The Comparison Of Pascal And Anselm Argument About God Existense

Many philosophers attempted to explain the biggest question mankind has yet to answer: what is the purpose of life and why are we here? For some, their saving grace is a greater power or religion that keeps them sustainably believing that they're not wasting time by providing justice for others and themselves. But, over the years, the argument has become more and more complex due to the lack of evidence for God’s existence in mind and reality. Both St. Anselm and Blaise Pascal battle for their truth that God exists by convincing their audiences that the omnipotent being should just be accepted; however, both arguments have their weaker points that have been debunked by multiple ethics.

The first argument for God’s existence, the Ontological Argument, bases itself solely off of perplexing thought; and St. Anselm wrote “The Proslogion” in order to attempt to answer the question, “what kind of being is God believed to be?” Anselm explains that God should just be widely accepted as the greatest conceivable being who also possess the power to stand omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omnipresent; then, he continues to analyze whether God exists simply in mind or in mind and reality. But, for God to be the greatest being he must exist in both the mind and reality, otherwise he would not be God. Another claim he details is the “Reductio ad absurdum” which lets a subject assume the opposite of what they believe in order to further explore the absurdity and implausible results; however, when it comes to this particular argument about whether God exists or not, believing that he doesn’t exist in mind would technically erase him from reality because we have no empirical evidence to actually prove his presence. Another argument, which was a direct response to St. Anselm, comes from theist Gaunilo who wrote in his book “In Behalf of the Fool” about the greatest conceivable island that actually failed to exist; and, therefore, debunked Anselm’s argument because the idea of a “greatest conceivable” anything doesn’t directly correlate with the existence of said thing. This argument would also later strengthen the argument of William Rowe, a philosophy professor from Purdue who rebuttals against the Ontological Argument by claiming that things cannot be defined to exist, they either do or do not; a word can exist without physical evidence to prove that the subject actually exists; for example, in an imaginary world without apples, the word “apples” would still exist and have meaning but there would be not actual proof or existing example of what apples are; so, the word “God” can exist without harboring any actual proof that the deity exists.

On the other side of things, Blaise Pascal realized that searching for God’s existence led back to the same circling argument that seemed unfathomable. In 1659, Pascal wrote “Pensees” and explained his idea of “The Wager.” At its most basic, people have to believe that either God does exist or does not exist; and, this results in an unavoidable wager that can either lead to eternal happiness or suffering and discomfort. And, when deciphering all the possibilities, believing in God is the best bet; the worst possibility for this is believing that God exists when in reality he doesn’t and so there was some waste of time and energy during life on Earth. However, losing some of this time and energy doesn’t compare to the time spent for eternity in Heaven if God does exist. But, future philosophers began to realize that people should believe in things due to their available evidence and not because of the possible results. “The Ethic of Belief” written by W.K Clifford provides the example of a shipowner who’s barge is in terrible condition; the man wants to make one more journey and it is believed that it will go one of two ways: he will disregard physical evidence and his ship will sink or the ship will make one more trip without harm. Either way, he cannot believe either statement without believing somewhat in the evidence whether he disregards it or not; basically, Clifford makes the argument that it is always wrong in any situation for someone to believe anything without sufficient evidence; and, if they do then they are considered a credulous character which makes them at risk for being taken advantage of or deceived and also means that they can cause societal harm by passing the tendency and influence down to others. The second argument against “The Wager” is “The Hiddenness of God,” written by Robert McKim in 2001, which proposes that God's Hiddenness makes it harder for people to believe in and devote themselves to God and is the true reason that there is a huge social conflict and disagreement; and, this also opens the door to another argument about whether or not God actually cares for those who don’t believe in him and whether or not God actually punishes those who don’t believe. The reason that this argument is so appealing is because it depicts the hiddenness of God from different points of view ranging from a believer to a skeptic. Someone confirms to a crowd that there is a hidden Godly emperor on the island and that this God has absolute powers; however, a bearded man questions the true existence because he doesn’t understand why the Emperor would remain hidden and he knows that there is no exact evidence to support the Emperor's existence. The believer’s only convincing argument is that the Emperor wants to remain hidden in order to preserve his power and a tentative believer points out that the being may not make showing his power a priority or that the Emperor doesn’t exist at all.

All things considered, Pascal makes a better and more appealing argument for God’s existence because he completely throws away whether or not God exists and focuses instead on what the results are of believing one way or another; while St. Anselm does attempt to convince his audience, he does so in a way that almost forces them to believe in a God that isn’t very believable. Pascal gives the true results of each belief or non-belief and then supports why believing in God is still the best option regardless of whether or not he exists. Even though each argument eventually reaches a dead end, Pascal provides humankind with a small shred of hope for what seems like a purposeless life.