The Ontological Argument for the Existence of God

Bernkastel said:
And my argument was that intuition says the complete opposite to what he believes. What doesn't exist, what you don't have, is always greater than what you have/exists.

traed said:
Im doing this while tired and the argument is not interesting to me so I dont feel its worth much effort so excuse me if I do not word this well

i.by definition, god is a being which nothing greater can be conceived
That is not the definition of God or even a god but merely a definition of God with the tinge of the Christian belief. So not only are they arguing by assumption there is a god, they are arguing by assumption what is a god. There is no explanation on why God has to be singular, omnipotent, omnipresent, and malevolent.

ii. a being who necessarily exists (whose non-existence is logically impossible) is greater than a being who does not necessarily exist (whose non-existence is logically possible)
This does not really say much about God. It says more about the limits of the one imagining. The limited mind struggles more to imagine non-existence. I can imagine a mind capable of imagining non-existence.

iii. if one conceives of a god as either not existing or not having necessary existence, then there must exist a being which is greater than god that we can imagine (ii)
This is entirely dependant on the first premise. It at least tries to fill in the logic gap of the second premise. However my imagined mind imagining the non-existent makes it more difficult to stand much ground.

iv. we can't imagine a being greater than god (i)
v. thus, if god, a being which nothing greater can be conceived, exists as an idea, it must also necessarily exists in reality
vi. god exists in the mind as an idea
vii. therefore god exists in reality
Its pretty obvious you can not have something greater than the greatest so it is setting up a logic trap forcing people to reach a certain conclusion with the imagined constraints placed.

traed said:
I realized i wrote malevolent when I should have wrote benevolent. Darn auto correction.

Again there is nothing building up support for the first premise of his. With nothing backing it up the rest of the argument falls apart easy because it fails to support itself.

I fail to see your point. If the entire argument is basically if you can imagine god the there must be a god. So there really is no reason within the same thought I can't say that a mind that can contemplate non-existence can exist because i can imagine it. Also this is me only referring to direct imagining of non-existence. I was aiming for a deeper type of thought. The easier method is imagining things without the god, which is pretty easy, every atheist does it and it does not even need extra steps. It just is how it is in that case.

Ravioli_Ravioli said:

you're entirely misinterpreting the argument if that's how you feel, it's not trying to argue if you can imagine a god that there must be a god, it's instead trying to prove the existence of the christian god, which is omnipotent and omniscient. The discrepancy between imagining something like a mind that cannot imagine god and god itself is that a god exists out of necessity, that is to say, if it's omniscient, omnipotent, and the ultimately best thing out of all other things than it has to be real, where as a mind that can not imagine god is simply a mind that cannot imagine god.

Whether or not you can imagine something is not the problem.

Ravioli_Ravioli said:

Formally, the argument says
i.by definition, god is a being which nothing greater can be conceived
ii. a being who necessarily exists (whose non-existence is logically impossible) is greater than a being who does not necessarily exist (whose non-existence is logically possible)
iii. if one conceives of a god as either not existing or not having necessary existence, than there must exist a being which is greater than god that we can imagine (ii)
iv. we can't imagine a being greater than god (i)
v. thus, if god, a being which nothing greater can be conceived, exists as an idea, it must also necessarily exists in reality
vi. god exists in the mind as an idea
vii. therefore god exists in reality
it is important to define what "greatest" means. In this sense, it refers to something perfect by human perception in all forms of omniscience, omnipotence, and morality.

Chiki said:
(1) Everything that exists contingently (depends on something else for its existence( has a reason for its existence.
(2) The universe exists contingently.
Therefore:
(3) The universe has a reason for its existence.
(4) If the universe has a reason for its existence then that reason is a necessary being
Therefore:
(5) A necessary being exists.

For one, infinite is not actually a number, and it is inconceivable.

It is unclear what greater refers to, as it is certainly not the same usage as in premise 1, where greatest means omniscience and most moral, since there is a categorical error in comparing imaginary with reality. For example, it is senseless to say that an imagined being that is omniscient is less omniscient than a real being with the same attributed omniscience. Thus, we reject premise 2 as a semantic fallacy; or at best, irrelevant, leading to an unsupported conclusion.

