RE: The Ontological Argument for the Existence of God
December 23, 2015 at 9:42 am
(This post was last modified: December 23, 2015 at 9:52 am by God of Mr. Hanky.)
(December 12, 2015 at 1:37 pm)athrock Wrote: I have never seen this argument before, so I'm interested in some discussion of it. A philosopher by the name of Alvin Plantinga states it this way:
The Ontological Argument
1. It is possible that a maximally great being exists.
Yes, however dubious.
Quote:2. If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists is some possible world
1. Anything is a possibility when you don't know the facts. When people believed that the thunder was caused by the god Thor hitting the sky with his hammer, this was a legitimate possibility to them in their culture. The fact that we know better in our culture today does not mean the facts are any different. The possibility based on ignorance has changed, but not the possibility based on fact (e.g., the number of blue(ish) balls orbiting the sun). Possibility based on ignorance is always undefined, while possibility based on fact is a finite number.
2. You cannot do math without factual data regarding your possibility. You can do math to calculate the probability that known objects will occur in a random sample (possibility based on fact), but you cannot apply this to an undefined possibility based on ignorance, such as how many, if any blue balls or gods exist in the whole big, ugly jar (universe). Math isn't magic, and the only way to obtain data on unknowns is through observation.
3. This argument presumes to be doing just that, as if Plantinga can and did do a calculation for the probability of an unknown variable (substituting the possibility based on ignorance for the missing possibility based on fact), and this is Failure 1!
4. The second fallacious presumption in this statement is that anything is known about other universes, much less how many others exist, if there really are any others. There is a finite number of stars in our universe, and there is no good reason to believe that the number of other universes would be infinite. If so, then it's conceivable that this may vindicate Plantinga on Failure 1, but since he has rightly earned Failure 1 by making presumptions of the unknown, and the construct of infinity is logically too ridiculous to consider, Failure 2!
No need to go any further down this logical rabbit hole!
You would laugh so f***ing hard if you saw how I struggled trying to work my way through math calculations while in school, and I'm not any sharper with that today. Still, this stinking fallacy didn't fool me - so what the hell is wrong with those who go with it?
Mr. Hanky loves you!
