Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ Anselm

December 31, 2014 • 5:17 am

In today’s strip, the Jesus and Mo artist picks out the fatal flaw in the Ontological Argument for God:

2014-12-31Why not define the crisps into existence as well?

I’m baffled that the Ontological Argument had any traction among philosophers (theologians, of course, are polluted by confirmation bias), especially after science arose. There’s simply no way that one can prove the existence of something by logic alone, absent any empirical observation.  The shorter refutation of the argument is “existence is not a property of a being or object.”

163 thoughts on “Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ Anselm”

  1. And I’ll never understand how logic can be of use at all when it comes to a lot of arguments. Logic can only help make your arguments sound good, “syntaxically”, but it doesn’t care one iota about the content of the arguments.

    For example, saying:

    God is big.

    Is perfectly logical, but logic doesn’t care if it’s actually true or not.

    1. That’s why we have epistemology and methodology in addition to logic as means of studying good ways to learn about the world. Logic is necessary but not sufficient, IOW.

  2. My preferred refutation says that a perfect God must by definition not exist. If it existed, then it would be subject to physical laws and hence not perfect. Therefore there is no God.

        1. I agree. Isn’t it more perfect to manage to be perfect *without* even existing? That would be quite a feat, but a perfect being could do it if he wanted.

          1. “It is the final proof of God’s omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us.”

            Peter de Vries, lampooning this kind of armchair theologizing in Mackerel Plaza.

          2. I would think that a god would have to not exist in order to be “perfect” because if it existed, it could disprove it’s perfection. Likewise, if perfection requires existence, we have evidence that a perfect being ever existed.

            I’m reminded of Pirate of Penzance and a certain song about a most ingenious paradox.

            [link]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXhJKzI1u48[/link]

      2. The idea is that somehow there is a notion of a “positive property”. This in my view is the mistake: to say that existence is not a *property* (or worse, a predicate) is in fact an error in modern logics. What matters is if one can find a suitable logic, what the models (in the model theoretic sense) or other semantic results are.

        If one does that, then, for example in E. Zalta’s system, the ontological argument is perfectly valid and not even *that* circular – except in so far as all valid arguments are. Hence one should believe its conclusion. But note that this is still a hypothetical conclusion: it still has undischarged axioms. After all, this is *metaphysics*, not logic alone.

        What instead goes wrong is the mininalist system (and the ordering). As I recall, the system and proof (which a theorem prover found!) is over the platonic numbers 0,1, a (non relational) platonic property of these numbers, and a relation over them (e.g., the usual >). In this case, the greatest thing which can be conceived is the platonic number 1, and the two numbers are arranged in “greater than”. Not much of a universe, though.

        Note the vitalness of having a relation. I do not remember what the other property is for; I think it can be just 0≠1.

        For those who want to read more, google Zalta and Oppenheimer on the ontological argument.

        1. Is this a fair summary of the version you describe here:

          Given the set of existent things, find the greatest of them. This will be what we shall call “god”.

          This doesn’t seem to me to work in any sort of similar way to how theologians want the OA to work. They don’t want god to simply be the best-behaved human we can actually find, and besides, “greatest” is still problematically ambiguous. What makes 1 greater than 0 in any of the other senses of “greater”, ie, not just “bigger”?

          1. You could make < the relation if you wanted to: the argument doesn't depend much on the relation's semantics at all, which is one of the discoveries of the proof: this is actually somewhat new, as there has been (e.g., by Gödel) attempts to formalize more here.

            Of course, by showing how weak one can make the assumptions one shows not only how easy it is to make an "ontological argument", it shows how useless they are because they don't prove very much. In this case, I think most of the work is done by the Platonism (i.e., that there is a 0, 1 – here "is" is "encodes"), which Zalta adopts because many theists and him both agree on.

            One other way to think about the result in my view is to show that Guanilo was right – the argument *does* prove a maximal great island (or cheese sandwich) so long as there's an appropriate ordering relation with very minimal properties.

