The Ontological Argument for the Existence of God

[Cato]

In other words, you have no evidence that it's an unsound argument?

The veracity of its premises cannot be demonstrated; therefore, the argument is unsound. This has been demonstrated repeatedly.

[Angrboda]

It would be nice if, instead of 100 people making 200 feeble objections to the ontological argument, there could be one, singular, comprehensive refutation that would convince people the ontological argument was fallacious.

Can someone come up with something like that? That would help.

Whole books have been written on it and you want it tied up nicely with a bow? How special. The ontological argument is notorious for being persuasive to people who already believe, and unpersuasive to those who don't. Guess which side of that divide you fall on? All your complaining about the lack of a definitive refutation does is demonstrate that you are no less biased than anyone else. You are basically blind to your own biases. Welcome to the human condition. We all are. Now if you could use that knowledge to actually understand the situation, that would be nice. But I don't expect it....

[Delicate]

It would be nice if, instead of 100 people making 200 feeble objections to the ontological argument, there could be one, singular, comprehensive refutation that would convince people the ontological argument was fallacious.

Can someone come up with something like that? That would help.

It would be nice if, instead of 40,000 Christian denominations making a myriad of different unsupported claims based on a single source, there could be one, singular, comprehensive display of evidence that would convince people that god was real.

Can someone come up with something like that? That would help.

It's in a book called "Mere Christianity." It's been around for several decades.

You're welcome.

In other words, you have no evidence that it's an unsound argument?

The veracity of its premises cannot be demonstrated; therefore, the argument is unsound. This has been demonstrated repeatedly.

These repeated demonstrations would be wrong.

The criteria for accepting a premise is not that it can be demonstrated. Lots of premises are taken to be true that are either not demonstrated, or impossible to demonstrate. Rather, the criteria for accepting a premise is whether it, or its negation has some evidence or justification to support its truth or falsehood.

The classic example of a premise that we take to be true without demonstration are regularities in nature.

Eg, take the claim "The sun will rise tomorrow." This cannot be demonstrated. If you believe it, it's because you rely on inductive inference as the justification for your belief.

Bottom line: Demonstration is not the criteria for assenting to a premise. Thus you don't have a successful refutation here.

[God of Mr. Hanky]

It would be nice if, instead of 100 people making 200 feeble objections to the ontological argument, there could be one, singular, comprehensive refutation that would convince people the ontological argument was fallacious.

Can someone come up with something like that? That would help.

Puh-leeeze, stop pretending you have the slightest interest in refuting any argument for your imaginary friend.

The reason you see these unwelcome (to you) objections to the ontological argument is that we have two eyes, we understand how logic works, and we see the fallacy in it. I'd be happy to see one theist's argument which doesn't cheat, even though that would not stand alone without evidence. Maybe this is because you cannot have an argument which doesn't cheat (become fallacious) without empirical evidence in support of your claim.

[Angrboda]

The premises must be accepted as sound or you don't have a successful argument. That sword cuts both ways.

[Whateverist]

It would be nice if, instead of 100 people making 200 feeble objections to the ontological argument, there could be one, singular, comprehensive refutation that would convince people the ontological argument was fallacious.

Can someone come up with something like that? That would help.

Whole books have been written on it and you want it tied up nicely with a bow?  How special.  The ontological argument is notorious for being persuasive to people who already believe, and unpersuasive to those who don't.  Guess which side of that divide you fall on?  All your complaining about the lack of a definitive refutation does is demonstrate that you are no less biased than anyone else.  You are basically blind to your own biases.  Welcome to the human condition.  We all are.  Now if you could use that knowledge to actually understand the situation, that would be nice.  But I don't expect it....

I think he just wants a resolution as complete and satisfying as he has found his unthinking belief in the God of his fathers to be.  What I hear Delicate saying is that when you can meet that standard, then your refutation will merit his attention.  Until then he recommends you leave the field of discourse in defeat, go back to church and beg God's forgivenss.  About as reasonable as everything else he's had to say.

[Cato]

Eg, take the claim "The sun will rise tomorrow." This cannot be demonstrated. If you believe it, it's because you rely on inductive inference as the justification for your belief.

Bottom line: Demonstration is not the criteria for assenting to a premise. Thus you don't have a successful refutation here.

Pointing at the uncertainty of a prognostication does not relieve you of the responsibility of demonstrating the veracity of your premises if you want the argument to be sound. This is simply idiotic.

I find it hilarious that your inability to justify the veracity of your premises suddenly morphs into the problem of induction. You went from not being able to provide one example of a particular to support your claim to whining about not creating a universal based on a shitload of demonstrated particulars. You really have no fucking idea what you are saying. And yet you run around these forums lambasting its members for a lack of intellectual standing and inability to think critically.

[Esquilax]

These repeated demonstrations would be wrong.

The criteria for accepting a premise is not that it can be demonstrated. Lots of premises are taken to be true that are either not demonstrated, or impossible to demonstrate. Rather, the criteria for accepting a premise is whether it, or its negation has some evidence or justification to support its truth or falsehood.

The classic example of a premise that we take to be true without demonstration are regularities in nature.

Eg, take the claim "The sun will rise tomorrow." This cannot be demonstrated. If you believe it, it's because you rely on inductive inference as the justification for your belief.

Bottom line: Demonstration is not the criteria for assenting to a premise. Thus you don't have a successful refutation here.

