(October 25, 2017 at 2:12 pm)SteveII Wrote: In case anyone wants to know the actual argument in an easy-to-understand way. And it is not true that you "could use anselms argument to "prove" any idea you happened to have no matter how fanciful."

The argument presented in this video is the modal ontological argument, which is a completely different argument than the classic argument from Anselm. That you seem incapable of distinguishing the two is quite disturbing. Regardless, the subject of this thread is Anselm's argument. If you want to discuss the modal ontological argument, I suggest you create a separate thread for it.

(October 25, 2017 at 2:12 pm)SteveII Wrote: In case anyone wants to know the actual argument in an easy-to-understand way. And it is not true that you "could use anselms argument to "prove" any idea you happened to have no matter how fanciful."

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It's logically possible that is maximally the worst video ever.

(October 25, 2017 at 9:31 am)SteveII Wrote: As I pointed out in the other thread, you are changing the term 'greatest' to 'good and bad' so you can use it in a moral sense (and declare it incoherent) when GCB Theology uses it in a qualitative sense. It is greater to be omnipotent than not. It is greater to be omniscient than not. It is greater to be morally perfect than not.

No, I am not. This is a misinterpretation of my argument. If you had pointed out your misunderstanding of my argument in the other thread, I did not see it. Regardless, I mean the terms good and bad to apply in a qualitative sense, and nothing in my argument turns on interpreting them in the moral sense in order to declare them incoherent. That last bit appears to be solely the product of your own imagination. As I pointed out in that thread, the term 'greater' in the sense of "better than" is a wholly subjective assessment. Objective reality does not have any "better than" relationships; things just are or are not.

Since we were discussing whether or not being morally perfect is "better than" being morally imperfect, I will continue with that alleged great-making quality.

In order to exhibit virtue, one must be tempted to do wrong, and instead choose to do good. That is a necessary part of being virtuous. As you claim in the other thread, a morally perfect God can do no wrong. Moreover, since he's omniscient, he knows that he can and will do no wrong, so he is never tempted by the option of doing wrong. In other words, God is constitutionally incapable of being virtuous. (Also, he's incapable of knowing what the experience of being virtuous feels like, as the best he can muster is the sort of vicarious experience such as a parent may feel at watching their son score a touchdown. He doesn't actually know the experience of it. So this by itself means that God is not omniscient. But that's a subject for another day....) So God cannot be virtuous. Suppose I value the experience of being virtuous, made possible by my moral imperfection, over whatever advantages being morally perfect may offer? Do you have any objective grounds why I should not want a life of virtue over a life without this experience? No, you cannot. The best you can say is that you consider being morally perfect better than the ability to live virtuously. But that's just your subjective assessment of the relative desirability of the two options. Desires or preferences for one thing over another are always subjective, and so can't form the basis for a greatest conceivable being, because all you mean by that phrase is whatever some subjective assessment considers the most desirable. Desires aren't objective facts. Only objective facts can ground a 'greatest' conceivable being, and there are no objective facts pertaining to what is or is not greatest.

As I noted in the other thread, objective reality cares not one whit whether you are morally perfect or not. You may say that according to your assessment, moral perfection is more desirable than moral imperfection. But your desires are not binding upon reality. I can come along and say that I prefer moral imperfection to moral imperfection, and the best you can say is that you feel otherwise. Your preference for moral perfection is not an objective fact.

Let's examine the word 'better' to see why this is. Merriam-Webster defines better as:


1 :greater than half - for the better part of an hour
2 :improved in health or mental attitude - feeling better
3 :more attractive, favorable, or commendable - in better circumstances
4 :more advantageous or effective - a better solution
5 :improved in accuracy or performance - building a better engine


The relative senses of the word are numbers 3, 4, and 5. Number 3 is clearly pertaining to matters of subjective assessment, so it is unproblematic to dispense with that as a potential objective ground for ranking one thing over another thing. Number 4 seems superficially to offer the potential for objectively grounding such relationships, but this is an illusion. Something is more advantageous or effective for a given purpose or goal. A screwdriver is more advantageous than a hammer for screwing in screws, but a hammer is more effective at pounding in nails. Which one is "better than" the other depends upon what I want to achieve with it. The choice of what I want to do with it is purely a personal, subjective decision. I may choose to hammer in nails rather than screwing in screws, and there is no objective basis for saying that my choice is right or wrong. It simply is 'my choice'. So as we can see, the meaning of better is subjective, through and through. A greatest conceivable being must be objectively great, but there is no such creature to be found in "better than" relationships; only subjective assessments and personal choices. There is no objective ground upon which to base the judgement that any one thing is "better than" another thing. All you've got is subjectivity.

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(October 25, 2017 at 10:05 am)SteveII Wrote:

(October 25, 2017 at 9:45 am)Khemikal Wrote: Then you're using "great" in a moral sense as well..so there's no point in castigating another for it.

