BLoggins02

[Mortal Kombat voice]Round One, FIGHT![/Mortal Kombat voice]

Theli

Why has this thread grown so large?

I mean, the obvious problem with the argument is that is assumes what it tries to prove.

For this premise to be true you must already assume that god exists. The mere fact the the argument exists at all according to this premise proves god's existence, therefore (1) is an assumption.

The whole argument can be summarized in "if god exists then god exists".
Yes, the argument is sound within it's own space but it gives no information to the question of god's existence.
The same argument can be used against god's existence, and with just as hollow result.
"If something exist, god does not exist"
I would not on any conditions call this a "proof".
Adding "something" as a factor to the argument is unnecessary.

Doug

anon,

I am going to beat a dead horse, but take a different tact. Any intro to logic book will tell you that any assumption used as a premise has to be agreed upon by the parties in the discussion to be a true assumption. If the person making the argument puts forth a premise and the person disagreeing with the conclusion of the argument does not accept the premise as fact, the person making the argument has to further break down the premise in question into another syllogism and logically prove the conclusion (which is then the premise in the original argument).

I think you're either a troll or a complete idiot, so I don't know why I bothered (but I did). You either don't understand a basic fact of logic, or you are purposely pretending you don't in order to toy with people.

Kenny

Not quite. I, for example, believe that some of the contemporary modal versions of the ontological argument (such as Hartshorne’s and Plantinga’s) are valid, sound, and not question begging either formally or informally, even though the premises are highly controversial and it is unlikely that someone would believe in the soundness of those arguments if they were not already a theist. The key premise of such arguments -- namely that the existence of God (defined as the being that which no greater than can be conceived) is logically possible -- though controversial, finds its epistemic justification, for the theist, in a rational intuition that is not directly dependent on the conclusion that God exits.

In the case of the argument I provided, the premise “God exists or 2+2=5” depends entirely on the conclusion that God exists for its epistemic justification. Thus, this premise cannot confer any epistemic justification on the conclusion that God exists. Thus, this premise is completely worthless in an argument for the existence of God, and any argument utilizing this premise in a proof of the existence of God informally begs the question.

God Bless,
Kenny

Vorkosigan

...namely that the existence of God (defined as the being that which no greater than can be conceived) is logically possible

The definition is incoherent. What does "greater" mean? Most famous? Most powerful? Most wealthy? Most evil? Most impatient? Most short-tempered?

Vorkosigan

David Gould

anonymousj,

I suspect that the reason for the hostility in some of the posts is that you are not answering the objections raised. After 2 pages of reading you doing that, I was pretty annoyed myself. Add to that another 3 and I can see why some people have blown their top.

I am not a logician or anything but I would like an answer to a (I think) simple question:

Why don't you have to demonstrate that your first premise is true?


My thinking on this is that if I say anything - like blue is red - then it can be used as a premise for a logical argument.

But the argument only derives a true conclusion if the premise is actually true.

Please answer my simple question.

Technos

anonymousj, won't you respond to my previous post?

Kenny

It seems like your objection here boils down to the idea that “greatness” is an entirely subjective or relative property. I disagree. Beauty and goodness seem, at least to me and many others, to have objective components to them, and there seems to be gradations of beauty and gradations of moral value. Something is *greater* than something else in an objective sense if it exemplifies qualities which are more beautiful and manifest greater moral value.

<a href="http://www.stats.uwaterloo.ca/~cgsmall/ontology.html" target="_blank">Here‘s</a> an interesting article which describes Kurt Godel’s (the same Godel of incompleteness fame) version of the ontological argument. Godel defines “greater” in terms of an object exemplifying more of the positive qualities of being. There is some intuitive support to this idea because we do tend to recognize things as beautiful which deepen our experience of being. The being that which no greater can be conceived, then, would be the being that manifests all the positive qualities of being to their maximum potential. This being is God.

At any rate, I refer you to the link I provided since the Ontological argument is really just a tangential issue to the issue brought up in this thread. My point in bringing up the OA was not to defend it, but to point out that this is an argument which a theist might (legitimately, in my opinion), on intuitive grounds, justifiably believe to be sound even if it is not convincing to others, and that the OA is non-question-begging both formally and informally. This just goes to show that a proof can be sound, valid, and non-question-begging, and still not be convincing to everyone. This just shows how people evaluate the soundness of proofs in terms of differing intuitions and intellectual commitments, and that there may very well be proofs of God which are legitimate even if one is not personally convinced by them. I suspect that something in the neighborhood of this point is what Anonymousj may be trying to get at.

God Bless,
Kenny

[ May 02, 2002: Message edited by: Kenny ]</p>

Adrian Selby

"This just shows how people evaluate the soundness of proofs in terms of differing intuitions and intellectual commitments"

Perhaps the fact that he isn't stating that he holds any of his premises as intuitively valid is the problem. I'm sure he'll get around to answering the problems, but until we hear from him how the fact that things exists presupposes God exists makes any sense as a proposition, I particularly cannot accept his argument as sound, and given the structure is valid doesn't support his conclusion, due to the plethora of ridiculous arguments using the same form, it behoves him to illuminate us with reasons for accepting his first premise and not any premises about green cheese and unicorns et al. I have asked for a specific demonstration of what compels him to assert his first premise, with regard to the computers we both use to indulge in this discussion, being examples of something. I await a response, no doubt I'm in the queue.

Adrian

ju'iblex

if something exists god exists
something exists
therefore god exists

if this was true, then every possible thing the mind can conjure would be true. Small creatures made of vinyl that live on jupiter, flying pink kittens who live in my spleen, all of those are therefore true. but theyre not. care to check my spleen?