One of the best arguments for God

[AquinasForGod]

One of the best arguments for God is the response to the modal ontological argument.

To read my full argument, go here - https://www.freelymeditate.com/single-p ... ts-for-god

And to read about ontological arguments and the modal ontological argument go to the Standard Encyclopedia of Philosophy - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/onto ... n%20alone.

Question for Debate: Can atheists prove God is impossible?

The reason that is the question for debate is because that is the counter to Plantinga's ontological argument. If you read the link to the SFP, provided above, you will notice that his ontological argument is valid. This means that if the premises are true, then the conclusion must be true. Thus to show the argument is not sound, you must show one of the premises are untrue. The only premise that you can really do that with is the first premise, which is that God is possible.

You could reject modal logic, I suppose, but that doesn't seem reasonable.

Also, the so-called defeater to this argument is why this argument is so good. It runs the argument in reverse, called a symmetry breaker. However, to run this argument in reverse is simply to state that God is impossible. Who argues that? Thus my question for debate. Can you argue that God is impossible?

If you wish to use the so-caleld symmetry breaker to the modal ontological argument to claim you defeated the argument, then you must defend the first premise, which is that God cannot exist in any possible world, yet that seems wrong. Why would God be impossible?

If you cannot defend the first premise, then you haven't defeated the argument. In other words, if you agree that God is possible, then Plantinga's argument goes through. It is sound and thus God is true.

In other words, you have to claim Plantinga's first premise is not true, which states that God is possible. If that premise is false, then you are saying God is impossible.

His argument is so powerful because it only leaves you with a few options.

1. God exists.
2. God is impossible, and cannot possibly exist. (Good luck trying to argue that. )
3. Reject modal logic.

[AquinasForGod]

[Replying to JoeyKnothead in post #15]

So 'possible' still means we don't know if it's actually true or false. Any premise that uses that word is equivalent to "We don't know". i.e. We don't know if a god (or God) is possible in the modal sense either. It's just a proposition. You can crank a "we don't know" premise through whatever logical argument you like, that doesn't somehow change it to a "We know" premise at the end.

Plantinga's argument is not just that God is possible, but that God is necessarily possible. But I think maybe what you are trying to get at is, what if someone chooses to be agnostic about the first premise that God possibly exists? They could do that. They could say, well, I don't have any arguments showing God is impossible, so I cannot argue against Plantinga, but perhaps there could be an argument that God is impossible. And because they don't want to believe, they can choose to say, well, I just don't know if God is possible or impossible. But then they are not an atheist. They are agnostic.

That's all before we get to "maximally great" which is really defined however the person wants it to be. i.e. they load whatever they want to fall out the bottom of the argument into the premises. Maybe I think it's maximally great to be maximally tall. However, a maximally great being in my definition can't walk under a maximally low bar. So how maximally 'great' is it really? We can crank whatever definition we want through the same argument and arrive at different entities. That should be a red flag to the issue.

Bo. Plantinga defines exactly what he means by maximally great being. You will see this in 2 and 3.

1. There is a possible world W in which there exists a being with maximal greatness.

2. Maximal greatness entails having maximal excellence in every possible world.

3. Maximal excellence entails omniscience, omnipotence, and moral perfection in every possible world.

4. So in W there exists a being which is omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect in every possible world.

5. So in W the proposition “There is no omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect being” is impossible.

6. But what is impossible in one possible world is impossible in every possible world.

7. So the proposition “There is no omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect being” is impossible in the actual world.

8. So there is in the actual world an omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect being.

Say that an entity possesses “maximal evilness” if and only if it is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally bankrupt. Say, further, that an entity possesses “maximal badness” if and only if it possesses maximal evilness in every possible world—that is, if and only if it is necessarily existent and necessarily maximally evil. Then consider the following argument:

I respond to this in my article that I linked to. This doesn't defeat the argument. Even if we believe evil is something that can exist and thus the argument goes through, it only means there are two Gods, one that is maximally great and good, and one that is maximally great and evil. That doesn't help you if you wish to remain an atheist.

However, we do not have to accept that evil is something that exists. In Scholasticism, evil is not a real thing but the absence of a thing i.e. the good. Like darkness is the absence of light. A hole in the wall is not a thing in the world but the absence of part of a thing in the world. A hole in a wall is the absence of part of the wall.

And so for those that hold to this concept, we have an argument that evil existing as a thing is impossible.

