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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Complementary readings, October 12, 2010
There are already some good reviews to this book, so I will only add that I was somehow worried I could not understand it. Far from that, it is easy to follow and in order to savour it one only needs to be a curious layperson. So my rate is 5 (content) and 5 (pleasure).
I also suggest reading the following readable books dealing with philosophical matters in addition to Witham's interesting book: a) "Justice. What's the right thing to do" by Michael Sandel; b) "The God Question: What Famous Thinkers from Plato to Dawkins Have Said About the Divine" by Andrew Pessin; c) "The proper study of mankind" by Isaiah Berlin; d) "Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors" by Susan Sontag; and e) "Hegel: as biography" by Terry Pinkard. Other interesting books, but no so readable would be the following: 1) "The accessible Hegel" by Michael Allen Fox; 2) "Schopenhauer and the Wild Years of Philosophy" by Rüdiger Safranksi; and 3) "The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies" by Thomas McEvilley.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Historic and Enigmatic Proof of the Big Question, September 22, 2008
This review is from: The Proof of God: The Debate that Shaped Modern Belief (Hardcover)
Is there a God? It's the big question. And now we have proof that there is a God. Well, actually, we have had a proof for almost a thousand years now. There are plenty of such proofs, all of which have been attacked in some way or other, as has the proof dating from 1078 of the medieval theologian Anselm of Bec, also know as St. Anselm of Canterbury. Anselm's Ontological Proof, however, is the "`only general, non-technical philosophical argument' from the Middle Ages that continues to occupy the interests of modern philosophers." That's what Larry Witham calls it (quoting historian R. W. Southern) in _The Proof of God: The Debate That Shaped Modern Belief_ (Atlas & Co.). Witham is a religious affairs reporter who posed himself the question, "Can something as nebulous as the medieval Ontological Proof be explained in a popular book?" The answer is yes, and the book proves it convincingly, though Anselm's proof divided philosophers in his time and all the way through our own. Witham has examined Anselm's life and work, and has used his proof as a way to conduct a brisk tour of many centuries of philosophy.
Here is Anselm's proof, as summarized by Bertrand Russell, who believed it when he was younger and then found logic that invalidated it: "We define `God' as the greatest possible object of thought. Now if an object of thought does not exist, another, exactly like it, which does exist, is greater. Therefore the greatest of all objects of thought must exist, since, otherwise, another, still greater, would be possible. Therefore, God exists." There is something going on here, some interplay between ideas and words that is mysterious and not completely satisfying. Anselm's contemporary, the monk Gaunilo of Marmoutiers, countered in a little tract called _On Behalf of the Fool_ that anyone could conceive of a most perfect island. Such an island of pure perfection probably doesn't exist, but then, if you think of a most perfect island, and it doesn't exist, it isn't the most perfect island, because the most perfect island would, in addition to having all the other attributes of perfection, have the attribute of existence, so the most perfect island has to exist. If this seems an absurd argument, Gaunilo claimed it was no more absurd than Anselm's. Aquinas was another believer in God who could not accept this as proof of God's existence.
Anselm was not a doubter who came up with a proof to convince himself of God's existence. Indeed, this sort of proof is simply not the way people come to their religious convictions. It is not a proof at the rock hard syllogistic level, whereby, for instance, if we accept that all men are mortal and that Socrates is a man, then it is inescapable that Socrates is mortal. It is not a proof like the mathematicians have that there is no highest prime number. Indeed, if Anselm had forever proved that God existed, we would have stopped arguing the issue centuries ago. His proof relies on too many subtleties, like what words mean or whether abstract qualities are real or merely names. Importantly, such a proof, even if it were completely watertight, cannot tell us anything about which of the thousands of gods people have believed in is the right greatest god. People have been getting by on believing in one particular god or another (or many gods) on the basis of a faith which no proof can touch. Nevertheless, Witham quite appropriately quotes the words of the unbeliever Bertrand Russell, "Clearly an argument with such a distinguished history is to be treated with respect, whether valid or not." Witham's cogent evaluation of Anselm's argument and the philosophical history that followed it is itself a measure of the respect Russell suggested.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The tale of people who failed to prove that God exists, December 15, 2009
This review is from: The Proof of God: The Debate that Shaped Modern Belief (Hardcover)
This short, but very informative volume tells the history and thinking of three important scholars who addressed the question: Can we prove that God exists? The three are Anselm (1033-1109), William of Ockham (about 1288 to about 1349) and Rene Descartes (1596-1650). All three were believing Roman Catholics. All three tried to prove the teachings of their church and, arguably, failed. The book also tells about other philosophers, such as Thomas Aquinas who offered what he considered five ways that God could be known.
Readers will be fascinated by the history that Witham describes. For example, until the eleventh century, the Roman Catholic Church was radically different than it is today. Hildebrand, who became Pope Gregory VII in 1073, guided his predecessor to begin to exert religious power, centralize the power in Rome, take away the secular rulers' ability to select bishops and popes, strip secular rulers of church ownership, require clergy, who until then married, to be celibate, and broke with the Greek church who refused to allow the Roman pope to lead the church as its top bishop.
One way this was accomplished was by the pope recognizing an adulterous royal marriage. Another was a compromise, the pope would appoint bishops but the bishops would continue to pay a bribe to the kings.
Anselm lived when "scholasticism" began. The church introduced the rational ideas of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BCE) into church teachings, but they refused to mention his name during the early scholastic period because Aristotle was a pagan.
Anselm wanted to go beyond faith and scripture and prove the existence of God based on reason alone. Ancient Christian teacher such as Augustine, like many Christian teachers today, counsel that belief in God is a mystery that must be accepted based on faith.
Anselm introduced what is called the ontological argument to prove the existence of God. He contended, in essence, that if a person could think of something, it must exist. Thus since people think of God, God must exist. The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer criticized Anselm saying his argument "is really a charming joke." Many modern people would agree; people can think of flying horses and friendly idols, but thinking it does not make it so.
Ockham developed what is called Ockham's Razor, but extended the idea too far. He said that when there are two or more possible explanations of a phenomenon, the simplest explanation is generally correct. Thus he claimed that it is simpler and therefore correct to say that the universe caused itself to exist rather than that God it; one thing was involved rather than two. Unlike Anselm, Ockham regressed and insisted that people can only know God though blind faith. Thus many scholars identify him as the founder of the Protestant faith.
Descartes contended that people not say anything unless they can prove it. Thus, he is famous for declaring that basic knowledge is "I think therefore I am." This, of course, is problematical. People could think that they have two legs, while the truth is that a four legged being on the planet Venus is dreaming about them. Descartes also insisted that people have both a soul and body and both are separate. He was unable to explain how the separate soul affects the body; how people, for example, could want to move their leg and do so. He also claimed that belief in God is an idea that God implanted in people. He insisted on these ideas because they were what he understood were the teaching of his church, even though he could not prove them as he was supposed to do according to his philosophy.
Readers of Witham's small book are given a large dose of information concluding with the fact that none of the philosophers proved God's existence, and readers may be prompted to ask, "Were these thinkers misled by their religious teachings?"
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