The Ontological Argument for the Existence of God

[Cyberman]

Well, it exists in all Universes, so probably yes.

[Silver]

No, this is not an argument for the existence of god. You're welcome.

[Jenny A]

The idea that omnipotent contains a contradiction is a canard introduced by uneducated youtube atheists, the bane of intelligent discussion everywhere.

I think you need a little education on the definition of a canard.  A canard is a unfounded rumor or story not an unfounded argument.  Nor was the argument that an omnipotent being creates inherent contradictions created by young modern atheists.  It goes all the way back at least as far as C. D. Broad who died in 1971. Not that it matters.  1 + 1 is still 2 even if an idiot says so.

Omnipotence does not include logical contradictions. The moment you ask an omnipotent being to do something logically incoherent, whatever the answer is becomes incoherent, because you've failed to preserve logical structure in your concepts. So, minimally to have meaningful discussions, we constrain omnipotence to that which is logically possible. There's nothing contradictory there.

Therein lies the problem.  If you have to take the definition and then constrain it to the logically possible, you are admitting that the bare definition is not logically possible.   Okay, so omnipotence is limited to the logically possible. So which is it?  Can God lift everything he creates, or is he so great he create that which he can't lift?  Similarly, can he destroy everything he creates or is he great enough and weak enough to create that which he can't destroy?  It must be one or the other.  But if you can't say which you really don't know what omnipotence is do you?

Likewise with perfect morality, the incoherence you notice is illusory. Professional atheistic philosophers don't really quibble on these issues. What you might imagine as morally perfect in another world different from ours would be a feature of your imagination, your moral intuition. Or perhaps the moral intuition of peoples and societies in that other world. They could be mistaken, just as we could be mistaken. None of this rules out the possibility of moral perfection. 

When you can define moral perfection without reference to god's opinion you might have a coherent definition of it. As is, until you can define moral perfection it's a meaningless idea.  And it's subjective meaning will vary depending up the possible world you imagine.

And third, the discussion of possible worlds presumes possible worlds semantics, formalized in a system of modal logic developed first by David Lewis in the 60s or 70s that is almost universally accepted today. (youtube animated presentation). So what you should be asking is not whether something can be maximally excellent in every world you imagine, but whether it's possible for something to be maximally excellent in every possible world.

Again, maximally excellent (excellent?, I thought we were talking about great or perhaps greatest actuality)  is not a well defined term and there are certainly possible worlds in which no being can be the best at all things.  I think we live in one of them.

So which of your objections survive now? Refine your objections and get back to me.

Done that.  Response?

[RobbyPants]

If I did, it wasn't intentional. But I think what I wrote still makes sense.

You used it in the moral sense by comparing it to evil, and then as "greatness", which is more of an adjective of power or splendor.

Even still, there's no reason to believe that a maximally great being must exist in all possible worlds. You first would have to define what possible worlds are and prove they exist. Then, you'd have to prove that what is "maximally great" in world A is also of maximal greatness in world B.

As long as it is not self-contradictory. The classic "Can God make a square circle" argument comes to mind.

Well, the problem is, you already limited it by asserting it has to exist in all possible worlds. These types of notions are self-contradictory because of square circle and rock-to-heavy-to-lift problems.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Since none of you have a clue about how to interpret the term ‘maximally great being’ your objections to the ontological argument are just noise.

“… Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble and the like. But "more" and "less" are predicated of different things, according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum…so that there is something which is truest, something best, something noblest and, consequently, something which is uttermost being; for those things that are greatest in truth are greatest in being, as it is written in Metaph. ii. Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus…– Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Article 3

Here is my favorite example, one I suggested earlier. The notion of perfection is based on how completely something instantiates an ideal form. For example, a yield sign, three dots on a paper, and a piece of spanakopita all, to various degrees embody the idea of a triangle. Anyone can see that some instances of triangles are better examples than others. The worse examples are those that most lacking with respect to triangularity.

Since I quoted Aquinas, I must mention that he did not consider the ontological argument as formulated by Anslem false per se; but rather incomplete. The argument assumes that everyone already knows that God is the maximally great being. Even in Aquinas’s time, people knew that many people had very different ideas about the nature of God and not all of them included maximally great.

Like Anslem, Plantinga takes it for granted that everyone knows that the maximally great being is God. If the God is not the maximally great being then the argument fails as a ‘proof’ for God. However it does show that a maximally great being does exist to the extent that moderate realism is true. So most likely way to refute the ontological argument is to undermine moderate realism, but I’m not going to help any of you along.