But like I said, I actually already addressed this here https://www.freelymeditate.com/single-p ... ts-for-god

[JoeyKnothead]

[Replying to JoeyKnothead in post #15]

So 'possible' still means we don't know if it's actually true or false. Any premise that uses that word is equivalent to "We don't know". i.e. We don't know if a god (or God) is possible in the modal sense either. It's just a proposition. You can crank a "we don't know" premise through whatever logical argument you like, that doesn't somehow change it to a "We know" premise at the end.

Plantinga's argument is not just that God is possible, but that God is necessarily possible. But I think maybe what you are trying to get at is, what if someone chooses to be agnostic about the first premise that God possibly exists? They could do that. They could say, well, I don't have any arguments showing God is impossible, so I cannot argue against Plantinga, but perhaps there could be an argument that God is impossible. And because they don't want to believe, they can choose to say, well, I just don't know if God is possible or impossible. But then they are not an atheist. They are agnostic.

That's all before we get to "maximally great" which is really defined however the person wants it to be. i.e. they load whatever they want to fall out the bottom of the argument into the premises. Maybe I think it's maximally great to be maximally tall. However, a maximally great being in my definition can't walk under a maximally low bar. So how maximally 'great' is it really? We can crank whatever definition we want through the same argument and arrive at different entities. That should be a red flag to the issue.

Bo. Plantinga defines exactly what he means by maximally great being. You will see this in 2 and 3.

1. There is a possible world W in which there exists a being with maximal greatness.

2. Maximal greatness entails having maximal excellence in every possible world.

3. Maximal excellence entails omniscience, omnipotence, and moral perfection in every possible world.

4. So in W there exists a being which is omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect in every possible world.

5. So in W the proposition “There is no omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect being” is impossible.

6. But what is impossible in one possible world is impossible in every possible world.

7. So the proposition “There is no omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect being” is impossible in the actual world.

8. So there is in the actual world an omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect being.

Say that an entity possesses “maximal evilness” if and only if it is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally bankrupt. Say, further, that an entity possesses “maximal badness” if and only if it possesses maximal evilness in every possible world—that is, if and only if it is necessarily existent and necessarily maximally evil. Then consider the following argument:

I respond to this in my article that I linked to. This doesn't defeat the argument. Even if we believe evil is something that can exist and thus the argument goes through, it only means there are two Gods, one that is maximally great and good, and one that is maximally great and evil. That doesn't help you if you wish to remain an atheist.

However, we do not have to accept that evil is something that exists. In Scholasticism, evil is not a real thing but the absence of a thing i.e. the good. Like darkness is the absence of light. A hole in the wall is not a thing in the world but the absence of part of a thing in the world. A hole in a wall is the absence of part of the wall.

And so for those that hold to this concept, we have an argument that evil existing as a thing is impossible.

But like I said, I actually already addressed this here https://www.freelymeditate.com/single-p ... ts-for-god

That's a lot of words to say, "My thing's possible, so it does, but your thing ain't, so it don't."

The possibility of a statement being true is insufficient to make it true.

[TRANSPONDER]

I think you have debunked your own argument more effectively that I could, but evidently you don't see it. All your posts above make unvalidated claims, (certainly unvalidated by philosophical contructs) but youfiddle the argument to say (your last remarks) that if we can't prove it impossible, it must be true. By which you surely mean a credible or at least valid claim, since you surely can't claim that the existence of a god (name your own) is proven by this 'than which is greater' flummery.

That was never the argument; it was never about skeptics having to prove a god was impossible any more than we have to prove that it doesn't exist. It isn't just me; in the past I have seen smarter persons and educated in philosophy explain why both Anselm and Plantinga are not demonstrating anything about a postulated god (name your own...yes, that's still to be shewn) that wasn't already postulated; it made everything and is arguably greater than everything (nobody said that Turing was greater than the computer he created) and philosophical (or theological) speculations about the nature of God,do not a single thing to prove it.

The burden of proof is on you to show that a god exists not on the Goddless to prove that it is impossible, because none of us ever said that it was.

I'd say that you are flogging a dead horse in the hope that resurrection is a reality.

[The Tanager]

Existence is an example of if it is possible in any world, then it is possible in all worlds, for there would be no world if there was no existence. Any world that obtains is an example of existence, so existence is necessary because it can exist in all worlds.

This is the crux for me. It seems weird to me to say that existence exists, as though those are two different things. To me, a thing with certain characteristics exists or doesn’t.

