Why ontological arguments are illogical

[CliveStaples]

'Better' isn't a necessary component of perfection either. I can imagine something perfect and I can think that it'd be 'better' if this thing never exists.

Can you give an example? Simply stating that you can imagine it doesn't mean that it's logically possible; I could state, "I can imagine a square circle." That doesn't prove that square circles are logically possible.

Immoral perfection (perfect immorality) is a 'kind of perfection' as well. So if your imagined god is required to have every kind of perfection, then he should be perfectly moral and immoral at the same time.

No, I don't think immoral perfection constitutes a "perfection" in the sense that the ontological arguments offer--at least, not Leibnizian ones.

But I might be wrong. Can you show that, under some definition of 'perfection' given by some noteworthy ontological argument (i.e., not one you just made up), God would have to possess "immoral perfection"?

I was referring to the terms you couched it in.

But I've never written or made an ontological argument. You need to refer to the terms that Plantinga (modal ontological argument), Leibniz, et al. couch their arguments in.

The definition itself is tailor-made for self-refutation, since mutually exclusive and contradictory properties come under the umbrella of "all".

In Leibnizian terminology, no perfection is ever mutually exclusive with or contradictory to another perfection. Thus the conjunction of every such "perfection" is trivially logically possible.

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The ontological argument is one of the silliest. I really don't understand why theists seem to think it's so compelling.

In effect, it defines a god into existence by claiming that existence is just one more attribute that a deity can have. But in reality, if a deity does not have existence, it has no other attributes either. So, we are still left with demonstrating that this deity actually exists.

Superman does not have existence (in the sense that there is no real Kryptonian corresponding to Superman), and yet he has the following properties:

1) Can fly faster than a speeding bullet;
2) More powerful than a locomotive;
3) Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound

There are 3 ways that something can be said to exist;

1. as a concept of language
2. as a concept of mind
3. in reality

It seems to me that the ontological argument is speaking of a concept of mind, but is trying to apply it to reality. This seems to be an equivocation.

But there are things that exist in multiple ways at the same time; New York exists in reality and as a concept of mind (I can think of New York). Ontological arguments attempt to show that God must necessarily exist in reality and not merely as a concept of mind.

I don't see any equivocation there.