[Pizza]

There is no argument needed Chad. You argument is just noise if you don't deal with the problem of anthropomorphism. Because it's self-evident that anthropomorphic god is not the greatness being imaginable.

[Whateverist]

Since none of you have a clue about how to interpret the term ‘maximally great being’ your objections to the ontological argument are just noise.

But aren't you assuming there is a sensible way to interpret ‘maximally great being’ which will have the persuasive force you think it will?  More likely, there isn't.

[Delicate]

The idea that omnipotent contains a contradiction is a canard introduced by uneducated youtube atheists, the bane of intelligent discussion everywhere.

I think you need a little education on the definition of a canard.  A canard is a unfounded rumor or story not an unfounded argument.  Nor was the argument that an omnipotent being creates inherent contradictions created by young modern atheists.  It goes all the way back at least as far as  C. D. Broad who died in 1971.  Not that it matters.   1 + 1 is still 2 even if an idiot says so.

Omnipotence does not include logical contradictions. The moment you ask an omnipotent being to do something logically incoherent, whatever the answer is becomes incoherent, because you've failed to preserve logical structure in your concepts. So, minimally to have meaningful discussions, we constrain omnipotence to that which is logically possible. There's nothing contradictory there.

Therein lies the problem.  If you have to take the definition and then constrain it to the logically possible, you are admitting that the bare definition is not logically possible.   Okay, so omnipotence is limited to the logically possible. So which is it?  Can God lift everything he creates, or is he so great he create that which he can't lift?  Similarly, can he destroy everything he creates or is he great enough and weak enough to create that which he can't destroy?  It must be one or the other.  But if you can't say which you really don't know what omnipotence is do you?

Likewise with perfect morality, the incoherence you notice is illusory. Professional atheistic philosophers don't really quibble on these issues. What you might imagine as morally perfect in another world different from ours would be a feature of your imagination, your moral intuition. Or perhaps the moral intuition of peoples and societies in that other world. They could be mistaken, just as we could be mistaken. None of this rules out the possibility of moral perfection. 

When you can define moral perfection without reference to god's opinion you might have a coherent definition of it. As is, until you can define moral perfection it's a meaningless idea.  And it's subjective meaning will vary depending up the possible world you imagine.

And third, the discussion of possible worlds presumes possible worlds semantics, formalized in a system of modal logic developed first by David Lewis in the 60s or 70s that is almost universally accepted today. (youtube animated presentation). So what you should be asking is not whether something can be maximally excellent in every world you imagine, but whether it's possible for something to be maximally excellent in every possible world.

Again, maximally excellent (excellent?, I thought we were talking about great or perhaps greatest actuality)  is not a well defined term and there are certainly possible worlds in which no being can be the best at all things.  I think we live in one of them.

So which of your objections survive now? Refine your objections and get back to me.

Done that.  Response?

You're not listening.

I'm not constraining the definition of omniscience. I'm constraining the scope of what you can meaningfully ask questions about. You cannot meaningfully ask questions about anything logically incoherent. To my mind, the question of whether God can do logically incoherent things cannot be answered in our domain of discourse. 

You can keep asking it if you like, but the question makes no sense, and thus has no answer.

So where is the problem with omnipotence now? 

Your objection to moral perfection makes no sense either. If you have a separate reason to question the coherence of moral perfection, provide an argument. You can't just assume it's incoherent from the get-go unless you have a reason for it.

And if you paid attention to the argument, you'd notice that there are two notions being discussed by Plantinga, maximal greatness and maximal excellence. 

Now what's left?

[Neo-Scholastic]

Since none of you have a clue about how to interpret the term ‘maximally great being’ your objections to the ontological argument are just noise.

But aren't you assuming there is a sensible way to interpret ‘maximally great being’ which will have the persuasive force you think it will?  More likely, there isn't.

I am assuming that a sensible person must have some understanding of the history of terms use before daring to critique them.

[KevinM1]

Funny how the very act of creation precludes that anthropomorphic creator from being maximally great. An omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect being would be complete in and of itself. It wouldn't need or want to create because there would be nothing in that creation that would benefit it. Deliberate creation stems from want or need, conditions this creator simply wouldn't suffer from.

To mangle a Star Trek quote, "What does god need of humanity?"