So to say something is necessary is to say that it could not have failed to exist.

But this, to me, isn’t a characteristic a being has, like omnipotence, it’s just a statement about that being with all of its characteristics…that it could not have failed to exist.

[TRANSPONDER]

Existence is an example of if it is possible in any world, then it is possible in all worlds, for there would be no world if there was no existence. Any world that obtains is an example of existence, so existence is necessary because it can exist in all worlds.

This is the crux for me. It seems weird to me to say that existence exists, as though those are two different things. To me, a thing with certain characteristics exists or doesn’t.

So to say something is necessary is to say that it could not have failed to exist.

But this, to me, isn’t a characteristic a being has, like omnipotence, it’s just a statement about that being with all of its characteristics…that it could not have failed to exist.

But the Theists make the argument that the universe (they mean the wider existence of which the universe is - probably - part) could not have existed unless the parameters were just right (Fine tuning argument) and that implies that it could indeed have failed to exist But how could the requirements to exist have been when nothing existed? That sounds like the'necessary being'argument, because you'd need a being outside of existence working out what would be needed for a universe to work. And that suggests a materialist answer - evolution (chemical, not biologuical). What works, works,a nd what doesn't goes exinct. the Cosmic Origin process could have tried so many things before one worked. Thus there could have been different universes with different fine tuning requirements - our universe didn't have to be the way it is, any more than we had to be the way we are. Without the Extincion, we might not ever have evolved.

The fallacy there is assuming that the outcome was planned, when the better explanation is random chance, really. And there indeed could be other universes out there fine tuned to totally different standards.

God, as Hawking said "Is.Not.Nesser -sarry."

[benchwarmer]

[Replying to JoeyKnothead in post #15]

So 'possible' still means we don't know if it's actually true or false. Any premise that uses that word is equivalent to "We don't know". i.e. We don't know if a god (or God) is possible in the modal sense either. It's just a proposition. You can crank a "we don't know" premise through whatever logical argument you like, that doesn't somehow change it to a "We know" premise at the end.

Plantinga's argument is not just that God is possible, but that God is necessarily possible.

Well Plantinga certainly defined that, but it doesn't make it true. I can define cotton candy as necessarily possible, but I have no actual evidence of that and you have no evidence that God is either.

But I think maybe what you are trying to get at is, what if someone chooses to be agnostic about the first premise that God possibly exists?

It's not about agnosticism, it's built right into the premise. The word 'possible' does not mean 'true'. Simply defining something as 'necessarily possible' or 'necessary' is simply a claim. What proof (or at least good evidence) do you have that God (however you want to define God) is necessary? If you had good evidence, we wouldn't be talking about philosophical arguments which don't actually determine the existence of anything.

They could do that. They could say, well, I don't have any arguments showing God is impossible, so I cannot argue against Plantinga, but perhaps there could be an argument that God is impossible. And because they don't want to believe,

Don't want to believe? I think you mean just don't believe. Why is this always framed as something people can just want and then it happens? We only believe things we are convinced of. Whether the reasons we are convinced are good or bad, we have been convinced first, then naturally believe. If you don't agree, then for the next day, simply want to disbelieve in your God. If you're honest you know you can't do that.

they can choose to say, well, I just don't know if God is possible or impossible. But then they are not an atheist. They are agnostic.

Not this again. I'm an agnostic atheist, so... checkmate?

That's all before we get to "maximally great" which is really defined however the person wants it to be. i.e. they load whatever they want to fall out the bottom of the argument into the premises. Maybe I think it's maximally great to be maximally tall. However, a maximally great being in my definition can't walk under a maximally low bar. So how maximally 'great' is it really? We can crank whatever definition we want through the same argument and arrive at different entities. That should be a red flag to the issue.

Bo. Plantinga defines exactly what he means by maximally great being. You will see this in 2 and 3.

1. There is a possible world W in which there exists a being with maximal greatness.

2. Maximal greatness entails having maximal excellence in every possible world.

3. Maximal excellence entails omniscience, omnipotence, and moral perfection in every possible world.

4. So in W there exists a being which is omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect in every possible world.

5. So in W the proposition “There is no omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect being” is impossible.

6. But what is impossible in one possible world is impossible in every possible world.

7. So the proposition “There is no omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect being” is impossible in the actual world.

8. So there is in the actual world an omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect being.

And? I just showed you can substitute whatever word pair you like instead of great/excellence so your objection fails.

