God is either necessary or he does not exist

[momo666]

I have been thinking about this for some time. First, let me say that I am not particularly clingy to this argument, I just want to see where it fails because it seems way too simple.

P1. God is either necessary or he does not exist.

God is the greatest possible maximal being. A being that is the ground existence for all physical reality is greater than a being who is not responsible for all of physical reality. Thus, god must, by necessity, be the ground existence for any thing other than his own existence. I suppose this is why Craig insists on creation ex nihilo.

P2. God is not necessary

All cosmological models start from a physical state, not from a state of non-existence.

Here I am employing Craig's defense of the first premise of the Kalam, namely the observation that anything that begins to exist has a cause. He provides the BGV theorem as evidence the Universe began to exist for P2. I provide all and any cosmological models; all of which start from a physical state, not from a state of non-existence.

C. God does not exist

I am fairly certain the argument is not that good. The biggest problem I see is with P2 which relies on inductive logic but isn't the first premise and the second premise of the Kalam the same ?

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

Just a minor comment on the creatio ex nihilo phrase - I addressed its etymology here.

Not sure how this affects Craig's use of it in his Kalam argument as I'm not aware of how/why he uses it.

Kindest regards,

James

 

[WarK]

I'm not even sure if this vid is on topic or not. But how can we imagine something "greatest" if in the next moment we can imagine something even greater? Why would god be necessary for anything? It seems to me like in this case god is defined to be necessary and existing. But why?

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

I'm not even sure if this vid is on topic or not. But how can we imagine something "greatest" if in the next moment we can imagine something even greater? Why would god be necessary for anything? It seems to me like in this case god is defined to be necessary and existing. But why?

That has always been the problem with the Ontological Argument to me. It is just an attempt to define a deity into existence. My reply is, "Where is the evidence?" We can sit around and imagine things all day long, but when we get right down to it, things that exist have evidence behind them.

 

[momo666]

I will take a look at the video, thanks for it. As for why god would be necessary, I didn't mean to suggest that he is. What I meant to say was that the greatest possible maximal being should be necessary to all of existence outside of his own and that one such being that is not necessary for the existence of something (eg. eternal multiverse) other than his own being is not in fact the greatest possible maximal being and it is not god.

 

[surreptitious57]

Evidence is not actually required for a purely hypothetical argument. Instead what is required is logical consistency across the
argument in question. Such as between each of the premises and the final premise and the conclusion. This but nothing else

I would question the necessity of making God the greatest possible maximal being because implicit in this is an assumption
that anything else could not create the universe. From a purely hypothetical perspective this assumption is unnecessary as
there is no logical reason why a lesser maximal being could not have created a smaller universe. With only one there is no
external referent to compare it with. So it is entirely possible a greater maximal being could also have created a larger one

And there is also no reason within a purely hypothetical argument why different sized universes could not simultaneously
exist. Created by gods of different capabilities or a single god who may or may not also happen to be the God who is the
greatest possible maximal being. All of these possibilities are entirely logically consistent within the argument in question

 

[Steelmage99]

An entity capable of creating just a universe will be exceeded in greatness by an entity capable of creating both a god and a universe.
I can imagine such an entity.
Such an entity does therefore exist.
So any gods are created by a greater entity.

:lol:

 

[Visaki]

An entity capable of creating just a universe will be exceeded in greatness by an entity capable of creating both a god and a universe.
I can imagine such an entity.
Such an entity does therefore exist.
So any gods are created by a greater entity.

:lol:

Yeah, I've always wondered about the ontological arguments for a christian God because I can quite easily imagine something with more maximal greatness than the christian God. This should mean that either the christian God doesn't exist, or that it is not the only god. Maybe I'm getting that wrong, I'm not really that good at philosophical apologetics.

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

Steelmage/Visaki, the idea of a "maximally greatest being" is meant to be the ultimate being - nothing better can be imagined. Hence your idea of being able to imagine a greater being misses the point - the one you imagine as the greatest is the maximally greatest being.

Where the argument actually fails is that the idea of a maximally greatest being is limited by our imagination.

In other words, no matter how great a being we can imagine, it's infinitesimally small in comparison to the real thing - if it actually existed.

Kindest regards,

James

 

[Steelmage99]

Greetings,

Steelmage/Visaki, the idea of a "maximally greatest being" is meant to be the ultimate being - nothing better can be imagined. Hence your idea of being able to imagine a greater being misses the point - the one you imagine as the greatest is the maximally greatest being.

Where the argument actually fails is that the idea of a maximally greatest being is limited by our imagination.

In other words, no matter how great a being we can imagine, it's infinitesimally small in comparison to the real thing - if it actually existed.

Kindest regards,

James

I know. I am merely having fun.

I am well aware that I am essentially saying; "infinity + 1".

 

[leroy]

In fact I would like to meat someone who uses and understand the argument, I personally find it very week. I personally don't understand why does the fact that God exists in some hypothetical world implies that he lives in our world.


but even ignoring that, an atheist could destroy the argument with this set of premises


1 All possible worlds respect the laws of nature

2 A maximally grate being wouldn't respect the laws of nature

therefore a maximally grate being doesn't exist in any possible world



obviously as a theist I would reject premise 1, but by rejecting premise 1, one would have to show that supernatural events (miracles) happen, and by doing it, one would prove the existence of God, making the ontological argument redundant,

in other words if one proves hat premise 1 is wrong, he would prove that God exist, therefore one doesn't need the rest of the oncological argument to prove the existence of God.



