About
Anselm's
ontological argument of
The existence of God:
It might be enlightening to consider Anselm's prefatory remarks, in which he avers that he "believes in order to understand". (Anselm's Latin: credo ut intelligam) This is a very interesting idea, and not so very antithetical to Pyrronian skepticism as it might appear. Must it be a contradiction in terms for a person to both have faith and be intellectually honest and curious? For medieval philosophers such as Anselm, certainly, there was no felt contradiction. I think, you must either quit the field of inquiry or keep an open mind. And if you lose your faith, you are better off with no faith than bad faith.
The very idea of proving God's existence is somehow wrong-headed (Da Free John wrote a book with a great title, "Scientific Proof of the Existence of God Will Be Announced From the White House"). If Anselm's proof held water, then it would be incontrovertibly established not only that God exists, but that He is surpassingly good (indeed, posesses all the perfections: unbounded intelligence, power, wisdom, etc.). Faith itself would be nugatory in a world in which Anselm's proof was valid. This is in my opinion an extremely important point.
It is a profound misundertanding to suppose that faith is a stop-gap until we have something better, something like a genuinely verifiable proof (scientific or otherwise!). Or even a sign from God! Faith is a good thing in itself. What better thing should it be exchanged for at first opportunity? The world and humanity are so contituted as to make faith operable.
Specifically, faith is the social virtue par excellance. To be capable of trust, and to be worthy of it yourself, is what faith is really all about. One cannot read other minds; one cannot, as the solipsist knows, even establish their existence! Imagine a world in which minds can be read, a world in which the last redoubt of privacy has been destroyed. That would be a bad world!
The concept of faith is routinely confounded with that of belief, specifically religious belief. Ths constitutes an immense distraction from the very thing these religious beliefs are about!; which is more than a little ironic. But to be fair, faith and belief naturally intertwine. A subject for another essay.
To return to Anselm's proof. While it fails to establish the existence of "that than which nothing greater can be thought", it does somehow penetrate to the very essence of monotheistic faith, the great world-historical project initiated by the ancient Jews. Here's my thought: suppose that God is really a rather unsavory character. Say he's more interested in his amusement than in the welfare of his creatures. --Which would certainly fit the observable facts fairly well, would it not! Now imagine another God, a better God, who though he may not exist, would care about His creatures if he did. (Not that he wouldn't enjoy himself too! -- As God, He really ought to!) Now this God deserves the respect and love that the real God does not deserve. In fact, we would do well to withhold our tribute and worship and whatever else the real God might demand of us, and give them instead to the God who by all rights Ought to be God. Are you still with me? See, the thing about faith in a monotheistic context is that it sanctions taking the next step -- not a step in a logical argument! -- it sanctions recognizing the deserving God as the real God. And this is the sense in which Anselm's argument bootstraps (Cf. bootstrapping) God into existence. In short, if God exists, then by the inexorable "logic" of faith, He is indeed that than which nothing greater can be thought. If He is not, or indeed, if He does not exist, then faith is, as a proposition, as a belief, incorrect. And that has to be epistemically possible for faith to make any sense! And even if incorrect (and we may never know), faith might still be good, might still be the right thing for humanity.
These issues are so subtle that even my best attempt to unpack them would necessarily fall short. All I can reasonably hope is to help the conversation along.
By the way, I do no see that Eastern non-dualism is necessarily at odds with monotheistic faith.