Who Needs God?
Berkeley argues that, given the truth of idealism, God must exist. Is he correct? If so, how valuable is this argument? Does this argument give theists anything to cheer about? Or can we get something less than the omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent God that Berkeley believes in?
Berkeley's argument that idealism proves God's existence can be taken multiple ways. Berkeley's argument proposes that all things are mind dependent, they need a mind to perceive them and to exist. He then states that they are also independent and can exist outside of his mind. For example, if he were perceive a table in a room and then leave the room with the table, that table would not just poof out of existence, it would stay there. That means there must be an all powerful mind always perceiving everything, A.KA God. This argument is very important because in Berkeley's time there was a new interest in science and the scientific method of proving things. He feared this revolution would challenge the church and religion across Europe. This made proving God's existence a key point in his dialogues. Though this is nothing to get too excited about. His argument lines up with his previous proofs but his final conclusion that that all powerful mind is God can be debated. Yes, it could be an all powerful mind that perceives all, but it does not in any way have to be the just, all knowing, and powerful Christina deity. It could simply be an all seeing mind that had no affiliation with any religion and has no power, just the ability to perceive. Additionally, this all-seeing mind could in fact be the opposite of God, maybe even the Devil. It could be evil and deceiving everyone into thinking they perceive certain things. Although Berkeley does come to a legitimate conclusion that there is an all seeing mind, objections like these disprove that is has to be a just, all powerful Christian deity.
ReplyDeleteGeorge Berkeley lays out an interesting argument for why it is common sense that god exists. He begins by saying that if skepticism were to be true than illusions must be real. In order for illusion to be possible we must make a distinction between appearance and reality. In order to distinguish appearance from reality we need to believe in material substance, but material substance doesn’t exist because idealism is true and therefore skepticism is false. His argument is strengthened when he says that everything is an idea of a mind. For example, one can only fully perceive what a table is because of their senses, which are then interpreted by the mind to gives them the idea which they explain, as an image. When senses are aren’t directly stimulated, and the idea of the table isn’t in our minds, most would agree that the table doesn’t pop out of existence. Since objects only exist in a mind then there must be some overarching mind that is perceiving all things at once and this being would be described by Berkeley as god. His argument gains ground in establishing that the likelihood of a god is much higher than the likelihood that there is no god, but he fails in establishing how this god would possess all of the qualities that a Judeo-Christian-Islam god would have. One objection that I would raise to his argument is that there is no way to know whether or not a table is popping in or out of existence if there is literally nothing there to perceive it. By definition it is impossible to know what is actually happening to an objects when there is nothing recording any physical stimulus from it. If objects do pop in and out of existence when there is nothing there to perceive it, then the foundation that Berkeley stands on for proving god falls. In conclusion, Berkeley's argument for proving gods existence using idealism is based upon assumption. Furthermore there is no victory for either side of the argument because either side’s justification is based on some assumption and in philosophy we seek to find knowledge, not strengthen our beliefs through faith.
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