Why ontological arguments are illogical
August 2, 2012 at 7:47 pm
(This post was last modified: August 2, 2012 at 7:49 pm by liam.)
The ontological argument has always been doubted due to its general 'being dumb'ness but there is a real betrayal of logic and reasoning occurring in all of the examples of the ontological argument. The main one that I focused on was that in Descartes' meditations on first philosophy meditation threee, and thus Anselm's ontological argument.
The argument, for those who dont know it, is effectively:
God is the most perfect thing ever
A thing is more perfect if it is real
Therefore God is real
The issues that are applicable to this are:
- God is not necessarily perfect
- God is imagined to be perfect
- Reality doesn't make something more perfect (real rape/murder/assault is less perfect that fantastical rape/murder/assault, ergo reality =/= perfection)
- A thing does, however, have to be real in order to be perfect, but this is a circle if applied to this argument
-'God is perfect' implies God is flawlessly 'good' which cannot be logically or empirically proven so we have no real premises
But what I really wanted to throw in here is the idea of any ontological argument, namely that they always make some assumption on the ontological existence of God, this is completely circular as this is tantamount to saying:
'God exists and is perfect', yet this requires existence in the first place and so demonstrates circular logic as it attempts to prove God exists by first stating that God exists. Derp.
The argument, for those who dont know it, is effectively:
God is the most perfect thing ever
A thing is more perfect if it is real
Therefore God is real
The issues that are applicable to this are:
- God is not necessarily perfect
- God is imagined to be perfect
- Reality doesn't make something more perfect (real rape/murder/assault is less perfect that fantastical rape/murder/assault, ergo reality =/= perfection)
- A thing does, however, have to be real in order to be perfect, but this is a circle if applied to this argument
-'God is perfect' implies God is flawlessly 'good' which cannot be logically or empirically proven so we have no real premises
But what I really wanted to throw in here is the idea of any ontological argument, namely that they always make some assumption on the ontological existence of God, this is completely circular as this is tantamount to saying:
'God exists and is perfect', yet this requires existence in the first place and so demonstrates circular logic as it attempts to prove God exists by first stating that God exists. Derp.
Religion is an attempt to answer the philosophical questions of the unphilosophical man.