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the basic train of thought in the ontological argument is this:
1. god is the greatest conceivable being
2. it is better to exist than not to exist
3. if god is the greatest conceivable being than god must exist because he is the greatest
4.god exists
the fallacy in in the ontological argument is that existence is just slapped on to the argument as some definable quality. it's not like you can be sure that existing is better than not. there is no basis from which the existence premise can be proven to be true. all in the all the argument has a hollow feeling to it because the whole argument from premises to conclusion are all based in reason. following the argument any person could conclude they they themselves are god because they can't imagine a greater being that exists.
have you read the cosmological argument? it makes much more sense
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these people are right, the only thing that makes number 6 true, is that it was a term defined in number 1. so by his definition, yes god exists. but god is not necessarily a supernatural overseer that answers prayers and experiments with a race of humans. god, by his definition, could be an ultralisk. this is why you learn that there cannot be a philosophical argument proving the existence of this type of god because you can never agree on what "god" is. it's too ambiguous with far too many interpretations.
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#1 The argument is completely flawed because like KwarK said, the first step assumes god exists.
#2 If you do believe this, then why is there so much evil in the world for god TO exist? Horrible evils happening every day in the world with people starving and killing each other and natural disasters and all that balony. If there really was a god...why would he allow THIS much evil? This argument really dumbfounded me.
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The argument ther the existence of evil negates the existence of God is flawed because the existence of evil is very often not contradictory to the existence of whatever god a religion believes in. In example, if you have ever read the Christian bible you will easily see that the god that Christians accept and believe to be their creator and master of the universe is not merciful nor a pacifist. This applies to all the Abrahamic religions which I see this emotional argument being used against with 0 effectiveness.
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United States43617 Posts
On April 06 2010 06:46 onewingedmoogle wrote:
the basic train of thought in the ontological argument is this:
1. god is the greatest conceivable being
2. it is better to exist than not to exist
3. if god is the greatest conceivable being than god must exist because he is the greatest
4.god exists
the fallacy in in the ontological argument is that existence is just slapped on to the argument as some definable quality. it's not like you can be sure that existing is better than not. there is no basis from which the existence premise can be proven to be true. all in the all the argument has a hollow feeling to it because the whole argument from premises to conclusion are all based in reason. following the argument any person could conclude they they themselves are god because they can't imagine a greater being that exists.
have you read the cosmological argument? it makes much more sense
Not really. The assumption that order requires purpose is flawed in a great many ways.
Firstly, humans as products of that 'order' are hardly unbiased observers. We arose in the conditions necessary for us to arise and therefore look upon the world and see that things are the way they should be. Should circumstances have been completely different something completely different could have appeared and would again find the world ordered by their different standards. The entire concept of order is false and subject to an inherent bias.
Secondly, the assumption that order requires design is contrary to the nature of the universe to progress towards order. The laws of physics are universal and the repeated interaction of matter obeying the same rules optimises and stabilises everything over time. When everything is conforming to the same rules it will appear ordered, for example the way galaxies tend to be swirls, but that doesn't mean they were created by the same guy with a swirl fixation.
Thirdly, the miraculous planet fallacy. Earth is so lucky that it required a creator to build it. This is a ridiculous fallacy because Earth has to have already been lucky to be judged, it's like saying 100% of people interviewed after winning the lottery are lottery winners, what a coincidence. It's not miraculous that mankind happened to live on the one habitable planet because we didn't happen to live here. It was habitable through probability, the same probability that created millions of uninhabitable planets, and we weren't lucky to evolve on the habitable one, the process wouldn't have happened on any other.
It reminds me in some ways of the statistical impossibility that your grandparents produced you. Think about how many sperm and eggs produced in their lifetimes. They just happened to have sex when the correct sperm and eggs were both present and your parents' sperm, of the millions, were the ones that made it. To use the same fallacy as the miraculous planet, it's statistically impossible that you exist. And yet everyone you meet is the same miracle and it gets more miraculous with every generation you look back.
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kwark, nice job. you articulated precisely what i wanted to say
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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.
