Faith – Lesson 14

Table of Contents

• The approach of presenting all positions and the Texas law
• Proslogion: the structure of the argument and the transition from Chapter 2 to Chapter 3
• Necessary existence, “cause of itself,” and the distinctness of the divine being
• Chapter 4: “saying in the heart” versus “conceiving in the mind,” and Anselm’s reply to the “fool”
• Prayer and begging the question: why a logical argument is not “superfluous”
• Closing Anselm’s circle: the fool “says” but does not “understand,” and dissonance as the goal of the debate
• Rashba, Tosafot, Rashash, and the dispute over thinking in language
• Psychological interpretation, projection, and zealotry as inner dissonance
• Atheism, Dawkins, Sacks, and the audience of the debate
• A summary of Anselm’s achievement and the move to the next arguments
• Questions at the end: defining God and the question “who created the creator?”

Summary

General Overview

The text presents a principled approach of laying out opposing positions on every issue and allowing people to explain and formulate a view, and it applies this approach even to the “Texas law,” arguing that in the speaker’s opinion its advantages outweigh its disadvantages, even though he does not know it in depth. It then develops a detailed discussion of Anselm’s ontological argument in the Proslogion: Chapter 2 moves from a definition, through the position of “the fool,” to a proof of existence; Chapter 3 is meant to distinguish between existence and necessary existence; and Chapter 4 explains how a person can say “there is no God” even though he cannot truly “conceive” that. The text argues that a logical argument always “begs the question” in the sense that the conclusion is already contained in the premises, and that its role is to reveal to a person what is already implicit in his premises even if he is unaware of it; accordingly, it exposes a dissonance between what a person says and what he is logically committed to. Finally, a critical stance is taken toward postmodernism, which is satisfied merely with pointing out premises, and it is said that even if Anselm does not succeed in providing a “pure proof from definitions,” the argument may still have value, and the discussion is set to move next to the cosmological argument.

The approach of presenting all positions and the Texas law

The speaker insists that one should present “all the positions on every issue” and allow everyone to express a view, justify it, and formulate a position, including extreme and contradictory issues such as “there is God, there is no God,” as well as claims about the Holocaust, evolution, and absurdities. The speaker argues that even the “Texas law” has advantages and disadvantages, and expresses the opinion that its advantages outweigh its disadvantages. He adds that he does not really know the law and only heard about it for the first time, but still justifies the approach of presenting everything on the grounds that if something is true, then one can “bring people in the best possible way to what is true,” and he argues that the defects of the situation before the law were greater.

Proslogion: the structure of the argument and the transition from Chapter 2 to Chapter 3

The speaker returns to Chapter 2 of the Proslogion and describes a progression that begins with prayer, moves to a definition, presents the opposing position of “the fool,” and then argues that the fool’s position leads to a contradiction. The speaker claims that commentators who think Chapter 3 merely repeats Chapter 2 are mistaken, because the role of Chapter 3 is to prove that God “not only exists, but exists necessarily.” He distinguishes between epistemic necessity, which is a necessity imposed on thought to reach the conclusion that something exists, and ontological necessity, which is a claim about the thing itself—that its existence is necessary and it cannot fail to be.

Necessary existence, “cause of itself,” and the distinctness of the divine being

The speaker quotes from Chapter 3 the claim that “And this exists so truly that it cannot even be conceived as not existing,” and explains that this refers to an existence that cannot be thought of as non-existent. He interprets the end of Chapter 3 as claiming that the divine being is different from human being, because only God has “being in absolute truth,” whereas everything else is “being to a lesser degree.” The speaker rejects the concept of “cause of itself” as an oxymoronic concept, because causality requires an essential otherness between cause and effect, and therefore “it cannot be that something is the cause of itself, not even the Holy One, blessed be He.”

Chapter 4: “saying in the heart” versus “conceiving in the mind,” and Anselm’s reply to the “fool”

The speaker reads Chapter 4: “How can the fool say in his heart what he cannot conceive in thought?” and formulates the difficulty this way: if from the definition that the atheist accepts it follows that God exists, then how can the atheist define himself as an atheist? He gives an example from Kant of the physico-theological proof in a simplified form: if the atheist accepts that everything complex requires a composer, and that the world is complex, then he is committed to the conclusion that the world has a composer, and therefore cannot hold an atheistic position together with those two premises.

The speaker brings Anselm’s answer that “A thing may be said in the heart or conceived in the mind in more than one way,” and emphasizes the distinction between bringing up the word that signifies the thing and understanding “the thing itself.” He explains that according to Anselm one can “conceive” the expression “there is no God” in the sense of words, but one cannot conceive the essential content after understanding what God is; therefore a person can say the words without having a genuine cognitive grasp that corresponds to them.

Prayer and begging the question: why a logical argument is not “superfluous”

The speaker returns to the criticism of Anselm that he “begs the question” because he prays to God before proving His existence, and rejects it for two reasons: a person can believe and still seek a proof in order to ground that belief, and he compares this to proving Fermat’s theorem while already believing in the correctness of the hypothesis. He explains, by means of the example of “our father Abraham with the hat,” that begging the question is not a logical fallacy but rather something superfluous in a discussion with someone who does not accept the hidden premise. He argues that every logical argument “begs the question” in the sense that the conclusion is contained in the premises, and this raises the question of why we need logical arguments at all.

The speaker answers that a logical argument reveals to a person consequences to which he is already committed by his own premises, though he is unaware of them. He compares this to a safe containing a diamond that was already in the person’s possession but inaccessible until he was given the key. He parallels this to geometry, where theorems follow from axioms, so that one who accepts the axioms “knows” the theorems in principle, but is not aware of them until they are proved.

Closing Anselm’s circle: the fool “says” but does not “understand,” and dissonance as the goal of the debate

The speaker argues that Chapter 4 “closes the circle” with the opening prayer, because a logical proof shows that the fool was never really an atheist if he accepts the definitions or premises that generate existence. He formulates the role of logical debate as showing a dissonance between what a person says and what he is committed to, and then he has to decide whether to give up one of the premises or the conclusion. The speaker says that such a presentation may sound paternalistic—“I’ll tell you what you really think”—but argues that here there is no coercion, only a proof that shows a person what follows from his own positions.

Rashba, Tosafot, Rashash, and the dispute over thinking in language

The speaker brings Rashba on Berakhot 15, who explains how from the verse “Hear” one learns both “in any language” and “one must make it audible to his own ear,” because if one is required to make it audible to his own ear, that implies actual speech, which in turn allows any language, whereas thought is not dependent on language. The speaker cites Rashash on tractate Sabbath 40, who identifies in Tosafot the view that thinking is done in words, because it is said that one may not think in the holy tongue in filthy alleyways. The speaker disputes the very existence of such a disagreement and argues that Rashba does not deny that people think in words; rather, he claims that where thought alone suffices, language is not important, because the main thing is the content and not the linguistic representation.