Except that the claim that the sun will rise tomorrow has some demonstration: it has evidence backing it up, observations of past mornings where that has happened, and a mechanical understanding of how the sun "rises" from our perspective, what causes that to happen, and thus a good reason to believe that it will continue to do so. It's a probabilistic inference, but crucially, it is that way because it's derived from actual objective evidence and not logic alone.

Meanwhile, you have no such evidence at all for the ontological argument. There is nothing there to base an inference on, just logical premises that may or may not be sound, we have no way of knowing. That's the problem.

[God of Mr. Hanky]

It would be nice if, instead of 100 people making 200 feeble objections to the ontological argument, there could be one, singular, comprehensive refutation that would convince people the ontological argument was fallacious.

Can someone come up with something like that? That would help.

Puh-leeeze, stop pretending you have the slightest interest in refuting any argument for your imaginary friend.

The reason you see these unwelcome (to you) objections to the ontological argument is that we have two eyes, we understand how logic works, and we see the fallacy in it. This has already been pointed out ad nauseum, you cannot cheat the logic of scientific possibility by substituting in statistical probability without getting your ass kicked out of the science arena. Unlike statistical math, science doesn't pre-quantify possibilities, therefore this insult to science for an argument fails with the second statement.

I'd be happy to see one theist's argument which doesn't cheat, even though that would not stand alone without evidence. Maybe this is because you cannot have an argument which doesn't cheat (become fallacious) without empirical evidence in support of your claim.

[Delicate]

These repeated demonstrations would be wrong.

The criteria for accepting a premise is not that it can be demonstrated. Lots of premises are taken to be true that are either not demonstrated, or impossible to demonstrate. Rather, the criteria for accepting a premise is whether it, or its negation has some evidence or justification to support its truth or falsehood.

The classic example of a premise that we take to be true without demonstration are regularities in nature.

Eg, take the claim "The sun will rise tomorrow." This cannot be demonstrated. If you believe it, it's because you rely on inductive inference as the justification for your belief.

Bottom line: Demonstration is not the criteria for assenting to a premise. Thus you don't have a successful refutation here.

Except that the claim that the sun will rise tomorrow has some demonstration: it has evidence backing it up, observations of past mornings where that has happened, and a mechanical understanding of how the sun "rises" from our perspective, what causes that to happen, and thus a good reason to believe that it will continue to do so. It's a probabilistic inference, but crucially, it is that way because it's derived from actual objective evidence and not logic alone.

Meanwhile, you have no such evidence at all for the ontological argument. There is nothing there to base an inference on, just logical premises that may or may not be sound, we have no way of knowing. That's the problem.

Strictly speaking, the sun rising every morning in the past, is not a demonstration that it will rise tomorrow.

Very often we see cases of apparent regularities fall through, such as where someone who drinks coffee with sugar for a decade suddenly switches to artificial sweeteners. You can have a decade's worth of demonstrations, observations and the mechanics of putting sugar in coffee, and the next day the person will still switch to artificial sweetener.

Are you going to say you've demonstrated that this person will drink coffee with sugar for the rest of their lives? Clearly not. Only an atheist apologist would be so desperate to salvage such an obviously false position.

Instead, we appeal to non-demonstrative bases to justify accepting premises. This is what we do when we accept a premise like "Brown is in Barcelona" even when you cannot directly demonstrate that Brown is in Barcelona, but you have other reasons for believing he is.

With demonstration refuted, I think we can agree that if we want to talk about refuting the OA, we have to look elsewhere. 

Whole books have been written on it and you want it tied up nicely with a bow?  How special.  The ontological argument is notorious for being persuasive to people who already believe, and unpersuasive to those who don't.  Guess which side of that divide you fall on?  All your complaining about the lack of a definitive refutation does is demonstrate that you are no less biased than anyone else.  You are basically blind to your own biases.  Welcome to the human condition.  We all are.  Now if you could use that knowledge to actually understand the situation, that would be nice.  But I don't expect it....

I think he just wants a resolution as complete and satisfying as he has found his unthinking belief in the God of his fathers to be.  What I hear Delicate saying is that when you can meet that standard, then your refutation will merit his attention.  Until then he recommends you leave the field of discourse in defeat, go back to church and beg God's forgivenss.  About as reasonable as everything else he's had to say.

You're being dishonest, Whateverist.

Eg, take the claim "The sun will rise tomorrow." This cannot be demonstrated. If you believe it, it's because you rely on inductive inference as the justification for your belief.

Bottom line: Demonstration is not the criteria for assenting to a premise. Thus you don't have a successful refutation here.

Pointing at the uncertainty of a prognostication does not relieve you of the responsibility of demonstrating the veracity of your premises if you want the argument to be sound. This is simply idiotic.

I find it hilarious that your inability to justify the veracity of your premises suddenly morphs into the problem of induction. You went from not being able to provide one example of a particular to support your claim to whining about not creating a universal based on a shitload of demonstrated particulars. You really have no fucking idea what you are saying. And yet you run around these forums lambasting its members for a lack of intellectual standing and inability to think critically.

I've noticed a correlation between the emotive rhetoric in a post, and the lack of comprehension in it. Your post being a prime example.

You fail to comprehend that what I'm pointing to is not "the uncertainty of prognostication", but the fact that we are justified in holding to premises in the absence of demonstration, and thus demonstration is not necessary to accept a premise. 

Hence your appeal to demonstration fails.

Eat a snickers, buddy.