Is God possible?

[Mystic]

Alvin Platinga's arguments argues that maximally great being is possible. Furthermore, to be maximally great, it must be that in all worlds. As it must exist in all possible worlds, it exists in this possible world. Therefore God exists.

Another version of the argument is, what is possibly necessarily, is necessarily. It's possible a necessary being exists. Therefore a necessary being exists.

I want to discuss the former argument, mainly the premise "maximally great being is possible".

When we think of praise and greatness, there is two types. There is unearned and earned. Earned in the sense I mean takes assumption that it was possible that such thing not be achieved, but it was achieved through will power.

Maximally great being if proven to must exist, could not have ever been not maximally great.

As it's impossible for it to be otherwise, it didn't achieve it's rank.

The properties of God is mainly that he is the Source of existence and eternally maximally great.

It can be argued that he chooses not to change from being maximally great, but if his character is so good (angel like, infallible like), then this would not be a struggle at all, and thus he doesn't really earn his character.

If he ascends from lower to higher, then he is not maximally great, but is ascending towards absolute greatness.

But what obstacles are in his way? What choices is he making and struggling with?

Counter argument: you are comparing creation unearned praise with creation earned praise and applying to the Creator who cannot be compared.

The problem is that while this is true, there is no way but to apply our concept of greatness and praise, to any concept of praise and greatness we come up with.

To state the Creator cannot be analyzed with our conception of greatness implies we shouldn't attribute greatness and assume all sorts of properties of him.

Counter argument: We been given a unique knowledge of God's greatness which is unearned yet greater then earned greatness.

This seems to be special pleading and it seems like we don't have such knowledge because when we think of the unearned and earned dilemma with regards to God, his greatness seems not so great.

It seems rather we tend to sideline the fact he didn't earn his character.

Counter argument: It's possible we been given knowledge that the Creator is the greatest an Eternal non-changing being can be, as opposed to what a finite changing being can be.

I agree this knowledge has not been proven impossible, but if that being is not more worthy than reverence of an honorable human, then it's not worthy of worship, hence not a God.

[CleanShavenJesus]

Alvin Platinga's arguments argues that maximally great being is possible. Furthermore, to be maximally great, it must be that in all worlds. As it must exist in all possible worlds, it exists in this possible world. Therefore God exists.

This argument dismisses everything that God is known to be. This omnipotent, omniscient entity that is somehow everywhere and nowhere at once. He listens to 2.1 billion people's prayers and has time to perform a couple of hundred miracles every day...and also doesn't have the time to do anything for the poor, dying Christian children in deprived areas. He supposedly is in control of everything.

Just from what we know about...everything, really, it's physically impossible for something like that to exist.

[Something completely different]

What is impossible?

[Mystic]

What is impossible?

Paradoxical concepts.

[Angrboda]

This argument resembles a similar argument that God is incapable of being virtuous. ("Can An Ancient Argument Of Carneades On Cardinal Virtues And Divine Attributes Be Used To Disprove The Existence Of God?", Douglas Walton, The Impossibility Of God, M. Martin, R. Monnier, ed.; see also the similarly named by Martin & Rennier)


That being said, if you wish my continued participation in this thread, you must first teach me modal logic, or at least the S5 variant.