Why is it not "great" to be infinitely destructive?  Surely a creature capable of more destruction than any another creature is meaningfully greater?  If you like, we can cut to the chase.  Short of some non-arbitrary metric, your use of the term is an explicit invocation of your personal biases.  How's that non arbitrary metric coming along...you ready to allow for it yet..........would you really maintain the above as a metric for "greatness" when we point out the gratuitous suffering magic book claims fairy god  inflicted upon christer fantasy world?  It's own inconsistency and destructiveness?

Make the world, break the world.  All is good, everything sucks.  Do this and not that, no..scratch that, do that but not this..wait, nevermind I'm handing out mulligans for all the things.  Is your god closer to my infinitely destrutive, and therefore greater, being...or your milketoast pushover of good behavior?

No...I was pointing out what 'perfectly immoral' would entail. I think it is clear that it is qualitatively better to be creative, loving, nurturing, structured, etc. because these attributes are more conducive to relationships between rational/thinking/emotional beings (us and God) than their opposites. 

That you may want such things more than their opposite does not in itself make them qualitatively better. You've based the question of what is best upon your own desires, and those aren't binding upon anyone but yourself. Why are loving, nurturing relations preferable to their absence? You're setting the standard for what is best based upon your subjective assessment of the value of these things, and your choice of what to desire and what not to desire is purely arbitrary. As a human being, you may find relationships conducive to stable and prosperous living, which leads to your happiness, but your happiness is not an objective standard. You theists are generally eager to claim that without God, their is no objective meaning, and no objective values. Well, I'm taking you at your word. Suddenly you want to reverse course and claim that there are objective values by which you can rank one thing as qualitatively better than another thing. The only reason you want to backpedal now is because one of your cherished arguments for the existence of God is imperiled by your previous stance. I find that more than a little coincidental. Regardless, you've made your bed, now lie in it. There are no objective values in the universe on which to ground qualitative judgements. All you have to base your judgements on is subjective preferences and choices. And those aren't the basis of an objective truth, they just happen to be your subjective inclinations.

SteveII Wrote:I'm not going to debate the PoE in this thread.

Maybe you should have stayed out of the moral issue of the argument, then.

How would a perfectly immoral omnipotent creator behave? To maximize suffering and sadistically enjoy the pain of others. How could it go about doing so? It would need to create life in order for suffering to exist. It would want to get around to forms of life capable of experiencing greater and more nuanced suffering. Maybe by setting up an automated system that would evolve such life forms in good time, based on competition and extinction over hundreds of millions of years. It would have to allow some good and some pleasure and some relief, because otherwise how would they know how badly they are suffering when it gets bad again? It would want them to make each other and themselves suffer even more for the evil LOLs. Maximum evil LOLs could be achieved by getting the creatures most capable of suffering in the greatest variety of ways to love it and thank it for not making them suffer more than it does already. It might give them eternal souls so it can continue to torture them after their bodies are dead.

The universe we're familiar with seems compatible with a perfectly malevolent creator.

One of the earliest branches of christerism thought just that.  Jesus was here to save us from a douche god. The attempted coup didn't go as planned.

(October 24, 2017 at 8:42 am)MysticKnight Wrote: These two premises prove Anselm's argument is correct though secular Academia presents it with the worse bias:
1. It is greater to exist than not to exist (We try to prevent death because we all believe in this).

I always liked CS Lewis as an apologist.  The key trickery he used, was using what people wanted to believe was true as a premise.  It's very sneaky to say things like "It's better to exist, than not exist!"  Because that's what people think.  But people thinking something doesn't make it a fundamental truth.  It makes it a widely held opinion.  

An interesting exercise for you, I think, would be to break down a lot of your premises not to the root of what people believe, but what they are in the absence of human opinion.

Things designed to continue existing are more likely to exist.  Naturally, life forms that have a desire to exist are going to have more staying power than one's that don't.  A population of super suicidal monkeys isn't going to exist long.  There is nothing inherently good or bad about that.  Our desire to prevent death is not different than a rock formation with a composition that makes erosion slower than other rock formations.  

I don't think you'd argue one pile of rocks is greater than another pile of rocks because it erodes slower.  There is no ultimate meaning in piles of rocks existing or their erosion speeds if you take out human opinion.

(October 25, 2017 at 7:21 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote:

(October 25, 2017 at 2:12 pm)SteveII Wrote: In case anyone wants to know the actual argument in an easy-to-understand way. And it is not true that you "could use anselms argument to "prove" any idea you happened to have no matter how fanciful."

The argument presented in this video is the modal ontological argument, which is a completely different argument than the classic argument from Anselm.  That you seem incapable of distinguishing the two is quite disturbing.  Regardless, the subject of this thread is Anselm's argument.  If you want to discuss the modal ontological argument, I suggest you create a separate thread for it.

It represents the latest philosophical thought on the ontological argument first developed by Anselm. Why wouldn't you discuss the latest? Anyway, I don't really care one way or another. Hadn't intended on defending either iteration -- just trying to help since most people here don't understand it and the video helps.

