The Ontological Argument
Offline Of all the God arguments being put forth by theistic philosophers, the ontological argument stands out to me as being the most fascinating. The argument is unique and salient among its class insofar that its existential conclusion, i.e., God has real existence, is inferred without recourse to empirical observation. For many, such an a priori argument is a paradigm example of sophistry and chicanery. After all, how can we acquire new knowledge about the cosmos without first examining its state of affairs? This basic conviction has led many people to not take the argument seriously. At the same time, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly where the argument goes wrong, since, without further justification, the proposition that knowledge can only come from experience seems to be a case of simple prejudice, or more specifically, an exemplary case of question begging. Evidently, refuting the argument requires more than just a mere hand wave; it requires the practice of some good philosophy. My principal goal in writing this essay will consist in providing a greater understanding of the argument’s place in the discourse of metaphysics. First, I shall discuss an early formulation of the argument along with the various critiques that it would eventually become subject to. Secondly, I will attempt to do the same with the more contemporary formulations of the argument. Finally, I shall attempt to argue that, in spite of the dialectical stalemate that is inevitably encountered with regard to the argument’s soundness, the argument can still be perceived as valuable when considered in light of the very reason for which it was originally put forth in the eleventh century; for the believer to better understand his or her own religious convictions. One of the earliest known versions of the argument can be traced back to St. Anselm of Canterbury. Anselm does not present the argument in any formalized way, but instead lays it out in an interpersonal dialogue with God. The dialogue occurs in Chapter 2 of Proslogion, where Anselm states that he understands God to be that than which nothing greater can be conceived. In other words, Anselm, following St. Augustine, understands God to be the exemplar of the fullness of being, the concept of which applies analogously to all that is but which can only apply to God infinitely. Thus, while worldly entities such as people enjoy the greatness of being in limited instances, such as in the instances of possessing limited knowledge or having a limited presence on some region of this planet, it is only God who enjoys being in its plenitude, i.e., possessing unlimited knowledge, unlimited power, omnipresence, etc. As such, it is not metaphysically possible for one to even conceive of a being greater than God. Continuing the dialogue, Anselm makes the following argument: If the atheist (or "Fool," as it states in the Psalms) accepts that the utterance, “that than which nothing greater can be conceived,” constitutes a rightful description of God, then s/he inexorably adheres to a worldview based upon a contradictory postulate. For in granting the consistency of the description, the atheist has accepted that God exists as an abstract object in his or her mind. Furthermore, the atheist must, in order to successfully maintain his or her position, believe that God exists solely in his or her mind. But clearly, the premise that God is not anything more than a thought object is inconsistent with the aforementioned Augustinian conception of God, which, presumably, the atheist has just accepted. For it is, according to Anselm‘s representation of Augustine, greater to exist in reality than it is to exist solely in the mind. Moreover, even as the atheist steadfastly denies that God exists in reality in addition to the mind, s/he will not be hard pressed to acknowledge that God could be thought to exist in reality in addition to the mind. Thus, it becomes clear that the atheist is unable to deny the real existence of God without self-contradiction. In this case, a denial of God's real existence would amount to an affirmation that the being than which nothing greater can be conceived is such that it could be conceived to be greater. I myself would agree that the efficacy of the argument depends strongly upon one’s set of presuppositions. Yet, is it possible to adopt, with no prima facie contradictions, any other worldview where one’s set of presuppositions allows s/he to infer the real existence of an object a priori? I do not believe that there is. This alone makes the argument unique and can help us understand that God, if conceivable at all, would be like nothing else that we can conceive. In essence, I find worth in the argument, not as a dialectical device but as a means of personal reflection. First, as I have just demonstrated, it sheds greater light on the nature of unbelief, showing that the epistemic chasm that exists between unbelievers and God is, indeed, an overall issue of one‘s own universe of discourse, itself not established within the parameters of Humean empiricism. Secondly, despite what Oppy says, it does help us gain a greater understanding of God’s nature, so long as we treat it as I’ve just specified. Then we are not simply proceeding from the premise that God is possible but also from the conclusion that God has real existence, which, in conjunction with the premises and the encompassing worldview, would somewhat elucidate to us just how excellent God really is. Thus, while the argument does not prove anything to anybody, I can still find worth in it. Personal reflections aside, it is equally important to consider that St. Anselm, widely considered to be the pioneer of the argument, did not posit the argument for the purposes of apologetics. Indeed, Anselm does not pretend to operate from a position of neutrality; he makes it very clear from the outset that Christianity is his worldview. This is evident from the very first chapter of Proslogion, where Anselm pleads with God for His self-revelation. As Anselm states: “When will you look upon us, and hear us? When will you enlighten our eyes, and show us your face? When will you restore yourself to us? Look upon us, Lord; hear us, enlighten us, reveal yourself to us (Proslogion, Chapter 1).” As can be seen, it is not Anselm’s thesis that God’s existence can be proven, at least in such a way that an unbeliever may be persuaded. Though Anselm felt obliged to defend his position publicly (as seen in his discussions with Gaunilo), the chief reason for which Anselm wrote Proslogion was to continue seeking the goal which he sought out initially in Monologion; to honor God faithfully with the application of reason, which Anselm believes to be a reflection of God and therefore the basis on which God must be understood by his disciples. Anselm goes on to state: “The believer does not seek to understand, that he may believe, but he believes that he may understand: for unless he believed he would not understand (Proslogion, Chapter 1).” In other words, Anselm submitted to the fundamental Christian tenet that belief in God is only achieved through God’s divine grace. Thus, he did not adhere to a quasi-rationalist viewpoint according to which human beings, when left to their own devices, can come to know God from a blank slate (tabula rasa). However, Anselm does not strictly view the belief in God to be a matter of faith alone, but also as something which can be justified intellectually. And this can be regarded as equally, if not more, important for the believer as it is for the atheist. REFERENCES “The Analytic Theist: An Alvin Plantinga Reader”, edited by James Sennett “Ontological Arguments and Belief in God” by Graham Oppy “Charles Hartshorne and Ontological Arguments” by Eugene Peters “Anselm’s Discovery” by Charles Hartshorne “Saint Anselm’s Proof: A Problem of Reference, Intentional Identity, and Mutual Understanding” by Gyula Klima “Logic and Theism” by Jordan Howard Sobel “The One and the Many” by W. Norris Clarke “The Christian Theology Reader” by Alister McGrath “Reading Anselm’s Proslogion” by Ian Logan “Anselm Revisited” by Robert Shorner “Anselm and the ontological argument” by Brian Davies The argument is a reductio ad absurdum argument, which is an argument that proves its conclusion by demonstrating that the contrary postulate leads to a logical contradiction. As it appears in Chapter 2 of Proslogion, Anselm's argument, albeit not formalized by Anselm himself, may be formalized here in the following way: (1) God is the greatest conceivable being [definition of “God“]. (2) Either the greatest conceivable being is only a thought object or it exists in reality [premise]. (3) Anything which is only a thought object is less great than it would be if it existed in reality [premise]. (4) The greatest conceivable being is only a thought object [assumed premise]. (5) The greatest conceivable being is less great than it would be if it existed in reality [from 3 and 4]. (6) It is not the case that the greatest conceivable being is only a thought object [indirect proof from 4 and 5] . Ironically, one of the first critics of Anselm's argument was not an atheist, but a Christian monk by the name