Edward Gibbon and Anselm's Ontological Argument

People continue to accuse Gibbon of being unfair to Christians, a charge which from one point of view is about as true or false as it's ever been. After 15 years of New Atheism, one might be inclined to chime in and say that Gibbon is just annoying already -- if you forget that Gibbon was writing in the eighteenth century, and fighting for freedoms of expression which people by 2004 had started taking for granted.

Freedoms somewhat less in evidence in Anselm's day. I find it very difficult to believe that his ontological argument (Google anselm ontological argument, cause I just can't get into the details right now without endangering the serenity for which I am so famous) would not have been about as savagely criticized as it is today, had Anselm's contemporaries been as free to speak and write about it as we are. About as difficult as it it is for me to believe that he had a horror of every worldly advancement, this Archbishop of Canterbury.

I had already encountered Aquinas' fivefold proof of God's existence, and rolled my eyes aplenty at it. Still, I felt quite positively disposed toward Aquinas as I heard about his attack on Anselm's proof, even cheered him on a little bit. Did Aquinas develop his fivefold proof because Anselm's ontological argument seemed embarrassingly flimsy to him? Was there no more to it than that?

I find it quite hard to conceive of anyone who doesn't already believe in God having their mind changed by Aquinas, and much more difficult still to imagine them having their mind changed by Anselm. I find it quite easy to imagine people rolling their eyes back when Anselm and Aquinas were alive, and holding their tongues because it wasn't worth being tortured and then burned alive.

A few days ago, I was made aware of the title of Richard Dawkins' latest book, by walking past it in a bookstore: Outgrowing God: A Beginner's Guide. And I felt quite embarrassed, as an atheist. As with Aquinas and even more so with Anselm, but in reverse, I thought about Dawkins' lack of appeal with non-atheists. Even a lot of us who are atheists find Dawkins thoroughly obnoxious. Is a believer going to see a book with a title like Outgrowing God and feel any way except personally insulted and less well-disposed toward atheists than they were a moment before?

It's hard for me to imagine.

And Dawkins doesn't have the excuse which embarrassed defenders of Anselm or Aquinas -- if any of them ever do feel embarrassed. I can't think of any such at the moment, but than again I haven't subjected myself to many of their fans -- always have at hand: that Anselm and Aquinas rarely came into contact with someone who is allowed to say that they think differently.

Anselm with his argument and Aquinas with his proofs, were they answering Lucretius? Or their own subconscious minds? That's one thing which still puzzles me: to whom were they talking? Were they actually trying to change anyone's mind, beyond some purely imaginary mind of some non-believer who was not ever at hand? Is this the Glass Bead Game I've wondered about my whole life, the one they played (and still play) just because they loved the game so much, with no further point to it at all?