      1. Indeed, I found myself not able to imagine a perfect being because I didn’t really know what that would be. Maybe it’s like what Smith says in the Matrix, we can’t accept a perfect world, our brains reject it.

      3. Actually, it is unnecessary in the argument. All one really needs is the ordering. One gets a pretty weak result, of course. One can then *define* perfect being as the maximal element of the ordering.

        1. Hmm, what’s then the minimal element of the ordering? Non existence or chaos?

          Also I’m having a semantic quibble with the definition of perfect as a concept of measurement.

          Wouldn’t the opposite of perfection then be perfect imperfection?

          Phhhh!…..I need coffee! 🙂

        2. The problem is that saying “greater” or “more perfect” doesn’t actually get you to an order. The meaning of those terms must be specifically defined to achieve an ordering.

          Consider:

          Which is greater: a hamburger or ice cream?

          You can’t order those.

          This, however:

          Which is greater, where “greater” means “less likely to melt”: a hamburger or ice cream?

          Why, a hamburger, of course!

          The terms must be defined. And the problem with defining them is that those terms do not have universal, absolute definitions. They are context-dependent.

          1. Of course, the greatest of these is a cheeseburger followed by a milkshake. My meal is greater than the attributes of the ground round of being. Assuming god also contains the properties of liver, and my meal wins by subtraction.

          2. The point is that you don’t need to worry about what “greater” and “more perfect” actually order at all, just that they order. This is actually where Zalta and Oppenheimer say the argument is most innovative and points precisely to where the theist needs to be more convincing.

          3. I think you’re still giving too much power to those words by themselves. What I tried to point out above is that they don’t order, unless the context in which they’re being used is sufficiently specified. The example you gave with numbers is not an example of an abstract, context-free usage of an undefined term like “greater”. By using numbers you established the context as arithmetic and the definition of “greater” as “a larger amount”. The OA includes no such implied context or definition.

            Being an ordering term (ie, being the word we use when we perform an ordering function) is not the same as actually establishing an order.

    3. Additionally, you can say that whatever, if anything, the OA’s “maximally great” entity is, it’s certainly not an omnipotent entity.

      After all, what is the OA but a constraint? “God must exist in order to be maximally great/perfect/whathaveyou.”

  3. Jerry, do you know there exists an infinite set of prime numbers or that a circle’s circumference is an irrational multiple of its radius empirically? If these facts weren’t discovered by armchair reasoning, I don’t know how they were.

    None of this is a defense of the OA, but just saying.

    1. Jerry, do you know there exists an infinite set of prime numbers …

      That depends quite a bit on what one means by “exist”. That set can be conceived of, so the conception of it can “exist”, but the set doesn’t “exist” in any physical sense. (Unless you are Tegmark, that is.)

      1. I’m not really sure if Tegmark is right or not. Reasonable people might be able to disagree about how numbers exist differently from physical objects, but I don’t know of a serious mathematician who doubts numbers exist at all. they almost certainly exist in some way.

        1. True, but here Jerry is clearly talking about physical existence, in the sense that something “exists” if it is capable of having some effect on something else.

          I don’t think that pure numbers or other mathematical conceptions “exist” in that sense. Of course conceptions of them do exist, in the same way that a *conception* of a perfect god can exist.

          1. Would it be helpful maybe to view numbers as highly evolved and versatile memes?

            As such numbers doesn’t exist outside human thinking as far as I can see.

          2. Based on prior empirical experience, I am confident that there is a cat sitting in a sunny spot at a window somewhere.
            There is your god; and we can be very sure it exists.

          3. All we can be “sure” of is that it “exists” in the shadows of the unexplored regions since there is no evidence in the illuminated areas. But one can still say their deity is like “the Force” invisible yet binds everything together even though there is not one whit of evidence to show it exists or needs to exist. Occam’s Razor cuts deep.

          4. I am quite possibly wrong here since my mathematical ability is sadly deficient, but I see mathematical things like an infinite prime numbers as similar to letters and grammar to explain other things.

        2. “they almost certainly exist in some way.”

          Everything exists in “some way”, so that’s a pretty useless claim. If you say numbers exist, then I say Hogwarts exists, too.

