The Argument
From Possibility
I was recently watching another
episode of the traveling atheist (‘Closer To Truth’ with Robert Lawrence Kuhn)
and the episode focused solely on the ‘Ontological Argument for God,’ or in
other words, the argument from existence. Meaning that some clearly obvious
facts about existence are taken and used as the axioms in a logical proof that
is intended to demonstrate that God’s existence is necessary.
Why everyone seems to zero in on
Anselm of Canterbury’s “that than which nothing greater can be conceived”
thought-experiment as the best representation of the Ontological Argument (or
synonymous with it, even), is beyond me. At least one person in the episode
(the series is presented through interviews with philosophers, scientists and
theologians) made the statement that to take Anselm’s pondering on ‘the
greatest conceivable being’ and to hold this up as a proof is to stretch it far
beyond what it’s intended to do, even by Anselm himself—and he placed the blame
on well-meaning but incorrect theologians in time past. What that interviewee
said was that Anselm simply suggested that whatever you conceive of a thing,
the actual thing itself is by definition going to be ‘greater’ than the
conception of the thing. That seems benign enough, and it’s a satisfactory
conclusion to me, who has wondered since first introduced why this is held up
as the best that Christian philosophy can do.
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| Wiki Commons image. Alvin Plantinga. |
The last interviewee of the
episode, Alvin Plantinga, also made a similar remark about Anselm, that as stated,
the argument doesn’t work. But he had apparently developed an improvement of
the argument, which he called “The Argument from Possible Worlds,” or something
similar. While I didn’t quite follow his construction of his proof, I
immediately understood the summary: he said that as constructed, the proof
leads someone to be totally committed to the reality of God’s existence as a
necessary fact, provided that he begin with the acknowledgement that it is
possible for God to exist. For anyone to believe that God does not exist, they
would have to claim that it is impossible
for God to exist.
* *
* * *
This immediately made sense to
me, because I’d constructed a similar logical proof before. I don’t believe
this is the same proof Plantinga’s developed, and I don’t seek to take credit
for his idea, but the thought process is similar, and he did remind me of it.
Without further ado, here’s the Argument
from Possibility.
The
Choice
Like Plantinga’s Possible Worlds, the proof does not
unilaterally demonstrate God’s existence. What it does instead is to show that
one must choose between the belief that God’s existence is either a fact, or
that it is impossible. To believe that it is possible and yet that it is not
actual, is to commit a logical contradiction. It is not possible for God’s
existence (1) to be possible, and (2) for God not to exist.
Defining
Possibility
All things either exist or do
not exist. And if it is possible for something to exist, then it must actually exist (1) at some point in time (2) in some
location (3) given the right conditions for its existence (not defined here).
Otherwise, given the whole scope of time and the whole scope of space, if the
thing never exists anywhere at any time, it is meaningless to say that it is
possible for it to exist. It is, rather, impossible, because its potentiality
is never actualized. If a critic has trouble to agree with these premises,
further suppose that in an infinite time and infinite space, the conditions for
its existence must, as a matter of probability, be realized at least once. This
necessitates my potentiality=actuality connection. I will return to this
infinity concept in a little bit.
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| Wikipedia photo. |
Possibility
Leads to Qualified Necessity
So, we’ve established that a
thing which exists possibly will exist actually at least sometime, somewhere in
the universe, given that conditions for its existence are present. And if you
deny that conditions for its existence are ever met, then you are by definition
(ipso facto) asserting that it is impossible for it to exist, since it
cannot exist, by definition, unless conditions required for its existence are
present. So, perhaps redundantly, I’ve now shown that if something can exist
because its existence is possible, then it MUST exist at least in some locale,
for some duration.
Demonstrating
Possibility Via Actuality
So, how would we test that? We
could easily show that it is possible for a thing to exist by producing an
example of the thing, in existence. We can know confidently that trees exist,
and have no difficulty pointing at a tree as a matter of demonstration of that
fact. Trees exist, therefore it is possible that trees exist. Simple enough.
But what about things which are outside of our experience? What I’ve just given
an example of is an object, or type of object, that intersects with our
experience of (1) time and (2) space. But what about time extending before or
after the observer? And what about space beyond where the observer can reach? A
finite human observer cannot make any concrete conclusions about things which
are never observed in his sphere of interaction, whether these are possible or
impossible. He can conceive of something, but a conception is different than a
thing itself. If something you can imagine exists never actually does, anywhere
in the universe, then as I’ve already shown, it is not possible for it to
exist. I should also point out that we can show that certain things are
possible even if they’re temporarily in existence (such as circumstances,
relationships of things to each other, or sequences of events). You can show
that it’s possible for such-and-such a drug to increase heart-rate by showing
that in at least one circumstance, in time, it actually did. Therefore we know that it is possible. This is the
core of observational science. Showing what is possible, by causing it to actually happen in the presence of
witnesses. The Empirical Scientific Method.
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| Wikipedia image. |
Possibility
of Non-Observable Things
So we can know that certain
things have the possibility to exist because we can either observe them
currently in existence, or because we can have memory or record of them having
been in existence under certain circumstances before. But what about the things
we cannot see, and which we cannot produce under any scientific circumstance?
