorns. He uses the argument to show unicorns exists, thinking that the argument states "if you can define it, it exists."

Nevertheless, let's look at this objection in the best possible light. Let's say we use the argument for a maximally great unicorn. Even if we had a perfect unicorn in everyway, clear of any defect, it still would not be omnipotent, omniscience or omnibenevolent. (If it did, then it would be "God"; we are then just replacing the word "God" with the word "unicorn".) At best, it would be contingent (only exists in some possible worlds).

In fact, this kind of objection is not new, and handled by St Anselm himself 900 years ago. Gaunilo of Marmoutiers, St Anselm's rival used a Lost Island as an example (rather than a unicorn). St Anselm pointed out that even the most perfect island is lesser than the greatest thing can be thought of (i.e. it is not "God"; or it does not have the qualities of "God") (Cornman et al., 1992).

Kant's objection
That said, there are forminable arguments against the ontological argument. Almost all serious objections focus on premise 1 ("It is possible that a maximally great being exists"). This is mainly because premise 2 onwards logically follows (Craig, 2008).

One of the greatest philosophers of the Western World, Immanuel Kant also had reservations with the ontological argument (even though Kant himself was a Christian). He questioned the existance as a "necessary proposition". In other words, he argue that a triangle must have three sides if it existed in the first place. Being necessary does not mean an object exist. Furthermore, he argues that a judgement of the non-existance entity is impossible (Kant, 1787).

However, Platinga's (1988) version of the argument does not take issue with this (i.e. it leaves the question of whether existing is a perfection open).

 Can a maximally great being exist?
Another challenge to the ontological argument is whether the concept of a maximally great being is coherent. The notion of God seen as classical theism (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) is omniscience, omnipotent and omnibenevolent. But these attributes have been often portrayed as contradictionary. For instance, Smith (1980) argues that God is either not good enough or powerful enough to stop all evil.

Limits of the argument
As with any argument, there are limitations. In the Christian context even if this argument is convincing, it does not lead to the conclusion that this god is the Christian God (since the God of Islam and Judaism is also omnipotent, omniscience and omnipresent). Granted, this argument is not intented to lead people straight away to the Christian God, but a step in a series of arguments to get there. So this argument is only at best useful against atheists.

In my personal opinion..
I find this argument logically coherent, but yet in the same way unconvincing. I sincerely doubt if I would use this argument as an argument for God's existance. For one, not everyone would agree to call a maximally great being "God". One of the most famous Christian theologians, Thomas Aquinas pointed this out in his landmark Summa Theologica.

Next, it would require people of some level of technical knowledge of philosophy to understand it, blunting its effiency.


References
Anselm, St. (trans. Benedicta Ward) (1973) Prayers and Mediations of St Anselm with Prologion

Cornman, J.W., Lehrer, K., Sotiros Pappas, G. (1992) Philosophical problems and arguments: an introduction
Craig, W.L. (2008) Reasonable Faith (3rd Edition)

Hannam, J. (2011) God's Philosophers

Kant, I. (1787) A Critique of Pure Reason

Kukkone, T. (2000) Possible Worlds in the Tahâfut al-Falâsifa: Al-Ghazâlî on Creation and Contingency. Journal of the History of Philosophy. 38, 479-502.

Platinga, A. (1998) God, arguments for the existence of. In E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Smith, G.H. (1980) Atheism: The Case Against God

For Further Thinking/Reading
InspiringPhilosophy
GospelCoalition
ReasonableFaith