The Ontological Fallacy

September 8, 2019

I watched again the 3rd episode of True Detective in which Cohle discusses the Ontological Fallacy. Anselm of Canterbury first proposed this kind of proof of God’s existence in his 1078 “Proslogion.” I see the Ontological Argument as circular reasoning that proves nothing. Cohle says that the minister deceives his flock with this sort of rationale. Regardless of how people come to the concept of God, I’m going to guess that for most people, an inner dialog about God is perhaps as close as they get to questions about purpose, meaning, and “philosophy.”

Funerals and some movies may also push them in this direction, but I’d say that few people just sit and think about the meaning of their existence, it’s brief duration, and the aftermath. Those that DO probably use the simple ways of thinking about it to which they have been exposed in church. The unchurched imagine that death is the end, and their morality is derived from the popular culture…. in short, don’t physically harm anyone and all other questions of morals are flexible. And then there are those who live in a black and white world of their own construction, and they DO suffer greatly in trying to reconcile their inner world to the world through which they must pass.

I’m sitting watching TV and my foot itches. I reach for it and touch the foot that I realize is only alive for a short while. This thought leads me down a path of questioning the significance of my time on this earth, my relationship with family, the size of the Milky Way, and the fact that either God exists…. or he doesn’t – and this mystery is forever and always hidden from me. All this because my foot itched.

Imagine the paroxysms of existential angst brought on by more profound issues! So, it is a continual dread that settles around me like a shroud and I return to Pascal and others whose similar terrors assure me that I’m not the only person who has struggled with these questions. See Pensees 393.