Psychological interpretation, projection, and zealotry as inner dissonance

The speaker proposes a reading according to which Anselm is dealing with inner “heretical thoughts” by means of projection: “the fool is Anselm himself,” and he constructs an external figure in order to deal with the arguments inside him. He cites the rabbinic saying, “One who disqualifies does so with his own blemish,” and presents projection as a mechanism in which a person fights outside what troubles him inside. He uses a literary example from Chaim Grade about Tzemach Atlas and Chaimke, and by contrast with the figure of the Chazon Ish, argues that fierce outward zealotry reflects an inner struggle and insecurity.

The speaker expands this through the sin of the first man as explained by Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin and by Maimonides at the beginning of Guide of the Perplexed, describing how the impulse that had been “outside” entered “within us,” so that a person feels it is his own will. He compares the difficulty of internal confrontation to playing chess against oneself, and says that the way to deal with it is to bring the “serpent” outside and argue against it, distinguishing between negative projection and a positive use of projection in order to clarify what the true content of faith is, as opposed to mere “words.”

Atheism, Dawkins, Sacks, and the audience of the debate

The speaker argues that if there is a logical argument based on premises that atheists also accept, then one can show that they are “unaware believers,” and he even says, “I’m sure,” that Dawkins believes inwardly but is not aware of it. He adds that there is no value in a paternalistic claim without an argument that demonstrates it, and therefore everything “begins and ends with arguments.” He criticizes the famous debate between Jonathan Sacks and Dawkins on the grounds that Sacks did not engage head-on with the arguments from evolution and the arguments themselves, and he claims that a public discussion is meant for the audience watching, and so one must deal with the arguments rather than sidestep them into questions of morality or the meaning of atheism.

A summary of Anselm’s achievement and the move to the next arguments

The speaker summarizes that Anselm, as Kant defines it, tried to establish an ontological proof based only on definitions and without factual premises, but “in that he did not succeed,” because the argument contains premises such as the possibility of “conceiving a being that does not exist as existing.” He argues that many of the premises concern the subject rather than the world, and that there is still something novel in deriving a conclusion about the world from premises about thought. He gives the example of Yuval Steinitz and of a contradictory concept like “a round square kippah” to show that conclusions of non-existence can be derived from logical contradiction.

The speaker says that the objection according to which Anselm showed only “that I think God exists” and not that God exists is a weak objection, because rejecting the move from a conclusion about thought to a conclusion about the world is a skeptical position that would also undermine conclusions such as gravity. He emphasizes that even if the argument contains factual premises, it is not worthless, because whoever accepts the premises is committed to the conclusion. Therefore, it is not enough merely to point out that premises exist; one must show that they are unreasonable. He ties this to a critique of postmodernism, which is satisfied merely with pointing out assumptions, and concludes by announcing that next time he will begin “the cosmological argument.”

Questions at the end: defining God and the question “who created the creator?”

A question is asked whether God was defined, and the speaker answers that every argument has its own definition, and within the ontological proof God is defined as “the most perfect being,” greater than which nothing can be conceived. A question is asked about the claim “if there is something created, then there is a creator,” and about the question “who is the creator of the creator?” and the speaker replies that this will be discussed as an objection to the next two arguments. A question is asked to clarify the point of “the most perfect being” and Anselm, and the speaker sharpens the point that Anselm is comparing two concepts—a concept of a being as existing versus a concept of a being without existence—and not an object to a concept. A mathematical comment is raised about beliefs that turned out to be false by means of a large counterexample, and the speaker responds that belief without proof is not certainty, but it still has subjective value, and he compares this to believing in Fermat’s theorem without having read Wiles’s proof.