of Gaunilo. In his letter On Behalf of the Fool, Gaunilo argues that simply because we can conceive of something does not mean that we can infer that it exists in reality, no matter how great we conceive it to be. As an example, Gaunilo conceives of an island which can be described as that island than which no greater island can be conceived. By Anselm's logic, this island must exist in reality because any island which exists solely in the mind is less great than it would be if it existed in reality. However, given that this is clearly absurd, Anselm's argument must be absurd as well. At first glance, it appears to be a thoughtful argument on the part of Gaunilo. However, Anselm is alacritous to retort that Gaunilo’s analogical comparison between God and an island is unwarrantable because, while it may be conceivable that there be an island which happens to be greater than all other existing islands, it is utterly inconceivable that there be an island which is such that no greater island can be conceived. For no matter how great one conceives an island to be, s/he can always conceive of one that is greater, simply because the greatness of an island is based upon things which have no intrinsic maximum, e.g., trees, weather, riches, size, and the like. In essence, Gaunilo's rebuttal lacks any cogency because a greatest conceivable island is logically impossible; islands are imperfect by their very nature, from which it follows that to conceive of an island than which no greater island can be conceived would be to contradictorily conceive of something that is both perfect and imperfect. By contrast, God has a degree of greatness which is based upon the category of being, which itself does have an intrinsic maximum. As such, God is not merely the greatest being, but He is the greatest conceivable being. From all of this, it is clear that Gaunilo's objection fails. But this does not mean that Anselm's argument is sound. For it was Immanuel Kant who delivered what many take to be the staunchest objection to the argument. As an interesting footnote, Kant was actually the first person (as far as we know) to refer to the argument as the "ontological argument." Moreover, even though many philosophers consistently invoke Kant as being one of Anselm‘s chief detractors, it is questionable as to whether or not Kant himself was directing this rebuttal towards Anselm specifically. Nevertheless, according to Kant, the central flaw in the inference to God’s real existence from the contents of the idea is the treatment of existence as being something which a subject possesses, i.e., a predicate. To Kant, existence itself is not anything which is added to a concept; it is merely the is of a judgment, which serves to connect a subject to its predicate. As such, the statement "God is" is hardly a statement at all. Instead, it's an incomplete sentence, which, from the perspective of the opposing interlocutor, says nothing meaningful about the idea which it attempts to put forth. For it simply posits the object in relation to whoever is conceiving it, which may be demonstrative of the possibility of the object, but not of its actuality. For Kant, we can never infer the actual from the possible. Otherwise, the currency of a hundred possible dollars would be equal to that of a hundred actual dollars, which is clearly absurd. Therefore, according to Kantians, Anselm's argument may support the possibility of God, but not His actuality. For many, it is taken for granted that Kant soundly defeated Anselm. But is it true? In order for Kant's objection to work against Anselm, it must be established that Anselm somehow had a misconception about the idea of existence. The problem, however, is that it is not so clear that this actually applies to Anselm's argument. Kantians would probably point specifically to the third premise, which states that something existing solely in the mind is less great than it would be if it existed in reality. But it can be argued that what Anselm treats as a predicate here is not existence, but concreteness and/or abstractness. As such, it does not appear that Anselm has any difficulty operating in accordance with Kant’s semantic guideposts; given the set of all that is contained in the concept, concreteness or abstractness would contribute to the cardinality. Thus, once the atheist grants that God is the greatest conceivable being, s/he becomes caught in a self-contradiction; inevitably adhering to the idea that the greatest conceivable being can be, insofar that it is greater to be concrete than it is to be abstract, conceived to be greater than He is. This is true, even if existence is not a predicate. Therefore, Kant's objection fails against Anselm. The failure of Kant's objection notwithstanding, there still remains something unsatisfactory about this formulation of the argument. For it inevitably raises the question: In what sense can we say that a real being is greater than an abstract entity? Thus far, we've only been appealing to intuition, where it seems obvious, for instance, that a hundred dollars in reality is greater than an imaginary hundred dollars. However, there are other scenarios in which this idea becomes counterintuitive. For example, are we equally justified in arguing that the Pythagorean Theorem is qualitatively less great than an amoeba simply on the grounds that the amoeba exists in reality as opposed to the Pythagorean Theorem which is only in the mind? If so, what heuristic not trading upon personal whim could we possibly have implemented in order to arrive at such a conclusion? Even if one argues that the aforementioned measurement of greatness applies only to situations where the greatness of a concrete entity is measured against that of its own concept (for example, if one says that while it is not necessarily true that the Pythagorean Theorem is less great than an amoeba, the real issue is whether or not an abstract Pythagorean Theorem would be less great than a concrete Pythagorean Theorem), the general problem still remains. But in the view of some philosophers, Anselm avoids this problem insofar that in contextualizing his argument with other chapters of Proslogion, the proposition that concrete existence provides additional greatness does not seem to be what Anselm was attempting to defend in the first place. For such an endorsement would admittedly make the argument far less tractable than it ought to be. For some, Anselm’s metric of greatness seems to be more pertinent to the distinction between contingent beings and necessary beings. In essence, the argument itself becomes a practice in what is known as "modal logic." Modal logic is a formal system of logic which provides a convenient way for logicians to make arguments using modal terms such as possibly, contingently, and necessarily. More specifically, modal logic provides a body of axioms and theorems which direct our usage of such terms, allowing us to formulate arguments, such as Anselm's ontological argument, more rigorously. Applying modal logic, it could be stated that something x is possible if and only if there is a possible world where x is instantiated. Likewise, something x is necessary if and only if x is instantiated in every possible world. Finally, something x is contingent if and only if x is instantiated in one or more possible worlds but not every possible world. Applying the aforementioned principles, Anselm’s argument has been subject to revision by contemporary philosophers. This revision has come to be known as the “modal ontological argument.” There are two main versions of this argument whose relative ubiquity shall render them the primary focus of the ensuing discussion. The first version was formalized by Charles Hartshorne and Norman Malcolm. Although Hartshorne and Malcolm did not work together, I shall, for the sake of brevity, discuss both of their arguments in the context of one formulation, given that their respective versions are quite similar to one another. The second version, formalized by Alvin Plantinga, seems to be unique in its own right. The argument formalized by Charles Hartshorne and Norman Malcolm largely reflects what Anselm wrote in Chapter 3 of Proslogion. In it, Anselm puts forward a premise, which, for Hartshorne and Malcolm, constitutes the foundation for the contemporary metaphysical understanding of “necessary” and “contingent”; an individual whose nonexistence is logically impossible is qualitatively greater than one whose nonexistence is logically possible. Thus, in the May 1944 issue of The Philosophical Review, Hartshorne interprets Anselm to be arguing that God, the greatest conceivable being, must be a necessary being because it is greater to be necessary than it is to be contingent. Norman Malcolm, in the January 1960 issue of the very same journal, echoes Hartshorne’s sentiments by positing that if God is understood properly as the greatest conceivable being, then He cannot be understood as having begun to exist nor can He be understood as existing whilst having the potential to not exist because anything which begins to exist or stops existing must be an effect of some cause to which it cannot comparatively be greater. Hence, according to the analyses of both