This is an argument that I thought myself, I haven't seen any atheist promoting this argument, nor any theist defending it.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

An entity capable of creating just a universe will be exceeded in greatness by an entity capable of creating both a god and a universe.
I can imagine such an entity.
Such an entity does therefore exist.
So any gods are created by a greater entity.

:lol:

Yeah, I've always wondered about the ontological arguments for a christian God because I can quite easily imagine something with more maximal greatness than the christian God. This should mean that either the christian God doesn't exist, or that it is not the only god. Maybe I'm getting that wrong, I'm not really that good at philosophical apologetics.

This comes from a theological slight of hand. If one reads the Bible, we find a very limited god (iron chariots). However, in modern theology (with all arguments for a deity), the theist is never arguing for Yahweh. They have to invent this omni-god and argue from there. After establishing the omni-god, the theist than moves to trying to claim that omni-god is in fact Yahweh, even though Yahweh cannot be the omni-god based on the Bible.

The fact is, if a Christian, Jewish, or Islamic Apologist argues for the omni-god, they have already lost the argument for their god. They have to imagine something greater than their deity and pretend that that thing is their deity.

 

[Deleted member 619]

I have been thinking about this for some time. First, let me say that I am not particularly clingy to this argument, I just want to see where it fails because it seems way too simple.

P1. God is either necessary or he does not exist.

God is the greatest possible maximal being. A being that is the ground existence for all physical reality is greater than a being who is not responsible for all of physical reality. Thus, god must, by necessity, be the ground existence for any thing other than his own existence. I suppose this is why Craig insists on creation ex nihilo.

I think it's failed already, for several reasons.

Firstly, it relies on a very particular failure to define god. Specifically, it leans on the lack of a definition contained in the modal ontological argument. We're asked to accept that this entity is the maximally great being, when no meat has been put on the bone in terms of what's meant by 'greatness'. What does it even mean for something to be great? In the MOA, without even defining greatness, it's asserted that this entity is such that no greater being can be imagined. Thus, they're defining greatness without defining it, by simply pointing to your inability to imagine something greater. The most obvious problem with this is the huge body of experience telling us that nothing is ever nearly as great as you imagined it.

Secondly, why should we even define god in this way? There are many tens of thousands of conceptions of deity, and not all of them will meet this definition or lack thereof. My favourite deity is Dionysus, mostly because I have a particular penchant for the blushful hippocrene, yet I know that I can imagine greater entities than that, yet Dionysus is properly a deity, by any reasonable measure.

Thus, we have definitions of god that simply don't meet these requirements and, indeed, that's one of the main reasons the MOA fails horribly to meet any rigorous standard. It's pure sophistry and, if it's sophistry as an argument for the existence of a deity, any argument against the existence of god falls afoul of the same problems, thus the argument fails on the same basis that the MOA does.

P2. God is not necessary

All cosmological models start from a physical state, not from a state of non-existence.

Here I am employing Craig's defense of the first premise of the Kalam, namely the observation that anything that begins to exist has a cause. He provides the BGV theorem as evidence the Universe began to exist for P2. I provide all and any cosmological models; all of which start from a physical state, not from a state of non-existence.

Several issues here, not least of which is that relying on Kraig's indefensible defence of a premise in a really bad argument means that it's subject to all the same failures as Kraig's argument does, in exactly the same way that criticisms of the MOA also apply to your P1. We don't even need to get into Kraig's failure to understand BGV theorem, which most definitely does not constitute evidence that the universe began to exist.

Moreover, starting with cosmological models is a mistake anyway, because none of them actually undermine the necessity of a creator entity. There's no good reason to assume that there's any such thing on the basis of them, but nor is there any real support for lack of necessity. In reality, even opening this door is going to leave you open to an awful lot of apologetic excrement that you're going to struggle to deal with. Indeed, I'd probably have issues myself attempting to circumvent the valid objections to this approach, largely because I don't think this is a good approach.

C. God does not exist

Best to start there. Contrary to popular apologetic argument, this statement carries no burden of proof, because the burden is always on the affirmative position. It's thought by many that the burden is on the one making the absolute claim, but this isn't actually the case (I once thought so myself, but now I know better). The proper name for the fallacy known as 'shifting the burden of proof is onus probandi, which is shorthand for onus probandi incumbit ei qui dicit, non ei qui nega, which translates directly as 'the burden of proof is on him who affirms, not him who denies'. The negating position NEVER carries such a burden, and it's easy to demonstrate why.

Suppose I were to assert the existence of furzlewurgle, and you say 'that's bollocks, there's no such thing'. Have you shouldered a burden of proof? How would you go about fulfilling such a burden? The answer is that you can't for several reasons, not the least of which is that furzlewurgle is undefined, in exactly the same way that god is undefined.

I am fairly certain the argument is not that good. The biggest problem I see is with P2 which relies on inductive logic but isn't the first premise and the second premise of the Kalam the same ?

No, they're not the same. P1 is conditional while P2 says that the condition is met.