Atheist Debates - Ontological Arguments

My thoughts on dealing with ontological arguments...and what's really being presented.

[wimsweden]

When I try to conceive of a most perfect being I'd definitely include "perfect communicator" and that's just one more thing I don't see evidence for.

[waspbloke]

I see the problem here Matt: you didn't turn around. Turn around around and look at the trees Matt.
*Look at the trees Matt!*

[jmtnvalley]

1: God exists
2: goobly gobly hokum dokum talk
3: Then god exists

[lonewolfmtnz]

“God cannot exist because of Eric The God-Eating Magic Penguin. Since Eric is God-Eating by definition, he has no choice but to eat God. So, if God exists, He automatically ceases to exist as a result of being eaten. Unless one can prove that Eric doesn’t exist, God doesn’t exist. Even if you can prove that Eric doesn’t exist, that same proof will also be applicable to God. There are only two possibilities: either you can prove that Eric doesn’t exist or you can not. In both cases it logically follows that God doesn’t exist.”

[jonmeinecke]

Regardless of language or symbolic representation of the argument, the largest flaw is in the idea that something we can just imagine must possibly exist. As Matt and others have pointed out that we cannot simply "define" something into acutal existence.


The factor which lends an air of reasonableness to the Ontological arguments is that reasonable people allow for possibilities. People may well say, yes, maybe in some world, something, anything, conceptually is possible.



I think the best way to short circuit this argument is to pair the statement,


- "It is possible that there is a being which has maximal greatness (in some world)"


with the statement,


- "It is also possible that there is NOT a being which has maximal greatness (in any world)."


That both of those statements may be true indicates that mere conceptual possibility, does not itself make actual existence necessary.

[snuffywuffykiss]

1. Imagine all theists owe me money.
2. It is possible that they all owe me money.
3. Therefor all theists must give me money or they prove god doesn't exist.

[KatheeDemontforte]

1.Imagine the  most absolute worthless philosophical

[TheFounderUtopia]

My biggest problem with these monologic arguments is that they seem to make a logical leap between premises. I don't even care about the issue of whether existence is better or not. How do these people think they got from "it's possible" to "it's necessary?" They just incrementally add words into the premises until edging their way to necessary, but they never demonstrate it.

It's possible that a perfect circle could exist

Uniqueness is a property of perfection

The most perfect circle must therefore be the ONLY circle

Therefore every circle is a perfect circle

You can do this with anything. To me it seems to be little more than rhetorical masturbation. In the ontological argument, they're just conflating "maximum POSSIBLE power" with "maximum power that is possible in this reality". The smartest guy in the world isn't infinitely smart, but he's still the smartest possible. It's just wordplay.

The claim is, INFINITE intelligence (or power) and that's where the burden rests. I see no need to entertain any argument that cannot demonstrate its own first premise, no matter how flawed the rest of it may be.

[johnughrin]

I've always been baffled by the idea of greatness/perfection outside of context. Is God supposed to be perfectly square, the most round, both?!? Is it also the perfect rapist, serial killer? the most blue, the most red? can He be perfectly stupid? How about Lucky? Does that even make sense as a property for an omniscient being?

[ImperiousViking]

In the thumbnail it looks like Matt is playing a tiny flute.

[smokert]

All philosophical arguments for god suffer from one great flaw. They all make unfounded presumptions. There is no evidence to support the presumptions so the conclusion is also unsupported.

[phileas]

So the most perfect being cannot write a book that wouldn't be easily improved by any random 10-year-old.

Go on, I'm

[scientious]

Some of these topics are interesting.

I'm reminded of an SNL skit about a garage band where the members imagined themselves having a hit song that brought them fame, wealth, and adoring fans. They found this idea so compelling that they had already designed an album cover and made a music video -- without having even one song. Most people will laugh at this idea. They feel intuitively that a potential, even a very great potential, has less utility than an actuality. In other words, an imagined hit song, even the biggest imagined hit song of all time still has less utility than a song that was actually composed, performed, and recorded.

Also, most people can readily decompose the concept of potentiality into several broad categories such as conceivable, theoretical, technological, and practical.

1.) A floating tabletop can be conceived, but, based on what we know now,  it isn't theoretically possible.
2.) A human mission to Mars is theoretically possible but, based on what we know now, it isn't technologically possible.
3.) Reciprocating steam engines are technologically possible, but, based on what we know now, they are not practical.

