Guanilo was a monk who was a contemporary of Anselm. He offers a reply on behalf of the fool not because he agrees that there is no God but because he thinks that the fool could rationally reject Anselm's argument.

To some, this makes Guanilo's efforts seem perverse. If he believes in God, why bother arguing against Anselm? Though this question could well be left aside for purposes of studying Guanilo's reasoning, it raises some issues worth reflecting on. Part of the answer is simply that Guanilo has the philosopher's temperament. He wants to understand and not simply believe. Knowing what is not an adequate defense of my beliefs is important if I really want to understand what I believe.

But must one cultivate understanding on one's own? Some people are content to leave this task to others. In fact, most of us do this with respect to some beliefs or other. I may need to solve a quadratic equation

ax² + bx + c = 0.

I could try to reconstruct the proof that

x =	-b + SQRT(b2 - 4ac)
	2a

but more likely, I will just accept it and proceed, relying on the fact that someone has already sorted this out for me.

Of course mathematical results, once proven, are effectively certain. But we also rely on the knowledge of others in areas where things are less than certain. There is always some room for error in science, but we typically rely on what scientists tell us without checking for ourselves. In fact, we do the same with ordinary bits of information gleaned from the new, for example, or even from the mere testimony of others.

On the other hand, if the matter is controversial, we are less inclined -- and less well-advised -- to rely on the mere testimony of others. And (believe it or not) the question of whether God exists, or whether a particular argument proves God's existence, is controversial.

Does that mean that every believer is obliged to sort through the arguments herself? That would be asking too much; if a scientific matter is controversial, I am not obliged to become a scientist myself before I make up my mind. But interestingly enough, if I decide to leave the matter of, say, whether greenhouse gases are producing global warming up to others, I am normally expected to withhold judgement until there is a reasonable degree of consensus among the experts.

Religion, some would insist, is different. Perhaps it is; we will take that issue up later in the course. But for now, it will do to point out that there is an issue here, and that religion is not just obviously different.

In any case, you are here -- by choice -- to do philosophy. And so we will proceed to examine Guanilo's objections.

Guanilo begins by re-stating Anselm's argument, though with a difference in wording that may or may not matter. Guanilo writes, summarizing Anselm,

Now if that being exists only in the understanding, then whatever also exists in reality is greater than it. Thus, that which is greater than everything else will be less than something, and not greater than everything else, which is of course a contradiction.

Having stated the argument, Guanilo goes on to speak on behalf of the fool (the atheist), offering several possible responses to Anselm. The first response is puzzling. Guanilo points out that in saying that the being exists in the understanding, we are really saying simply that we understand what has been said. But this could be true of any number of things that have no real existence whatsoever, and so unless it can be shown that to understand the idea of this being it to recognize that it really exists, the argument can't work.

This, of course, is perfectly true. But Anselm would not disagree He thinks that there is something special about this concept, as Guanilo himself has pointed out in re-stating the argument.

Guanilo goes on to say that if Anselm really were right, an odd consequence would follow. It is very common first to have an idea in our understanding and then only later on come to understand that the thing really exists. Anselm illustrates this in the case of the painting. It is one thing to have the idea of the painting, and another to believe that it really exists. But if having the idea of God is the same as understanding that God exists, this distinction would fail. And Guanilo's point seems to be that this is a perfectly good and psychologically real distinction. For many people, having the idea of God is one thing, and coming to believe that there is a God is quite another. So perhaps the best interpretation of this criticism is that it flies in the face of the psychological facts -- including the facts about religious belief.

There certainly is a puzzle here, but Anselm is aware of it and has already addressed it in his chapter 4, entitled "How the fool said in his heart what cannot be thought." Anselm's account amounts to saying that one can use words without fully grasping their significance. I can say and perhaps even "believe" in a very weak sense of "believe" that there is a largest prime. But if I really understand what I am saying, I can believe no such thing.

Here's where this seems to leave us. If Anselm is right, our usual impression of how religious belief works is wrong. Guanilo points this out, but he never talks about what Anselm has already had to say on the matter. Perhaps what Anselm has to say isn't good enough. But since Guanilo hasn't addressed it, does he have a right to complain.

However, Guanilo's next point could be seen as a way of amplifying his first one and avoiding this criticism. He begins:

When I hear someone speak of that which is greater than everything else that can be thought,... I can no more think of it or have it in my understanding in terms of anything whose genus or species I already know, than I can think of God himself -- and indeed, for this very reason I can also think of God as not existing. For I do not know the think itself, and I cannot form an idea of it on the basis of anything like it, since you yourself claim that it is so great that nothing else could be like it.

We might put it this way: Anselm has offered an explanation of how the fool can say "There is no God." The explanation is that the fool has a merely verbal notion of God but either no real understanding or an incorrect understanding of the concept. But Guanilo's reply on behalf of the fool is that given what the words say, this is the best that any of us could do. God is too different from anything else for us to have a real understanding of Him. And if that is so, no one has God "in the understanding" in the sense needed to make the argument go through.

Anselm has some things to say in response to this, but we will get to those later. We come, meanwhile, to the third of Guanilo's points, and the one for which he is most famous. He asks us to imagine an island -- the "Lost Island" -- that is "everywhere superior in its abundant riches to all other lands that human beings inhabit." We can understand this idea perfectly well. But suppose someone argued that the island must exist, because otherwise it would not be superior to any actual island, since a non-existent island is not as good as one that really exists. To put it mildly, we wouldn't be persuaded. But Guanilo's point is that it if Anselm's reasoning is correct, then this argument should be correct as well. Since it isn't, Anselm's argument must be flawed.

As you no doubt guessed, Anselm is not persuaded by these arguments. To find out why, and whether he ought to be, we turn to his response. © Copyright Allen Stairs 1998. All Rights reserved.

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