This approach of presenting all the positions on every issue—that you also have to explain why we think there is God, why we think there isn’t God, there was a Holocaust, there wasn’t a Holocaust, it was good that there was a Holocaust, it wasn’t good that there was a Holocaust, whatever you want, minors, evolution, everything—you have to present the issues and let everyone express a position or justify their position and form a position, and that’s all. Does the Texas law also have advantages and disadvantages? You hear? Does the Texas law also have advantages and disadvantages? Yes, it has advantages and disadvantages, and in my opinion its advantages outweigh its disadvantages. I don’t know it; I heard about it here for the first time. But this approach that says to present everything—yes, of course it has advantages, because if I think something is right, then I can bring people in the best possible way to the right thing. The advantages are obvious, but I think the drawbacks of what existed before the Texas law were greater. Okay, so let’s begin. I still want to devote a bit more time, because we basically finished the ontological argument more or less, in a somewhat shortened version, but I still want to talk about a few aspects of it because they’re important both for it and for what comes next. I’ll share the Proslogion again for a moment. We read chapter 2 of the Proslogion and went through it in detail; step by step we saw all the stages of the argument, how it’s built. I remind you that it began with a prayer, then a definition, then presenting the opposing view—apropos the Texas law—that is, what the fool says, and then the argument for why he thinks the fool is wrong, or that the fool leads to a contradiction. In chapter 3, at the end of last time, I did it quickly; I’m just reminding you so we have an overall picture of the move here. In chapter 3 there are quite a few commentators on Anselm who claim that he repeats the argument of chapter 2 in words—not even in very different words. And they don’t understand why chapter 3 is needed. I think that’s a mistaken interpretation, and I explained that last time. I said that chapter 3 is meant to prove that God not only exists, but exists necessarily. And I explained that when I have a proof that something exists, that still doesn’t mean it exists necessarily. It only means that I necessarily arrive at the conclusion that it exists. The necessity here is epistemic necessity, cognitive necessity. It’s a necessity about my thinking. I’m forced to arrive at the conclusion that it exists. But the claim that something exists necessarily is a claim about the thing itself, not about me—that its existence is necessary, that it cannot fail to exist. That’s a claim about it. The first claim is a claim in epistemology, the theory of knowledge. The second claim is a claim in ontology, the theory of being, about reality itself, in metaphysics. Okay? That’s something entirely different. In chapter 3 that’s what he says: “And it exists so truly that it cannot even be thought not to exist.” Then he says his whole argument, moves on to a religious section that I’ll leave aside for now: “And You, Lord our God, are such a being,” and so on. Then he concludes: “You alone therefore, of all beings, have being most truly and to the greatest degree, for nothing else has being in the same degree of truth, and therefore it has being to a lesser degree.” Meaning, Your being is different from our being. It isn’t that my recognition of Your being is necessary, but that Your very being is necessary. You cannot fail to exist, unlike me, who also might not have existed. There’s no necessity there. These things are called something like self-caused, yes, or something that exists necessarily. I don’t like the term “self-caused,” because “self-caused” is an oxymoronic term. A thing cannot be the cause of itself, not even the Holy One, blessed be He. Because to say that A is the cause of B means that A existed before B and created it. But God did not exist before He Himself existed and create Himself. That’s nonsense. And precisely on Thursdays, because last night we were talking about self-reference. And here, for those who were present at last night’s class, there is an essential otherness. Because when I speak about A creating B, you can’t say that A creates itself or is the cause of itself. The concept of cause contains an otherness that is essential. It has to be between someone and someone else in an essential way, otherwise the concept just isn’t defined. In any case, so that’s the role of… In chapter 4, let’s read it. “But how can the fool say in his heart what he cannot think? Or how can he be unable to think what he said in his heart? For to say in the heart and to think are one and the same.” What is he actually asking? He says: after all, I showed the fool that from the definitions of the concept of God—which he too agrees to and understands, he just claims that it isn’t realized in reality, but we talked about this in one of the first classes—he agrees to the very definition of the concept of God, he claims that this concept as defined here does not exist, we have no dispute about the definition. What Anselm did was show him that if you accept the definition, then from that I can derive the conclusion that God exists. I see we have another student here. In any case, Anselm’s claim now says: so wait, I don’t understand. If from the atheist’s definition it follows that God exists, then how does the atheist define himself as an atheist who doesn’t believe in God? After all, inside his own thought is the claim that God exists. So he does believe in God. So why do I define him as an atheist? He basically always believed in God. Or in other words: how can “the fool said in his heart, there is no God”—how can it be said that the fool says in his heart there is no God when I proved to him that he says in his heart that there is a God? I showed him that he too says in his heart that there is a God. Actually I want to sharpen this a bit more, look. Suppose I take as a proof the proof that Kant calls the physico-theological proof: that the world is complex, every complex thing must have a maker who assembled it, if the world is complex then there is a maker who made it, and that is God. Okay, let’s say in a very simplistic formulation. That’s the physico-theological proof. Now suppose I’m speaking with an atheist, and the atheist accepts the premise that every complex thing must have a composer or maker, and of course he also accepts the premise that the world is complex. So how can you say he is an atheist? If he accepts these two premises, then he also accepts the conclusion that the world has a maker, so he isn’t an atheist. How can I say “I’m an atheist” and at the same time accept these two premises? The logical argument shows that from these two premises the conclusion follows that there is God. Let’s say for the moment that it does show this; I’m leaving aside objections and whether it’s true or not, but for the sake of discussion let’s say we presented a valid argument here. Okay? So basically an extremely fundamental question comes back here: then actually I wasn’t talking with an atheist. He wasn’t an atheist at all. He thought he was an atheist, but he really wasn’t. When we began the Proslogion, if you remember, I talked there about the meaning of the prayer. After all, he opens his whole move with a prayer to God to help him discover His existence, to prove His existence. And everybody laughs at Anselm for begging the question. You haven’t yet proved His existence and you’re already praying to Him? Or if you’re praying to Him, then why are you looking for proofs? You already believe in Him, so don’t tell us stories that you believe in Him because of the proofs. You believed in Him beforehand too. So I explained that this is a mistake. Why? For two reasons. First, there can be something I believe in, but I seek a proof in order to ground it more firmly. I believe in it already beforehand, and I gave the example, if you remember, of Fermat’s principle—well, not principle, theorem. Yes? What was the name of the fellow who proved it—I forgot his name—the one who took about six years to prove Fermat’s hypothesis. Now clearly he wouldn’t have invested six years in it if he didn’t believe the hypothesis was true. You don’t invest six years in a task that there’s a good chance can’t even be done. So it’s quite clear that he already believed beforehand that Fermat’s hypothesis was true, and by the way most people believed it beforehand too. But he wanted to have a proof for it as well. That’s exactly Anselm. I believe in God—I even pray to Him—but I want this also to be grounded in a proof, to give understanding to faith. That was Anselm’s definition there when he prayed to the Holy One, blessed be He, to help him give understanding to faith, meaning to turn what I believe into something proven, into something rational. Okay? Therefore I think this criticism of Anselm is incorrect. And there’s something deeper here. I talked there about Abraham our forefather with the hat. Yes, the proof that every Jew has to go around wearing a hat. What’s the proof? It says, “And Abraham went.” A Jew like him surely didn’t go without a hat, right? Well, if Abraham went with a hat, then we, his descendants and faithful disciples who walk in his path, also have to go with a hat. Which was to be proved. What’s the problem with this argument? That it begs the question. What does that mean? Right, notice: it’s a valid argument. If we assume the premises, the conclusion really does follow from them necessarily. The problem is that one of the premises we assumed already contains the conclusion itself. We simply assumed it as a premise. Where? When we said the sentence, “A Jew like him surely didn’t go without a hat.” What are we assuming there in the subtext? That obviously a Jew needs