This is where the argument stops to follow reason. An imaginary being is in a sense real too, it is just the plane of existence that is different. Furthermore he assumes that something "real" has to be greater than something "imagined" but he provides no explanations for this. He values existence outside of your head greater than existence inside of your head without anything to base that on.
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On April 06 2010 07:20 koreasilver wrote:
The argument ther the existence of evil negates the existence of God is flawed because the existence of evil is very often not contradictory to the existence of whatever god a religion believes in. In example, if you have ever read the Christian bible you will easily see that the god that Christians accept and believe to be their creator and master of the universe is not merciful nor a pacifist. This applies to all the Abrahamic religions which I see this emotional argument being used against with 0 effectiveness.
this is true; however, zaphod_smithh does point out something important, which may not be immediately obvious to everyone, simply because they never had to deal with it. i.e. you hear about all the terrible terrible things that happen to great people, but it doesn't really register until it strikes, say, your immediate family. at least it didn't for me. now that it did, and now that i have experienced things i would much rather have not (and still am very much struggling with accepting it), i can honestly say if god exists he can go fuck himself because he's a douche. if hell is the eternal absence of god (that's one of the ways i've seen it defined, in contrast to dante's inferno or w/e) then it sounds like a pretty spiffy place to be in, tbh.
of course this isn't entirely relevant to the "does god exist?" argument, but at least it solved the problem for me, once and for all.
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I like how this moved from the ontological argument for God to the 'Problem of Evil and Benevolence'. Logically, Kwark's point is the fallacy in the argument.
Like most of the other arguments (cosmological, teleological), the problem of many gods also arises.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
even without the usual responses, ie vagueness of greatness and "existence is not a predicate," the argument only establishes two things. the greatest thing is god. the greatest thing has the property of existing.
however, as we know from set theory, the sup of a set is pretty dependent on the actual set, it's not an arbitrary "greatest." so the greatest thing that exists is not necessarily the same as the greatest thing evar aka the god of the ontological argument.
edit: op's version of the ontological argument is not the classic one. this particular one just wildly says "existing imaginary being" without bother defending the notion. you can't really do that.
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I disagree that the value 'great' is a scientific measurement.
Also the entire rest of the argument is total bunk as well.
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On April 06 2010 06:41 buhhy wrote:
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.
Statement 1 isn't a premise, it's merely the definition. You can't have a proof without defining what it is you're trying to prove. To say God is the greatest conceivable being is not to say that such a being does or does not exist, it's merely stating what exactly it is that is being discussed. There are many problems with Anselm's ontological argument, some of which have been mentioned in this thread, but (1) is just the definition of God that Anselm is discussing, as one could have a different definition.
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1. God is the greatest conceivable being.
2. It is possible for God to play zerg, protoss, or terran.
3. Something that could play zerg but only plays protoss or terran could be greater if it played zerg.
4. If God plays protoss or terran, then there is a being that could be greater by playing zerg.
5. Because God is the greatest conceivable being, then God cannot play protoss or terran.
6. kekeke.
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On April 06 2010 04:46 DeathSpank wrote:
So if the greatest conceivable being in the universe is an ultralisk should we call him God?
Yes.
I would bow down to him. Haha.
But yeah. I agree. The biggest assumption here is that God exists before you even start the proof, so it's sounds extremely counter intuitive.
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On April 06 2010 08:18 REDBLUEGREEN wrote:
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.
This is where the argument stops to follow reason. An imaginary being is in a sense real too, it is just the plane of existence that is different. Furthermore he assumes that something "real" has to be greater than something "imagined" but he provides no explanations for this. He values existence outside of your head greater than existence inside of your head without anything to base that on.
Your claim that an imaginary being exists in another plane of existence is pretty vague. Anselm is trying to prove that God exists in reality and not merely in the imagination. He doesn't say anything about whether or not existence in the imagination is non-existence; that depends on what you define non-existence as which is irrelevant to this argument.
The greatness that Anselm refers to is quantitative and not qualitative. Greater simply means more than, not better than i.e. 5 is greater 2. If something exists in reality, it also exists in the imagination and thus is greater than something that exists only in the imagination.
