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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 States42175 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 States42175 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 States42175 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 States42175 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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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 States42175 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