to go with a hat. What we want to prove has already served as one of the premises. So notice, the problem of begging the question is not that it’s a logical fallacy. The conclusion indeed follows necessarily from the premises, even in an argument that begs the question. On the contrary, it follows very clearly from the premises. Why? Because it is itself one of the premises. The criticism of begging the question is that it’s unnecessary, not that it’s false. It’s unnecessary. Why? Because if I’m speaking with the atheist, or with someone I want to argue with, or with someone who thinks a Jew doesn’t need to wear a hat—now, if in order to prove the claim I need to assume the claim itself, then why am I presenting him with this argument? After all, he doesn’t accept the conclusion. So he also won’t accept it as a premise. And if he doesn’t accept it as a premise, then the argument is irrelevant to him. So why am I making this argument? This argument is good only for the convinced; it’s no good for someone else, for someone who isn’t convinced. Right? That’s basically the point. Then I said, yes, but every logical argument is like this. Every logical argument begs the question. After all, I assume premises A, B, C, D, and from them I infer conclusion E. That conclusion follows necessarily from the premises. And why necessarily? Why does it follow necessarily from the premises? Because it’s contained within them. It’s there. Sometimes maybe not in a very distinct way, sometimes it’s hard to see exactly where it’s there, but it’s there. Because if it weren’t there, then we also couldn’t prove it on the basis of those premises. Yes, all human beings are mortal, Socrates is a human being, therefore Socrates is mortal. This is the classic logical argument. Every introduction to logic starts with this argument. And of course this argument begs the question. Because if I say that all human beings are mortal and Socrates is one of the human beings, then I’ve implicitly assumed that Socrates is mortal. It’s already there in the premises. So what’s the big deal that I proved Socrates is mortal? I already assumed it within the premises. And so with every logical argument. I gave the joke about the hot-air balloon; we won’t go back to it here in order to explain this. The claim was that the validity of a logical argument derives from the fact that it begs the question. That’s not a defect. A logical argument, precisely insofar as it is a logical argument, always begs the question. If it doesn’t beg the question, it isn’t a logical argument. Then the question arises: so why do we need logical arguments? If you only prove something to someone who already knows it in advance, then what do we need logical arguments for? The answer is that sometimes a person doesn’t really understand what is contained within the premises he himself assumes. So I use a logical argument to expose, to bring into the sunlight, something that is already inside your premises; you just weren’t aware of it. The logical argument reveals it to you. I think I compared it to something like this: you have a safe with a diamond inside it. The diamond is entirely yours, in your possession, no one else can access it, it’s completely with you. But you have no access to it, and maybe you don’t even know that you have it. Someone gives you a key to open the safe. You open the safe and discover the diamond inside. Did the one who gave you the key thereby grant you the diamond? The answer is no. The diamond was yours and in your possession beforehand. But he made accessible to you the fact that you have a diamond. That’s the role of a logical argument. A logical argument will never convince you of something you weren’t already convinced of beforehand. Rather, many times people are not aware of all the things they are in fact convinced of, all the things that lie within the premises they assume. Therefore the logical argument exposes more and more things from the premises I hold, and suddenly I discover that I actually believe this, and this, and this too, and all the conclusions that emerge from my premises—like in geometry. There are four axioms of geometry, and from them I derive all sorts of theorems. The student who knows the axioms in some sense also knows the theorems, because the theorems are inside them. From the premises one can show that whoever holds the premises also holds the theorems. Right, but he isn’t aware of it. Even a student who knows that two parallels do not meet, and that one straight line passes between two points, and so on, doesn’t know that the sum of the angles in a triangle is one hundred and eighty degrees. He knows it in some theoretical, principled sense, but it’s not accessible to him in consciousness. He can’t make use of it. He isn’t aware that he knows it. That’s the role of a logical argument or a mathematical proof. Now if I return here, that’s what Anselm’s prayer is saying: Help me, Holy One, blessed be He, to discover that I know. I already know now, but the proof will show me that within my definitions and basic premises this conclusion is already embedded, and this will sharpen for me even more that I already know it. It won’t bring the thing to my knowledge. It will sharpen for me that I already know it. Therefore I think this prayer has, as I already said, a literary role. This prayer explains this move, the meaning of a logical argument, what one can expect from a logical argument. Now I claim that in this chapter Anselm closes the circle—in chapter 4, sorry, Anselm closes the circle. Because what is he basically saying? He’s saying: look, if every logical argument indeed begs the question, and I have now proved that there is God on the basis of a logical argument, then this means that the fool to whom I proved this claim was actually a believer in God all along. The premises from which I started, which he agrees to—or the definitions in this case, or the sub-premises, which he also agrees to—actually contain within them the conclusion that God exists. So he was never an atheist; he was always a believer. So how can one say, “the fool said in his heart, there is no God”? Think of a person who was convinced. I told him: every complex thing has a maker, the world is complex, therefore the world has a maker, which means there is God. Suppose the person was convinced. Now I ask: what do you mean, convinced? And before that, how did he say there is no God? After all, beforehand too he understood that the premise that the world is complex is true, and that every complex thing has a maker is also true. So how can he say he doesn’t believe in God? The answer is that there is some sort of dissonance within us. Sometimes there are things we understand in some essential sense, and we aren’t even aware that this is part of our insights, part of our beliefs, or of the things we believe. And the logical proof helps us become aware of this. Now look again at what Anselm writes here and you’ll see that this is exactly what he writes. That is why this is a closing of the circle with the opening prayer. “But how can the fool say in his heart what he cannot think?” After all, he cannot think it, because as I showed, from the premises in his own mind it follows that there is God. So how can he say in his heart there is no God? “Or how can he not think what he said in his heart? For to say in the heart and to think are one and the same.” After all, what he thinks is what he thinks. How can he think there is no God if I showed him that he thinks there is a God, if he really did think it? And more than that—precisely because he did really think it, for thus he said in his heart, and not because he could not think it. So all of this is the question: how can it be that the fool says in his heart, when I showed him that he doesn’t say that in his heart? So now he answers. “This is because something may be said in the heart or thought in not just one way.” It is not true that to say in the heart and to think are the same thing. They are not the same thing. “For one thing it is to think of a word signifying a thing, and another thing it is to understand what the thing itself is. Thus in the first way one may think that God does not exist, but in the second way this is impossible. For no one who understands what God is can think that God does not exist, even if he says these words in his heart.” Yes, the atheist says, “There is no God,” he says the words, but he doesn’t really think this. “Even if he gives those words no meaning at all, or gives them a meaning alien to them.” What is he basically saying? He says this identification between what you say in your heart and what can be thought is a mistaken identification. Like the person who says “there is no God” but accepts the premise that every complex thing has a maker and that the world is complex. So does he say in his heart that there is God, or does he say in his heart that there is no God? The answer is: when he says what is conscious to him, what his consciously accessible conceptions are, that is what he says in his heart. And what he truly thinks or has in mind—not what he says, but what really is in his mind—can be something else. Because if he truly accepts the conclusion that every complex thing has a maker, and the world itself is complex, then clearly if you ask me what, essentially, his opinion is—he is a believer. He believes that the world has a maker. He just isn’t aware that he believes it. So he says in his heart that there is no God, but in fact he thinks, without being aware that this is what he thinks, that there is God. And every logical argument—and this is an important point—every logical argument basically does this work. The only thing a logical argument can do is connect what you say with what you have in mind. To show you that there is a dissonance between what you say and what you have in mind. Now decide: either give up one of the premises, or