Say that an entity possesses “maximal evilness” if and only if it is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally bankrupt. Say, further, that an entity possesses “maximal badness” if and only if it possesses maximal evilness in every possible world—that is, if and only if it is necessarily existent and necessarily maximally evil. Then consider the following argument:

I respond to this in my article that I linked to. This doesn't defeat the argument. Even if we believe evil is something that can exist and thus the argument goes through, it only means there are two Gods, one that is maximally great and good, and one that is maximally great and evil. That doesn't help you if you wish to remain an atheist.

Who talked about wishing to remain an atheist? I'm showing the obvious holes in the argument. Load in your desired outcome in the premises and look at that, they fall right out the bottom as expected.

My point is that we can define as many gods as we want using this logic:

maximally great/excellent
maximally bad/evil
maximally tall/high
maximally sweet/tasty
....
etc.

Everyone will be a polytheist following this logic.

However, we do not have to accept that evil is something that exists. In Scholasticism, evil is not a real thing but the absence of a thing i.e. the good. Like darkness is the absence of light. A hole in the wall is not a thing in the world but the absence of part of a thing in the world. A hole in a wall is the absence of part of the wall.

That is one way to look at it, but is simply that. One way to look at it. I see your word play and substitute my own:

Good is not a real thing, but the absence of evil. Thus good does not really exist, only evil does and therefore something can be maximally evil, but not maximally good.

And so for those that hold to this concept, we have an argument that evil existing as a thing is impossible.

Well, simply redefining my desired outcome as they have seems to fix that right up

At the end of the day, I'm not sure why theists bring these logical arguments up rather than just producing some verifiable evidence. Oh wait, I do know...

As others have mentioned, these arguments do not seem to be the gateway to religious belief (or we would have all heard of them in Church), but seem to be something brought up when the tough questions start. i.e. dazzle the believers with some modal logic and hope they don't see the flaws.

[Tcg]

[Replying to AquinasForGod in post #1]

Whenever I see arguments for God presented, I am always puzzled. If God actually existed, why would we need arguments to prove its existence? It'd be like needing arguments to prove the sun exists. Of course, I suppose philosophers need something to do with their time.

It is extra puzzling when Christians rely on them. I suppose they have rejected Paul's claim in Romans 1 and consider it insufficient to the task.


Tcg

[Tcg]

Don't want to believe? I think you mean just don't believe. Why is this always framed as something people can just want and then it happens? We only believe things we are convinced of.

This is such an important truth to point out. I became an atheist because I wanted to believe or rather keep believing. As a Christian I was struggling with things in the Bible that didn't make any sense and with the realization that certain beliefs some Christians hold don't match reality. I turned to the Bible and trusted Christian leaders to find resolution to these problems. After a few years effort I realized there weren't any and no matter how much I wanted to keep believing I simply couldn't. I couldn't believe that which I wasn't convinced was true.

At the end of the day, I'm not sure why theists bring these logical arguments up rather than just producing some verifiable evidence. Oh wait, I do know...

Yep, if there were a maximally most everything God, there'd be plenty of verifiable evidence sufficient to establish its existence. Unless perhaps it also possesses maximal stage fright. That'd be a tough one to overcome.


Tcg

[William]

Question for Debate: Can atheists prove God is impossible?

No one can prove a creator or creators of this universe, is impossible.

That answered, the premise should start with "We exist within a creation" because no one can prove that we do not.

This then implies a creator or creators are involved.

What it does not imply, is the nature of said creator or creators, so even that it is currently impossible to prove a creator or creators is/are impossible, this does not mean any particular religious views re the nature of said creator or creators are therefore that which should fill the gap.

Much more investigation is required.

[POI]

One of the best arguments for God is the response to the modal ontological argument.

Is this argument then why most people become God believers? Probably not.

Heck, do (many/most/all) believers know what this argument even is and proposes? Probably not.

Does this then mean people are coming to their beliefs in god for inferior/lesser reasons?

So if it's the best argument, why is it not a "house hold" one? Too difficult to understand, other?

Does the title say it is the best or one of the best?

Allow me to slightly tweak my questions. You will notice the questions are still relevant.

Is this argument one the arguments which brings most people to becoming God believers? Probably not.

Heck, do (many/most/all) believers know what this argument even is and proposes? Probably not.

Does this then mean people are coming to their beliefs in god for inferior/lesser reasons?

So if this is one of the best arguments, why is it not a "house hold" one? Too difficult to understand, other?