(6 hours ago)Modern Atheism Wrote: There is a thread about the modal ontological argument, but not about the classical one. Here is the original ontological argument as formulated by Sain Anselm:
When you first read this, something about it immediatly feels wrong to me. Instead of an argument, it feels more like some kind of semantic trick like the Missing dollar riddle. However, it can be deceptively difficult to tell exactly what is wrong about it.
- By definition, God is the greatest being that can be conceived of.
- But if God did not exist in reality, we could imagine a being that had all the other properties of God but that also existed in reality, and this being would be greater than God.
- Since God is the greatest being that can be conceived of, this is impossible.
- Therefore, God must exist in reality.
A line of response is to parody the argument and refute it by reductio ab absurdum. You can claim, for example, that the maximally greatest pizza must exist, because otherwise we would be able to imagine an even greater pizza: one which existed in reality in addition to being maximally great. Some apologist try to claim that the concept of a maximally great pizza is incoherent, but they use very dumb reasons to do so. For example, they say that a maximally great pizza would have an infinite size, but at this point it cannot be eaten so it does not count as food, and so on.
I would also say that you just cant just define something into existence. If the mere definition of something implies that it exists, then you really can't use this definition in an argument to prove its existence. That would be circular logic.
(Bold mine)
There’s nothing ‘deceptively difficult’ - it’s absurdly simply: when your premise is defined as your conclusion, the argument is vacuous. /fin
Boru
‘I can’t be having with this.’ - Esmeralda Weatherwax