This argument is moronic. It is unclear what a "reason" refers to in premise 1, but if a reason is simply a prior state in a deterministic classical mechanics way, then the "necessary being" is merely history, and we're left with nothing profound at all, but a restatement of cause and effect.

Chiki said:
Why? It seems intuitively true that a God who is otherwise perfect would be better if he existed.

katsucats said:
Existence isn't a property. Why would some concept be better if it happens to occur in reality? Its occurrence has no effect on the properties of the concept. And "better" in which way? Certainly, not better as in "greater" (usage in premise 1: omniscient, omnipotent, and most moral). One cannot be more omniscient and omnipotent than a being that is omniscient and omnipotent. If better refers to some subjective sense, then it is defeated by the Perfect Island.

Another way out of the ontological argument is formal logic. If you accept formal logic's idea that existence is not a first-order predicate (you cannot say, God exists. You can only say, there is an x such that x is God) so you can't talk about its goodness or whatever. Then this version of the ontological argument doesn't follow.

Chiki said:
To katsucats: First of all, it's worth noting that the argument I presented is widely accepted by many philosophers, all of whom are much more educated and intelligent than you, with degrees from places like Ivy League universities in philosophy, while you on the other hand are a community college student who hasn't taken a course in philosophy. I have no reason to take seriously anything you say, but I will respond to your argument for fun anyway.

Chiki said:

It is enough if you understand that infinity is neverending for the argument to work. I can't imagine what it means for PerpetualTrance to be happy, because I never met him and never went inside his head (maybe him being happy is different from myself being happy so I can't imagine it), but I can understand it, and being able to understand a concept is enough for the argument to go through.

Chiki said:
Look, no other philosopher in the world has said that the ontological argument has a semantic fallacy of this kind. It's highly unlikely that you're smarter than every other philosopher in history who has examined this argument, since you are a mere community college student while these philosophers have gotten PhDs in philosophy from Ivy League universities, so you are bound to be wrong.

Chiki said:
And you are wrong about this. For Anselm, there are different levels of "being" or "greatness." Objects like rocks, etc. are at the lowest level. Humans are in the middle, while God is at the top. That's all that "greatness" means here.

Chiki said:
HAHA. Your community college education shows once again here, since many philosophers accept this argument and they all have PhDs from great universities.
We are left with something profound, but perhaps your poor education is not up to seeing what this profound thing is: we know that there is a self-causing necessary being who is the reason for its own existence, since there is no contingent being which causes its own existence. This necessary being could be like Stephen Hawking's reason for the Big Bang, i.e. there is nothing that is a true vacuum, even before the Big Bang there were particles that came out of "nothing" that hit each other. This "nothingness" could be the necessary being that we are looking for, and it is remarkable that science and philosophy arrive at a similar result.

Chiki said:

Already said this LOLOLOLOL.

Bernkastel said:

As far as I'm aware, Anselm defined God as "greatest thing ever" and made zero mention of actual perfection.

Anselm begins, as has already been stated, by rooting his Christian understanding of God within the following formula: "a being than which nothing greater can be thought." (p. 73) This is a greatness, not in size or space, but in perfection -- periection of intelligence, power, truth, love, all that makes perfection is found within this being. It should also be noted that this most perfect conceivable being is not, contrary to some thought, the most perfect being in existence. By simple definition, a most perfect being does exist; this being, however, may not be what Anselm posits as God. Therefore, rather than establishing that God is the most perfect being in existence, Anselm argues that God is so perfect that no more perfect being can even be conceived. This issue, while it sounds like the splitting of hairs, will become important when the objection of Gaunilo is addressed.

Your appeal to an anonymous authority impresses no one. Anyone can do this.

Being able to understand a concept through linguistic approximation is not the same thing as being able to conceive of the possibility of a concept in reality. Take, for example, the number i, or an non-spatial, non-temporal afterlife. Anselm's argument requires a stronger conception, such that it could exist in reality. It is not enough for the argument to work to say that if we manipulate some words, we could get close to describing something that we could never directly think of.