Hartshorne and Malcolm, positing that God is not instantiated in the actual world is tantamount to arguing that, in the worlds where God does exist, there is some being that is qualitatively greater than the greatest conceivable being, which, of course, is a metaphysical impossibility. As such, the structure of the argument gives way to the following exclusive disjunction: Either the existential proposition of God is analytically true or it is logically contradictory. And, according to the argument, since the proposition is not contradictory, it must be analytically true. Hartshorne and Malcolm’s argument can be formalized in the following way: (1) God is the greatest conceivable being [definition of “God”]. (2) The greatest conceivable being is either necessary or impossible or contingent [premise]. (3) The greatest conceivable being is neither impossible nor contingent [premise]. (4) The greatest conceivable being is necessary [from 2 and 3]. (5) The greatest conceivable being exists in all possible worlds [from 4]. ::. God exists in the actual world [from 1 and 5]. Alvin Plantinga formalized what many take to be the most famous modal version of the argument. The principal weakness that Plantinga found in Hartshorne and Malcolm's formalization of the argument was that it was not made clear in any of their premises that God's existence in the actual world included all of His great-making properties, which is to say, perhaps God's properties in possible world W are greater than His properties in actual world W'. As Plantinga states: "It doesn't follow that the being in question has the degree of greatness in question in Kronos, the actual world. For all the argument shows, this being might exist in the actual world but be pretty insignificant here. In some world or other it has maximal greatness; how does this show that it has such greatness in Kronos (The Analytic Theist, Alvin Plantinga, edited by James Sennett, 1998, p. 66)." Plantinga thus revised the argument to say that God, as understood by Anselm, possesses His great-making properties in every possible world. Plantinga refers to the instantiation of God's great-making properties (omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, moral perfection, etc.) in every possible world as "maximal greatness," whereas the instantiation of such properties in one world is called "maximal excellence." Plantinga reformulates the argument as follows: (1) There is a possible world in which maximal greatness is instantiated [premise]. (2) Necessarily, a being is maximally great if and only if it has maximal excellence in every possible world [definition of "maximal greatness"]. (3) Necessarily, a being has maximal excellence in every possible world if and only if it is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, wholly good, and eternal in every possible world [definition of "maximal excellence"]. ::. A being instantiates omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, moral perfection, and eternality in the actual world [from 1 to 3]. How do atheists respond to the newly formed modal versions of the argument? One objection is that granting the possibility of God in these instances is strictly epistemic, which is to say that as far as we know, God is possible. Along similar lines, we can argue that it is possible that the one billionth digit of Pi is 8, simply on the grounds that we have no knowledge whatsoever of the one billionth digit of Pi. And for the atheist, this is the only sense in which we can say that God is possible; we have no knowledge whatsoever of God, therefore we can say that God is possible, if “possible“ is understood in a trivial epistemic sense. Thus, we cannot accept the logic of the modal ontological argument because in doing so we would have to conclude that since the one billionth digit of Pi is 8 in some possible world, it therefore must be 8 in every possible world since all mathematical truths are logically necessary. But clearly, there is something wrong with this conclusion because we‘ve already conceded that we do not know if the one billionth digit of Pi is 8. In the same way, we cannot conclude from God’s epistemic possibility that He actually exists. In response, the theist can argue that it should be made clear that, in the context of the argument, "possibility" strictly refers to modal possibility, i.e., occupying some possible world. In this case, the term "God" has a clearly defined meaning, allowing us, by way of its logical consistency, to posit with certainty that such a being is modally possible. In terms of the one billionth digit of Pi, we cannot apply this same metric simply because the assessment of its logical consistency is coupled with the application of counting, which creates an epistemological gap between ourselves and the value of the mathematical constant equal to the one billionth digit of Pi. As a result, we can only know that necessarily there is a one billionth digit of Pi and that, letting 0 < x < 9, if the one billionth digit of Pi is x in possible world W, then it is x in every possible world. However, our metric for determining what x can possibly be equal to is much less manageable and therefore, we cannot say one way or the other if the one billionth digit of Pi is possibly 8. Rather, we just simply do not know. Thus, the epistemological gap does not apply in both cases. But then the atheist may ask the following question: How can we know for sure that "God" is a logically consistent idea? For the concept itself may contain a hidden contradiction which we are unaware of. Thus, it may in fact be the nonexistence of God which is logically necessary. In fact, one can point out that it is possible for us to affirm the real existence of contradictory ideas if we fail to realize that such things are contradictory. The contention that “God” is a contradictory idea is referred to by Hartshorne as “positivism.” Understandably, theists may ask the following question in response: What exactly does this position do for the atheist? Does the alleged possibility of "God" being a contradictory term vindicate his or her position? If anything, it would place the burden of proof on his or her shoulders. Moreover, the tactic itself seems to be an ad hoc maneuver on the part of the atheist if s/he normally argues against God from the standpoint that a world where God exists would be entirely different from the one that we happen to occupy (for example, the problem of evil argues that the existence of evil is inconsistent with the existence of God, which would show that the atheist grants the coherency of the idea of God insofar that s/he is speaking of worlds where God exists). Thus, it would appear that, at least to the theist, positivism is an untenable position. But though it may be clear that atheists will have their own burden of proof with respect to the positivist position, isn't it just as well that God's conceivability requires further justification on the part of the theist? In fairness, the lack of prima facie contradictions in the proposition “God exists in reality” seems to apply equally to the proposition “God does not exist in reality.” At this stage, then, it seems to be the case that the tenability of the ontological argument is, in any one of its formalizations, contingent upon one's worldview. Hence, while the argument itself will work for those whose set of presuppositions allows that there be something than which nothing can conceivably be greater, it will have not even a modicum of currency for the atheist interlocutors who deny that “God“ is even meaningful. Thus, the ontological argument does not appear to stand on its own two feet, as it requires us to make additional arguments in support of the set of presuppositions under which it is sound. Given these facts, the atheist does not seem to be fully blameworthy for his or her skepticism. For it holds true that if an entire worldview is not justified, then arguments which are defended only under its auspices cannot be justifiably accepted. St. Thomas Aquinas had argued along similar lines, claiming that the existence of God, while self-evident, is not necessarily self-evident to us. God is self-evident in Himself, as it is clear to Him, in His omniscience, that nonexistence is not an option for Him. But, as Aquinas would probably have argued, in order for the truth of this existential proposition to be clear to us, we will need intellectual assent provided from beyond the mere utterance of the word "God." Thus, according to Aquinas’ reasoning, it seems that the ontological argument, even if we grant its validity, cannot provide us with grounds for saying that the atheist’s tendency toward doubt is without excuse. It appears, then, that the greatest charge someone can make against the ontological argument is that it's superfluous. For it seems that it only works once the truth of the proposition "God has real existence" is established a posteriori, at which point God's real existence is already proven. One possible counterargument is as follows: If we follow Charles Hartshorne‘s understanding of God‘s nature, then it is inconceivable that positivism be true. Hartshorne states that unlike regular abstractions such as "human" or "cat," the abstraction "perfect" cannot be shared by many beings. As such, God's existence does not occur in place of other things which could have shared in His divine category. The essence of God is, in fact, noncompetitive. This means that there is no moment at which God's existence competes with His nonexistence or with the existence of others because such dichotomous relationships are predicated only of contingent things. Taking this one step further, we can argue (as philosopher Eugene Peters does) that God, in His divine essence, constitutes the ground for possibility itself, since the ultimate source of any contingent thing would consist in something that's necessary. Hence, one may argue that God cannot be modally impossible because the very notion of possibility presupposes God. Therefore, so the argument goes, the ontological argument can work without recourse to a posteriori arguments. The problem with this proposed solution is that if the positivist is right and "God" is not meaningful, then the term, regardless of what the theist intends for it to signify, does not actually signify anything, anymore than does “squared circle” actually signify a four sided figure that contains only closed curves. What follows is that in putting forth this objection against the atheist, the theist is making an accusation of self-contradiction whilst unwittingly presupposing that the atheist grants the coherency of the term, which cannot be the case in positivism. The only recourse for the theist, then, would be to put forth another argument justifying the coherency of "God," which, as previously mentioned, would make the ontological argument superfluous. So, the question remains, what place does the ontological argument have in the ongoing dialectic between theists and atheists? One could argue that it could be useful in explicating the theistic position, given that the argumentative modus operandi of the atheist may be based on a misunderstanding of what “God” means. Furthermore, as Alvin Plantinga notes, even if the argument does not establish its conclusion incontrovertibly, it may still lend credence to the rational acceptability of theism, given its deductive validity and the fact that its central premise, i.e., God is possible, contains no prima facie contradiction. One could also argue that the argument is a useful tool for engaging philosophy novices (especially those who are atheists, given their antipathy towards the argument’s conclusion) in the contemplation of metaphysical issues, since, as Plantinga mentions, many of the central issues in metaphysics meet in this argument, such as the nature of existence, the possibility of knowledge without experience, the relationship between concepts and objects, and so on.
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/anselm-proslogium.html
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1002.htm
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Just another thought to BC: the quote from Russell that the OA should be treated with some respect, regardless of its validity, was an entirely appropriate remark in the context of a book on the history of philosophy, ie it was not a work where it would be appropriate to spend time proving or disproving historical arguments. Its focus was on documenting major lives and events and milestones in Western Philosophy, and the OA certainly deserves a mention in that context.
It is still very dishonest, and disrespectful of Russell, to quote him without acknowledging that he thought the OA was invalid.
But then, we are probably dealing with the same troll who started those other threads in defence of this and other classic arguments for God.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
I think we're about to see another user implosion.
Wouldn't it be refreshing if this type of poster came back and said, "Damn, I was wrong, maybe I need to re-think this argument and give your objections some serious thought! Thanks, RSS, for helping me to think about this issue rationally."
Instead, they call other posters pre-schoolers, get nasty and mean, and refuse to respond to anyone who disagrees with them...all the while claiming infallibility.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
The guy glorifies two sticks lashed together in a T that are covered in human hemorrhage.
What do we expect?
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
your measured contributions are always a pleasure.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Russell, in his wildest dreams, would never refer to St. Anselm as a "fuckwit." I guarantee that if Russell were alive today, he would feel embarassed that someone like you is attempting to ride his coat tails.
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts. - Bertrand Russell
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
I am sure he wouldn't. He was from a fairly different time and society.
I am not trying to ride his coat tails in any sense. I do have a lot of respect for his ideas and writings. I am sure he would appreciate that.
You still have not apologised for not mentioning, when you quoted him in some sort of support of your agenda, that he, like many other prominent philosophers, rejected the argument you have been trying to push. I feel fairly confident that he would not wish to be associated with a true fuckwit like yourself. You are the one who was dishonestly attempting to "ride his coat tails".
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
I'm asking this in an attempt to get you to change your style of argumentation. I'm interested in having an effective conversation and that's impossible if you continually do what you are doing with terms. "Epistemic assertion" is a legitimate phrase, my main point to you was that it had nothing to do with definitions. You are misusing the term. An epistemic assertion is a proposition regarding what you know, i.e. "I know that God exists", "I know what love is", "I know what you did last summer", etc. That has nothing to do with a statement such as, "A man is a rational animal."
The point is, you need to stop taking free reign with philosophical jargon. It's no way to engage in a discussion.
Bob Spence is not genuine. He's an atheist willing to do anything to downplay theism, including backing up any atheist whether or not he understands what the hell that atheist is saying.
Sure you did.
NO! They fucking do not! I'll try to make this as clear as I can:
DEFINITION = a statement expressing the essential nature of something (webster.com)
Statement X = "An apple is a red fruit that grows on a tree"
The statement, "There is an apple in the actual world" is NOT logically implied by the statement, "An apple is a red fruit that grows on a tree".
The only thing that one can infer from the definition is that there is a concept of an apple, since, without a concept, no definition could be formulated.
However, the abstract existence of the concept does not lend some sort of ontological status to an apple because the concept of an apple is not the apple itself.
Hence, the statement, "There is an apple in the actual world" is different from the statement, "There is a concept of an apple in the actual world."
This does not in any way posit that the apple exists in some sort of ontological context. It may posit the existence of a CONCEPT of an apple, but not of an apple.
Now, to your other point: You claimed (by your phrase ""defining anything a priori requires a referent"
A definition does not carry any sort of existential import.
A definition does not carry any sort of existential import.
A definition does not carry any sort of existential import.
A definition does not carry any sort of existential import.
No! "Spookhollers" is meaningless without some sort of referent, PERIOD. It has nothing to do with ontological context. DEFINITIONS DO NOT CARRY ANY SORT OF EXISTENTIAL IMPORT.
No, because you just said that they exist in all possible worlds, and that would include the actual world.
I'm going to cite a source and hopefully that will put this nonsense to bed:
"Linguistically: a sentence of the form []A - necessarily A - is true if and only if A itself is true at every possible world... The picture is of a collection of possible worlds- including our own, the real world-- at which sentences of the language are variously true and false (Modal logic: an introduction, Brian Chellas, p.4)."
Oh definitely, that ancient primitive society from way back in the 20th century. I guess all of us are too young to remember.
You've shown none whatsoever. You've pissed all over philosophy and claimed that only classical logic is useful (or some other bullshit). There is no way in hell that Russell would agree with you on these points.
LOL
I don't have to mention a fucking thing about what he thinks of the argument. You were the one who said that you "respected" him. I gave you that specific quote in order to show you that, given your approach, he would have definitely distanced himself from you. All you've done is mocked the argument and put forth that anybody who endorses the argument is an idiot, whereas Russell had great respect for the argument, even though he disagreed with it, and he had great respect for St. Anselm.