give up your conclusion, because it’s not compatible. They don’t fit with one another. That’s the entire role of a logical argument, and therefore this chapter is a very important chapter in Anselm’s whole move, because Anselm is basically dealing here with Kantian criticisms and future criticisms when he says: apparently against what I’m saying stands the fact that there are fools who say in their hearts that there is no God. So that means what I proved to him is not true—that he himself believes there is one. There, he’s telling you there isn’t. Anselm says: not true. A person is not always aware of the things he himself believes and thinks. Sometimes, for example, a person thinks there is no God but at the same time believes that the world is complex and that every complex thing has a maker. So what does he really believe? After all, there is a contradiction among his premises, among the claims he believes in. The logical argument only exposes the contradiction to him. And now you have to make decisions: either you give up your atheism, or you give up one of the premises—that the world is complex or that every complex thing has a maker. You can’t live with all three. So how did you live with all three until now? You said all three; you didn’t live with all three. Clearly, there is one among them that I don’t really believe. I think I believe it, but I’m mistaken. Therefore many times such a view would be called a paternalistic view. I tell a person in his place what he himself thinks. “Let me tell you what you really think.” That always drives me crazy when I hear someone say that to me. Don’t tell me what I think; tell me what you think. But no—here I’m basically doing the same thing. Except that I’m not telling you what you think; I’m showing you that this is what you think. I’m proving it to you. Therefore this is not paternalism. Paternalism is a situation in which I prescribe to you what you think. Don’t prescribe to me—tell me what you think. But here I’m showing you that this is what you think; not that I’m asserting it or imposing it on you, I’m showing you, I’m proving to you that this is what you think. That isn’t paternalism. That is the nature of a logical dispute. Therefore Anselm wants to explain that his argument didn’t actually address atheists. It addressed people who think they’re atheists. But deep down they had been believers all along. If there is a real atheist, who inwardly too is an atheist, then he must not accept either the premise that the world is complex or the premise that every complex thing has a maker. Then the whole argument won’t be relevant to him, because he won’t accept one of those two premises. But if I present him with both premises and he accepts them, then he simply isn’t an atheist. Then the argument can be presented. To atheists there is no point in presenting the argument; it isn’t relevant, they won’t accept my premises, because every argument begs the question—every logical argument. Maybe one note. This difference between saying in one’s heart and thinking, he ties to the question whether you think it in words or whether you understand the thing itself. That’s a very interesting point. And you know, there is the Rashash in tractate Shabbat, page 40, where he claims there is a dispute among medieval authorities (Rishonim) on this issue. There is Rashba on Berakhot page 15: the Talmud there says that from the verse “Hear, O Israel” two things are learned—that it may be said in any language, “hear” in any language you hear, and that one must make it audible to one’s ear. Rashba asks: how can two things be learned from one verse? Usually in the Talmud, if you learn one thing from a verse, then from where do you learn the other? The Talmud’s assumption is always that each verse teaches one thing; you can’t learn two things from the same verse. So here, it’s Rabbi Yosei there in the Mishnah—so how does Rabbi Yosei learn two things from the same verse? Rashba says very simply: if the rule were not that the verse says you need to make it audible to your ear, the meaning would be that the Shema is recited in any language. Why? Because if it weren’t recited in any language, then it would be obvious that you have to make it audible to your ear, because if it were enough merely to think the Shema, then thought has no language. Once language is needed, it is obvious that you have to say the Shema and not merely think it. Therefore these are not two things learned from the same verse; it is the same thing. And Rashba’s assumption is that thinking is not done by means of language; rather, thought thinks the ideas, not the sentences that represent the ideas. Therefore there is no point in asking whether it must be specifically in the holy tongue or in any language with regard to something that is in thought. Only something that is in speech can be discussed—must one speak it in the holy tongue or can it be in any language? But something that is in thought—there is no room for such a discussion. Now the Rashash claims that Tosafot disagrees with Rashba on this issue, because the Talmud in Shabbat page 40 speaks about thinking in filthy alleyways—whether one may contemplate words of Torah, think things in the holy tongue. And Tosafot there writes that it is forbidden to think things in the holy tongue in filthy alleyways. Rashash says—sorry, Rashash says: you see from Tosafot that he thinks thought is done in words, because he speaks about thinking in the holy tongue and not in another language, when he is talking about thought, not speech. So you see that thinking is done verbally and not only by thinking the things themselves. That is what the Rashash claims in one of his directions; and the Chazon Ish also makes this into a dispute. I think this is simply not true; it’s an interpretive mistake. There is no dispute here at all. Rashba’s claim is not that we do not think in words—that’s nonsense. Everyone knows that we think in words. Rashba’s claim is that if there is something that we are only supposed to think and not say, then the words or the language are not important. Not that technically it isn’t done verbally. We do have verbal thought, that’s clear. We think verbal sentences. But yes, we won’t get into that one-to-many system. So Rashba isn’t claiming that we don’t think verbally; obviously we think verbally. He is only saying that if there is something for which thought is sufficient and speech is unnecessary, that means that what matters is the content I am thinking, not the manner in which I represent that content. If I have to speak with my mouth, then I am required to represent the content, to say it. Then one can discuss how to represent it—specifically in the holy tongue or in any language. But if all that is required is to think it, there’s no need to speak, then Jewish law is telling me that what I need is only to hold the content in my head. So what difference does it make in what language I do this? Not that it isn’t done in language, but that it doesn’t matter in what language I do it if it is thought. That is what Rashba says. It follows that both Rashba and Tosafot agree that we have two levels of thought. There is a verbal level: when I say in my head “there is no God,” I am thinking the words “there is no God.” Anselm says: yes, but does that also represent the cognitive content of atheism? Is there really within me this insight that there is no God, which the verbal thought represents? Anselm says: no. Look, I have shown you, atheist, that in terms of content, inside your own head you are a believer. I proved it to you. The fact that you say “there is no God,” you are saying it only on the verbal level, but that is not what you really think. You are not interpreting yourself correctly; you haven’t deciphered what is inside your safe. Inside your safe sits faith—come, let me open it for you. That is basically Anselm’s claim. Therefore the discussion with which he ends his move in chapter 4 is actually a return to the starting point, to the prayer. He is trying to show us that after I proved to the atheist by a logical proof that there is God, I thereby showed that he had never really been an atheist. So how did he say, “the fool said in his heart, there is no God”? He said it, but that isn’t what he thought. That’s the claim. Now look at how he concludes: “Indeed, God is that than which nothing greater can be thought, and whoever truly understands this”—the definition—“will also understand that God is such that there is no possibility at all of thinking Him not to exist. Therefore one who understands that this is what God is also cannot think that He does not exist.” That is the conclusion. He can say it, but he cannot think it. “Thanks be to You, good Lord, thanks be to You”—notice he ends with a prayer. He opened with a prayer and ends with a prayer. “For what I formerly believed through Your gift, I now understand through Your illumination, so that even if I did not want to believe that You exist, it would not be possible for me not to understand it.” Do you want to share the screen? Yes. The class—sorry. He ends with a prayer; they can see you here. “Thanks be to You, good Lord, thanks be to You, for what I formerly believed through Your gift, I now understand through Your illumination. For even if I did not want to believe that You exist, it would not be possible for me not to understand it.” Now look, in my eyes this is—I told you—it’s an amazing text in its power. Every sentence here is sewn into a completely precise structure. Look, this prayer returns to the initial prayer, as I said before. And what are we really learning from here? In my opinion there is something deeper here than the difference between faith and proof, between giving understanding to faith. After all, Anselm is basically saying: look, I believe in God, but I have heretical doubts. Thoughts keep coming up in me all the time: maybe this isn’t true? Right