(October 25, 2017 at 8:02 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote:

(October 25, 2017 at 9:31 am)SteveII Wrote: As I pointed out in the other thread, you are changing the term 'greatest' to 'good and bad' so you can use it in a moral sense (and declare it incoherent) when GCB Theology uses it in a qualitative sense. It is greater to be omnipotent than not. It is greater to be omniscient than not. It is greater to be morally perfect than not.

No, I am not.  This is a misinterpretation of my argument.  If you had pointed out your misunderstanding of my argument in the other thread, I did not see it.  Regardless, I mean the terms good and bad to apply in a qualitative sense, and nothing in my argument turns on interpreting them in the moral sense in order to declare them incoherent.  That last bit appears to be solely the product of your own imagination.  As I pointed out in that thread, the term 'greater' in the sense of "better than" is a wholly subjective assessment.  Objective reality does not have any "better than" relationships; things just are or are not.

Since we were discussing whether or not being morally perfect is "better than" being morally imperfect, I will continue with that alleged great-making quality.

In order to exhibit virtue, one must be tempted to do wrong, and instead choose to do good.  That is a necessary part of being virtuous.  As you claim in the other thread, a morally perfect God can do no wrong.  Moreover, since he's omniscient, he knows that he can and will do no wrong, so he is never tempted by the option of doing wrong.  In other words, God is constitutionally incapable of being virtuous.  (Also, he's incapable of knowing what the experience of being virtuous feels like, as the best he can muster is the sort of vicarious experience such as a parent may feel at watching their son score a touchdown.  He doesn't actually know the experience of it.  So this by itself means that God is not omniscient.  But that's a subject for another day....)  So God cannot be virtuous.  Suppose I value the experience of being virtuous, made possible by my moral imperfection, over whatever advantages being morally perfect may offer?  Do you have any objective grounds why I should not want a life of virtue over a life without this experience?  No, you cannot.  The best you can say is that you consider being morally perfect better than the ability to live virtuously.  But that's just your subjective assessment of the relative desirability of the two options.  Desires or preferences for one thing over another are always subjective, and so can't form the basis for a greatest conceivable being, because all you mean by that phrase is whatever some subjective assessment considers the most desirable.  Desires aren't objective facts.  Only objective facts can ground a 'greatest' conceivable being, and there are no objective facts pertaining to what is or is not greatest.

As I noted in the other thread, objective reality cares not one whit whether you are morally perfect or not.  You may say that according to your assessment, moral perfection is more desirable than moral imperfection.  But your desires are not binding upon reality.  I can come along and say that I prefer moral imperfection to moral imperfection, and the best you can say is that you feel otherwise.  Your preference for moral perfection is not an objective fact.

Let's examine the word 'better' to see why this is.  Merriam-Webster defines better as:


1 :greater than half - for the better part of an hour
2 :improved in health or mental attitude - feeling better
3 :more attractive, favorable, or commendable - in better circumstances
4 :more advantageous or effective - a better solution
5 :improved in accuracy or performance - building a better engine


The relative senses of the word are numbers 3, 4, and 5.  Number 3 is clearly pertaining to matters of subjective assessment, so it is unproblematic to dispense with that as a potential objective ground for ranking one thing over another thing.  Number 4 seems superficially to offer the potential for objectively grounding such relationships, but this is an illusion.  Something is more advantageous or effective for a given purpose or goal.  A screwdriver is more advantageous than a hammer for screwing in screws, but a hammer is more effective at pounding in nails.  Which one is "better than" the other depends upon what I want to achieve with it.  The choice of what I want to do with it is purely a personal, subjective decision.  I may choose to hammer in nails rather than screwing in screws, and there is no objective basis for saying that my choice is right or wrong.  It simply is 'my choice'.  So as we can see, the meaning of better is subjective, through and through.  A greatest conceivable being must be objectively great, but there is no such creature to be found in "better than" relationships; only subjective assessments and personal choices.  There is no objective ground upon which to base the judgement that any one thing is "better than" another thing.  All you've got is subjectivity.

You think "greater" is subjective because you are confusing the fact that God is the greatest concievable being with our descerning what properties a GCB must possess. These are not the same thing and the former does not depend on the latter. A debate about what properties are great-making does not imply that there is no objective truth about the matter. In his debates and Q&As, WLC uses the example of Timelessness. Is it greater to be timeless or in time? That is not clear to us. But that does not imply that there are no great-making properties or that the concept of a CGB is subjective. 

It could be the case that some properties are not great-making on their own, but are a result of or linked to or limited by some other property. For example, omniscience does not entail knowing all things because there are some propositions not possible to know (like knowing what virtuous feel like). A limit imposed by a superseding great-making property. So, it makes no sense to ask is it greater to have experienced virtue than not--because it is not a logical possibility. 

'Conceivable' is metaphysically the same as 'possible'. Not 'imaginable'. 

For the above reasons, God would have objectively great-making properties regardless of our ability to discern them. In fact, only God is capable of conceiving the complete set of great-making properties.  They would still apply if we existed or not, so to hang coherence on whether we can conceive of them just does not make sense.

If you don't value actual life, what do you value?

Well..I value human life.   You value a magic book.....so?