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The Pleasure of Proof

by Nathan Schneider

I’m really pleased to report that the excellent New York Times blog Happy Days—a series of reflections on “the pursuit of what matters in troubled times”—has just posted an essay of mine: “The Self-Thinking Thought.” It’s a reflection on my experience spending part of a summer with St. Anselm, the 11th-century monk-turned-archbishop who introduced the ontological proof for the existence of God to Latin Europe.

So the ontological proof is what matters in troubled times? Yeah, I guess that’s what I’m saying.

It was the year 1077, at the monastery of Bec in what is now northern France. Anselm was happy. “The grace of God shone on his heart, the whole matter became clear to his mind, and a great joy and jubilation filled his inmost being,” his friend and biographer Eadmer would later write.

Head over to the Times to read more.

This essay is something of a sequel to one that appeared last year here at Killing the Buddha: “Proof Enough for Me.”


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August 23, 2009

Nathan Schneider is senior editor of Killing the Buddha and writes about religion, reason, and violence for a variety of publications. He is also a founding editor of the blog Waging Nonviolence. Visit his website at The Row Boat.

4 Responses to “The Pleasure of Proof”

  1. Anjum Niaz
    August 24th, 2009 at 3:13 pm

    I’m a Muslim. Ramazan has started. One needed a piece like your’s to bolster the spirits and keep the faith moving along the path that God wants us to tread.Thanks for shining a light on this path.I’m all the wiser for reading your inspirational story of Anselm. More of such is needed in today’s crazy world.

    anjum niaz
    NJ
    USA

  2. Richard
    August 24th, 2009 at 3:46 pm

    “God in his infinite wisdom…”
    In this statement its implied that God is equated with infiniteness and God is equated as being a wisdom of infinite capacity. Also God is equated wrongly with maleness but God cannot be infinite and then be finitely limited to maleness or anything else finite. God is a word and words are finite expressions as are most of our human attempts to grasp,define and limit vast existential experience beyond conceptualization in order to understand it; to control it. “In the beginning was The Word” kind of says it all in a Big Bang sort of way. “We” “live” in an infinite universe of infinite multi verses and “we” are just beginning to grasp that the more “we” connect to this infinity the more “we” lose individual consciousness and BTW I do read and enjoy KTB daily.

  3. Suzanne
    August 24th, 2009 at 5:22 pm

    I read it and loved it, which lead me here and to subscribing to your newsletter. Thank you!

  4. Suzanne
    August 24th, 2009 at 5:22 pm

    P.S. I’m also mentioning it in my blog today.

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