now I believe, but maybe this belief is misleading me, maybe it isn’t true? How do you deal with such a thing? To deal with such a thing—and again I return to self-reference in the Thursday classes—to deal with such a thing, we are basically supposed to do what psychologists call projection. What is projection? Projection means to say: yes, “whoever disqualifies another does so with his own blemish”; the Sages say, whoever disqualifies another does so with his own blemish. What does that mean? That someone who calls another person a slave is himself really a slave. You project onto others things that are within you. There is a wonderful story—it always comes to mind for me in this context—about Chaim Grade, the Yiddish writer and poet, who was also a Nobel Prize candidate. In his quarrels with Bashevis Singer he claimed that Singer took the Nobel Prize from him. In any case, he wrote two books called Tsemach Atlas and The Agunah—well, no, actually in Hebrew these are Tsemach Atlas and Milchemet HaYetzer, published by Am Oved. They are novels. Now these novels are basically autobiographical novels about himself. There is a boy there named Chaimke who goes to the Novardok yeshiva. You know that in the early twentieth century, when the Enlightenment was taking huge bites and people were abandoning their religious commitment, the Alter of Novardok sent all his yeshiva boys—each one—to establish a small yeshiva for children or youth in some village, in different villages, and dozens and dozens of Novardok yeshivas were established. At the head of each such yeshiva stood a young fellow of twenty—not a real rosh yeshiva, just “it is a time to act for the Lord”; he sent the students to be roshei yeshiva before they were mature, both intellectually and personally. They were young fellows. And of course Novardok was a place of wild men, and they were educated to be wild men—that was their ideology. So yes, with the nails in the pharmacy and all the well-known stories. So think what happens when such a rosh yeshiva arrives to educate youth—he’ll destroy their minds. This is a fellow who is a wild man, immature, not old enough, and he has authority over children of thirteen, fourteen, fifteen; he is their admired rosh yeshiva, and he can do crazy things there, ruin their lives. And that is what happened there. Now Tsemach Atlas—he was Chaimke’s rosh yeshiva, Chaimke being the writer Chaim Grade. He doesn’t present it as a biographical novel, but it is known. By the way, academic articles have been written trying to identify who Tsemach Atlas was. Shlomo Zalman Havlin, for example, claims he has identified him; he has an article on the matter. He also doesn’t like Chaim Potok and identifies figures in Chaim Potok’s novels. In any case, the claim is that Tsemach Atlas was—he describes Tsemach Atlas as the rosh yeshiva there in this village, Volknik, that’s the name of the village—who fights fiercely against heresy and sinful thoughts and “do not stray after your hearts,” and so on and so on, with enormous zeal, extreme radicalism. He shouts and gets angry and throws out students and reacts very, very zealously and impatiently to the slightest trace of sinful thought or forbidden thoughts. And at a certain stage he throws Chaimke out of the yeshiva because Chaimke too had these impulses. So Chaimke goes to live in a hut in the village, where each summer a playwright Abraham comes for vacation; that’s how the book describes it, and according to commentators this means the Chazon Ish. The Chazon Ish came there to the village for summer vacation, and Chaimke, who had been thrown out of the yeshiva and had nowhere to be, went to his house—and it is biographically known—he lived in his home for months. Now in these books—this Chaimke left everything. After the Holocaust there’s a very beautiful film about some dialogue between him and a friend who studied with him in yeshiva after the Holocaust, about how he lost his faith and so on. Anyway, he left everything. And after he left everything he wrote these books, and in my opinion these are wonderful books of ethics, because they were written from a secular point of view. It’s genuine. He simply describes how he saw the Chazon Ish, not the hagiography written by all kinds of biographers who are trying to educate us. He describes what he really saw, and it is very, very impressive. In any case, he describes there the figure of the Chazon Ish, and of course the whole book is a contrast between the Chazon Ish and Tsemach Atlas. And the Chazon Ish relates to every question of his and answers patiently and without being rattled by anything, unlike Tsemach Atlas, who is burning hot and so on. What lies behind this contrast? What lies behind it, in my opinion, is a point that is very true also in life—I don’t know if always, but many times. Someone who fights in a very extreme and fanatical way against something, that means that this something is inside him. He is fighting himself. He sees it in everyone else and goes to war on Rocinante, yes, riding Rocinante against all the windmills, but deep inside him there is a windmill against which he is fighting. He is really fighting ideas that exist within him himself, or impulses, that are battling within him himself. An extreme outward struggle usually appears in someone who has an internal struggle, who is not fully at peace with the statement itself. And his way of fighting himself is what I called before projection. I project it onto others and fight with them. And I think zealotry is generally like this. Usually zealotry over principles of faith points to insecurity, insecurity in one’s principles of faith. Insecurity as such is legitimate—if you’re not sure, you’re not sure. But don’t take your zealotry out on the windmills outside in order to fight with yourself. Finish it between you and yourself. Don’t wage jihad wars against others just in order to fight with yourself. That is the problem with projection. In any case, this is true—just think, in our life today, the Haredi reactions become more extreme over the years against various phenomena. I think the reason for that is the same reason. Haredim aren’t fighting someone who is outside; Haredim are always fighting, like all of us, something inside themselves. The more the external phenomena penetrate into Haredi society, the harder it fights the external factors. Because “whoever disqualifies another does so with his own blemish.” You’re fighting yourself, only since you can’t do that, it’s a kind of… you know, it’s Adam’s sin. What does Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin describe—and Maimonides at the beginning of Guide for the Perplexed—what do they describe in Adam’s sin? The serpent seduced Eve and Adam to eat the apple, and then “you shall be like God, knowing good and evil,” right? So what does he explain there? He says the serpent is the impulses. And the impulses stand outside and tempt me to do bad deeds. I yielded to them. What is the result of this? That the impulse, which is the serpent—the shell of the serpent, the serpent’s skin, the serpent’s contamination—enters inside me, and ever since Adam’s sin, after Adam’s sin, impulses are perceived in us as something that speaks to us from within, not from without. Then the feeling is that this is something that I myself want. It isn’t someone else inciting me to commit sins; I decided to commit this sin, I want to do it. It is much harder to deal with this now. That is the result of Adam’s sin, that the contamination of the serpent entered into us. It ceases to be a serpent standing outside and inciting us, and instead it becomes something inside us with which we now have an internal struggle. What is the way to deal with this? To remember very well that the fact that it is inside us is an illusion. It is something external trying to influence us: to do projection and deal with it as if it is something else. Not to get into internal dissonances, but to try to deal with it from a true sense—not an illusion—that it really is something external. It is not me. And now let’s deal with its arguments. But here it is clear who is me and who is the other, so now one can begin to conduct a discussion. If I argue with myself—it’s like, once, now I’m being associative—like when I was a child I loved playing chess very much. Also afterward. In any case, my father once took me to some expert at the Technion, a chess master, who played with me a bit when I was a child. And he told me—recommended very strongly—that I should play against myself. Play chess with myself. Now after all you always know the plans of the opposing side, so there’s no bluffing, so you won’t be able to… because of some plan of the other side you never thought of, because you know the plans of the other side. So only moves that are genuinely correct—not moves that rely on the other not noticing—only genuinely correct moves can be made in such a game. If you try this—I don’t know whether you have—if you try this, you’ll see it’s very hard to play that way. Not that it’s hard to win and hard to respond—that’s obvious. It’s hard to preserve the duality, that each time I am playing in a completely authentic way as Black, and then in a completely authentic way as White, and ignoring the fact that I know the plans, and so on. I am playing in the most genuine way possible. It is very hard to do. In most cases I broke. I couldn’t do it, and I built plans and knew the plans and fooled myself. This is an expression of the difficulty of dealing with problems that are inside me. And the way that helps is to take the serpent back outside and deal with it when it is outside. That is basically the meaning of projection. But there is projection in the negative sense: “whoever disqualifies another does so with his own blemish.” You disqualify others with the blemish that is in you, and then you go out against them in jihad. And there is projection