Pascal, Anselm And The Majjhima Nikaya

[Xangsamhua]

Not only did the Buddha predate Pascal's Wager by more than two millennia in the Apannaka Sutta (Majjhima Nikaya:60), but his disputants Sakuludayin and Vekhanassa anticipated Anselm's Ontological Argument for the existence of God in Suttas 79 and 80 (MN).

You may remember the 17th century Pascal arguing that if the existence of God couldn't be proved you may as well act as though God existed, as by doing so you would gain eternal life, whereas by not doing so you would be condemned to eternal punishment. This is not a complicated position and one which the Budha appeared to endorse (though with regard to the holy life rather than theism) on pragmatic grounds, even for as limited a reward as social approval.

Anselm, the 11th century French monk (later Archbishop of Canterbury) was pleased to discover for himself an argument for God's existence that he found particularly illuminating, but strikes most people, I think, as sleight of hand. It was that God is that of which nothing greater can be conceived. As that which of nothing greater can be conceived must really exist in order to be the pinnacle of conceived existence, then God, by this definition, must really exist. It's not an argument that has won many strong supporters, as it is possible to imagine something as the unsurpassable pinnacle of existence that does not actually exist in any objective, "real" (not "ideal") sense, but there are philosophers who have been able to work with it (Alvin Plantinger, for example, at Notre Dame) for reasons that I've forgotten. It appears, however, that the argument had been around for some 15 or more centuries before Anselm and was held by some teachers in India in the Buddha's time.

Sakuludayin and Vekhanassa declare to the Buddha in the Suttas (79 and 80) that at the end of arising and ceasing there is a "perfect splendour which is unsurpassed by any other splendour higher or more sublime". When asked by the Buddha what that splendour is, the two Brahmins simply repeat their declaration. Not specifically about God, maybe they are talking about paradise, but the idea seems to be that that there must be something which is defined by its unsurpassability and which exists therefore. The Buddha rejects the proposition on the ground that the declared state of unsurpassability cannot be described and hence can't be compared to other splendid things. In other words, a perfect state or person, beyond which nothing greater can be conceived, needs to be a known or knowable entity, at least to the extent that one can know in what way it is different from and superior to all other known entities. Hobbes, the 17th century crypto-atheist philosopher, put it quite bluntly that one could not think of a God that had no form (i.e. the Christian-Platonist God) and 20th/21st century "non-realist" Christians (e.g. Don Cupitt, Lloyd Gearing) agree. In this matter, therefore, these latter-day philosophers are following in the footsteps of the Buddha.

Edited August 30, 2009 by Xangsamhua