This was not expressed in OP's argument; for if it were, it would greatly trivialize it. If Anselm's "greatness" is merely some subjective, arbitrary ladder based on no particular property, then it does not follow at all that a being that exists in reality must apparently be greater according to this definition. It impresses no one that we devise an arbitrary, uncommon definition for greatness.

It is remarkable, indeed, but what is remarkable is your resemblance towards philosophy as opposed to science, which is precisely the reason that I opted towards a science degree.

Neither the Big Bang, nor prior particles are a priori necessary existences--they are merely phenomena that have existed.

But perhaps the most remarkable aspect of your argument is that even if some particle is "God", that elucidates absolutely nothing, for in renaming the word "particle" to "God", you've made no point about the state of affairs. It is as empty as:
1) If it is true that strawberries are God
2) strawberries exist
3) Therefore God exists.

traed said:
I dont get how this is supposed to be hard to disprove. Even while unrested and partially intoxicated i found this whole thing not complicated.

That is not the definition of God or even a god but merely a definition of God with the tinge of the Christian belief. So not only are they arguing by assumption there is a god, they are arguing by assumption what is a god. There is no explanation on why God has to be singular, omnipotent, omnipresent, and malevolent.

ii. a being who necessarily exists (whose non-existence is logically impossible) is greater than a being who does not necessarily exist (whose non-existence is logically possible)
This does not really say much about God. It says more about the limits of the one imagining. The limited mind struggles more to imagine non-existence. I can imagine a mind capable of imagining non-existence.

Chiki said:
Anonymous? Really? Would you like me to give you papers of professors and such who agree with me?

Chiki said:
You don't need to be able to think of it for the argument to go through, it's enough to just understand the concept. Ted Sider, the world's most well paid philosopher, agrees with me: http://tedsider.org/books/chapters_1_5.pdf
Go to page 19, first paragraph.

But understanding a topic of a question does not require being able to imagine that topic.

Chiki said:
Of course it's based on properties, lol. Why are rocks worse than humans? Because of properties. It's not categorized just for fun. Use your brain.

Chiki said:
I'm actually going for a PhD in science rather than philosophy.

Chiki said:
Why can't Stephen Hawking's conception of what is before the Big Bang be a necessary existence? Give me a reason.

Chiki said:
In my argument, I never called particles "God," I called them a "necessary being." Lol.

Bernkastel said:

And that's not actual perfection. The most perfect conceivable being is not necessarily the most perfect being. The most perfect conceivable being is just the greatest imaginable, not necessarily actual perfect. It would be unreasonable to say "It seems intuitively true that a God who is otherwise perfect would be better if he existed" with certainty unless God is actually perfect.

I don't agree with Anselm's premise: A being that exists as an idea in the mind and in reality is, other things being equal, greater than a being that exists only as an idea in the mind.

Intuition clearly shows us in many contexts something that exist solely as fiction is far better than it is in reality.

katsucats said:
It doesn't really matter who agrees with you.

This is true. We do not need to be able to imagine something to be able to speak about it. That's why linguistic approximations exist, so that we could express various things that we could not imagine. For example, we could express quantum mechanics while not being able to fully conceive of it. But this is not applicable to Anselm's argument at all. Anselm's premises require that one is able to conceive of God, and only by being able to conceive God does the possibility of a real version of that conception follow. While we are able to speak about God according to Ted Sider, it does not pass the requirements by the Ontological Argument.

You could do well to explicitly describe the properties in question rather than leaving them up to subjective intuition, but as usual, your misunderstanding of basic ideas is apparent. There is no objective sense in which rocks are worse than humans, nor can any such comparison make sense when we start dealing with imaginary versus real rocks.
It should be noted that Anselm defines God as a "being than which nothing greater can be conceived". Suppose "greater" in this instance refers to the qualities typically attributed to God in Christian theology, such as the aforementioned omniscience, omnipotence, and utmost morality, capacity for love, etc. These senses of "greater" are meaningless when we compare an imaginary concept of God with the otherwise same concept, except one that really exists. For example, the imagined God is not any less omniscient, omnipotent, moral, or possess greater capacity for love than the identical God that is imagined to be real.
Next time you expound on some idea of Anselm, please make sure it is relevant.

