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I was recently exposed to the ontological argument for God in my Philosophy class, and it intrigued me. The general form of the argument, as presented by St. Anselm, is as follows:
1. God is the greatest conceivable being.
2. It is possible for God to exist as a real being or as an imaginary being.
3. Something that could exist as a real being but only exists as an imaginary being could be greater if it existed as a real being.
4. If God exists only as an imaginary being, then there is a being that could be greater by existing in the real sense.
5. Because God is the greatest conceivable being, then God cannot be imaginary.
6. God exists.
Now, I think its fairly obvious that there is something wrong with this argument. However, reading responses such as Guanilo's Island and Kant's critiques, I have not yet seen anything that sufficiently shows where the fallacy lies. Now, I'm pretty new to this stuff (and kinda dumb ;P) so I was wondering what some of the smarter people here thought. My approach to this is:
The argument does not actually prove that God has necessary existence because the premises do not actually lead to the conclusion "God exists." Rather, they lead to the conclusion that "To be God, one must exist" or "If there was a God, that God would necessarily exist."
So, what do you all think? Does the ontological argument work, or can you find the issue with it? Does my critique work, or is there something wrong with it too?
Please, no religious debate, this is not about the existence of God, just the ontological argument.
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United States43900 Posts
It doesn't work because the starting premise is that God exists. You need to assume that God exists to prove he does. Great for believers but logically lacking.
Dragons are the most dragonlike thing imaginable.
However an imaginary dragon would be less capable of hoarding real treasure than a real dragon.
Therefore a real dragon would be more dragonlike than an imagined one.
Therefore dragons by definition must be existing things because if they didn't exist they'd be less dragonlike than hypothetical existing dragons.
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So if the greatest conceivable being in the universe is an ultralisk should we call him God?
just because I can conceive of something doesn't mean it exists.
If God is a natural being or acts upon the natural world in an all powerful manner than God is directly tied to everything and we are all apart of God. God operates only through natural laws with us.(There would be a physical manifestation of him.
If God is purely a supernatural being than we know nothing of God and will never know God until we transcend into his supernatural realm.
God in the sense of religious context appears ridiculous. An all powerful being does not need to be worshiped. There is no such thing as a jealous God because if you're God then what's there to be jealous of?
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United States43900 Posts
God is imagined to be the greatest concievable being.
For his greatness to be maximal he would have to exist.
Therefore God is imagined to be an existing being.
That's not the same as saying God exists.
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think of God in the argument as a variable. substitute it with any other word and the argument is still valid. the fallacy is in the argument itself because it is redefining God with one attribute in order to make the argument work so all it is essentially proving is something exists which has nothing greater than it and calls it God.
like i said replace it with any other word and the argument still works.
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The base case is poorly defined and the inductive step is flawed since the imaginary and real fields are not properly explained yet an inequality is established.
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1. God is the greatest conceivable being.
True by definition
2. It is possible for God to exist as a real being or as an imaginary being.
Also true, albeit only the second operand to the 'or' part. There is no basis for god being possible as a real being unless you factor in the limitations of conception of such a case in point 1.
3. Something that could exist as a real being but only exists as an imaginary being could be greater if it existed as a real being.
Imagination is not bound to the laws of nature. If an imagination outside of these bounds is to be a representation of god, then how can you fathom god to exist for real? I could agree here if our entire knowledge brought forth by scientific measuring and deduction is brought to a pause at least for the context of god's existence.
4. If God exists only as an imaginary being, then there is a being that could be greater by existing in the real sense.
Implied by point 3, see my remarks there.
5. Because God is the greatest conceivable being, then God cannot be imaginary.
By this reasoning, if point 3 is not valid, if god cannot be imaginary then it cannot be real either.
6. God exists.
Deduction from point 5 and 3, but I don't think point 3 has a strong basis.
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Kwark: the starting premise is not that god exists for real, but at the very least in some people's imagination. Well... depending on the interpretation of point 2.
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I think the biggest problem is with
"3. Something that could exist as a real being but only exists as an imaginary being could be greater if it existed as a real being."
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I think the best way to counter the ontological argument for God is to simply disagree with premise 2 - that a god of the nature described is possible.
This also allows you to counter more complex ontological arguments, such as the one below.
+ Show Spoiler +
# It is proposed that a being has maximal excellence in a given possible world W if and only if it is omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good in W; and
# It is proposed that a being has maximal greatness if it has maximal excellence in every possible world.
# Maximal greatness is possibly exemplified. That is, it is possible that there be a being that has maximal greatness. (Premise)
# Therefore, possibly it is necessarily true that an omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good being exists.
