Anscombe - good quotes

I am taking refuge in the beauty of Christian philosophy and Christian music, as well as Scripture and prayer. It's a crazy world out there, and everyone needs a place of refuge and rest. Kind of like  Lothlórien in The Lord of the Rings. So, here I am again. 

Faith in a Hard Ground
Essays on Religion, Philosophy and Ethics by G.E.M. Anscombe - edited by Mary Geach and Luke Gormally. 

Mary Geach is one of Anscombe's daughters. Anscombe was the mother of 7 children. That part still amazes and inspires me. 

 First of all, the title is appropriate for our day. It has always been difficult for believers to keep their faith strong. We constantly battle our own inertia, the tug of the world's system and its values, and the devil's deceptions. The ground is hard for many reasons. Anscombe's essays have been preserved in several volumes. Faith in a Hard Ground is one of them.

Here is a Chesterton quote that is found on p. 4 of the iBooks version of Faith in a Hard Ground.

"And his faith grew in a hard ground
Of doubt and reason and falsehood found,
Where no faith else could grow."

- The Ballad of the White Horse

Geometry was her favourite branch of mathematics. p. 12)

I found this detail interesting, since geometry was the only branch of mathematics that made sense to me. Interesting factoid.

On the same page as the quote, Anscombe is said to have found an argument that she wanted to improve in a  work on natural theology. This was when she was still a student. I'm not sure, but I think this was a book that influenced her to convert to the Catholic religion. She had grown up in a Protestant home.

The book she had been reading presented an argument to the effect that God "has knowledge of what sins dead people would have committed if they had lived longer." (p. 12) She saw the flaw in that line of reasoning, since no such thing existed so how could it be known?

"She consciously became a Catholic, but her treatment of this book shows that she was a philosopher, with good philosophical instincts, before she knew that she was one." (p. 12)

I suspect that she had been a philosopher for a long time before she worked out the flaw in the argument of the book she was reading - probably since childhood, but I don't know that for a fact.

Here is something that shows her ability to take complex ideas and make them accessible to all kinds of people, not just her fellow philosophers.

"Mary Warnock describes her as 'dedicated to dialogue which is central to philosophy..." (p. 12) 

This kind of dialogue is really needed in our day. And...

'She was in some ways, a more attentive parent than most; ... She was good at thinking at the level of the person she was speaking to,..." (p. 13)

Some of the articles in this book were written for a more general audience, and not just for those trained in philosophy. She could communicate her ideas to all kinds of people.

Anscombe's faith came first in her life, so that is why all of her children stayed in the Catholic faith. (p. 13)  Philosophy was her life as well as her profession. She did have a time when she was tempted intellectually in the form of an argument presented by Bertrand Russell. He claimed that, "an argument from the facts about the world to the existence of God could not be valid, as one could not deduce a necessary conclusion from a contingent premiss." (p. 13)

It took her some time to find the solution to this problem that had challenged her faith. She made an act of faith by going to church.

She realized later that of course one can derive necessary conclusions from contingent premises.

Evidently Russell's inability to see the flaw in his own argument likely showed his hatred of God, according to the author. If he admitted that he was wrong, then he would have come face to face with the reality of God's existence - something he was not willing or not able to do.

So, these few quotes and some commentary based on the book's introduction give a little window into the sould of Anscombe. Her faith kept her from falling into grave error even philosophically as well as theologically.

Here is an article by William Lane Craig explaining the Argument from Contingency and why it is logically irrefutable.