Pigs can Fly

Inspired by: Prof. Richard Dawkins, ‘The God Delusion’
Based on: St. Anselm’s a priori ontological argument

A pig that can fly, is surely better than a normal pig. It is possible to conceive, of a flying pig- everyone can, just that we would deny its existence. But, goes the argument, a pig capable of flying but does not exist in the real world is, by that very fact, even worse than a normal pig. Therefore we have a contradiction and, hey presto, pigs can fly!

In ‘The God Delusion’, Richard Dawkins says that he ‘piqued a gathering of theologians and philosophers by adapting the ontological argument to prove that pigs can fly’. Although he had forgotten the details, but after deducing I made a similar reproduction as shown above. Initially the ontological argument was used by St. Anselm to prove that God exists (by substituting ‘God’ and ‘perfection’), but the fatal assumption of this argument is that ‘existence’ is a measurement of quality.

Philosopher Norman Malcolm puts it well: “The doctrine that existence is a perfection is remarkably queer. It makes sense and is true to say that my future house will be a better one if it is insulated than if it is not insulated; but what could it mean to say that it will be a better house if it exists than if it does not?”

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