-Johann Wolfgang Goethe
Interpretation
The above quote is all about how the best way to demonstrate faith is by admitting you yourself are not a God. The logic behind this is pretty solid. When you "finally decide" that you are not the centre of the universe, then you open the door to something greater. By accepting you are not God, you are allowing God to exist.
Class
The lesson today was all about finding ways to prove the existence of God (while tomorrow we would focus on disproving Him as well). To do this, we read a few passages arguing in favour of a higher power. To save you from the extremely confusing statements like, "If, therefore, that than which greater cannot be thought exists in thought alone", which St. Anselm decided to include like candy on Halloween. Here's a summary of his argument.St. Anselm's Ontalogical Argument
1) Something greater than which cannot be thought - Greatest Possible Being
2) All the qualities of the greatest possible being
3) Cannot only exist in thought
Therefore God exists in Reality
To be a bit clearer. The Greatest Possible Being would have all the qualities of being the GPB, one of which would of course be the fact that it exists in reality. (mere thought < existing in reality) Since it therefore cannot exist in thought, He must exist in reality. Now of course this seems incredibly vague, but you can see some logic in it. The twist is the fact that through this you can prove anything to be real.
Check it out. Something else that cannot be limited to mere thought would be the greatest possible purple dragon. As the greatest possible purple dragon, one of its qualities would be the fact that it exists. As it cannot then merely reside in thought, the greatest possible purple dragon exists in reality.
Now as awesome as a thought like this is. There appears to be a distinct lack of greatest possible purple dragons in the world.
As one of our classmates was very close to pointing out however, the problem of naming a "greatest possible thing" is that you can't. The second you name something you are establishing it and stating that you have a full comprehension of it (to some degree), which is against the whole idea of God. As stated in a previous quote,
"God is not what you imagine or what you think you understand. If you understand you have failed."
-St. Augustine
The whole point of God is His ambiguity, which I know is tough for a lot of people who believe you have to break something apart in order to truly understand what it is. The second you try to pinpoint Him you're doomed to fail. I try to hold a fairly open perspective in my religion as a combination of science and faith, so it's something I accept with open arms. Ultimately, I think God exists and is expressed through science and mathematics. They are His laws governing the world around us. I don't spend all my time considering it, but I feel that we came to be how we are through a divine plan. The alternative is that the fact that I'm writing this blog was merely a series of accidents with a probability so slight it cannot even be fathomed. In my mind, a plan seems much more logical than the alternative.
So that's more or less my opinion. I'll try to be a bit more brief in later entries, but I was extremely interested in what we were talking about today. :)
Never stop questioning!
