(June 19, 2016 at 10:49 am)KevinM1 Wrote: I take issue with the concept of god being necessary. The video posted above highlights the absurdity of it - following the structure of the argument you can claim that anything is possible and possibly necessary without support. I think giant space faring whales who shoot Skittles out of their blowholes are possible and possibly necessary. Therefore they're necessary. Therefore it exists.
Do you see the absurdity? You can't just pull anything out of your ass, apply modal logic to it, and then say "Ta da!" You still need to demonstrate that these creatures aren't just possible, but that they're possibly necessary. Ultimately, you can't logic something into existence.
You are correct that the argument hangs on the concept of necessary. The opposite of necessary is contingent. Since being contingent on something is a defect it would not be considered maximally great to be contingent. A maximally great being would be a necessary being because it could not be contingent on another (then that would be a greater being).
You can dream up all the parodies you like but you have to answer the question of why whatever example is necessary rather than contingent.