          1. If we assume your point, and assume numbers and hogwarts exist in the same way, they do so very strangely. pretty much everyone disagrees (or has different notions) about the nature of hogwarts, unicorns, dragons, fairies, and gods. practically no one disagrees about the nature of 1,2,3,4 or 5. when they do, we call them insane. or politicians.

          3. you very well may be mistaken about facts about numbers, but I humbly submit you’re having beliefs about them somewhat presupposes their existence.

            You: “All unicorns have scales”

            Me: “Well, do you believe, unicorns exist at all?”

            You: “Of course not!. I’m not insane! But if they did, they’d have scales!”

          4. The pillars to the entrance to Hogwart’s grounds are topped by winged boars.

            I’m sure I’m not the only one to notice their resemblance to flying pigs.

          5. I think one problem with your claim that numbers “exist” is unfortunately very similar to the objection re: Hogwarts.

            If numbers exist, what is their mass? Colour? Spin? Speed? Location?
            Numbers don’t actually have any attribute that one normally associates with existence.

          6. Unicorns do exist, but all are human made. Have been so for centuries. Human ingenuity to remove one horn and move the other horn bud surgically to the middle of the forehead. Still in use today.

          7. “Numbers don’t actually have any attribute that one normally associates with existence.”

            Well, we can see them and do things with them. Seems odd to be able to say that about something that doesn’t exist. 😉

    2. There is evidence that prime numbers go on for ever. There is also proof that pi goes on forever. Empiricism gives sufficient reason to believe in these proofs.

    3. Mathematics is not like empirical science, as it proceeds purely as the logical consequences of a set of axioms. That is why we speak of “proof” in mathematics but not in science. In science, there must be possible universes in which the result might not obtain.

      Do you want to tell me of something that actually exists as an entity in the cosmos whose existence can be demonstrated by pure logic? Like God? Give me an example outside of math and philosophy in which the existence of an entity or phenomenon can be demonstrated by pure logic alone.

      1. I hope someone has an answer to this question! There are examples of conjecture, predictions and hypotheses that temporarily satisfy – the Higgs boson, Darwin’s long-tongued moth – but we don’t call the phenomena truly “demonstrated” until the particle is measured or the moth is found pollinating the orchid.

      2. I think your challenge is challenging. If something were to be demonstrated logically, most people (scientists and myself included) would want an empirical result to back this up. However, once its existence had been verified, it would no longer be a logical result but an empirical one.

        The best I can think of as an answer to your challenge would be something like black holes. Scientists (LaPlace) theorized. Einstein came up with the robust logical theory which predicted the existence of black holes in 1915 and that theory was empirically verified. The first convincing black hole observation was Cygnus X – 1 in the ’70s.

        I would say that black holes’ existence was demonstrated through a logical theory absent empiricism between Einstein and Cygnus X – 1. No?

          1. fair enough, though I think you’re in danger of defining away the challenge. If you’re unwilling to believe a conjecture without empirical justification, I don’t see how any purely logical justification could sway you, regardless of what it concerned.

            with all of this said, your puzzlement over the OA is well-founded. personally, I think the flaw in the argument is supposing there is a cogent notion of “most great” or “most perfect”. so it goes.

          2. Another problem with dictum’s argument is that Einstein’s theories were not derived from “pure logic”, they were a mixture of logic plus empirical facts about how the universe is.

          3. As I would argue (caveat emptor: I am nothing like a mathematician) all math is.

            Couldn’t one say all math is extrapolation from the process of quantifying physical referents? It seems to me that without the initial step of extracting the abstract notion of “amount” from a set of physical objects, math would not exist.

          4. Agreed. If reality worked so that when you put one of something next to another of those things, another of them popped into existence alongside the original pair, then 1 + 1 would equal 3; any mathematical system that did not acknowledge this reality would have no utility.

        2. A theory is an explanation of phenomena that is not demostrated to be accurate until it is verified by empirical evidence. Also, theories are built up from bits of previously empirically verified theories, models and observations. I think a good example is String Theory.