Practicality can be further broken down into things such as cost, talent, and opportunity. A reciprocating steam engine would cost more to build and operate than a diesel engine. I could buy a big hunk of marble which could potentially be carved into a great work of art but that would require the talent of a stone carver. Anyone could visit the Eifel Tower but they would have to actually be in Paris to have that opportunity.

So, while it might be comforting to think of a god as perfect, it can be readily stated that a real but imperfect god has greater utility than a perfect but only potential god.

Then we could consider maximality itself. Let's say God is the maximally conceivable agent. Presumably this would be maximal to humans or perhaps maximal to the most intelligent human. But then one would have to ask if this God then, being of greater intellect could likewise conceive of an agent greater than itself. This then would lead to an infinite sequence  of each maximal God conceiving of an even more maximal God. Such an infinite sequence would not seem to be much of an explanation. This fact swallows up both Anselm's and Descarte's arguments as conceivability within a mind.

You could try to get around this problem by defining God as the maximally conceivable agent. However, this too seems to have problems. If God is the maximally conceivable agent then no such God could conceive of an agent greater than itself. However, for a human to propose such an argument requires a concept of an agent greater than itself. Therefore, such a human would have a relatively less limited ability of conception than God. In other words, a human could imagine an agent greater than itself but God could not. And, a God that is more limited than a human would be a contradiction. Therefore God could not exist.

[JMUDoc]

The OA pretty much boils down to

"existence is a property of greatness".

Fantastic - prove it.

[fingerboxes]

Version at 3:06
Imagine the greatest possible cheeseburger. If this cheeseburger doesn't actually exist, then you can imagine a cheeseburger that is greater than that cheeseburger because it has all the properties of the greatest possible cheeseburger and also exists. Therefore, the greatest possible cheeseburger must exist. Why don't you like me enough to bring me that cheeseburger?


Version at 14:18
The greatest cheeseburger that can exist has a perfect texture, flavor, and calorie count. A perfect cheeseburger can only be perfect if it exists in every possible world. It is possible that a cheeseburger has maximal greatness. Therefore, it is necessarily true that a cheeseburger of maximal greatness exists. Therefore the perfect cheeseburger exists. Why don't you like me enough to bring me this cheeseburger either?

[Correctrix]

It is a conceptual truth (or, so to speak, true by definition) that a Youtube channel run by God is a channel than which none greater can be imagined.

God and his channel exist as an idea in the mind.

Something that exists as an idea in the mind and in reality is, other things being equal, greater than something that exists only as an idea in the mind.

Thus, if God's Youtube channel exists only as an idea in the mind, then we can imagine something that is greater than God's Youtube channel.

But we cannot imagine a channel that is greater than God's Youtube channel (for it is a contradiction to suppose that we can imagine something greater than the greatest possible thing that can be imagined.)

_Therefore, God has a Youtube channel._

Furthermore, with 54M subs, Pewdiepie is the greatest channel on Youtube.

_Therefore, Pewdiepie is God._

[stupidluvdisc]

I couldn't even tell how the conclusion even followed the premises.

[jeffkidder]

I have never understood why the ontological argument isn't more often attacked by the assumption that "perfection" or "greatness" is totally ordered (i.e., satisfies the trichotomy that for any A and B, either A < B, A = B, or A > B). Or at least that it is a semi-latice: for any A and B there is a C such that A <= C and B <= C.

Who was more perfect, Albert Einstein or Robin Williams? Is there any being that is greater than both?

It also doesn't seem well defined. Are bigger things more perfect or smaller things? It depends on perfect for what?

[Griexxt]

It seems to me that it's an equivocation between a very sloppy meaning of the word "possible" and what it actually means. To me, "X is possible" means that there is some known mechanism by which X could become a reality. But this argument seems to want "possible" to also mean things that "could be possible given certain not necessarily actual circumstances". Since we don't know everything, there are a lot of things that could be possible, but that doesn't mean we get to say that they are in fact possible, only that we can't say they're definitely impossible.

[TheNinerion]

I always loved the Ontological Argument. There is an interesting angle one can come from: if the greatest possible thing must exist, then by the same toke, must not the meekest possible thing not exist?

This would then lead to nothing existing at all, since if the meekest (or smallest) possible thing can't exist, then the second meekest will be the meekest, and stop existing too. and so on. Until nothing is left.

This might not be the most airtight of arguments, but its fun and it shows some of the silliness about defining things into existence.