Uh-oh, we've got uppercase usage! And bolded text! and underlining!
We're going down!!! Oh GOD, the HUMANITY!!!!
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
I love how Bob, after he makes a post, will sit in front of the computer for about 3 hours editing the post he just made.
He just can never get anything right the first time.... or the second..... or the third.
M'kay, but since we're talking about the existence of God, shouldn't we be using definitions that, while a priori, still point to a physical/material context rather than a conceptual one? Even if saying "The apple is red" doesn't say anything about whether the apple in question is a concept or a physical object, shouldn't we talk about the apple as if it were material, since we're addressing existence (in a non-conceptual sense)?
How is this relevant? Who cares whether or not it's right the first or second or third time, as long as it's right? Do you go through life never correcting yourself?
"The Aim of an Argument...should not be victory, but progress."
-Joseph Joubert (1754-1824)
"All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed."
-Richard Adams, Watership Down, 1972
An apple is a material object by definition. But merely expressing what is meant by "apple" does not in any way assert that there really is an apple.
I agree, but as long as we're dealing with existence in a non-conceptual context like material existence (unless you can give me a link between the conceptual and non-conceptual), would it be unreasonable to assume that there really is an apple? Remember, we're not talking about a God that you can conceive; we're talking about how you can make the jump from a God you can conceive to one that exists non-conceptually.
"The Aim of an Argument...should not be victory, but progress."
-Joseph Joubert (1754-1824)
"All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed."
-Richard Adams, Watership Down, 1972
On the basis of the concept alone, it would be unreasonable to assume that there really is an apple. Otherwise, to be consistent, you'd have to assume the real existence of a unicorn from the very fact that someone defined "unicorn" as a horse with one horn.
Still...at least we're enjoying the flight.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Excellent! So let's jump into that.
Would you agree that God, by definition, is the greatest conceivable being?
Anselm's point, mainly in chapter 3 of Proslogion, is that in order for you to be consistent with the definition of God that you've accepted, you have to grant that God really exists. Otherwise, you are essentially claiming that if God existed, he would be a contingent being, which is less great than being a necessary being. Thus, assuming that God is nothing more than a thought object is a contradiction.
I know. Let me rephrase what I meant: for definitions whose objects we can demonstrate to be true outside of the definition itself, shouldn't we use them in a material context? If we could find evidence for a "horse with one horn", then we would be able to talk about it in non-hypothetical, non-conceptual situations. Even if you could prove to me logically that without a doubt there must necessarily be a God, you have only proven to me his necessity of his existence, not that he in fact exists. I need oxygen to survive, but the fact that I am alive (excluding food and everything that sustains life that isn't oxygen) does not prove the existence of oxygen. Sure, it's a good start, but we need to test it empirically. You can explain that the universe necessarily needs a creator, but you can't tell me that YOUR definition of "creator" is therefore more valid than other possibilities that fulfill that same necessity (for example, two gods could have created the universe, or three, or god-life life forms with advanced technology).
Besides that, you just refuted yourself. You said that defining something doesn't mean that it necessarily exists. Just because I can define something to be "the greatest/most perfect being I can conceive" doesn't mean that it necessarily exists.
"The Aim of an Argument...should not be victory, but progress."
-Joseph Joubert (1754-1824)
"All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed."
-Richard Adams, Watership Down, 1972
No, because "greatness" is subjective, not a definition. If he was the God of the Bible, I wouldn't find him that great morally. If he was not all-knowing or all-powerful but still the most intelligent or most powerful being, I would only consider him the greatest only in comparison to every other intelligence or power I've experienced (but not the greatest that can be conceived). You need to define God in order for me to consider how great he is.
"The Aim of an Argument...should not be victory, but progress."
-Joseph Joubert (1754-1824)
"All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed."
-Richard Adams, Watership Down, 1972
Don't you just wish god was around, Bloody? It would be a lot easier than having to undertake these contortions in order to salve your doubts. If god was real we would not have to conceptualise him and that would make him greater still.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
It's not subjective. It's greater to be healthy than to be sick, it's greater to be intelligent than it is to be stupid, it's greater to be stronger than it is to be weak, it's greater to be talented than it is to be impotent, and so on.
Whether or not he is the God of the Bible, we can bracket that point for now. The truth of a religion comes from special revelation, not from philosophical argumentation.
If you don't accept that God is the greatest conceivable being, then I am in agreement with you that the God you don't believe in does not exist. I also don't believe in a God that is not the greatest conceivable being.
We can refine the definition of "God" to say that he is a being without limitations.
What would you accept as proof of God?
Why, and in what situations? What about "ignorance is bliss"? What if the stronger people were being drafted to go fight off in a bloody war where they were certain to die? Don't make generalizations. Besides, when you say "it's greater to be A than B", the definitions of A and B would allow you to figure out what order to put them in. So I can't give you such statements until you define the God.
Then why are you arguing philosophically?!?
But that's moving the goalposts. We're moving from God's definition being contingent on being something that people can conceive to God's definition being independent of whether or not he is something people can conceive.
On a side note, what if can I conceive of a being that is greater than any greatest conceivable being (including itself), and call this being "Dog"? I'm pointing out that we can do all of this conceptual masturbation without moving on to reality. Conceiving of things (or things being conceivable) has absolutely no bearing on their existence in a non-conceptual context.
"The Aim of an Argument...should not be victory, but progress."
-Joseph Joubert (1754-1824)
"All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed."
-Richard Adams, Watership Down, 1972
I've wondered this before. You know, extraordinary claims, extraordinary proof.
Something that was not subjective. Something falsifiable and something widely agreed upon by qualified people. Something actually real - I could not discount personal revelation but it would need to be in the sense of god turning up for lunch and beers.
The need to imagine god myself, to contrive his greatness, to speak with his voice, to make his judgments and interpose his disappointments upon myself suggests to me we are our own god. That we all carry templates of ideal self we can never live up to. We carry our own sense of heaven, our fear of hell. Our own father-longing.
I think that for us, most of earth, all this universe, all other possible universes and any conceivable gods exist as momentary sketches in the as yet unknown brain. I'm prepared to say this applies to many other fragments of reality we brush up against in the ego tunnel. God is like a memory of something that never happened.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
There's actually no need for me to even answer the questions. The mere fact that you allow there to be situational greatness shows that you don't believe that greatness is subjective. For example, you are granting that it is objectively greater for someone to be strong in a particular context.
Because my goal is to defeat atheism. That does not require me to prove the truth of any particular religion.
"Greatest conceivable being" does not stand or fall upon a person's cognitive faculties. That is not what Anselm meant. Obviously, different people have different abilities to conceive of things. A lobotomized person cannot conceive of God, for example. "Greatest conceivable being" is an abbreviation for God's infinitude, or the fact that he is without limitations.
That's a contradiction. If you agree that some being is the greatest being that can possibly be conceived, then it is logically require that you be unable to conceive of anything greater. Otherwise, you have not actually conceived of a greatest conceivable being.
