Terrible Atheist Argument #1

[MindForgedManacle]

[Vincenzo Vinny G.]

[MindForgedManacle]

Well, with me 'knows something about this' is more like 'has a fuzzy recollection of something like this, maybe'. :p A philosophy-centric forum may generate better informed folk on this topic. I recommend this one: http://onlinephilosophyclub.com/forums, since I go there every once in a while.

Anyhow, it isn't a flaw with modal logic per se, just in a particular application of it. As I said in my last post, it can't be assumed as metaphysically possible as the basis of a premise alone. That's why people have tried to prepend supporting arguments for the first premise. Logical systems are made to be used certain ways, and transgressing the intentions of their usages will likely make issues like these inevitably crop up.

[Vincenzo Vinny G.]

I'm curious as to whether this view you hold is held by anyone else. Did you think of it yourself, or did you find it in your reading?

[MindForgedManacle]

No, I didn't come up with this. I remember first coming across it by the uploader of those 2 YouTube videos I posted, and in a blog post by a graduate philosophy student on it
(http://www.uncrediblehallq.net/2011/12/1...fway-good/). I later went through Plantinga's original paper on his MOA and he seemed to conclude with what the aforementioned people did: The his argument alone cannot establish it's conclusion:

But obviously this isn't a proof; no one who didn't already accept the conclusion, would accept the first premise. The ontological argument we've been examining isn't just like this one, of course, but it must be conceded that not everyone who understands and reflects on its central premise -- that the existence of a maximally great being is possible -- will accept it. Still, it is evident, I think, that there is nothing contrary to reason or irrational in accepting this premise. What I claim for this argument, therefore, is that it establishes, not the truth of theism, but its rational acceptability. And hence it accomplishes at least one of the aims of the tradition of natural theology.

I disagree, but his paper seems to contain a few instances where he references this problem of it only working if you can establish the first premise outside of this argument.