(December 15, 2015 at 6:08 pm)Jenny A Wrote:(December 15, 2015 at 5:51 pm)Delicate Wrote: That sounds like an older formulation. It's been formulated to be even stronger in a modal version called the modal ontological argument.Oh goody!
Seriously, if there is a better formulation, let see it. Please provide definitions for any words not used in a colloquial way.
Actually it is a little technical because it relies on modal logic concepts like possibility and necessity, as well as the S5 axiom.
Here are the two definitions Plantinga starts with
[*]A being is maximally excellent in a world W if and only if it is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect in W; and
[*]A being is maximally great in a world W if and only if it is maximally excellent in every possible world.
Given these two definitions, the argument is constructed:
1. The concept of a maximally great being is self-consistent.
2. If 1, then there is at least one logically possible world in which a maximally great being exists.
3. Therefore, there is at least one logically possible world in which a maximally great being exists.
4. If a maximally great being exists in one logically possible world, it exists in every logically possible world.
5. Therefore, a maximally great being (that is, God) exists in every logically possible world.
From a formal-logical analysis, everything is consistent. There aren't any "holes" in the argument.
Instead, most atheists who have a problem with it question P4 because it reliexs on the S5 modal axiom. Which, oddly enough, is something atheist philosophers are quite comfortable with outside this context.
