Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Here's what I think the ontological arguments claim, God is necessarily a bachelor,which is necessarily an unmarried male, God, therefore is necessarily unmarried.
That is that the argument is based on, the necessity of God having a certian trait to be God, and the necessity of that trait that God has having the definition it is said to be, and the necessary trait God has along with the trait's necessary definition makes one to arive at the conclusion that God by necessity is the definition of his necessary definition,which namely is existence.
Another way to state this is that argument based on the concepts of necessity and a priori knowledge, or that they are based on concepts that in every possible world p must be true, and knowledge can be had independent of observation.
Do I have a correct understanding of the argument?
I don't know, RJ. I have to re- read the ontological arguments every time until I understand them and the flaws in the reasoning -and the next morning I can't remember a word of it.
I think the ontological arguments are, despite how complex they appear are based on circular reasoning.I feel the ontological arguments are based on langauge,so my objection will derive from it.
If it says, God is perfection, perfection exists, therefore God exists. (Admittly this a rather simplistic ontological argument.)
The moment I wrote is, I said, God exists. "Is" is a form of the verb to be, a definition of to be could be the state of existence (in some form). Thus the conclusion that God exists could be reached as so.
God is,since is necessary what exists, God exists,
Or God exists, existence necessitates existence, therefore God exists.
"God must be perfect" is to say "God necessarily exists perfectly." Imagine this, "God is fiction, being fictional necessitates nonexistent, therefore God is nonexistence." An existencent (is) and nonexistent thing would be a contradiction. One could ignore my objection, and accept this conclusion, or accept the objection, and invaldate the argument.
If we think about each word being a step, I believe we forget about what step two is, because the word is so much apart of our everyday use we don't think about and skip to step three. Secondly, I think even skeptics want to hear what people think to hear step three. "Oh, you think there's a God? Define it." What most concern themselves with is what definition God has,
Also, one might look at my objection, and say, okay I'll leave out is out verbs that necessitate existence,besides exists. ( This might look clunky) " Perfection exists. God, perfect, exists.
The problem with that besides, the weird wording is that, when that is done it's saying "Perfection exists.God (that is/exists) perfect (that does) exists." even though it doesn't state it,"is" is implied.
Also, the argument is rather complex. Thus why step two is forgotten, because it is seemed as so trival.
Just look at how many times I used is, if not these posts,then my original post. My grammar still sucks.Sorry.
It is a helpful summary. I read it again and I again felt that feeling of being made a sucker of by eddicated theists with a philosophical or mathematical background who took arguments that were circular as RJ says or based on false assumptions and dressed them up in a lot of complicated stuff that boggled the mind and ended up saying 'Therefore god exists - you can't argue with that can you?'
I couldn't, because I had no idea what they were talking about. I struggled with the discussion with Mystic phd and gaylenwoof about the philosophy of universal origins and it was awfully hard to see it as anything other than an elaborate mental construct which worked in terms of the rules of philosophical constructs but was of doubtful vaue in proving anything at all, but I was wide open to the facepalm Icon.
So I rather prefer to leave the God - question to the philosophers and just stick to filleting the gospels. I understand those well enough.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 06-15-2012 at 03:34 AM..
Anselm defined God as the greatest possible being we can conceive and argued that this being could exist in the mind. He suggested that, if the greatest possible being exists in the mind, it must also exist in reality. If it only exists in the mind, a greater being is possible—one which exists in the mind and in reality.
The major flaw I see in this reasoning is equating the concept of a being located in the mind with a being that exists in the mind. Beings don't exist in the mind; the only thing that exists in the mind are thoughts. So, Anselm's conditional statement, "if the greatest possible being exists in the mind" will always be false because again no beings exist in the mind, only thoughts.
I don't think ontological arguments are necessarily circular, but they do rely on positing something that isn't true and then building on that proposition using the rules of deductive reasoning. And the catch typically involves a linguistic illusion (my phrase) exploiting assumptions we make so routinely that we almost become blind to them. For instance, in this case, we are so used to treating conceptions in our minds (the concept of a being) as if they are what they represent (a being itself), that we can forget that are merely conceptions.
Last edited by Hueffenhardt; 06-15-2012 at 06:36 AM..
[Descarte] suggested that the concept of God is that of a supremely perfect being, holding all perfections. He proposed that existence is a perfection: it would be more perfect to exist than not to exist. Thus, if the notion of God did not include existence, it would not be supremely perfect, as it would be lacking a perfection. Consequently, the notion of a supremely perfect God who does not exist, Descartes argues, is unintelligible. Therefore, according to his nature, God must exist.
The problem here is with his second premise: "it would be more perfect to exist than not to exist".
1) Perfection is so subjective - Basically, if an attribute is part of one's ideal, then it can become part of the definition of perfection. For me, I don't agree that existing is more perfect than not existing, but that is neither here nor there, because of point number 2.
2) The construction of the premises are such that two definitions are given (one for god and one for perfection) such that the definition of one is incorporated into the definition of the other.
god = a supremely perfect being, holding all perfections
perfect = existant (and presumably other things that were not articulated by Descarte)
therefore, using the transient property:
god = a supremely (existant) being, holding all (existence)
So, Descarte defines god simply as an existant being. Hardly, a surprise then, that he then finds that god must exist, because if it doesn't exist, it is not god by definition. This argument obviously is circular and does not get us anywhere.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