Upper class English Society of the early to middle 20th Century was definitely significantly different in manners that Australia or USA of the early 21st, especially in use of language.
Where did I say anything about primitive or ancient, Mr_Bloody_Fuckwit?
I have not claimed, nor would I necessarily expect, that Russell would agree with me on these points.
After all he was still only a philosopher, which is not a rigorous discipline like Science.
You don't have to, of course, unless you wish to more honestly describe the status of the OA, and deal honestly with Russell.
He didn't say he had great respect for the argument, all he was really saying, in the context of recounting the history of the argument, was that such debate deserved to be granted respect because of its importance in the realm of thought and debate at the time.
He certainly did not endorse the argument, and neither did Frege, who you also mentioned.
Your refusal to acknowledge that he did not accept the argument still implies great disrepect. You are so convinced that it is valid, that logically you must think that, as someone you yourself acknowledge as well-versed in logic, he is a fuckwit like myself not to see its 'truth'.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Would you believe in God if you personally witnessed somebody claiming to be God, performing miracles, and then raising from the dead? Or would you still be an atheist and claim that everything you've just witnessed had a scientific explanation?
No, I was just agreeing with you for the sake of argument. Someone could, in the face of evidence to the contrary, deny that it is greater to be stronger that weak in the context where you think it is greater. Besides, you haven't addressed anything moral/ethical, which is very subjective.
So I take it that you don't identify with any religion (although you believe the absurd notion that truth can come from revelation)?
If that's what Anselm meant, he would have then said "a being without limitations" or "greatest being" or "greatest possible being". His diction reveals that he meant that his definition of God is directly tied to conceivability. If he is not conceivable, than he doesn't exist (in an objective sense, not in the sense that he doesn't exist from the perspective of the observer).
And so an all-powerful and yet all-knowing God (which are both unlimited attributes and would both fall under the definition of "a being without limitations" ) is not contradictory? Is the Pope not Catholic?
"The Aim of an Argument...should not be victory, but progress."
-Joseph Joubert (1754-1824)
"All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed."
-Richard Adams, Watership Down, 1972
I've seen magicians do that before.
When is it not reasonable to ask questions?
"The Aim of an Argument...should not be victory, but progress."
-Joseph Joubert (1754-1824)
"All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed."
-Richard Adams, Watership Down, 1972
If it was only going to be on that scale, one would need to bring someone like James Randi along, trained in the skills employed in various forms of performance magic, as a minimum.
Re-covering a skeleton into a living person, who I had actually known in life, while I and others were surrounding and holding on to it, would be better.
Bringing the moon down to Earth in front of us perhaps.
Undoing all the damage he had caused from earthquakes, etc. Restoring Haiti completely, for example, then taking us and a whole bunch of experienced people to show what he had done. Let us speak with the people brought back to life.
Wouldn't be ultimate proof of course, we already know that remarkable illusions can be created with technology we ourselves have now.
In fact it would be all but impossible to do something which couldn't be equally well explained by very advanced aliens, without invoking the supernatural.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Raising people from the dead and performing miracles would have a scientific explanation whether you were god or not.
Physics defying anthropomorphic magic acts have always seemed to me to be an odd way to prove the existence of a laws-based creator.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
He would not have even said that if he was alive today.
This is why I continue attacking you vehemently. You make such ignorant statements. You deserve all of the abuse I'm giving you.
No, he was saying, and I quote, "Clearly an argument with such a distinguished history is to be treated with respect." Nowhere does it say "such debate" or "at the time." Here is the full paragraph: "Clearly an argument with such a distinguished history is to be treated with respect, whether valid or not. The real question is: Is there anything we can think of which, by the mere fact that we can think of it, is shown to exist outside our thought? Every philosopher would like to say yes, because a philosopher's job is to findout things about the world by thinking rather than observing. If yes is the right answer, there is a bridge from pure thought to things, if not, not. In this generalized form, Plato uses a kind of ontological argument to prove the objectivity reality of ideas. But no one before Anselm had stated the argument in its naked logical purity. In gaining purity, it loses plausibility; but this also is to Anselm's credit."
I was asking if you believed, in the midst of your blanket statements regarding classical and modal logic, that you were a logician on their level. I made no claims about what they said in regards to the ontological argument.
If you are going to claim outright that Modal Logic is useless or that classical logic is the only kind of useful logic, then you are making a really bold claim which would require you to have studied it in great depth. My goal was to show that you make statements from a position of ignorance, like if I denied the theory of evolution without ever learning a thing about it. I asked for your credentials and you told me that you were a computer programmer. That's not good enough.
On the day that someone comes along and actually demonstrates that Modal Logic is useless, that person will be an actual philosopher. Not some computer programmer pretending to be a scientist.
The argument is deductively valid. Even Russell would grant that. If all of the premises are true, then the conclusion would necessarily follow.
The only real argument against it is that the possibility premise may be false. This is the context in which Plantinga said that it isn't always a proof for the existence of God. And I agree with him on this point. In fact, here is what I said in my original post:
I myself would agree that the efficacy of the argument depends strongly upon one’s set of presuppositions. Yet, is it possible to adopt, with no prima facie contradictions, any other worldview where one’s set of presuppositions allows s/he to infer the real existence of an object a priori? I do not believe that there is. This alone makes the argument unique and can help us understand that God, if conceivable at all, would be like nothing else that we can conceive. In essence, I find worth in the argument, not as a dialectical device but as a means of personal reflection. First, as I have just demonstrated, it sheds greater light on the nature of unbelief, showing that the epistemic chasm that exists between unbelievers and God is, indeed, an overall issue of one‘s own universe of discourse, itself not established within the parameters of Humean empiricism. Secondly, despite what Oppy says, it does help us gain a greater understanding of God’s nature, so long as we treat it as I’ve just specified. Then we are not simply proceeding from the premise that God is possible but also from the conclusion that God has real existence, which, in conjunction with the premises and the encompassing worldview, would somewhat elucidate to us just how excellent God really is. Thus, while the argument does not prove anything to anybody, I can still find worth in it.
Personal reflections aside, it is equally important to consider that St. Anselm, widely considered to be the pioneer of the argument, did not posit the argument for the purposes of apologetics. Indeed, Anselm does not pretend to operate from a position of neutrality; he makes it very clear from the outset that Christianity is his worldview. This is evident from the very first chapter of Proslogion, where Anselm pleads with God for His self-revelation. As Anselm states:
“When will you look upon us, and hear us? When will you enlighten our eyes, and show us your face? When will you restore yourself to us? Look upon us, Lord; hear us, enlighten us, reveal yourself to us (Proslogion, Chapter 1).”
As can be seen, it is not Anselm’s thesis that God’s existence can be proven, at least in such a way that an unbeliever may be persuaded. Though Anselm felt obliged to defend his position publicly (as seen in his discussions with Gaunilo), the chief reason for which Anselm wrote Proslogion was to continue seeking the goal which he sought out initially in Monologion; to honor God faithfully with the application of reason, which Anselm believes to be a reflection of God and therefore the basis on which God must be understood by his disciples. Anselm goes on to state:
“The believer does not seek to understand, that he may believe, but he believes that he may understand: for unless he believed he would not understand (Proslogion, Chapter 1).”
