Thursday, September 3, 2009

Anselm Argument vs Jehovah or Yahweh

I am quoting this from an article by Roy Jackson on the website www.philosophernet.com.
"Anselm's Argument

`And so, O Lord, since thou givest understanding to faith, give me to understand - as far as thou knowest it to be good for me - that thou dost exist, as we believe, and that thou art what we believe thee to be. Now we believe that thou are a being than which none greater can be conceived.'
(From Proslogion, Chapter 2)

The important part of this quote is what Anselm meant by "that thou are a being than which none greater can be conceived". Two key words here need to be clearly defined. First of all, what did he mean by `conceived' (some translations use the word `thought')? Judging from the Proslogion, the primary meaning of this word is synonymous with that which is logically possible. However, the problem here is that it certainly seems possible to conceive of God's non-existence. As we will examine later, however, the conception of the non-existence of God is, in fact, logically impossible!

The second key word is what he meant by `greater'. Although Anselm himself does not define what he meant by this, it seems apparent that he is not merely limiting himself to `goodness', but is using it in the more all-encompassing manner that suggests God's omnipotence; i.e. powerful, able, and so on. It is obvious that he did not mean the greatest being that you or I can possibly think of, or conceive, simply because we are limited in our conceptions. What Anselm meant was the greatest being that it is logically possible for any conceiver to conceive of. The very fact that Anselm meditates upon the property of God as being `the greatest being' means that God must be greater than the human conception of `greatness'."
I thought about Anselm statement and Roy Jackson's interpretation of it, he must have been meditating or describing some other god other than Yahweh or Jehovah, I can conceive of a being greater than the god of the bible: therefore, can one say that the god of the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is not god? The reason I ask this rhetorical question, is I can conceive of a god greater than the one described in the Torah, the Christian bible, and the Koran. Therefore the god of these religions do not fit this definition of Anselm's god. Lets look at some characteristics of the Jehovah or Yahweh. Yahweh or Jehovah according to what believers calls his word, he is jealous, unmerciful, not omniscient, not omnipresent, and not omnipotent. Whenever you see the word "the Lord" it means Yahweh or Jehovah or Adonai (which the Jews used as a substitute for Yahweh or Jehovah, because they thought Jehovah/Yahweh was too sacred to be written so they use Adonai when writing) For example, according to Exodus 20:1-5 "1 And God spoke all these words: 2 "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 3 "You shall have no other gods before me. 4 "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God.." He is not merciful according to Jeremiah 13:14 "And I will dash them one against another, even the fathers and the sons together, saith the LORD: I will not pity, nor spare, nor have mercy, but destroy them." He is not omniscient according to Genesis 3:8 "And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God, among the trees of the garden" and he is not omnipresent according to Genesis 18:20 "And the Lord said, because of the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous; I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it which is come unto me, and if not, I will know". Finally,Jehovah/Yahweh is not omnipotent according to Judges 1:19 "And the Lord was with Judah, and he drove out the inhabitants of the mountain, but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron". Therefore, the god of the bible is not a god in which none greater can be conceived, think about it...
Black Socrates

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