The Ontological Argument - valid or debunked?

[Veritas_Vincit]

In the simplest terms, this is what William Lane Craig and exponents of the Ontological Argument are trying to do with God:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djV11Xbc914

[Neo-Scholastic]

Proving Yahweh is just so easy, as demonstrated by his many proofs.

Step 1: Blah blah blah
Step 2: Blah blah blah
Step 3: Therefore Jesus. 

Where "blah blah blah" means all the stuff you don't want or try to understand. Skeptics just work like this:

Step 1: Misrepresent Chistrian theology
Step 2: Argue against straw man.
Step 3: Relish ignorance.

[Cyberman]

Step 4: Therefore Jesus.

[Veritas_Vincit]

Proving Yahweh is just so easy, as demonstrated by his many proofs.

Step 1: Blah blah blah
Step 2: Blah blah blah
Step 3: Therefore Jesus. 

Where "blah blah blah" means all the stuff you don't want or try to understand. Skeptics just work like this:

Step 1: Misrepresent Chistrian theology
Step 2: Argue against straw man.
Step 3: Relish ignorance.

Step 1: Read the Bible from an un-indoctrinated perspective. 
Step 2: Read that God explicitly instructs people to commit child sacrifice, enslave each other, kill homosexuals, adulterers, unbelievers, witches, wizards, women who aren't virgins on their wedding night, to commit genocide against neighboring tribes and peoples, to take sex slaves as spoils of war. Read further that in the New Testament Jesus repeatedly says that all of the Old Testament laws still stand and must be upheld.
Step 3: Read the part where God exterminates the world's population of humans and land animals on a scale that puts Rwanda and the Final Solution to shame. 
Step 4: Hear some Christian apologist have the nerve to tell you that this God is moral and the source of all that is good and just.
Step 5: Laugh out loud but feel slightly indignant at having your intelligence so blatantly insulted. Wonder if they are actually serious. 
Step 6: Hear Christians claim to know better than the scientific community and continually misrepresent established science make absurd claims about the nature of the universe. 
Step 7: Roll eyes and worry for the future of civilization.
Step 8: Point out that all of the apologetic arguments for the existence of God have been repeatedly and exhaustively refuted and debunked. 
Step 9: Point out the logical fallacies and unmet burden of proof undermining their metaphysical claims.
Step 10: Realise that they aren't actually interested in truth, they only care about reinforcing their pre-existing belief system for emotional reasons, blinded to the fact that they have compartmentalised their irrational theological beliefs away from any logical and reason and empirical critique. 
Step 11: Hope that one day they will come to a point where just asserting a belief system isn't good enough and doesn't satisfy them and that they start to want to know what is actually true about the world in which they live.

[Whateverist]

In the simplest terms, this is what William Lane Craig and exponents of the Ontological Argument are trying to do with God:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djV11Xbc914

So you're saying God really does exist but is stuck between the covers of the bible .. but you can help Him out of there with the power of love?  Yuck .. just threw up a little in my mouth.

[Angrboda]

What makes a specific property objectively great?  If properties are objectively great or objectively bad, then you should be able to tell me what makes any specific property great or bad.  But as I noted with Chad, properties do not form an ordered set from bad to good.  You cannot rank any one property as being better or worse to possess except by subjective opinion.  Therefore you can't rank necessarily existing as being better or worse than any other property aside from personal preference.

It does not matter what we discern to be a great making property--that would be subjective. As Anselm put it: by definition, there cannot be anything greater than God. You might object what is the purpose of defining God this way if we don't know what it means. Well, depending on your purposes in discerning what God is like, you can look at scripture or natural theology (or both) as a kind of control.

What I object to is not that an MGB cannot be constructed in practice, but that an MGB cannot be constructed in principle. Let us suppose that we have a possible world populated only by demons. Things that you might postulate as great making they might postulate as bad making. Evil preferred to good. No necessarily existing good God. Certainly no omnipotent overlord. Demons just want to have fun. There is nothing that makes 'good' necessarily greater than evil. It is neutral, outside of itself. So it wouldn't be a great making property, it would just be an optional, accidental element. Incorporating 'good' into the description of an MGB would just be arbitrary. So there's no objective reason an MGB would have this or any other property. All properties are metaphysically neutral. No one property is any 'greater' than any other. So an MGB would not necessarily have any particular set of properties. That's the crux of the matter. Not that an MGB would be subjective, but that no set of properties -- no properties at all -- are inherently good or bad. If no particular property is either good or bad -- they're neutral -- what sense can one make of a maximally great being? It makes no sense. It can't be defined because real properties are neither good nor bad. Great making properties form an empty set. It's not that greatest is inscrutable because of our subjectivity, it's incoherent because there is no such thing as objectively greatest.