In other words, Anselm submitted to the fundamental Christian tenet that belief in God is only achieved through God’s divine grace. Thus, he did not adhere to a quasi-rationalist viewpoint according to which human beings, when left to their own devices, can come to know God from a blank slate (tabula rasa). However, Anselm does not strictly view the belief in God to be a matter of faith alone, but also as something which can be justified intellectually. And this can be regarded as equally, if not more, important for the believer as it is for the atheist.
Even if we don't know what that explanation is, right?
"The Aim of an Argument...should not be victory, but progress."
-Joseph Joubert (1754-1824)
"All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed."
-Richard Adams, Watership Down, 1972
Okay. So basically, there is absolutely no way you'll believe in God. No matter what proof anybody gives you, it is either "subjective", or has a scientific explanation, and what not. You are clearly not an atheist based on the evidence. You, like most atheists, exclude God by your presuppositions, such that no matter what anybody shows you, it will never be good enough or "extraordinary" enough.
And where does it say in that quote that Bertrand Russell thought that the argument itself was valid, sound, or even plausible?
"The Aim of an Argument...should not be victory, but progress."
-Joseph Joubert (1754-1824)
"All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed."
-Richard Adams, Watership Down, 1972
Wrong. He said that, whether or not God exists, everything has a scientific explanation (or at least raising people from the dead and performing miracles would have some).
"The Aim of an Argument...should not be victory, but progress."
-Joseph Joubert (1754-1824)
"All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed."
-Richard Adams, Watership Down, 1972
As I was reading through all our recent posts I began to wonder if there were not a strong case that god could not possibly be supernatural at all. I thought that acts in this reality demand a presence in this reality distinct from lighting a match under the big balloon. No doubt others have considered all this before but it was the first time it had occurred to me in any strength. In our world of atoms what influence could an imaginary non-entity possibly have?
Stirring up quarks, leptons, FC particles and all the rest demands an actual presence, as well as actions consistent with universal laws.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
He's present in everything we can't explain! QED! God of the gaps strikes again!
"The Aim of an Argument...should not be victory, but progress."
-Joseph Joubert (1754-1824)
"All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed."
-Richard Adams, Watership Down, 1972
I feel like doing a sort of "Nostalgia Critic" thing (for those of you who have heard of him) by summarizing everything that I find wrong with this argument in a long list of objections, like how he ends each of his videos with his general comments about the movie. Who's with me?
"The Aim of an Argument...should not be victory, but progress."
-Joseph Joubert (1754-1824)
"All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed."
-Richard Adams, Watership Down, 1972
And if that person does so, I will just give the same response that I've just given you. But don't agree with me for the sake of argument. Please tell me your views, although I could have sworn that you said great is subjective.
I do identify with a religion. But why does that require me to prove my religion whenever I prove the existence of God? My goal here is not to convert anybody.
You cannot base an entire body of work around a single phrase. Read everything else written by Anselm. He believed that God is a perfect, or unlimited, being:
"Nevertheless, though 'perfect-being theology' is not an apt description of Anselm's method, it can remain a useful label for the conception of God that Anselm develops by means of his more fine-grained and variable arguments. Though few descriptions of God follow directly and unproblematically from the claim that God is a perfect being, Anselm would never permit any description of God to be taken literally or strictly if it implied that God is less than perfect (Anselm, Sandra Visser/Thomas Williams, p. 109)."
No, it's not contradictory.
The whole idea of an undetectable character who underpins the universe is impossible to understand much less prove. To me this is just essentialism on a universal scale. Really, feeding people omega 3s at a picnic and 'raising some one from the dead' are not proof of exo-universal creator gods. As I've said before, I'd need to be god to conceive god. Attempting to prove huge universal claims on the basis of personal anthro revelations is just - utterly uneducated.
I really don't know what proof I'd need but there are no miracles in the NT that cut it for me. The real human 'miracles' of modern medicine and science blast them completely out of the water.
As for believing on the basis of presuppositions, Bloody, look at you. You have never seen a miracle and like me, have no scientific proof of god. Yet here you are - projecting your presuppositions.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
If you had some feeling for the range of totally stupid things that have been uttered by famous philosophers over the ages, you might understand why I say that.
What you claim he was saying is really still pretty close to what I said in meaning and sentiment. He then goes on to describe the idea behind the OA in more detail, as is appropriate in a book on the History of Philosophy, but nowhere does he say it is valid. In fact he says that as stated by St Anselm, it is less plausible than it could be.
I cannot yet find any explicit discussion by Russell where he is actually challenging and not just describing it, but these two quotes shed some more light on how he regarded it:
I was asking if you believed, in the midst of your blanket statements regarding classical and modal logic, that you were a logician on their level. I made no claims about what they said in regards to the ontological argument.
If you are going to claim outright that Modal Logic is useless or that classical logic is the only kind of useful logic, then you are making a really bold claim which would require you to have studied it in great depth. My goal was to show that you make statements from a position of ignorance, like if I denied the theory of evolution without ever learning a thing about it. I asked for your credentials and you told me that you were a computer programmer. That's not good enough.
On the day that someone comes along and actually demonstrates that Modal Logic is useless, that person will be an actual philosopher. Not some computer programmer pretending to be a scientist.
That is a trivially true and ultimately uninteresting statement, which applies to any carefully constructed logical argument . It is totally dependent on the status of its premises.
OK, acknowledge that Russell did not accept that it was a good argument. See my quotes above.
And that is the problem with modal logic - to have 'necessary' entities to apply it to, you have to assume a priori that some entities within your premises meet that criteria, so it becomes circular. Like the OA, it is true only IF there is such an entity in actuality. It cannot prove that such an entity exists. Since the additional rules that ML employs are either naked assumptions or necessarily have to be definable in terms of simpler logics, a valid argument should still be expressible in terms of basic logic, albeit with more statements.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
I was agreeing with you for the sake of argument to show you the flaws in your argument. That's what "for the sake of argument" means; it's a rhetorical device.
You're right, it's totally unrelated, but I still disagree with you.
I can deconstruct a syllogism though.
Oh, yes it is. First, let's look at just omnipotence: Can God create a boulder so heavy that he himself cannot lift it? Now let's move on to both omnipotence and omniscience: Can God ask himself a question so difficult that he himself could not know the answer? Continuing on with omnipotence and omniscience, suppose that an omnipotent and omniscient God at Time X knows that Scenario A will occur 10 minutes later. 5 minutes later, one then wonders whether this God can cause Scenario B, instead of A, to occur after another 5 minutes. I'm not even going to mention the free will problems that result from an omniscient creator God; how an omniscient creator God could not have intelligently designed the universe; or the problem of evil that comes from an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God (or just an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God). These attributes that allow God to transcend these limitations ultimately lead to contradictions.
"The Aim of an Argument...should not be victory, but progress."
-Joseph Joubert (1754-1824)
"All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed."
