Monty Python and Philosophy

by Gary L. Hardcastle

  Put another way, God is simply, by definition, the greatest conceivable being. (St. Anselm may have meant “possible” rather than “conceivable” but we will leave that point off to one side for the time being and return to it later). Ah, but what conclusion can be drawn from this premise? Does God, this greatest conceivable being, actually exist, or is he merely imaginary?

  St. Anselm was well aware of the freethinkers and skeptics who might doubt God’s existence, but he had an answer for them. Imagine the greatest conceivable being: omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, omnivident, omnibenevolent, and omnivorous. Suppose, St. Anselm asks, that such a being didn’t exist. Well, in that case, we wouldn’t really be conceiving of the greatest conceivable being, now would we? For we can conceive of a still greater being, namely, one that has all of these traits, and exists. Therefore, if God, by definition, is the greatest conceivable being, he must exist. In fact, St. Anselm takes the argument one step further and says that God is an even greater being than we can conceive of.63

  Get Me to the Argument Clinic!

  We don’t have to visit the Argument Clinic to see the problem with this argument (Yes, we do! No, we don’t!). Instead, we can do what philosophers do and focus on the form of the argument. Let us forget for a moment that St. Anselm’s argument is about God. Consider instead an argument of the same form, only in this argument we seek to establish the existence of Yeti. Yeti is defined as a Himalayan ape-like creature that leaves footprints in the snow. But suppose we tweak this definition as follows: Yeti is an actually existing Himalayan ape-like creature that leaves footprints in the snow. All that follows from this definition is that IF something is to count as Yeti, it would have to be Himalayan, ape-like, leave footprints in the snow, and exist. That’s a big IF. It doesn’t follow that Yeti does exist. In fact the camel-spotter of Monty Python’s Flying Circus (Episode 7, “You’re No Fun Anymore”) before he became a camel-spotter, had been a Yeti-spotter, and never did actually spot a Yeti. Thus, we may here be dealing with a definition that goes unfulfilled by any real being. Likewise, directly or indirectly importing the property of existence into the definition of God, as St. Anselm did, leaves open whether there exists a being that fulfills that definition. Defining God as the greatest possible (hence existent) being leaves unanswered the question of whether there is any real being that fulfills the definition. We can certainly conceive of the definition going unfulfilled without running into any logical difficulties. Hume summed this up well in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, when he wrote: “Whatever we conceive as existent, we can also conceive as nonexistent” (p. 91). Thus, St. Anselm’s argument fails to establish the existence of God. Of course, its failure to do so does not disprove God’s existence either.

  The Conceivable versus the Possible, Or, How to Confuse a Cat

  Let us now return to the distinction between “conceivability” and “possibility” mentioned earlier. Although for St. Anselm’s argument I don’t think it matters very much whether God is defined as the greatest conceivable being or the greatest possible being, it is nonetheless an important distinction in philosophy. On the one hand, whether something is conceivable or inconceivable depends very much on the thinker. For example, what is conceivable to an intelligent man like the famous composer Arthur “Two Sheds” Jackson (Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Episode 1, “Whither Canada?”) is not necessarily conceivable to a Gumby brain specialist (see Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Episode 32, “The War Against Pornography”). Conceivability varies from one individual to the next. On the other hand, not everything that is conceivable is possible. There is a certain sense of the term “possibility,” namely physical possibility, which is independent of the capabilities of individual thinkers, and depends only on physical laws. For example, Luigi Vercotti (Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Episode 10, untitled) can conceive of Ron Obvious jumping the English Channel, digging a hole to Java, or running to Mercury. The fact that Luigi can conceive of these things certainly does not make them possible, as Ron’s failed attempts so laughably illustrate. While we’re on the topic, it should also be noted that conceivability and possibility often interact in interesting ways. For example, when something inconceivable to us turns out to be possible, we are often quite baffled to see it actually happen. This fact was put to productive use by the Confuse-A-Cat team in jarring a listless pet cat from out of its rut (Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Episode 5, “Man’s Crisis of Identity in the Latter Half of the Twentieth Century”). Actually, in that episode, the Pythons take things even further. Some of the stunts pulled by the Confuse-A-Cat team were not only inconceivable, but physically impossible (although television makes anything look possible). As baffling as it is to see the inconceivable happen, it is even more baffling to witness something that is physically impossible! This is the stuff of miracles, but more on miracles later.

  The Argument from Design, or, “All Things Dull and Ugly”

  Another argument for the existence of God, a bit more intuitive than the Ontological Argument, is the Argument from Design. The Argument from Design says that the natural world provides evidence of creation by a rational God. What kinds of evidence are cited? Generally, evidence of order in the biological and physical worlds. Let us first consider the biological world. The biological variant of the Argument from Design states that the high degree to which plants and animals are adapted to their habitats and habits of life can hardly be due to chance. Besides, many of these adaptations are strikingly similar to the products of intelligent design by humans: the lens of an eye shares many features with the lens of a camera. Since human intelligence is known to be responsible for the design of man-made devices, by analogy, a divine intelligence must be responsible for the design of the far-more-complex adaptations of living things.

