Jobar

Quarks make up bosons make up atoms make up molecules.

As to whether we can say there is such a thing as a 'greatest' one of any of those entities, I can't say- but the thing is, the theistic argument depends on being able to do that. We skeptics need not do anything but show that the concept of a GPB which also is the creator of anything at all separate from itself is untenable!

Diana's objection appears to me to be a valid argument against a pluralistic GPB- but hey, the Christians cannot use that one, since doing so would call into question the tripartite nature of their God. I'd say that Afghan's argument allows us to give the Xtians their GPB, for the sake of argument- and still show that this GPB can *not* be the entity they call God!

I am unsure if this helps the case against a truly monotheistic God, like Allah or Yahweh. I still feel this may become a useful debate tactic in formally disputing the ontological argument.

diana

Hm. Let's see. From m-w.com:
All the Christians I know mean the third definition when they claim that God is the GPB. I suspect all traditional religions, given the choice of these definitions, would also go with 3.

Your argument appeals to a definition that oversimplifies the way they view their god: he doesn't simply exist, but is alive.

I think you've just beaten the shit out of a straw man.

d

diana

I'm sorry, John. I don't follow. Theistic argument depends on being able to say that there is a "greatest" atom? Huh?

I must echo Lobstrocity's comment that you'd be hard put to define what is meant by "greatest" being in the first place. I'd suspect this precise thing is one of the argument's selling points to Christians: the fuzzier the concepts put forward, the better the argument sounds.

Or maybe we could just corner them with a repeated polite request for clarification on what GPB entails, exactly.

Or we could jump the "possibility" problem. Provided we can adequately define "greatest," then there must be a greatest being in existence. However, it still does not follow that a greatest possible being must exist.

???

I was trying only to point out that Christians claim 1 god + 1 god + 1 god = 1 god ("Christian math"), and it looks like the same untenable position to state that 1 being + 1 being + 1 being = 1 being.

d

Afghan

You're a hard sell, aren't you?

Well I think that most theists would argue meets definition 3. However, just about every GPB argument that I have seen relies on the GPB meeting definition 1b. If you have seen different, by all means point me towards it.

Let's go with entity for 1b and being for 3, just for the time being.

Now if we consider the class of all entities, and the class of all beings, it should be clear that the latter is definitely a subclass of the former. So if we find the Greatest Possible Being, we only have the greatest member of a subclass of all entities. That is to say, there may very well be a great number of entities that are greater than the GPB.

Effectively, by specifying that our Greatest Possible... be a living thing, we forfeit the quality that it is greater than any other conceivable thing. It is precisely this latter quality that the GPB argument relies upon.

Big Spoon

I'll look at this from a set-theoretic point of view.
let A be an infinite set, B a finite set.
The union of A and B would be of the same size as A alone.
If God is A, and The Rest is B, then God union The Rest is of the same size as God.
Even if The Rest is infinite, there would always be a bigger size of infinity that God could take.

diana

Well. Yes.

I'm not trying to be annoying. (It's just a perk. )

Ah. Maybe this is what I was missing. I tried looking up Alcuin's ontological argument this morning to make sure I had a grasp of the argument you're making but couldn't locate it for some reason. Do you have a link?

I'm just going by what seems to be a reasonable argument to me, from the Christian (or theist) perspective. When I was a Christian, I never claimed that God was the totality of everything. When pressed, any Christian (or theist) will assert that one of the defining characteristics of God is that he is a living being.

If they're just asserting that he is b (1) : something conceivable as existing (2) : something that actually exists (3) : the totality of existing things but not alive, they've just said God = things that exist. So what? They're no theological or philosophical threat. To attack an argument that simply defines God as everything seems as pointless to me as attacking the silliness of defining God as "love."

Honest, I'm not trying to be thick. It's quite likely there's something I'm missing here. I'm just trying to figure out what it is. Your patience is appreciated.

Meanwhile, your argument is getting trial by fire and if necessary, refinement (to make it intelligible to us common folk).

OK.

I'm with you so far.

Define "greater" so it makes equal sense in both contexts, please.

Question: Does the GPB argument depend upon def 1b, specifically? Or would it work with def 3? If it requires--as opposed to just assumes--def 1b, please explain why it needs this specific definition to work.

Maybe it relies upon an understood definition of "greater" that includes the characteristics [alive] and [self-aware]. In other words, a being (a la def 3), in which case it "greatest" couldn't apply to anything in the class of "entities" that aren't "beings."

Why would the Greatest Possible Being have to necessarily be the Greatest Possible Entity? What the hell am I missing?

d

Afghan

Aah, but you are not comparing the sets themselves here but, rather, their cardinalities. And set cardinality is a very bad indicator of 'bigness'. For instance, the interval between 0 and 1 has the the same cardinality as the interval between 0 and 1,000,000. You're not going to tell me that they're the same size, are you?

I am not sure it is reasonable to represent the GPB as a set but if you did it is still true that the GPB is a proper subset of the union of the GPB and the Rest.


My bad, this one. It was, of course, Anselm's Ontological Argument. I'm getting my medieval English theologians mixed up. Anyway, link... http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/on...cal-arguments/.

If we could get them to do this, we'd have probably put the whole thing to bed long ago. Rather than provide a definition I shall instead assert, for any valid definition, the following is true...

The whole is greater than the part.

It doesn't. But as I say, most GPB arguments actually assume the GPE. That is, they require God to be greater than any other entity (usually the universe) rather than simply any other being. Otherwise, God could be outnumbered or something.

Perhaps, but as you pointed out earlier 'a pair of beings' is not 'a being' but it is an entity. By my definition above, 'a pair of beings' is greater than either of its parts. Therefore, the GPB definitely isn't the GPE except in trivial (and pantheistic) cases.

Big Spoon

actually, |[0,1]|=|[0,10000000]|
It may sound counter intuitive, but maths often is.
the set of rational numbers is the same size as the set of primes, this is easy to prove.
When it comes to sets, the whole isn't greater than the part.

Afghan

The key point being those little bars you have stuck on either side. As I have said, you are talking about the cardinality of the sets, not the sets themselves. The cardinalities are the same; the sets are not.

And when you are talking about transfinite cardinalities, you are not talking about something 'tangible' or 'actual'. You are talking about something conceptual. The concept is well-defined just as, say, the square root of minus one is well-defined. This does not mean you can find a real instance of the square root of minus one.

So yes, I agree that if you define a mapping (called cardinality) from a subclass of sets to a set with a total order relationship defined upon it then a proper subset can map to an identical value as the superset but I really don't think that this is a particularly valid criticism of my argument here.