-Richard Adams, Watership Down, 1972
Yes. And then he'd lift it.
The real answer is that God can do anything which is logically possible. But it is logically impossible for him to make himself limited because that would require him to not be God. And if something is logically impossible, then saying that God is limited by the fact that he cannot do it is like saying that God is limited by the fact that he cannot aklgafg;ajklgjkl;afga. It's just incomprehensible babble.
See above.
God does not exist in time. God is eternal. Therefore, your example doesn't apply to him.
How? Whether or not you answer "yes" or "no" to the question, the conclusion is that God is not omnipotent. Either God can or can not create the rock. If he can create a rock so big he can't lift it then he's not omnipotent because he can't lift it. If he can't create a rock that big in the first place then he's still not omnipotent.
So God is limited by logical absolutes.
Don't blow it off as incomprehensible just because it's incomprehensible to you. I'm not saying that there's meaning in everything, but I clearly intended something, and I think my statement was clear enough, and you're basically saying that it's false because you can't understand it.
Hello, random assertion. How do you know that God does not exist in time or that God is eternal (which I think are making two different claims)?
"The Aim of an Argument...should not be victory, but progress."
-Joseph Joubert (1754-1824)
"All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed."
-Richard Adams, Watership Down, 1972
nothing exists in a law of time, God or anything else. Issues surrounding the quantum scale suggest it's better for the thoughtful rationalist to reserve judgment.
These vagaries cast words like 'eternal' in a strange light. This does not mean you can't claim god exists, of course, but the data does not support such speculation.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
I look at it like this. If God was truly an omniscient being, he would already know what I needed for proof. The Bible claims he is omniscient. Yet he hasn't provided such proof. So either he's not omniscient or he has a malevolent reason for keeping the proof from me.
Then again, you'll come back with more special pleading...
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
There is no case FOR the existence of a God.
The OA, because it makes no reference to the actual observed nature of external reality can prove nothing specific about what actually exists.
There may well be an eternal necessary thing, ie, something is necessary to provide a 'ground of being', or the quantum twitch which may have triggered the Big Bang.
The OA may well be valid and sound in proving that something eternal and sufficient to give rise to all that is was 'necessary'. All it can say about this necessary 'being' is that it was sufficient to provide the grounds for the emergence of 'Life, the Universe, and Everything'. Modern science says that any such necessary pre-existing state of existence was nothing corresponding to anything that could be called a God. If you disagree, take it up with Stephen Hawking, and tell him he is not qualified...
The OA, or any other variation on a priori, intuitive 'reasoning', cannot tell us anything beyond this, whether this original thing was sentient , or possessed of omni attributes, or what if any its disposition toward us would be.
Religion can only speculate, or utter naked assertions.
Systematic study of external reality has produced evidence which points to the Big Bang, and other studies have suggested that prior to that, the minimum initial existence is a universal quantum field of energy, sometimes thought of as a 'quantum foam', which at long intervals might randomly reach a peak confluence of energy sufficient to trigger the singularity that was the initial state of the Big Bang.
Religious ideas cannot conceive of something of minimal energy and no agency or sentience as originating all things, but since such ideas are generated purely intuitively, they are limited to the primitive ways of imagining the world around us we evolved with.
Even if there was some super being, it would be inherently beyond our capacity to comprehend, so we could know nothing with confidence about its attributes or motives.
Bloody, you can take your Cross and shove it where the Sun don't shine. </frustration mode off>
Just expressing my intense irritation with someone so attached to the OA... The. Dumbest. Argument. Ever.
You do realize that Russell was not only regarded as one the finest authorities on logic in the 20th century, and he considered himself technically an agnostic, on the usual grounds that one could not strictly disprove the Christian God, but in practical conversation he was happy to be considered an Atheist - he put the Christian God on the same likelihood as the Homeric Gods, and regarded the OA as a bad argument. It seems he has far more authority than me by your criteria, yet his beliefs are far more in alignment with mine than with yours?
When are you going to concede that Russell is a standing refutation of your whole position?
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Why was there such whining about Bob's lack of degrees in philosophy yet when asked about his/her own credentials we have gotten only silence? Not that it matters for the argument though.
What is so hard to understand about the term "epistemic assertion". An assertion is a declaration or statement, usually strong, of sort. An epistemic assertion would be one related to knowledge. I don't see how in the world you can deny that a definition is a statement about about knowledge. If a definition is not a some sort of statement about knowledge then what is it? i I really don't know where you're getting your understanding of this from...maybe you should cite some sources here.
I don't think I'm misusing "philosophical jargon" nor am I taking free reign with it. I suspect you may be trying to bolster your red herring (see below).
The No True Scotsman fallacy at work. How do I know that you didn't just try and detract an objection that pointed out the blatant fallacy of ontological arguments by creating this your-argument-is-incomprehensible red herring? I have reason to believe this is the case, because you keep reasserting this over and over to the point that you're attempting to make the point ad nauseam (yet another fallacy) and after stating that the argument was incomprehensible, you make no attempt to understand it after I have tried to explain it multiple times. Additionally, you keep making fallacies like your Scotsman fallacy. Furthermore, I've had discussions with BobSpence before, and we don't always agree on things. I have every reason I need to think that he does understand the argument because he's understood my thoughts on this forum long before you showed up. Now, am I more likely to think that he's just agreeing with me? No. Rather I have plenty of reason to think that he does understand me and plenty of reasons to think that you're just trying to cover up your original fallacy with another fallacy by trying to vilify my argument as a fallacious and patching your cover-up fallacy with even more fallacies like your ad nauseam and Scotsman fallacies.
BTW, CJ seems to understand too. Are you going to cite him (or her?) as "willing to do anything to downplay theism" too?
Tell me: how do you know the definition of an apple with out ever having either observed one or imagined it? In either case, you have an ontological context. I will say it again for the fourth time: I don't care if it actually exists. Are you refusing to see this because it might have some implications on ontological arguments? This also further undergirds my suspicion this whole debate is a cover-up for a blatantly obvious problem.
Here's a few definitions to show what I'm getting at:
This assumes a supernatural context.
This assumes imagination.
According to your own supplied definition of a definition which says, "a statement expressing the essential nature of something" definitions do address ontology. If a definition is talking about something's essential nature, then it is talking about that something's ontology. Have you ever studied essence before? I'm beginning to think that you don't know what ontology is....
Concerning definitions, if I substitute the aforementioned definition of "god" into an ontological argument, the only way for such a thing to even be possible is for a supernatural ontological context to exist. Now I can propose any number of possible worlds that are possible under the definition, but the definition in and of itself doesn't say anything about the actual world. If it does, it is only by luck. If you want to say it is talking about the actual world, then you are begging the question. You keep missing the qualifier about the possible worlds every time I've stated the argument. I will state again: If I make up some wild claim, I can suppose any number of possible worlds that could exist under that wild claim, and all possible world then are according to the wild claim. But this may or may not have any bearing in the actualized world. If I suppose the wild claim is something about the actual world, and then conclude it necessarily true in the actual world, then I'm begging the question, which is what ontological arguments do.
“Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.”