Ontological Arguments - A Comprehensive Refutation

[Neo-Scholastic]

…I'm not really familiar with (they seem archaic and have the sound of old forays into metaphysics).

(laughing)Seems my whole life is archaic. My apartment is vintage Art Deco, I write with fountain pens, and still like to play Galaga.

… you're positing something both unnecessary … You seem to merely be saying that there is a substance whose only attribute is to be.

Not exactly. I’m saying that everything in the world is made from the same basic stuff. The property of that stuff is not pure being, but the ability to be anything.

…it must be through some other property it manifests that is observable …But if that is the case, your primal matter becomes an ad hoc ontological commitment for which we can only assume exists, for all we have are the the properties by which it makes its existence known.

That position creates a monster. Now you have a reality consisting of many and varied properties without any binding principle. It makes the plurality of properties fundamental. It is not an assumption; it's a deduction. Big difference.

[MindForgedManacle]

(laughing)Seems my whole life is archaic. My apartment is vintage Art Deco, I write with fountain pens, and still like to play Galaga.

No shame. :p

Not exactly. I’m saying that everything in the world is made from the same basic stuff. The property of that stuff is not pure being, but the ability to be anything.

That's a little waffle to me. The problem is that this doesn't really explain what it means for that fundamental ontological substance to exist. All you're saying is that they exist with the property of potentially expressing that existence, which doesn't make sense as a property (the potential to be other things).

That position creates a monster. Now you have a reality consisting of many and varied properties without any binding principle. It makes the plurality of properties fundamental. It is not an assumption; it's a deduction. Big difference.

Indeed it does, because we have no apparent reason to believe there is something more fundamental. It's not dissimilar to the fact that physics does not define a single, particular substance as the fundamental substance of reality, but a group of them that are the root of expressed properties on 'higher' levels of reality.

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Now Chad, since you say that you accept what I said about modal realism and modal fictionalism, does that mean you reject Plantinga's modal ontological argument?

[Neo-Scholastic]

I haven't studied Plating's modal ontological argument enough to say one way or the other. And I don't care to. My knowledge is far to limited to know whether certain whole realities are actually possible or just possibly possible. :-)

[Rabb Allah]

You actually just supported monism, great job