500 Words on the Cosmological Argument

Guys!! I can scarcely believe my stupidity! Having taken about two and a half of your precious earthly minutes to explain the ontological argument I was somehow deaf to your choruses of ‘yes Nick, but what about the cosmological argument?’ So here, to sate your lust, are 500 words on why God is the cause of everything.

The argument is very simple really and dates back to Hellenistic times although it is most famously associated with St Thomas Aquinas.

1) Everything which exists (contingent beings) could, under different circumstances, not exist.

2) It follows, therefore, that there is a reason that they exist as opposed their not existing; they have a cause.

3) This cause must be something other than itself. This is obvious if you think about it: We are talking about bringing things into being. A thing which at one moment exists must have not existed prior to that moment. It cannot have bought itself into existence as to do so it would have had to have existed prior to its existence. You don’t have to be a genius to realise that that makes no sense whatsoever.

4) Other contingent beings alone are not good enough to account for the cause of contingent beings. This is the case because it would mean that there were always objects to serve as the cause of other objects. This would just create an infinite regression and would never explain why the universe exists as opposed to not existing (see premises 1&2)

5) Therefore a non-contingent being must be involved in the cause of contingent beings.

6) A non-contingent being, or a being without matter, is just a posh way of saying God. Consequently God Exists.

Now as it stands this argument looks better than the ontological one, which just goes round and round in circles in a space just left of reality. The most obvious reply to this is that we observe causality by observing things which have causes. As we don’t see the causes of the universe so we can claim that the universe just is. Unfortunately the answer to this is that we see causality in everything else so why should we not extrapolate to the universe, just because we cannot observe its cause doesn’t mean its not there. Put another way: All dogs drink water, just because my dog isn’t drinking water at the moment doesn’t mean that the statement is incorrect. Bertrand Russell does have an answer to this but it is somewhat obscure, so I shall omit it here.

Far more convincing to me is the fact that the conclusions of the argument are contradictory. God is a metaphysical necessity and therefore must exist. Yet this takes us back to premise 1. If God exists then it is possible that under altered circumstances could not exist. Therefore there must be a cause for God existing as opposed to not existing, so God is a contingent being and therefore cannot be a first cause.

Anyway folks that’s me out of words.

500 Words on the Ontological Argument

Hello folks, I thought I would dedicate 500 words (and not more) to the explaining ontological argument for the existence of God. The argument was set down by Saint Anselm of Canterbury in 1078. It runs something like this:

1)  God is perfect. This is true by definition. If the being is not perfect then it cannot be God.

2) God exists in the mind as an idea.

3) A being that exists in the mind is inferior to one that, should all other properties be the same, also exists in reality. For example, think of a spade. If I have a real spade which is exactly like the one you are imagining my real spade will be superior as I can dig a hole with it.

4) Therefore, if God exits in the mind he is not perfect as we can imagine a better God; one that actually exists.

5) But wait! There cannot be a being more perfect than God, therefore amongst God’s qualities is existence. Quod erat demonstrandum: God exists.

There are a number of problems with this as I’m sure you can imagine. First, it draws existence from a physiological phenomenon. If I say “I am imagining the perfect being” and then you say “no you’re not because I can imagine a better one, one which exists” then all that proves is that I wasn’t imagining the perfect being. To confer from this that the being exists is to take unquestioned the premise in point 1, that God is perfect. To say that God exists because he is perfect and that his perfection he exists is entirely circular.

Secondly, The argument, as Gaunilo pointed out, would exists equally well if you replace the word God with a perfect island. Yet no one would claim that if you imagine a perfect island, a more prefect one would be one that was real, therefore the perfect island must exist. The lack of empirical basis for this claim formed Hume’s criticism of the argument for the existence of God.

Meanwhile, Kant pointed out that the existence of God was a prerequisite of the argument working. Take a triangle. It is true by definition that it has internal angles equalling 180^oC and three sides, but that does not mean that the triangle exists. The argument states that if a triangle exists these would be its properties. In the same way that Anselm’s argument states that if God exists this is what he would be like, not that God does exists.

All in all God’s perfection could be a good test of anyone claiming to be God but it cannot be used to prove that he exists.

All in all the ontological argument for the existence of God is an interesting argument which goes round and round in circles in a fashion completely detached from reality.

Right, 500 words are gone so we don’t have time for that Descartes had to say on the matter. But don’t worry it’s not very interesting. 

The Best Books of 2014

It is, alas, Christmas again, which means that the newspapers, at least those which contain words, are full of people telling you which books they have enjoyed most this year. So I thought I would pitch in.

I have read far more books on politics this year than in any year since I started recording what I read. By far the finest is the re-issue of Gyles Brandreth’s parliamentary diaries Breaking the Code. These are the best political diaries I have read since Chris Mullin’s, and are far funnier.

Whilst on the subject of political diaries, the greatest hits of Tony Benn, who left us earlier this year, has been published (The Best of Benn). Ruth Winstone has done an excellent job in editing down the tens of thousands of diary entries, essays, interviews and speeches given by Benn over a truly remarkable life and career.

Other political books I have particularly enjoyed this year include Michael Jago’s Clement Attlee: The Inevitable Prime Minister and Dennis Skinner’s Sailing Close to the Wind. The Establishment by Owen Jones and Private Island by James Meek made me angry at the elitist clique that runs our lives and has sold us out, and despair at the mountain we must climb to take control. In a case of missing the boat, I cannot recommend Gordon Brown’s My Scotland, Our Britain highly enough. Like his earlier book on the economy, it was thoughtful and outlines the true, patriotic reason for Scotland remaining in the Union and why we should all be so thankful that it did.

