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The Ontological Argument - valid or debunked?
#12
RE: The Ontological Argument - valid or debunked?
(June 18, 2016 at 7:58 pm)Irrational Wrote: The flaw is with premise 1. The others are fine.

Not so much: a lot of the other premises are predicated on existence being a requisite for maximal greatness, something that the argument never justifies. Now, I'm sure it's Craig's personal opinion that existence is necessary for maximal greatness, and that's super convenient for him, but I wasn't aware we all just had to play along with Craig's subjective idea of what constitutes greatness.

The big problem, though, is that "maximally great being," isn't a logically coherent concept, and is in fact, logically impossible, because "greatness" is not a quality with an upper bound. Any extant purported "maximally great being," could have the title taken from it by an imagined being that's identical, except slightly more great than the being under examination, and since we've abandoned objective evidence in favor of logical arguments to take the ontological argument seriously at all, it's no less a valid point that premise one is. So basically, any "maximally great being" ceases to be so the moment it's objectively real and, hence, quantifiable.

I know I've posted this before, but it really does sum up the eminent ridiculousness of the ontological argument:

[Image: 20130730.png]
"YOU take the hard look in the mirror. You are everything that is wrong with this world. The only thing important to you, is you." - ronedee

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RE: The Ontological Argument - valid or debunked? - by Esquilax - June 18, 2016 at 11:35 pm

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