in a positive sense. Anselm—and now I return to Anselm—Anselm used projection here because he had heretical thoughts within him. This is my psychological interpretation of Anselm. I think he was dealing with the claims of the fool. The fool is himself. The serpent wasn’t outside; it was inside. And he looked for a way to prove to his inner fool that there is God. He believes, but he has impulses. If he succeeds in proving, in giving understanding to faith, then he can deal with the fool’s claims. What does he do? He constructs a fictitious figure, a straw man. He builds a figure of a fool, which is basically the serpent, and hangs on him all the claims that arise in him. But notice, as we saw now, these are only claims outwardly. Because inwardly the fool is a believer; only claims arise outwardly for him. Anselm is trying to deal with the claims of the fool, to prove to the fool that inwardly he is a believer, he only says he doesn’t believe, that he is an atheist verbally. But in terms of content, on the level of content, he is a believer. And through this he closes the circle for himself. When various doubts arise in me too, those are the words. But on the level of content, on the cognitive level, I am a believer. The fact that thoughts arise in me—maybe there is no God—those are thoughts on the verbal level. But after I have shown logically that belief in God follows necessarily from my premises and definitions, then I have shown myself that all this is external. I took the serpent out, and also showed that it is a serpent. Not only did I put it outside; I showed that it is not me at all, that I do not agree with it, it is not me, that is not what I think. These are simply things that entered in and accompany me, but in fact they do not reflect what I think. Therefore there is no need to deal with them. They are not raising claims, only words. Words, not arguments. The words do not represent an argument. Those are the two levels he is talking about. And thus by way of projection he succeeds in dealing with claims that arise within him, while this whole business is based on the fact that logic always begs the question. Therefore it is possible that I say something that I do not believe. That is, it is possible—sorry—that I say something I do not believe. The logical argument showed that I don’t believe it, but that does not prevent me from saying it. Only now that I understand this, I understand that those statements are not me. They are a serpent outside, because I am a believer. I know that I believe; I have a clear proof of the matter. And this basically closes this whole circle with the opening prayer and the closing prayer. It is all simply a structure built magnificently. And I don’t think this is detached; I think this really is the move that lies at the basis of his argument. Does this mean that a person like Dawkins is really a believer? Yes, yes, I’m sure of it. Again, not that he is lying—he is not aware that he believes. Most atheists, in my opinion—most atheists, in my opinion—are believers, unconscious believers. Since I have a logical proof that is based on premises that they too accept, then I can show them that they are believers. Well, if I’m right that these proofs are good proofs. I think so. Since that is so, in my view I think they are also believers inwardly. They disagree with me; maybe I’m mistaken, fine. But if that’s my position, then from that it follows that they too are inwardly believers; they only say they are not believers. But Dawkins would say exactly the opposite: that anyone who says he is really a believer is deceiving himself; he really doesn’t believe. Of course, of course. Anyone who raises a logical argument, in either direction—both for the existence of God and for the nonexistence of God—obviously he will claim the same thing. And therefore in the end what I’m saying here has no polemical value at all. It isn’t that now I can beat Dawkins by telling him, listen, inside you’re a believer—that’s nonsense, that’s paternalism. If I present him with an argument that shows this to him, that’s something else. Therefore in the final analysis, after this whole great move we made here, in the end everything begins and ends with arguments. We need to see whether there is a good argument that proves this. If so, excellent. The meaning is that I showed you that you were always a believer, and so on—but I still have to show it to you with an argument. It is not enough to tell you that inwardly you were always a believer; that’s just paternalism. Therefore everything I said now explains the framework within which the logical discussion operates, but it doesn’t exempt us from logical analysis itself. Obviously in the end I still have to deal with Dawkins through the arguments, and if his argument is right, then he’s right and I’m an atheist and I was always an atheist. And if my argument is right, then he’s a believer and always was a believer. Therefore in the end the discussion is over the question whose argument is right. And all this paternalism—that you’re really a believer or really an atheist—is just demagoguery; it has no value. There was, for example, a very famous debate between Jonathan Sacks and Dawkins, and Sacks intentionally didn’t get into all the arguments—meaning, I’ll say this and he’ll say that and nothing will come of it—and he went in a completely different direction. On that I disagree. I disagree with that approach. You have to get into the arguments, because you can’t tell him, listen, inside you’re a believer, so what difference do the arguments make? Show him that he’s a believer, otherwise it’s paternalism. You have to examine the arguments on their merits. I don’t agree with that. Sacks went there in all sorts of directions—I saw it—he went there in directions of what atheism really means. He also went in the direction of ethics or something, that most people who give charity are religious and things like that. Exactly, and therefore he didn’t confront head-on the arguments of evolution and of Dawkins, and in my opinion that was a mistake. A mistake, because if you don’t confront the arguments head-on, then you are basically being paternalistic. You are basically explaining to the person what he ought to think instead of showing him what he really thinks. And many times that sounds much more calm, much more serene, tolerant, enlightened, I don’t know exactly what—but in my eyes, no. One needs to argue and tell him that he is mistaken, not to be enlightened—or to try to show him that he is mistaken. But it seems to me he thinks that whatever he says, Dawkins will say the opposite, and nothing will come of it. I disagree, and I’ll tell you why. First, on Dawkins’s personal level you’re right. But after all this debate took place on television, not in Dawkins’s room. It’s on YouTube now. Yes, exactly. So since this took place on television or YouTube, the discussion is addressed to the millions of viewers, not to Dawkins. Therefore you have to deal with the arguments. The viewers will form a position; if you raised good arguments, maybe you’ll succeed in convincing some of them, and if not then not. But you have to deal with the arguments. The fact that Dawkins won’t be convinced—that’s true. Atheists are a rather fanatical church. Very hard to penetrate it, like the religious church, yes? It’s a kind of religion. It’s very hard to discuss with these people; usually they aren’t really listening. But no matter—the discussion is conducted before a public; it has significance for the public. You are speaking with the public, not with Dawkins. Otherwise there’s no point in doing it at all. If your target is Dawkins, then it really is a waste of time. Your target is the public, not Dawkins. Anyway, for our purposes I just want—I see this took all my time—so I only want to make one more remark, and I see I won’t have time today to begin the second proof, so let’s just finish this proof. What have we come out with in the end? In the end, even if I didn’t go into all the details—but I tried to do it briefly last time—did Anselm succeed? Yes, let’s summarize what we saw. Anselm claimed—as Kant also defined it—that his proof is an ontological proof. It doesn’t need to assume any factual premise. What does it start from? Definitions. It is enough to start from definitions, and one can agree on definitions; definitions can define whatever one wants. So you are assuming nothing, you are simply defining concepts. And Anselm claimed that it is enough to define the concepts correctly in order to derive from this the conclusion that God exists, a claim about the world. In this he did not succeed. There are also premises inside his move; it is not true that there are only definitions. For example, that I can think of a being that does not exist as existing—that is a premise, and not a very simple premise at that. Fine, it is a premise. Therefore his argument does contain premises. He was mistaken in this. As with the cogito, I said—even Descartes wanted to make an argument that was entirely conceptual analysis without premises, and there too it is not true. There are no such arguments; there cannot be such arguments. And in every such argument, if you examine it, you’ll see there are premises inside it as well. But I have two comments. The first comment is that most of the premises, and perhaps all of them—there are several, by the way, in Anselm’s argument; in the book I show this in greater detail—are not simple factual premises. They are premises about us, not about the world. For example, that I can think of as existing a being that in itself does not exist—that is a claim about me and my mind, not a claim about the world. If so, there is still some novelty here: from premises about me I can derive a conclusion that is a claim about the world. This is not the novelty Anselm wanted to produce—that from definitions we derive factual conclusions—but it is still not trivial: from subjective premises I derive a conclusion about the objective world. That is an interesting claim in itself. But on that Yuval Steinitz already wrote in one of his books: he says we do this all the time. For example, when I say—yes, Quine’s example—the round square dome of some college, I don’t remember which one he used there, Berkeley, Berkeley College, okay?