Introduction
Let’s prove the existence of God.
First things first though, let me make it clear where and how I stand on the subject: God is real. Anyone who says otherwise (Gnostic Atheists) has simply gotten the definition of God wrong. Anyone who insists that we can’t know for sure whether God does or does not exist (Agnostic Atheists) has also failed to understand the correct definition of God. And yes—I am claiming to be in possession of the correct definition.
Let’s take Anselm’s definition of God: “That than which nothing greater can be conceived.” What medieval philosopher Anselm of Canterbury says with this is that God is the most maximal concept that can be coherently thought up of, so that there exists nothing, nor could exist anything, that is, or would be, greater than God.
Anselm’s definition is a strong foundation, but it is not all we need to prove the existence of God. Anselm’s own failure at proving the existence of God with this definition shows us exactly why we need to go beyond merely asserting that God is “that than which nothing greater can be conceived.”
Anselm’s argument goes like this: he defines God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” and goes on to argue that this definition guarantees that even an atheist must admit that God exists. He articulates: we can either conceive of God as existing only in our minds or as existing in the mind and in actual reality. If we assume God exists in actual reality, then God is assumed to, well, actually exist. Alternatively, if we assume God exists only in our minds, Anselm argues, there is a contradiction and therefore we must admit God does actually exist. If we assume God only exists in our minds, then this wouldn’t really be God because we could conceive of something greater than a God that exists only in our minds, namely a God that exists both in the mind and in actuality. In other words, if God is “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” then God cannot be conceived as not existing in actuality, because otherwise we could conceive of something better—a God that actually exists. Either way, the definition of God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” seems to entail actual existence. Actual existence, then, according to Anslem, is a great-making property.
This argument fails for one main reason I want to explore in this post. Before addressing that reason, we need to cover a famous objection to Anselm’s ontological argument, laid out by a monk named Gaunilo. Gaunilo uses the analogy of an island, specifically “an island than which no greater island can be conceived.” We can either consider the island to exist in the mind only, or in the mind and in reality. If we considered the island to exist only in the mind, then we would run into the same contradiction of considering the existence of God only in the mind, because an island that actually existed in the mind as well as outside the mind would be better than an island that existed only in the mind. Therefore, the island that we considered does actually exist. But this clearly is not the case. Gaunilo’s point here seems to be that just because we can imagine such an entity does not guarantee that it actually exists. There is an error in Anselm’s reasoning.
Anselm responds to this objection by pointing out an important distinction between the island and God—an island is not the sort of concept to whose nature existence belongs, whereas God is precisely the sort of concept to whose nature existence belongs. Alternatively stated, it is not in the nature of the concept of “an island than which no greater can be conceived,” to entail existence; in contrast, existence belongs only to the very nature of the concept of “that than which nothing greater can be conceived.”
In response to this, some might claim that Anselm is begging the question—presupposing the very thing he sought out to proof (the existence of God). As I interpret him, however, Anselm doesn’t beg the question because his defense does not make one of his argument’s premises the conclusion of God’s existence. Anselm’s defense should be interpreted as a clarification of the ontological difference between the category of the most maximal island, a particular ontology, and the category of the most maximal thing, a general ontology. Anselm, in other words, is pointing out an ontological asymmetry between the island and God, so as to suggest that Gaunilo’s island analogy is in fact a disanalogy.
The source of this ontological asymmetry may be found in the difference between broad vs particular ontological categories. For instance, only “that than which nothing greater can be conceived,” in virtue of being the most maximal thing is actually maximal enough to entail existence, whereas the most maximal island, no matter how maximal it is in the mind, is never maximal enough to contend with the most maximal thing. The most maximal thing, God, is broad enough to be greater than any possible particular. God stands alone as the greatest thing, a broad ontological category over and above any subset or particular concept. An island, even the most maximal island, is too particular to, in and of itself, entail its own existence. The most maximal thing, on the other hand, is the greatest possible concept among every other conceivable concept and hence it alone is capable of self-necessitation—it subsists in itself. Existence belongs necessarily to this most maximal ontology. Gaunilo’s analogy, therefore, is actually a disanalogy and thus exposes no critical flaw in Anselm’s argument—even if it is nonsensical to attribute existence to a most maximal particular, an island, it is not necessarily nonsensical to attribute existence to the most maximal general, which can be anything.
…or at least that’s what Anselm would probably like to think.
One central objection, and I think the most valid reason for demonstrating why Anselm’s proof fails to prove God’s existence, is that merely asserting that existence belongs to the very nature of a thing (the most maximal thing) is not the same as actually showing that the thing does exist. At most what Anselm has accomplished has been to demonstrate that if the thing did exist, then it would exist necessarily.[1] Anselm may have conceptually established the attribute of necessary existence as a great-making property, and may have successfully established a case for why the most maximal thing would possess such a property of necessary existence, but he has yet shown that there indeed exists some ontological candidate that fulfills the definition of being God, or “that than which nothing greater can be conceived”. As Gaunilo puts it: “it must be first of all proved to me that this greater than everything truly exists in reality somewhere…”
God as the Totality of Being
I say yes, God does truly exist in reality somewhere. Now that we have defined God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived,” our duty is simply to find a candidate that fulfills this definition. For that purpose, I present the following candidate: the totality of Being, or alternatively phrased, the aggregate of all existence. In logical language, God is the totality of all possible worlds.
Put simply, nothing other than the totality of Being itself can be defined as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived,” for there is nothing either beyond nor more encompassing than the totality of Being. God, therefore, is not some recluse or separate entity from the aggregate of existence but must be at least either numerically identical to or incorporate within itself the aggregate of existence.