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There are strong observances through reason and logic for a god to exist metaphysically. God being defined as the laws of Nature, and not a personification of the human specimen. From a purely logical basis the Ontological statement is true, in that if you define God as the greatest being, then god must exist, for there is a greatest being. Now, I would have better liked the Ontological argument if they pre-faced it with analytical reasoning.
That said, I myself am a Kantian Ontologist and Deist. There are absolutes in this world, and we can determine them through reason and logic.
Now, that being said, I really hate when you mention God and people automatically assume Christianity. >.< Christianity, like every other personified religion is nothing more than Modern Paganism.
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Just noticed the the argument in the OP is not actually a version of Anselm's ontological argument. Anselm's actual argument:
1. God is that-than-which-none-greater-can-be-thought.
2. One can conceive of that-than-which-none-greater-can-be-thought in the mind and thus it exists in the mind.
3. Something that exists in reality is greater than something that exists in the mind.
4. If God exists in the mind, then there is a being that could be greater by existing in reality.
5. If one can conceive of that-than-which-none-greater-can-be-thought as existing in reality, one can conceive of a being greater than the that-than-which-none-greater-can-be-thought, which is absurd.
6. Therefore that-than-which-none-greater-can-be-thought (God) exists in reality.
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On April 06 2010 09:19 reincremate wrote:Show nested quote +On April 06 2010 08:18 REDBLUEGREEN wrote:
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.
This is where the argument stops to follow reason. An imaginary being is in a sense real too, it is just the plane of existence that is different. Furthermore he assumes that something "real" has to be greater than something "imagined" but he provides no explanations for this. He values existence outside of your head greater than existence inside of your head without anything to base that on. Your claim that an imaginary being exists in another plane of existence is pretty vague. Anselm is trying to prove that God exists in reality and not merely in the imagination. He doesn't say anything about whether or not existence in the imagination is non-existence; that depends on what you define non-existence as which is irrelevant to this argument. The greatness that Anselm refers to is quantitative and not qualitative. Greater simply means more than, not better than i.e. 5 is greater 2. If something exists in reality, it also exists in the imagination and thus is greater than something that exists only in the imagination.
Ok that "plane of existence" wording was bad. Ask yourself what a imagination is. An imagination is a thought. What is a thought? Some complex play between electrons and synapses and whatnot in your head. What is a human being? A even more complex interaction between atoms and particles.
An imagination is as real as you are, it is just the scale that makes a difference and hence you could say that nothing of the two is greater than the other one.
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On April 06 2010 09:38 REDBLUEGREEN wrote:Show nested quote +On April 06 2010 09:19 reincremate wrote:On April 06 2010 08:18 REDBLUEGREEN wrote:
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.
This is where the argument stops to follow reason. An imaginary being is in a sense real too, it is just the plane of existence that is different. Furthermore he assumes that something "real" has to be greater than something "imagined" but he provides no explanations for this. He values existence outside of your head greater than existence inside of your head without anything to base that on. Your claim that an imaginary being exists in another plane of existence is pretty vague. Anselm is trying to prove that God exists in reality and not merely in the imagination. He doesn't say anything about whether or not existence in the imagination is non-existence; that depends on what you define non-existence as which is irrelevant to this argument. The greatness that Anselm refers to is quantitative and not qualitative. Greater simply means more than, not better than i.e. 5 is greater 2. If something exists in reality, it also exists in the imagination and thus is greater than something that exists only in the imagination. Ok that "plane of existence" wording was bad. Ask yourself what a imagination is. An imagination is a thought. What is a thought? Some complex play between electrons and synapses and whatnot in your head. What is a human being? A even more complex interaction between atoms and particles. An imagination is as real as you are, it is just the scale that makes a difference and hence you could say that nothing of the two is greater than the other one.
The neuronal networks that comprise your holding of thoughts such as the concept of God in the mind exist physically, but the actual content of the concept doesn't. If I can think of a green flying monkey the thought exists, but the actual monkey doesn't. Anselm is saying if something exists both physically and conceptually, then it is more than merely one of the two.
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Just say no to the cosmological argument. The ontological argument was my favorite in my lower-level philosophy course, because it's comedy gold! 
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EPT