# Therefore, it is necessarily true that an omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good being exists. (By S5)
# Therefore, an omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good being exists
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The basic reality lying behind the wordplay in this sort of stuff is that logic never proves anything. It only explains or guides. Even if the argumentation were valid, which it is patently not because it's just a word trick; it would only be grounds for examining the evidence of God's existence, rather than evidence itself.
Although I confess this sort of thing would be REALLY hard to dissolve in front of rabid religionists back in the day. Kwark's deconstruction of the argument is clearly sufficient for anyone rational but seeing as it is not exactly aligned to the mathematical, logical form, it might be refuted by people with no common sense who want an exact refutation using only the terms provided.
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I only read the title but every ontological argument for God in philosophy is stupid.
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United States43900 Posts
On April 06 2010 05:17 zulu_nation8 wrote:
I only read the title but every ontological argument for God in philosophy is stupid.
This is a valid question. He phrased it knowing it was stupid but asking how exactly. There's a period of a few minutes in everyone's life where they consider the ontological argument and can't quite see what's wrong with it.
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Holy shit....just....holy shit.
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If you're asking what's wrong the argument, then on first glance I would say nothing, it's logically sound. However it looks like the conclusion is actually "God is a real being". And that's not the same as "God exists."
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"Greatness" is used with all the looseness of someone wanting to self-convince. A real thing is "greater" than an imaginary one? What kind of statement is that? Sounds pretty sloppy to me.
And as pointed out, point 1 already postulates God to exist if the following arguments are sound, since your definition (1) requires your conclusion (6). In other words, to say _blank_ is the greatest conceivable being directly means (if 2-5 are valid) that _blank_ exists. So maybe replace blank by flying spaghetti monster?
But this from the mind of an atheist, can't say I'm not biased O_O...
zulu: so if you add the argument "an existing being is greater than a real one" you'd be convinced?
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United States43900 Posts
On April 06 2010 05:40 Pseudo_Utopia wrote:
"Greatness" is used with all the looseness of someone wanting to self-convince. A real thing is "greater" than an imaginary one? What kind of statement is that? Sounds pretty sloppy to me.
And as pointed out, point 1 already postulates God to exist if the following arguments are sound, since your definition (1) requires your conclusion (6). In other words, to say _blank_ is the greatest conceivable being directly means (if 2-5 are valid) that _blank_ exists. So maybe replace blank by flying spaghetti monster?
But this from the mind of an atheist, can't say I'm not biased O_O...
zulu: so if you add the argument "an existing being is greater than a real one" you'd be convinced?
They're tricky words. Something can be defined as being real, hard, strong etc without existing. To return to my dragon example, the concept of a dragon is of a real animal, they're not etheral, they're big dangerous things that are real enough to eat you. The concept doesn't have an existance but the dragon does if that makes sense. Within the concept the dragon is defined as being real in the same way that it's defined as being big or strong. But the concept itself has no substance.
The same can be applied to God. Any definition of God has to include real as well as omnipotent and all loving because otherwise he wouldn't be much good at the godding stuff. But that doesn't mean the concept has any reality within our world, just that reality is part of the definition within the concept.
The whole 'greater than' happens within the definition of God. The question of whether the concept you've defined is actually real is outside that. It's like concentric circles. The inner circle deals with the definition of the subject whereas the outer one deals with the nature of the concept. The concept of God can be defined as a real being without the concept itself being real because the nature of the concept is separated from the definition of the subject.
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they're trying to prove god exists by playing with words? the english language? come on..
I got one. I can prove a hamburger is better than gold (pretend gold is like the best thing in the world), using the fact if a>b and b>c then a>c:
1) a burger is better than nothing
2) nothing is better than gold
3) therefore a burger is better than gold
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United States22883 Posts
Aside from what KwarK pointed out, it's also unsound because of #3. If we're playing by foundational logic, you can't assume real > imaginary.
A more interesting step is to say that because it is possible for God to exist, in another possible world God does exist. Because God is omni-blahblahblah, if God exists in one possible world, God must exist in all possible worlds.
That one's unsound as well, it's just not as obvious when you write out the logic.
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this whole thing seems like a tautology to me..
if there was a greatest being, he would exist, because existing is a great thing to do.
if there isn't a greatest being, that's ok too.
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Also, prove statement (1). How can you be sure God is the greatest conceivable being? What if everything in the universe is equally great? Somehow God is arbitrarily assigned the rank of greatest being.
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EPT