  Now let us consider the physical world in general. The universe is chock full of orderly phenomena, as Eric Idle observes in “The Galaxy Song” from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life:Just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving

  And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour.

  That’s orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it’s reckoned,

  A sun that is the source of all our power.

  The sun and you and me, and all the stars that we can see,

  Are moving at a million miles a day,

  In the outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,

  of the galaxy we call the Milky Way . . .

  The physical version of the Argument from Design states that all of this astronomical order and law-governed motion cannot have arisen due to chance, and therefore must have as its source a Higher Intelligence.

  Today it is widely acknowledged throughout the world (and much of the United States) that Darwin’s discovery of evolution by natural selection blew away the biological version of the Argument from Design. As the Pythons acknowledge in the title track to Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, “scientists say we’re just spiraling coils/ Of self-replicating DNA.” Blind variation in physical traits, some traits faring better than others in the struggle for existence, the encoding of traits in DNA, and their inheritance by offspring provide the basic ingredients for the evolution of adaptation by natural selection. A Divine Designer is not necessary to explain the presence of biological adaptations. Yet the physical version of the Argument from Design refuses to die. Many scientists and engineers today, while acknowledging that Darwin’s discovery of evolution by natural selection has undercut the biological version of the argument, argue that the physical version of the Design Argument receives stronger and stronger support with each new theoretical advance in our understanding of the universe. Newton certainly thought so, as did Einstein, who wrote in The World As I See It (1934), pp. 267-68:Religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is utterly insignificant reflection.r />
  This quotation emphasizes another dimension to the Argument from Design. Not only does the universe afford us evidence of the existence of God, but of His attributes as well. God possesses an intelligence that in some vague way is like human intelligence, only more super. Hume, a big Newton fan, and himself very much impressed with the orderliness of the universe, was very dismissive of this argument. For one thing, to invoke a Divine Intelligence to explain the origin of order in the universe doesn’t seem to explain anything at all. It simply takes one mystery, the presence of order in the universe, and replaces it with something equally mysterious, a Divine Intelligence (in Hume’s words, an “intelligent agent”). We might just as well ask where Divine Intelligence comes from. Clearly, Hume argues, this explanation gives no satisfaction. Yet even granting that the universe has a Creator, Hume was skeptical of the prospects of inferring His attributes from His creation. Where the orthodox Christian believer saw in nature evidence of God’s moral righteousness, benevolence, and omnipotence, Hume saw evidence of moral indifference. Monty Python captured Hume’s critique brilliantly on their Contractual Obligation Album in their mock hymn, “All Things Dull and Ugly”:All things dull and ugly,

  All creatures short and squat,

  All things rude and nasty,

  The Lord God made the lot.

  Each little snake that poisons,

  Each little wasp that stings.

  He made their brutish venom,

  He made their horrid wings.

  All things sick and cancerous,

  All evil great and small,

  All things foul and dangerous,

  The Lord God made them all.

  Each nasty little hornet,

  Each beastly little squid.

  Who made the spiky urchin?

  Who made the sharks? He did.

  All things scabbed and ulcerous,

  All pox both great and small.

  Putrid, foul, and gangrenous,

  The Lord God made them all.

  Hume believed that the Argument from Design did not derive its persuasiveness from observations of the imperfect world around us, but rather from weakly veiled appeals to church doctrine, which preached the existence of a single, all-powerful, eternal, and benevolent God. Our observations of the world are influenced by our prior beliefs about God. In other words, when we look out at the world, we aren’t seeing evidence of God’s attributes in the world, rather, we are simply seeing the world through God-colored glasses, selectively ignoring all things dull, ugly, rude, and nasty. Hume thought that not very much about God can be inferred from his creation. To underscore his point, he ventured a number of hypotheses equally compatible with the observations. Perhaps, he mused, the universe is the work of many Gods. Or maybe it was initiated by a deity who has long since abandoned it to its own devices.

  There is a scene in Terry Gilliam’s opening animation sequence to Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life where God is shown vacillating between two possible earths, one spherical and the other cubical. Opting for the spherical one, he tosses it off to one side whereupon it promptly cracks open. Hume had invoked a similar image in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion to emphasize that a number of different creation scenarios were consistent with our observations of the world around us:This world [for all we know] is very faulty and imperfect, compared to a superior standard; and was only the first rude essay of some infant Deity, who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance. (p. 71)

  From the context of the passage, it is clear that Hume did not sincerely entertain this proposition or several of the others he mentions. Rather, he sought to illustrate that what we are able to observe of the world around us does little to illuminate such remote questions as the existence and attributes of the Creator, if there is one.

  The Argument from Miracles, Or, “He’s Been Taken Up!”

