RE: The Ontological Argument for the Existence of God
December 12, 2015 at 7:16 pm
(This post was last modified: December 12, 2015 at 7:25 pm by athrock.)
(December 12, 2015 at 6:22 pm)Rhythm Wrote: You're absolutely right. I've got you completely wrong and/or confused...continue -not- defending your arguments, and -not- abandoning them, lol. In fact, you can show me up right now...do the one thing necessarry to make the ontological argument stick..and to hell with form or structure, just to make it easier. Demonstrate the veracity of it's propositions.
Well, okay...I'll try. But let me clear: I don't know whether this argument holds water or not. Like I said in the OP, I just heard about it. And I'm just repeating what I've read because you asked me to...not because I'm an expert on this. So, you'll have to do more than simply dice me up; my inability to articulate or defend something I'm barely familiar with is not proof that the argument itself fails. Failure in this situation may be due entirely to shortcomings of the one making the argument!
Let's start with the first premise. It seems intuitive that a maximally great being might possibly exist. In order for its existence to be impossible, it must be logically incoherent...like the idea of a married bachelor. But proponents claim that there is nothing logically incoherent about the idea of a maximally great being. Are they right? If not, I don't see why they're wrong.
As a side note, it just occurred to me that we might argue that there is no such thing as a cat that glows in the dark. However, scientists are experimenting with genetic manipulation that will introduce the "glowing" ability of other species (fish?) into the DNA of cats. So, the possibility of glowing cats is real, even though until recently we would have said that we'd never seen one or that there is no experiential evidence that one exists. Bottom line? What is possible and what actually exists are two different things. Similarly, we not have seen a maximally great being (yet), but that is not the same as saying that it is impossible for one to exist.
Moving on, it seems to follow that a being which is not merely "great" but is "maximally great" must be one which has certain characteristics, and these would be the "omni's" that are commonly referenced by theists when speaking of God: omnipresent, omniscient, etc.
To repeat, even though we don't know of an actual maximally great being, it does not follow from what may simply be our ignorance that one does not exist...or at least there is no reason for us to conclude that one cannot possibly exist. IOW, in the absence of logical incoherence, we must say that it is at least possible that a maximally great being exists. Which is all that premise (1) says.
Your thoughts so far?
(December 12, 2015 at 7:15 pm)mh.brewer Wrote:(December 12, 2015 at 6:15 pm)athrock Wrote: The link took me to "FreeSpace a blog by Timothy Sandefur" who was talking about his adopted brother being killed by the terrorists in San Bernadino...
What did I miss?
Not speaking for Cato but try this:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ontolo...#ObjOntArg
Thanks. I will start working through that tonight. (It runs 22 pages hard-copy.)