Away from politics, this year marked the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War. To mark this I have read a good deal on the War. I write this having just finished re-reading Sebastian Faulks’ masterpiece Birdsong, still the most moving First World War novel I have ever read. I have also particularly enjoyed The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek, the story of the overly patriotic Švejk and his bumbling attempts to reach the front after he is called up to the Austro-Hungarian Army. A classic too little read in this country.

An interesting work on the contribution made by the public schools to the war effort is Anthony Seldon’s book Public Schools and the Great War, it catalogues the horrific losses suffered by junior officers on the Western Front as they led their platoons over the top. One in five former public school boys who went to the Front died there, a higher ratio than any other demographic group. Seldon’s book, as with all his works, is well researched and detailed and challenges the ‘lions led by donkeys’ consensus far more effectively than Michael Gove’s bizarre attacks on Blackadder.

If first hand accounts of the war are more your line of thing then your cannot do better than to reach for Robert Graves autobiography Good-Bye To All That, it may well be the most remarkable memoir I have ever read. Penguin has re-released the original 1929 edition, which is rawer, and what I believe the critics call grittier, than the comparatively restrained, somewhat anodyne later versions.

Two books I was grateful for reading this year were Italio Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees and Tim Parks’ Italian Ways. The former lifted me from a period of melancholy in the spring whilst the latter’s warm and paternal reminisces of journeys on the Italian Railways distracted me greatly and cheered me as we drove around a small corner of that beautiful country in the late summer.

In fiction, The Long Road to the Deep North was a worthy winner of the Mann Booker Prize and a deeply moving story the of human suffering involved in the building of the death railway in Burma during the dark days of World War Two. For my money How to be Both by Ali Smith was the best of the shortlist, an all to rare thing, a novel which makes you see the world a little differently. My other favourite novel I have read this year is The Children Act by Ian McEwan, how it escaped the Booker shortlist I don’t know. For my money it is the best novel McEwan has done for several years and ranks alongside Amsterdam as one of his finest works.

As the New Year approaches I am hoping to finish two books that have dogged me this year, the first is Capital in the Twenty-First Century by the French economist Thomas Piketty and the other is Absolute Recoil by Slovenian philosopher Slavoj žižek both are endlessly fascinating and both are important books but both seem to have back covers which retreat from you.

I also look forward to reading the second volume of Alan Johnson’s autobiography, Please, Mister Postman. The first volume, This Boy, sits half-read on my bedside table and volume two awaits as my reward for finishing volume one.

In fiction, and in continuance of my marking the war, my eye has been caught by Parades End, and All Quiet on the Western Front, both of which have graced by shelves for a number of years now but neither of which I have read.

I also await with anticipation the memoirs of Messrs Cameron, Clegg and Osborne. I hope that the latter part of next year will find them suitably unemployed and at liberty to start drafting.

The book everyone is raving about is The English and their History by Robert Tombs, I wouldn’t resent finding that in my stocking on Christmas morning.

Fiction

The Baron in the Trees, - Italio Calvino, (Harcourt) - http://tinyurl.com/pxfxx8m

Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks, (Vintage) - http://tinyurl.com/obnzc86

Long Road to the Deep North – Richard Flanagan, (Vintage) - http://tinyurl.com/lv3d6ws

Parade’s End – Ford Madox Ford, (Penguin) - http://tinyurl.com/m4asg5h

The Good Soldier Švejk – Jaroslav Hašek, (Penguin) - http://tinyurl.com/lfl7uau

The Children Act – Ian McEwan, (Vintage) - http://tinyurl.com/lhebmwh

All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque, (Vintage) - http://tinyurl.com/kzjek92

How to be Both – Ali Smith, (Penguin) - http://tinyurl.com/kc8vy6o

Non-Fiction

The Best of Benn – Tony Benn, Ruth Winstone (ed.), (Cornerstone) - http://tinyurl.com/npkjrz2

Breaking the Code – Gyles Brandreth, (Biteback) - http://tinyurl.com/n8gt3ad

My Scotland, Our Britain – Gordon Brown, (Bantam Press) - http://tinyurl.com/pnnz3nj

Good-Bye To All That – Robert Graves, (Penguin) - http://tinyurl.com/qfymxcq

Clement Attlee: The Inevitable Prime Minister – Michael Jago, (Biteback) - http://tinyurl.com/lw7j3vl

Please, Mr Postman – Alan Johnson, (Transworld) - http://tinyurl.com/kxjcwh2

This Boy – Aland Johnson, (Transworld) - http://tinyurl.com/k7cbnuv

The Establishment – Owen Jones, (Allen Lane) - http://tinyurl.com/pmlp4do

Private Island – James Meet, (Verso) - http://tinyurl.com/lroc486

Italian Ways - Tim Parks, (Vintage) - http://tinyurl.com/oa98kjc

Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty, (Harvard) - http://tinyurl.com/le4p8ak

Public Schools and the Great War – Anthony Seldon, (Pen and Sword Books) - http://tinyurl.com/kxh2erm

Sailing Close to the Wind – Dennis Skinner, (Quercus) - http://tinyurl.com/kaxngan

The English and their History – Robert Tombs, (Penguin) - http://tinyurl.com/mcv9kpf

Absolute Recoil – Slavoj žižek, (Verso) - http://tinyurl.com/pkhw5gj