Yorkshire Gold Tea

People drone on about how much they love Yorkshire Tea, how it is the best tea in the world, how it has the best flavour and blah blah blah. Yet lurking in my cupboard I found some individually wrapped bags of ‘Yorkshire Gold’. I repaired to the company website, and read thus:

Yorkshire Gold. This is our finest blend. We choose teas from our three favourite origins – Assam, Kenya and Rwanda – and buy them from the top ten tea gardens in the world to make a rich, smooth and incredibly satisfying brew.

So by the company’s own admission, regular Yorkshire Tea is not the best. When I drank the Gold stuff, I’ll confess to not noticing anything different, apart from the individual wrapping, which made me deduce that its unidentified donor had stolen it from a hotel.

All this reminds me of Archbishop Anselm’s ontological argument for the existence of God:

• God is the greatest conceivable being (by definition)
• It is greater to exist in reality than the mind alone
• God exists in the mind
• Therefore, God exists in reality

It is an old argument for God which essentially states that if a perfect being can be imagined, then he must be real, because existence is more perfect than mere imagination. An atheist says she does not believe in God while implying that she at least has an idea of God in her mind. Says Anselm:

That, than which nothing greater can be conceived, cannot exist in the understanding alone: then it can be conceived to exist in reality; which is greater. Therefore, if that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, exists in the understanding alone, the very being, than which nothing greater can be conceived, is one, than which a greater can be conceived. But obviously this is impossible. Hence, there is no doubt that there exists a being, than which nothing greater can be conceived, and it exists both in the understanding and reality.

It is a bit complicated, but essentially God cannot be an idea that exists in the mind alone. That would be ridiculous, as we could conceive of something greater: God also existing in reality. Yet, God is the greatest being, so conceiving of anything greater is impossible. Therefore God must therefore be a being that exists in reality. To say that God does not exist in reality is to say that the greatest being is not the greatest being, which is incoherent.

Regular Yorkshire Tea could- and has- been improved. It is not therefore the greatest tea. Might Yorkshire Gold be improved? Yes, it may, because there will always be more salubrious ingredients and blendings available. But God cannot be more powerful, more beautiful, more wonderful that we imagine Him- except by actually existing.

Too much for your head? Go and have a cup of nice Yorkshire Gold, and reflect on that fact that God is as real as the cup you hold. More real, in fact, for He shall still exist when the cup is no more.