Either because we can’t produce the conditions required for the things’
existence, or because we can’t travel in space or time to observe the things
existing in places or at times when the conditions are met. Well, we can’t. But
there’s the rub. Suppose we could see
everywhere, at all times, extending back through the whole past and forward
through the whole future? Then every occurrence of an actual thing would be
observable to us, and nothing that we did not see would be a thing which could
possibly exist.
Possibility
Applied to God
Of course, we can’t be
everywhere in time and space. But God can. And since He is, by definition,
everywhere present at all times, we don’t have to be, in order to run the test.
What I’ve been talking of so far is finite objects. But God is infinite, and so
we don’t have to be infinite in order to “observe the thing in existence” in
order to determine that it is possible for “it” to exist. We can determine this
wherever we happen to be, at any time.
What I won’t tell you is how to do that. Actually, the idea that
we humans have the prerogative to be the arbiters of whether God’s existence is
possible is rather silly to me. But nevertheless, there are those who do walk
around and say to themselves, and to others, “I think there’s a possibility
that God exists, but I’m not sure.” This essay is for them. The point is that
you cannot say something like that. Because God is not in the category of
events that can be actualized at some times and not others, God either actually
exists, right now, in this very moment and right where you are, or it is
impossible for Him to exist at all. There is no middle ground.
If God has the possibility to
exist, He must actually exist at some place and some time. And since the
conditions for His existence to be possible (namely, the existence of space and
time and all the creation within it—which by definition He created and sustains
by His power/presence) are met in all locations and at all times within the
universe, God must actually exist at all times and in all places within the
universe (to ignore the question of ‘outside’).
Therefore,
if it is possible for God to exist, then He exists. By necessity.
Therefore,
if it is possible for God to exist, it is impossible for Him not to exist.
Therefore,
if God does not exist, it is impossible for Him to exist.
The
above are all reformulations of the same statement. Like how you derive
different integral equations in Calculus.
The Argument
From Possibility As A Predicate Logic Proof
Put another way, for a thing to
have the possibility to exist, it must possess that quality of potentiality,
but only things which actually exist can possess qualities; things which do not
exist cannot possess qualities. So a thing which is possible to exist is a
thing which has qualities and so it is a thing which must exist. A thing which
does not possess the quality of existing is a thing which can possess no other
qualities, and so it cannot possess the quality of having the possibility to
exist, so therefore it is impossible for it to exist. In summary, it must be
possible for the things that exist to exist, and it must be impossible for the
things that do not exist to exist. It
cannot be possible for things that do not exist to exist.
Possible
Objection
A friend brought up the idea
that “a pink unicorn has the qualities of being pink and having one horn,” and
the response to any similar rebuttal is that yes, the conception of it in your mind does. But unless you have
actually seen one, you can’t say with personal assurance that it’s possible for
actual pink unicorns to exist. Yes,
you can give an imaginary object qualities, but that object does not possess those qualities—your conception of that object does. Take care not to confuse the
two.
Does this mean that someone can
say the same about God? Yes, indeed. You can say that ‘God’ is not a real
thing, and that people have assigned qualities to something they call ‘God,’
but that thing is only a conception of the mind, and thus does not inherently carry
the possibility of existence (nor either the impossibility of existence; it is
irrelevant to those qualities, since the conception of a thing and the thing
itself are not the same). This ensures the consistency of my proof, because if
you rejected my above rebuttal to the unicorn, then you would have to say that
because people can predicate qualities to their idea of God, therefore God must also be an actual thing which is
possible to exist—and ipso facto exists.
I think this is closer to what most people’s understanding of Anselm’s argument
is, and of course I disagree with it wholeheartedly. I think my proof, which
clearly separates the idea of a thing from the thing itself, makes sense of
reality both from the perspective of the person who thinks God does not exist
and the person who thinks God exists/it is possible that He exists. Without the
distinction, you’d either have to say that you can’t imagine a thing and
attribute qualities to it (clearly untrue), or you’d have to say that because
you can attribute qualities to imaginary things, they must exist (clearly
untrue). If you read through this logical proof essay without acknowledging the
distinction, doing it again while having it in mind will probably help you
understand what I am trying to prove—and what I am not—much better.
A final sub-rebuttal might take
the form of “yes, you’ve demonstrated that God as an idea and as ‘the thing
itself’ are distinct, but if He doesn’t exist, then you could only predicate
possible existence to the concept of God in one’s mind, you wouldn’t actually
predicate possible existence to God Himself, since, if He doesn’t exist, can’t
have any qualities predicated of Him. So by predicating possible existence to
Him, you’re assuming His existence, and that’s a circular argument.” And to
this I would say, yes, that is exactly the point. Remember that the argument is
not intended to prove God—it is intended to show that you must conclude that
God exists IF you admit that it is possible that He exists. No more. If you do not
allow for the possibility that God exists, then you can never be convinced of
the fact of His existence.
And
that really is the bottom line, after
all, isn’t it?
~
Rak Chazak
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