This is my modal pantheist thesis, by which the definition “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” is fulfilled by the candidacy of an ontological entity whose greatness is defined by the breadth of that which it encompasses. Since a modal pantheist thesis ascribes to God the totality of all possibilities, God is literally “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” because the totality of all possible worlds necessarily exhausts every conceivability. There is no thing, nothing, beyond the totality of all possible worlds, hence there is nothing beyond God. God is “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” because quite literally the only things that exist beyond His greatness, are no things at all. God constitutes the whole of reality, being identical to it.
Now you can either subscribe to modal realism, as I do (for reasons I will discuss in the future), which is to believe that actuality is indexical, and all possible worlds are as real as this world we inhabit, or you can subscribe to modal actualism, which is to believe that the actual world we inhabit is the only world that exists. As modal realist, I ascribe the breadth of God’s greatness to include all possible worlds as existent entities in conjunction to this world we inhabit. This world is just one of every other conceivable possibility playing out. Of course, however, one need not subscribe to modal realism to be a pantheist. If one is a modal actualist, then the actual world alone becomes the candidate for God, since the actual world alone would exhaust every conceivable possibility. God, in being numerically identical to the actual world, (the only world according to modal actualists) is still “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” because according to modal actualism the actual world is everything that there is and nothing would exist beyond it.
Furthermore, there remains questions as to whether we ought to say that God is the world (pantheism), or the world is in God (panentheism). These questions, if taken seriously, however, indicate that we have moved beyond the question of whether or not God exists, and have instead plunged into the question of how God exists. Therefore, I will postpone these questions until I have definitively secured that God’s existence has been proven in the first place.
Now, if we further inspect this broad definition of God (whether it be pantheistic or panentheistic), we will see that it perfectly fulfills the definitional implications inherent in the Anselmian ontological argument. Remember the previous section and how it went over the nuances of Anselm’s response to Gaunilo? Anselm’s reply to Gaunilo’s island objection emphasized the importance of the ontological difference between a particular entity, like the most maximal island, and a general entity, like the most maximal thing. Anselm’s reply asserted that the property of necessary existence belongs to the latter but not the former—to the general thing, but not the particular thing. But why should this be the case? Why should a general maximal thing entail necessary existence, but not a particular thing? Why is particularity conflated with contingency, while generality is conflated with necessity? I think both an abstract and a concrete pantheistic perspective can give us the best answers to these questions.
Understanding it abstractly, we must admit that only the most general thing can be explanatorily ultimate. Assume that X is the most general category; then it is also the case that X must be the final explanation for all other categories. If the most general category wasn’t the final explanation, then some other explanation would exist beyond this most general category, and then this new other explanation would encompass everything that the old explanation encompassed along with the old explanation itself. The new explanation would thereby, necessarily, encompass more than the old explanation and become the new most general category. So, it seems Anselm makes a fair point when highlighting the importance of generality as a distinguishing trait for self-necessitation. Lest we accept an infinite regress, or the existence of some brute fact, any explanatory thread must eventually come across, and stop at, a self-caused fact. (These three positions are outlined in the Agrippan Trilemma). Precluding the possibility of a brute fact, the most general explanation to all things must either be located in a self-caused fact or an infinite regress. For reasons I will discuss in future posts, I consider these two alternatives to be functionally equal indications of a self-caused fact. Hence, I argue the very capacity of our reasoning minds to continue to ask “why?” foreshadows the existence of some necessary existent; foreshadows the existence of God. We see, therefore, that an island, does not in itself possess some unique feature, like generality, that guarantees it place as an explanatory stopper and therefore as a self-caused fact.
Understanding it more concretely, though, we can apply this question to pantheism. Why is this most general thing, the totality of all possible worlds, self-caused/necessary? And why is the most maximal island not self-caused/necessary. I’ll answer this question with another question: why is there something, instead of nothing? Easy, because nothing is not something. There is something instead of nothing because nothing is not an alternative. Therefore, there is something because something is all that there could ever be. Something, reality, existence, is self-caused because it exists merely in virtue of itself; something is all that there could ever be, there is no reason beyond itself to ground its existence. Let me answer the question with another-another question: why does existence exist? Easy, because if existence did not exist, then it wouldn’t be existence. Existence exists because it cannot do otherwise—for existence to be existence it must exist. To exist is inherent in the definition of existence. Reality, existence, the world, the totality of all possible worlds, whatever you want to call it—is self-caused. It is the only thing that subsists in itself. This, I think, merits the name God. On the other hand, an island, even the most maximal island, is but a subset of this totality, a part of the whole. Only the whole subsists in itself, but everything that is a part of it exists contingently upon the whole. Conjuring an imaginary maximal island guarantees nothing because particulars are subsets of the general. Conjuring an imaginary most maximal thing sharpens our focus unto an ontological candidate that is so expansive that it cannot possibly have an explanation outside of itself, therefore it must have an explanation from within itself, i.e., it must be self-caused.
Finally, we return to the mission statement of this blog post: proving that God is real. What’s important to note here is that, if my arguments have been successful, I will have shown not only that God is real. Rather, I will have shown that God is the real, the most real. He is reality, the Ultimate Reality. God is real and realness is God.
Further Reading
For further reading on this subject, I recommend Alternative Concepts of God: Essays on the Metaphysics of the Divine. Even though I had already developed my own views on God before reading this book, I have borrowed from the structure of Yujin Nagasawa’s modal panentheism argument.
Also, Medieval Philosophy: A History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps and its chapter on Anselm helped me better understand the ontological argument. Again, though my views on the connection between Anselm’s definition of God and my own pantheism had been implicit in my thinking prior to reading this book, it was nonetheless a great source of inspiration for me in helping bridge Anselm’s ontological argument with pantheism.
[1] Adamson, P. (2019). Medieval Philosophy: A History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps. Oxford University Press, USA.
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