GunnerJ

I've been hard pressed to find a formal criticism of this argument. I've heard it simplified that God must exist because God is the greatest being possible, and things which actually exist are greater which things which exist only in theory, therefore, in order to be greater than all other things, God must have the property of existing. The obvious weak link is the supposition that things which actually exist are better than things which only "conceptually" exist. It would seem that such a famous and respected proof would therefore have as many refutations as Pascal's Wager if it was this easy, so is this a valid formulation of the Ontological Argument, and, relatedly, is what I have posted a valid refutation?

hinduwoman

well, to my uninitiated eye, it seems that the main problem is the assumption god is the greatest Being possible. By definition God is supposedly the greatest Being possible, but that is a definition made up by the theists themselves. One has to grant that assumption first (because to another the universe can be greater than God). And then of course the theory that existents are better than abstract concepts is unproven.

Synaesthesia

Rimstalker,

Although formal criticisms of the argument (some of which are on the infinidels library here <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/ontological.html" target="_blank">Ontological Argument Library</a>) exist for specific formulations, you really don't need a formal argument to show it's emptiness.

Every ontological argument introduces (in a confusingly roundabout and complex way) the assumption that god is a being that exists. Look for it and you will find it in the premises of every formulation.

Once you have created a question-begging assumption, proving the existence of God is a piece of cake.

I like this argument because an idiot like me can bring the most sophisticated theologan down with simplicity and elegance.

TooBad

The classic rebuttal is to point out that existence is not a "property". It makes no sense to suppose that there may be some things which possess this "property" and other things which don't, since by definition there are no things which don't exist. So what does it mean to say that A is greater than B, if there is no B to compare A with?

Grumpy

Another criticism which just occurred to me is that it is arbitrary to assume that a god like the Christian God is "greater" than another type of god, like a Deist Creator or something. For example, which is greater, the God who demands worship, or the God who doesn't?

tronvillain

Well, it's not a proof of the Christian God, it's a proof of the "Greatest Being." I believe additional argument are attempted to show that the two are one and the same.

HRG

The Ontological Argument is similar to a good Emmentaler cheese when we compare holes with substance

Apart from the defects which have already been mentioned, there are two formal ones:

1. The relation "greater than" is only vaguely defined. There is no reason to assume that it is a linear order: i.e. that given 2 entities A and B, either A &gt; B or B &gt; A (this goes to uniqueness and identification of the "greatest conceivable").

2. Arguments from Set Theory make it very dubious that there is a "greatest conceivable". Given an conceivable entity, it seems that we can always conceive of something greater.

Regards,
HRG.

P.S. Comments of a mathematician :

The first cause argument is based on the fallacious assumption that an ordered set always has a first element.
The ontological argument is based on the fallacious assumption that an ordered set always has a last element.

Automaton

The "valid" ontological arguments are formulated in modal propositional calculus. It is recognized that Anselm's argument uses both modal and hyperintentional operators. A general formulation of the second generation of ontological arguments can be seen in Hartshorne's. Malcolm's works from the dilemma that God is either necessary or impossible, and Plantinga's is a modified form of Malcolm's to fix what he calls "minor errors", but based on possible worlds semantics, but even he recognizes the argument is circular. Hartshorne's can be formulated thusly ( means "it is necessary that", ~ means "not", v is a disjunction, → is strict implication, and g means "God exists."):<ol type="1">[*]g → g[*]g v ~g[*]~g → ~g[*]g v ~g[*]~g → ~g[*]g v ~g[*]~~g[*]g[*]g → g[*]g[/list=a]1 is supported by what Malcolm calls "Anselm's principle", that "perfection cannot exist contingently." This is because necessary being is apparently more perfect than non-necessary being. 2 is standard disjuction, 3 is Becker's postulate, 4 is substitution from 2 and 3, 5 is modal modus tollens from 1, 6 is substitution from 4 and 5, 7 is true for any logically possible conception of God, 8 is disjuctive syllogism from 6 and 7, 9 is axiom M, and 10 is modus ponens from 8 and 9.

The first, and probably most major problem, is that it assumes what it is trying to prove, that God is necessarily existent, because that must be assumed in order for ~~g to be accepted over ~g. Another problem is that existial modes are not properties, so they cannot be assigned by definition (that is, g → g is false). The notion of ontological perfection is extremely shaky, especially relating to God and necessary existence, and so there is no real support for premise 1. So it is not valid, and it even if it were, it would not be sound.

[ July 05, 2002: Message edited by: Automaton ]</p>