What is before the Big Bang is a necessary existence in our world, but not a necessary existence in all worlds, as it would have been referred to in philosophy, and certainly by Anselm. But saying that there is a necessary existence in our world in this manner says nothing but that something has existed, since everything that has existed is necessary. It is completely trivial.

The word "being", by the way, typically refers to a subject, which Stephen Hawking should have never believed. Subatomic particles aren't intelligent. Whether they're "necessary beings" or "God" is as unimportant as strawberries or bananas.

the fact of existing; existence (as opposed to nonexistence).

Chiki said:
Anyway, when science and philosophy come to the same conclusion, it's not really a trivial result.

Bernkastel said:
This is when linguistic approximation becomes relevant.

An actual perfect being is just a being given the description perfect. I don't need to conceive a perfect being to know that it is perfect and talk about it. A perfect conceivable being however is different in that I actually have to be able to imagine such a being.

For example:
The kindest person and the kindest conceivable person are two very different things. The former is a person who has the maximum kindness. I don't need to be able to conceive such a person to put it into words. The latter however has to exist in my head as an actual person who is very kind. For example, many would consider historical figures such as Mother Teresa, Buddha, Jesus, etc, as the kindest conceivable people. They would not qualify for the absolute kindest person however.

Bernkastel said:

Ignoring the fact that science can be considered a philosophy, I have to strongly disagree that philosophical discourse can be put on the same level as science. Philosophy had been historically used to justify almost everything. Science on the other hand deals with a specific empirical methodology to see the world. In retrospect it seems like philosophy had come to the same conclusion as science using logic, but the reality is you simply copied conclusions from scientists. Most current philosophers were bought up with scientific education, hence share many views with scientists.

In my views as long as science comes up with the conclusion convincingly, it's not trivial. Whether philosophy agrees is essentially irrelevant.

Laniaka said:
I'm sure science and philosophy can both come to the conclusion that 1+1=2. But I still consider it to be extremely trivial.

Chiki said:


1+1=2 isn't a trivial result EVEN IN math. Have you heard of the book Principia Mathematica, in which proving 1+1=2 takes Russell and Whitehead 300 pages?

Bernkastel said:

Na 1+1=2 is actually serious business. We're not trolling lol.

Bernkastel said:

Just because 1+1=2 is common sense doesn't make it trivial. Many ideas now considered obvious were the result of serious thoughts and discoveries by past thinkers.

Science does not come to circular reasoning conclusions, the reason is obvious - all scientific discoveries are a posteriori. There is no "premise" to work with when all scientific discoveries are found.

Laniaka said:
That sounds like a lot of wasted pages. I'm sure it wasn't just about that.
I don't know for sure about back then but at least nowadays it is common practice in mathematics to just define 2 to be 1+1. Which makes it trivial to conclude that 1+1=2.

Bernkastel said:

There's two things I can do:
1. Just think the phrase "kindest person" in my head.
2. Actually put a face and actions on that "kindest person".

The former doesn't require me to conceive the kindest person, it just requires me to understand what the term kindness and the term person means. The latter however does require me to conceive kindest person.

Bernkastel said:

Then why is 1+1=2 trivial? Because you said so? It's actually groundbreaking in the world of mathematics.

2=1+1 is just a notation and therefore trivial.
The non trivial definitions are those for 1 and for +.

Bernkastel said:
Example?

Chiki said:
Mathematicians try to derive the results of all mathematics with the fewest number of axioms and definitions possible. Proving 1+1=2 is done by supposing that 0 is a natural number, that the successor of 0 is a natural number, that the successors of that are all natural numbers, and so on. Addition is defined in terms of the successor function.

2=1+1 is just a notation and therefore trivial.
The non trivial definitions are those for 1 and for +.

I don't know for sure about back then but at least nowadays it is common practice in mathematics to just define 2 to be 1+1. Which makes it trivial to conclude that 1+1=2.