Why?  Because you think a maximally great being would have that property?  You're still just tacking on 'exists necessarily' to a list of arbitrary attributes.  A maximally great being is not like a mathematical equation except in the sense that it cannot be coherently and objectively defined, as some math equations are.  1/0=3 is simply undefined because you cannot divide by zero.  It is neither true nor false, it is simply not defined to have a value.  Simply asserting that a maximally great being must be metaphysically necessary is nothing more than you stating your preference that, if you were a great being, you would desire to be metaphysically necessary.  And the question is why?  What is it about existing necessarily that makes it desirable?  Is it an objective feature of necessarily existing that makes it desirable?

I would be interested to hear your thoughts on Plantinga's defense of his formulation (from wikipedia): The conclusion relies on a form of modal axiom S5, which states that if something is possibly true, then its possibility is necessary (it is possibly true in all worlds). Plantinga's version of S5 suggests that "To say that p is possibly necessarily true is to say that, with regard to one world, it is true at all worlds; but in that case it is true at all worlds, and so it is simply necessary."

I think it's a form of begging the question. Once you define something, anything, as necessarily existing, then unless it is logically contradictory, you are declaring that it exists. Modal logic here is simply dressing up the assertion that an MGB would by definition be necessary. As noted, because of the problem that great making properties don't exist as such, one cannot assert that a great being would have this or that great making property. The assignation of properties then becomes merely arbitrary assertion. As stated, making that particular arbitrary assertion is tantamount to claiming the entity exists and thus begs the question.

[Edwardo Piet]

But what does it mean, to you, to exist in a possible world?

It means we exist in a world that is possible.

[Edwardo Piet]

There's hundreds of proofs for yahweh. Only the most fundie atheist would deny them all.

http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/GodProof.htm

OMFG hilarious perfection!

I LOVEEEE how they gradually get more and more ridiculous and silly and hilarious.

ETA:

ARGUMENT FROM POSSIBLE WORLDS
(1) If things had been different, then things would be different.
(2) That would be bad.
(3) Therefore, God exists.

And here is basically what it's like 24/7 here on AF when we're debating theists:

ARGUMENT FROM ARGUMENTATION
(1) God exists.
(2) [Atheist's counterargument]
(3) Yes he does.
(4) [Atheist's counterargument]
(5) Yes he does!
(6) [Atheist's counterargument]
(7) YES HE DOES!!!
(8) [Atheist gives up and goes home.]
(9) Therefore, God exists.

Oh look, Chadwooters caught in action:

ARGUMENT FROM EXHAUSTION (abridged)
(1) Do you agree with the utterly trivial proposition X?
(2) Atheist: of course.
(3) How about the slightly modified proposition X'?
(4) Atheist: Um, no, not really.
(5) Good. Since we agree, how about Y? Is that true?
(6) Atheist: No! And I didn't agree with X'!
(7) With the truths of these clearly established, surely you agree that Z is true as well?
(8) Atheist: No. So far I have only agreed with X! Where is this going, anyway?
(9) I'm glad we all agree.....
....
(37) So now we have used propositions X, X', Y, Y', Z, Z', P, P', Q and Q' to arrive at the obviously valid point R. Agreed?
(38) Atheist: Like I said, so far I've only agreed with X. Where is this going?
....
(81) So we now conclude from this that propositions L'', L''' and J'' are true. Agreed?
(82) I HAVEN'T AGREED WITH ANYTHING YOU'VE SAID SINCE X! WHERE IS THIS GOING?
....
(177) ...and it follows that proposition HRV, SHQ'' and BTU' are all obviously valid. Agreed?
(178) [Atheist either faints from overwork or leaves in disgust.]
(179) Therefore, God exists.

[Edwardo Piet]

In the simplest terms, this is what William Lane Craig and exponents of the Ontological Argument are trying to do with God:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djV11Xbc914

You bastard! I used to like that song!

[Edwardo Piet]

Your objection is similar to Kant’s when he said that “a hundred actual thalers do not contain the least coin more than a hundred possible thalers”.

Well he's wrong there if he's talking about merely possible thalers. A hundred actual thalers contain exactly a hundred more thalers than a hundred merely possible thalers.