The Kalam Cosmological Argument

[The Grand Nudger]

While I broadly agree, is decay the right word here, mightn't we say moral "evolution"? I realise of course if you start with the notion the morality offered is perfect, then yes decay might be the right word, but that surely is subjective. Personally I'd take the morality of 21st century democracies over that of patriarchal Bedouin societies, but this is also subjective.

I'm not making a comment on any moral system they offered perfect or otherwise - but on the decay of christianity as an institution which did, at least once, try to realize a rational christianity.  It is difficult to look at the christian field today and think "here are people very concerned about whether their faith can be logically argued".

Plantinga argues that an entity possesses maximal excellence if, and only if it is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect. This is interesting for a couple of reasons, as again morally perfect would firstly be subjective, and secondly its existence does not reflect objective reality, Epicurus argued effectively against the existence of a such a deity centuries before humans created the Christian religion. 

It would be much easier to demonstrate a subjectively maximally great whatsit of whatever, and the argument would ofc work the exact same way if we were to replace the two contentions for each other.   

I am of course dubious that you can define or argue something into existence. Suppose we use his argument but don't posit a deity, but a different entity like a powerful wizard, or even a perfectly cruel or evil entity, does the argument lose anything?

As am I.  

The argument works the same way for all mechanically equivalent objects - as all logical arguments do (or are believed to do....).   The key quality at least with respect to how the argument works is not "godness" - though I'm sure a committed nutball would flail around to argue otherwise.  This type of argument works on necessity in possible worlds semantics.  So..if the powerful wizard is possibly necessary - sure.

This is probably why the argument and in fact all arguments of it's kind lend themselves so well to reductions to the absurd.