Bernkastel said:

Uhh, that's not science? I asked you for a scientific example.

Bernkastel said:

That's because Anselm used "God is the greatest conceivable" rather than "God is the greatest". The kindest possible person you can conceive is not equal to the kindest person.

If you don't include the word "conceivable" into Anselm's argument it just dies, because then I could just argue God is inconceivable and invalidate the reasoning.

You define the smallest natural number.
Then you define the +1 operation on it.
Then you get all natural numbers.
You have to proof that this works as expected and doesn't give any contradictions.

Then you define
2=1+1
3=2+1
4=etc.

The number two is just a notation for 1+1. So the statement 2=1+1 is trivial.

Bernkastel said:
No. The kindest conceivable person is not equal to the kindest person. Since we're talking about maths we can use this analogy:

The hardest maths problem you can conceive is not the absolute hardest problem in mathematics.

Maybe it's easier to think about the difference using this example?

Chiki said:


Well.. all of your counterarguments are wrong.



Doesn't matter, the Bible says so and Anselm is trying to prove the existence of the Christian God.



See my reply to katsucats about how it is irrelevant if you cannot imagine something. (Ted Sider actually brings up your own example about how hard it is to imagine nothingness)

Spooks said:
All this back and forth doesn't matter because none of you will ever know the truth end of the day. If God exists or doesn't no amount of argument or fallacies or paradoxes if going to change that original fact, even if it doesn't make sense to us logically we couldn't argue with reality.

Although If we truly discovered God exists and yet defies all our logic I bet it would blow a lot of peoples minds because they couldn't accept that it doesn't stick to their parameters of reality. I bet if people met God face to face there would still be people pointing fingers and trying to logic him out of existence even staring God in the face.

Daconator said:
Refering to science like this was possibly the worst you could have resorted to.
For one, science is the last thing you'll see to logic out reality.
Secondly, science is pretty much the best tool and approach available to understand the universe we live in. Saying I'm not a scientist I prefer to just wait and see and keep all options open may sound wise but, it's basically wilful ignorance.
Finally, if your belief on the existence of a deity is based on what science doesn't understand, then historically speaking, as deGrasse Tyson describes, your deity is basically a receding pocket of sciencific ignorance. And it will only get smaller as time moves on.

Dr. Grant: I have a theory that there are two kinds of boys. There are those that want to be astronomers, and those that want to be astronauts. The astronomer, or the paleontologist, gets to study these amazing things from a place of complete safety.

Erik: But then you never get to go into space.

Dr. Grant: Exactly. That's the difference between imagining and seeing: to be able to touch them. And that's... that's all that Billy wanted.

Bernkastel said:

Anselm's argument is most definitely de re. Because he asks about the greatest thing imaginable. This being must actually exist in the mind as an imaginable entity.

Spooks said:
People who make up logic arguments and stuff sound very convincing but they can use their arguments to logic out reality if they wanted deny the existence of elephants for example using their roundabout logic fallacies. I don't trust in such arguments.

Ravioli_Ravioli said:
"God is that, than which nothing greater can be conceived.… And [God] assuredly exists so truly, that it cannot be conceived not to exist. For, it is possible to conceive of a being which cannot be conceived not to exist; and this is greater than one which can be conceived not to exist. Hence, if that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, can be conceived not to exist, it is not that, than which nothing greater can be conceived. But this is an irreconcilable contradiction. There is, then, so truly a being than which nothing greater can be conceived to exist, that it cannot even be conceived not to exist; and this being thou art, O Lord, our God."

Zuggy said:
Isn't this a description of the limits of human consciousness?

I'm guessing an 'infinite' consciousness which contains the totality of the universe would be synonymous with the actual universe, given an infinite mind would be unthinking.

traed said:
In Christianity God is not the universe, but is present in all the universe and considered greater than the universe. It gets confusing a bit. Just think of God like a property rather than an object and its easier to imagine. There is no reason an infinite mind could be unthinking that I can think of, however there is nothing that is known to be infinite except for possibly nothing itself.