—does not exist. How do I know it does not exist? Because a square circle is a contradictory concept. That is, from a premise that arises from the forms of my thought, I derive a conclusion about what exists or doesn’t exist in Berkeley College. The fact that there is a contradiction here is a logical claim. How do I infer from that a factual conclusion about the world, that there is no square round dome at Berkeley College? Contradictions are always conclusions from how I think about what happens in the world. And we can show this in many other places as well. By the way, I showed this—I talked about it at the end of the previous class—the objection that Anselm really showed only that I think God exists; he didn’t show that God exists. And that’s true. But what I wanted to claim is that this is a weak objection. Why is it a weak objection? Because usually, if I’m not a skeptic, if I arrive at the conclusion that God exists, then as far as I’m concerned God exists. To say that even though I arrived at the conclusion that God exists, the truth is that He does not exist—that’s a skeptical claim. You could just as well tell me: I arrived at the conclusion that there is a force of gravity; who says there is a force of gravity in the world? I arrived at a conclusion. And my assumption is that if I arrived at a conclusion, it is probably true, if I am not a skeptic—that’s what I assume. Meaning, Anselm in the end succeeded in pushing the atheist into a corner and saying to the atheist: if you want to cast doubt on my claim, then you have to be a skeptic. That’s a very heavy price. You also have to reject the laws of nature; you also have to reject every conclusion we reach, because it is only a conclusion about what we think, it does not say what is happening in the world, if you make such a claim. If you don’t make such a claim, then the simple assumption is that if we reached some conclusion, that is probably what is happening in the world, unless it has been shown that we were wrong. Therefore it is enough for me to prove that my conclusion has to be that God exists. I do not need to prove the ontic claim, the claim about the world itself. And the last thing I want to say is that even if this is an argument that is not ontological, but has premises—and even if it had factual premises, not only premises about my subjectivity, but even if there were actual factual premises here—that still does not mean the argument is worthless. Whoever accepts the premises will also accept the conclusion. True, it is weaker, because an ontological argument is an argument one cannot dispute, because if you accept the definition, then the existential proposition follows logically. So there is nothing to argue about. If an argument is based on basic premises, then one can argue; I can say I don’t agree with your basic premises. Therefore it is a weaker argument. But that does not mean it is a worthless argument. Because if I do accept your basic premises, then excellent—the argument can show me that there is God because I accept the basic premises. So the fact that we showed there are basic premises does not mean the argument is worthless. It only means the argument is not something one must necessarily accept. Fine? Now let’s check: do you accept the basic premises or not? In fact, if you think about it, many times in discussions today, in our postmodern narrative world, very often when postmodernists try to attack a position, what they do is try to show that there is an assumption within it. The moment they point out that there is an assumption within it, they think they’re done. Why? Because they have some kind of position like this—and this itself is definitely an assumption—that every assumption is arbitrary. After all, assumptions have no proof, so every assumption is arbitrary. Therefore if I want to attack a position, it is enough for me to show that it is based on an assumption. And that is nonsense. There is nothing that is not based on an assumption, including the postmodern position itself. You need to attack the assumption and show why it seems unreasonable to you, not merely point out that there is an assumption. Obviously every argument has an assumption. So what? The question is what you think of the assumption. If it is a reasonable assumption, then the argument shows you that you also need to accept the conclusion. It is not enough to show that there is an assumption. In order to attack the argument, you also have to show that the assumption is unreasonable. And for some reason postmodernists do not bother doing that. So I say: also in our context, even if I exposed assumptions lying at the basis of Anselm’s argument, assumptions he himself was not aware of—he thought it was an ontological argument, but there are assumptions there—that still does not topple the argument. It only turns it from an ontological argument into a regular logical argument. And now we need to examine whether the assumptions are reasonable, and then we should accept the conclusion. And if they are not reasonable, then not. But we need to examine the assumptions; it is not enough to show that there are assumptions. And that brings me to the next lines of argument, which we’ll begin next time. The next lines of argument are not ontological; they are logical. They begin from basic premises, and even factual basic premises, and they reach the conclusion that there is God. And what I said now is basically the background for why the fact that there are premises there is not enough to defeat those arguments. One has to check whether those premises are reasonable or not, and that is what we will examine with each of the next arguments. Next time we’ll begin the cosmological argument. Okay, comments or… A comment in mathematics. With Fermat’s theorem, there are examples where everybody believed… I mentioned that it was Andrew Wiles, yes. But there are examples where everybody believed it, and on a computer, in the case n equals a billion, they found a counterexample. So everyone believed it, they checked various examples, and it looked correct, but in the end what everyone believed was not true. There was a counterexample at a billion. No, of course. I’m not saying belief is certainly true. I’m only saying one can believe even without a proof and know that it isn’t certainly true. Once there is a proof—that’s what Anselm tried to do, to give understanding to faith. But that doesn’t mean that without understanding, without proof, faith has no value. Faith is subjective. I believed in Fermat’s theorem; I still believe in it even though I haven’t read Wiles’s proof, and I’m sure I wouldn’t understand it anyway. But I still think it’s true. And that is legitimate, only I am aware that it isn’t certain. Okay. I—maybe I apologize in advance, maybe I simply missed part of the lecture—but I have two questions. First of all, we keep talking about whether there is God or there isn’t God. Have we defined within the framework of these lectures what “God” means when we say it? So yes, you missed something there. I said that each argument has its own definition of the concept of God. And meanwhile, since I have only gone over one kind of argument, the ontological proof, within that framework I defined God for the purpose of that proof. And there He is defined as the perfect being—the being than which a more perfect one cannot be conceived. In each of the next proofs I will define the concept of God that it deals with. And I already explained that these may be different gods, or different divinities. Each proof proves the existence of a different being. You can identify them with one another, but you can also choose not to. Duns Scotus or Ockham? So is the continuation of that—whether in this context there’s a problem or not, I’m not sure—with the supposedly winning claim that if there is something created then there is a creator; then the question is asked, if there is a creator, who is the creator of the creator? We’ll get to that. That is one of the objections to the next two arguments we’ll deal with. We haven’t discussed that yet, okay. For now I haven’t yet assumed that if there is something created there is a creator. Those are the next arguments. Understood, so I’d be happy to hear next time. Rabbi, could you maybe sharpen again the point about the perfect being—that Anselm says the proof is that if He exists, He is more perfect than if He did not exist—in the sense of the premise that this is the perfection? What’s the question? It’s a bit hard to understand that. This is basically a premise that assumes a perfect being—that is, He is a being, and in being a being He is more perfect than if He were only on the cognitive level. Okay, I defined it. I said that a concept that is grasped in my awareness… a concept that is grasped in my awareness as existing is more complete than a concept that is not grasped in my awareness as existing. The comparison is between two concepts, not between an object and a concept. That is one of the claims, one of the common objections to Anselm, and they are mistaken. Because that objection thinks that Anselm is comparing here the perfection of an object with the perfection of a concept. Mistake. Anselm is comparing between perfections—between the perfections of two concepts. A concept of an existing being and a concept of a being without assuming that it exists. I spoke about sensory neurons, yes, in the language of neuroscience. Okay, understood, thank you. Okay then, Sabbath peace and goodbye. Sabbath peace. Sabbath peace.