  What religion would be complete without its miracles? Well, certainly not Christianity. One of the most important arguments for Christianity is founded on such miracles as the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, and the miracles performed by Jesus Christ and described in the New Testament by the Evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. According to these accounts, Jesus brought about events completely outside the natural order of things, such as turning water into wine, raising Lazarus from the dead, healing the blind, the lepers, and even the impotent (the number of different kinds of miracles Jesus performed depends on which Evangelist you consult). What can we conclude from all this? A miracle is often cited as a sign that the person performing it is either Divine or Divinely empowered. Let’s grant that only God can confer supernatural powers, and let’s further assume that He would never give those powers to someone who would misrepresent Him. Then the words of a miracle-worker such as Jesus should be accepted as revelations of Divine Wisdom (a version of this argument may be found in John 3: 2). That, in a nutshell, is the Argument from Miracles.

  This raises the question, was Brian Cohen divine? Let’s take a look at his miracles. In Monty Python’s Life of Brian, each “miracle” Brian performs leads to greater conviction on the part of his followers that his every utterance is Divinely sanctioned. His first miracle is to be “taken up” into heaven, only to be spotted in full sprint moments later. For his next miracle, he causes a juniper bush to bring forth juniper berries. Later he miraculously restores the power of speech to Simon, a hermit of eighteen years (by landing on his foot, that is). As evidence of Brian’s divinity mounts, his words are received by the devoted throng as Divine revelation. His exasperated plea for the crowd to “fuck off ” is treated as an invitation to ritual: “How shall we fuck off, O Lord?”

  Of course, we know, as do Brian, Simon the Hermit, and everyone else who is not in a devotional stupor, that the purported miracles are nothing of the sort. Which of these events lies outside the natural order? Temporarily disappearing from view when running through a crowded marketplace? Juniper bushes bearing juniper berries? Yelping over a foot injury? The answer is none of the above. Eyewitnesses believe them to be miracles, yet clearly they are not. This is the starting point for a critique raised by Hume in his essay “Of Miracles.”64 Eyewitnesses are often wrong. And as weak as the evidence from the reports of eyewitnesses might be, it certainly gets no stronger as it travels through the grapevine, as anyone knows who has ever sent a story around a circle. Moreover, a miracle is by definition outside the natural order, and hence has the weight of every contrary event stacked against it. For every report of water being turned to wine, we have countless reports of water remaining water. The less probable an event is, Hume says, the more suspicious we should be of claims that it happened. From errors on the part of the witness, to mistakes or deception at each link in the chain of human testimony, there are countless ways that a report of a miracle could be mistaken. Ultimately, Hume says, the only condition under which we should accept someone’s testimony of a miracle is if it would be even more miraculous if they were wrong!

  It was central to Hume’s philosophy that questions of existence, which he called “matters of fact,” could never be settled by abstract reasoning alone (we saw this earlier in the critique of the Ontological Argument: a being cannot simply be defined into existence). Knowledge of what exists is always rooted in experience. Nonetheless, as is well-illustrated by the eyewitness accounts of Brian Cohen’s “miracles,” experience is a fallible source of knowledge. Hume readily acknowledged that we can be mistaken about what our senses are telling us.

  The Cause of Religion, Or “Oh Father, Please Don’t Boil Us”

  Hume’s examination of the Ontological, Design, and Miracle arguments found each of them severely lacking. Yet for all of his attention to the reasons for religious belief, Hume was convinced that elegant argumentation had little to do with why most people actually believed. To answer that question required an inquiry not into the reasons for religious belief, but rather its causes. In his Natural History of Religion, Hume fingered a rather simple and age-old caus
e of religious belief: fear.

  Hume argued that people everywhere are afraid of the forces which affect their lives but are beyond their control. They call these forces Gods and seek to appease them through religious worship. Over time, the number of Gods has decreased, but the same story holds. In Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, the school chaplain leads the young lads in a hymn that essentially beseeches the Almighty not to cook and eat his loyal flock: “O Father, please don’t boil us.” And in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, God himself chastises King Arthur for his fearful groveling and supplication. These views of religion fit very well with Hume’s analysis.

  The Epilogue: A Question of Belief

  Good evening, and welcome to the Epilogue! We have seen several arguments for the existence and attributes of God criticized (by Hume) and ridiculed (by Monty Python), but what are we to conclude from all this? In the end, not much. Both Monty Python and Hume seem to be in agreement that when it comes to questions at a remove from our experience—the origin of the universe, the existence and attributes of God, and while we’re at it, let’s toss in the afterlife—we are simply out of our element and any conclusions we draw will be sketchy at best. We would like to have useful empirical information on these questions, and the Pythons (in Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Episode 36, “E. Henry Tripshaw’s Disease”) sure try, assembling, for example, a noted panel of the corpses of three professors to answer the question, “Is there life after death?” Their answers? No, no, and no. As for the existence and nature of God, after exposing the flaws in the positive arguments of others, Hume himself offered no clear answer, but rather counseled humility and suspense of judgment on such questions. For that matter, what good would an appeal to the authority of Hume do us anyway? His entire point was that nobody can be an authority on God. For their part, the Pythons suggested alternate ways of settling these questions. Why argue over the existence of God at all? Why not simply wrestle over it? And so we see, in Monty Python’s Flying Circus (Episode 2, “Sex and Violence”), Monsignor Edward Gay, author of My God, square off against secular humanist Dr. Tom Jack, author of Hello, Sailor, to decide the question in the ring. In the end, God exists by two falls to a submission.