(August 2, 2012 at 7:47 pm)liam Wrote: 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
Most ontological arguments define 'God' to be 'that which is the most perfect thing', or 'that which possesses all perfections', or something of the like. Are you claiming that the most perfect thing is not perfect?
Quote:- God is imagined to be perfect
See above. In many of these arguments, 'God' is merely a name for 'that which possesses all perfections' or something of the like.
Quote:- Reality doesn't make something more perfect (real rape/murder/assault is less perfect that fantastical rape/murder/assault, ergo reality =/= perfection)
That reality doesn't make everything more perfect does not demonstrate that reality doesn't many anything more perfect. It might be that reality is a necessary property of complete perfection, but that there are certain things which are worse if made real.
Quote:- A thing does, however, have to be real in order to be perfect, but this is a circle if applied to this argument
Where is the circle? Can you explain this more?
Quote:-'God is perfect' implies God is flawlessly 'good' which cannot be logically or empirically proven so we have no real premises
This doesn't make sense. If "God is perfect" implies "God is flawlessly 'good'", then if "God is perfect" is true, then "God is flawlessly 'good'" is true, and hence if "God is perfect" can be logically proved, then "God is flawlessly 'good'" can be logically proved.
But "God is perfect" is tautological if "God" is defined to be "that which possesses all perfections".
Quote: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.
No, it's not saying "God exists and is perfect; therefore, God exists." It's saying, "God is perfect; therefore, God exists."
To paraphrase Alvin Plantinga, once a logical argument is understood, the premise can be seen as tantamount to the conclusion. If I can show that "x is divisible by 4" implies "x is divisible by 2", you might object "But assuming that x is divisible by 4 assumes that x is divisible by 2!" And, once you've seen the proof that 4|x -> 2|x, you'd agree. But this isn't a circular argument; it's valid deduction.
What the argument truly shows--if the argument works--is that perfection entails existence.
“The truth of our faith becomes a matter of ridicule among the infidels if any Catholic, not gifted with the necessary scientific learning, presents as dogma what scientific scrutiny shows to be false.”
