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Sept. 12, 2008 Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) was a German mathematician and philosopher who maintained that we live in the best possible world because God, who is perfect, omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent would have it no other way. Apparently, any imaginary world superior to the real world is not a possible world, for if it were possible, you can be sure we would have it. Leibniz, like Newton, invented a method of calculus. François-Marie Arouet (1694-1178), who used the pen name Voltaire, laughed this idea of Leibniz' to scorn, even going to the lengths of writing a book, Candide, to hold it up to ridicule. I read Candide when I was 18, and though I appreciated the joke, I thought writing a whole book was going too far. It may be worth a short article though. Anyway, Voltaire was a famous writer of the Age of Enlightenment, the friend of the Frederick the Great of Prussia and correspondent of Catherine the Great of Russia. He gave himself out to be a deist, but it has been speculated that he was probably a closet atheist who feared that if he declared himself, his servants would rob him blind, there being no God for Voltaire to invoke to deter them. Candide is the most fanous of Voltaire's 100 books. Leibniz' opinion that this is the best of all possible worlds is, at bottom, a tautology. Leibniz did not want to mar the perfection and omnipotence that tradition ascribed to God. And the only way to avoid this was to pretend that this is the best of all worlds. But how was it that Leibniz felt he knew that there is a God in the first place, and that, moreover, God has all those wonderful attributes? He could have come to the conclusion of the existence and perfection of God only from observation of the real world, the only world that he or anyone ever inhabits. So he must have concluded from his observation that this is the best of all possible worlds and therefore there must be a God who made it. In other words, this world must be the best of all possible worlds because it was created by God, and this world must have been created by God because it is the best of all possible worlds. This kind of reasoning is called begging the question, because the proposition sought to be proved is taken for granted beforehand as basis of the proof. What someone who reasons like Leibniz implies is that the fact of World War II, with its 50,000,000 dead, does nothing to diminish God's reputation as all-merciful and all-powerful, since, in the nature of things, a better world, one where such monstrosities do not occur, is impossible. If God countenances genocide and bloodshed, it's not because he's not merciful, it's only because he has no choice, even though he's omnipotent. How do we know that a world without world wars is impossible? Simple, if it were possible, we would have it. The calamities of the times of Leibniz and Voltaire are nothing compared with those of the twentieth century, but Voltaire was still canny enough, after an earthquake in Portugal, to see the fallacy of Leibniz' philosophy. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Visit my website here. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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