Continuing my threads on the more classic arguments for God's existence, I figured I pick y'alls brains on the various ontological arguments, but moreso on Alvin Plantinga's since theists tend to push his nowadays.
Plantinga's argument essentially uses the possible worlds concept and says that if God (the maximally great being or MGB) exists in any possible world, as the MCB, He must therefore exist in all of them including the actual world.
I don't have any real knowledge of formal logic and since Plantinga is a well-respected philosopher (I'm told), I would presume the argument is structurally valid. However, I've seen some people claim that it is invalid because of the particular logical framework it uses (axiom S5). I've heard that on the argument's 3rd premise, it begs the question because in that particular framework to say that something is 'possibly necessary true' equates to being 'actually necessarily true' (hope I got that right). Is this objection to the argument legit?
Secondly, what of the objection that the argument can be used to establish the existence of a "maximally evil being"? If you call that being a god, apologists tend to throw up a smokescreen of "A God by definition must be worthy of worship and thus can't be evil".
Anyway, if the just flip "omnibenevolence" to "omnimalevolence", the argument seems to work the same, but then you've got a seeming contradiction with two omnipotent beings existing.
So, what exactly are the problems with Plantinga's formulation? Other than denying the 1st premise anyway. :p
Plantinga's argument essentially uses the possible worlds concept and says that if God (the maximally great being or MGB) exists in any possible world, as the MCB, He must therefore exist in all of them including the actual world.
I don't have any real knowledge of formal logic and since Plantinga is a well-respected philosopher (I'm told), I would presume the argument is structurally valid. However, I've seen some people claim that it is invalid because of the particular logical framework it uses (axiom S5). I've heard that on the argument's 3rd premise, it begs the question because in that particular framework to say that something is 'possibly necessary true' equates to being 'actually necessarily true' (hope I got that right). Is this objection to the argument legit?
Secondly, what of the objection that the argument can be used to establish the existence of a "maximally evil being"? If you call that being a god, apologists tend to throw up a smokescreen of "A God by definition must be worthy of worship and thus can't be evil".
Anyway, if the just flip "omnibenevolence" to "omnimalevolence", the argument seems to work the same, but then you've got a seeming contradiction with two omnipotent beings existing.
So, what exactly are the problems with Plantinga's formulation? Other than denying the 1st premise anyway. :p
