RE: What do you think of this argument for God?
March 6, 2017 at 8:01 pm
(This post was last modified: March 6, 2017 at 8:05 pm by SuperSentient.)
(March 6, 2017 at 7:34 pm)SteveII Wrote:(March 6, 2017 at 6:22 pm)TheAtheologian Wrote: Why should we start from what the human mind can conceive?
The human mind is not the problem. Using 'possible' creates a couple of problems.
Defining God as the greatest possible being is not the definition of God. How do you define what is 'possible'? Since it is not clear that God would necessarily exist from premise 1, you you have an unsupported assertion in 2.
The whole argument hinges on greatest conceivable (maximally great) being concept and it is a greater to exist in all possible worlds than one possible world. Premise 3 requires understanding of S5 Modal Logic. Substituting "possible" does not allow you to bridge the argument from 2 to 3 because you need it to be necessarily so.
True, God is the postulated to be the greatest possible being in theistic thinking, but this argument fails to demonstrate neccessity and what this being is.
As for the ontological argument you mentioned, the greatest conceivable being is no better since that relies on epistemic possibility rather than metaphysical possibility. Also, how do you define 'greater'? It suffers from the same problem as the "possibility" argument, that would be, How do you define what is 'conceivable'? I cannot conceive a being that is outside space-time, immaterial, and omnipresent at the same time, therefore the monotheist concept of God doesn't count in this argument, since it is inconceivable. Being conceivable is dependent upon experience and knowledge.
I fail to see any more success in that argument.
Hail Satan! 