        3. If that is an example of demonstration, then it was a mathematical one – which as Jerry points out is conjecture in the physical universe until there is observation. The math on black holes was done as early as the 18th century century, even though there was no evidence then that such a think should or could exist, or even that gravity acted on light.

          1. Even so, that math was based on observations such as those that led to Newton’s theory of gravity.

            Nothing purely logical about it.

      3. Not by logic alone, but what about the last common ancestor of a set of organisms (or genomes)? – I’m thinking of Sarich’s quip “I know that my molecules had ancestors. You don’t know that your fossils had descendants.”

    4. Useful mathematics start with a set of axioms. These axioms must be correspond to something in the physical world to be applicable there. You can test properties of 1 and 0 can be tested using apples or pennies.
      Axioms can also be false in the real world.
      Religion does not start out with obvious axioms that have been demonstrated in the physical world.

      1. Oh good, this is how I saw things as well. The mathematics can “prove” a lot of things but that does not mean that those things actually unfold the way the math says they do. Was there not a time in history where people thought that if the math said it was so then it must be so? I somehow thing there was such a Romantic claim with math and music being seen as the closest thing to reality.

  4. As Barbie might say, “Thinking is hard. Let’s make cookies for the boys.”

    Some philosophers find comfort in the cessation of thought. “Let’s postulate a god exists. Therefore, a god exists. QED.”

    I went to a Catholic university (one certain path to create an atheist) and there was a legendary philosophy teacher there named “A.B” Bloemer, so nicknamed because you got an A if you actually attended class, B if you didn’t. (He was, BTW, a priest.) One thing that firmly established his legend was his final, which was (wait for it, wait for it) a true-false philosophy exam. Sample T/F question: Bertrand Russell was a poor confused man. I can’t make this stuff up.

    1. Barbie said that math was hard. 🙂 She’s right, it is hard. I remember I didn’t like the message Barbie was sending but I agreed with her. 😉

      1. But surely you didn’t agree that “she” should be sending that message out to all the little girls who had yet to discover if math was hard for them or not.

        (A large part of it is having the right teachers, I think!)

        1. Yeah I didn’t like that they made the toy say that but I don’t really like most of the messaging Barbie sends to little girls, verbally and non verbally.

          2. Oh, of course not! By not hyping it a lot, I let my daughter realize herself just how basically un-fun Barbies were. She never got into them.

          3. I totally would’ve been into them but my parents didn’t really expose me to them & in my true misanthropic young self, preferred to play with little plastic animals or my Yertle the Turtle. I did get Cindy Dolls which were all the rage in the late 70s but they were more normally proportioned.

          4. I had some Barbie stuff when I was a kid, but they usually ended up doing some kinky karma sutrarian positions with my GI Joe’s.

            The proportionial differences made it look a bit weird. 🙂

  5. I can’t get past the first frame of the argument.

    What the deuce is perfection other than a vague concept of subjective criteria?

    1. My thought exactly on reading the first frame.

      First define what you mean by “god” and “ultimately perfect”.

      Just getting them to attempt a definition will expose the flaws in the argument.

      So the correct answer to the questions is “no”.

    2. Same can be said for virtually all proofs of God: “If you start where I tell you to start, and do NOT question my assumptive premises, then my argument is unassailable.”

      1. I think that’s why I almost always feel the need to ask “What/which god?” when people attribute anything to their god. Even though I have a pretty good idea about what god they mean, it’s a good reminder that their gods have well-defined attributes described in thick books.

        It’s easy to explain an anonymous god into existence, but not so much when there’s supposed to be plenty of physical evidence left behind from the shenanigans in the various stories.

    3. Yes.

      I think this flaw is even more devastating to the argument than Kant’s “existence is not a predicate”. You simply can’t use ambiguous terms like “greatest” or “perfect”, leave them undefined, and expect them to do any work in your argument.

      1. Agreed. I could never confidently grasp the problem of ‘not a predicate’, but it was always easy to think, ‘Ah, smallpox (or holocaust, Battle of the Somme etc) was great while it existed. Such a pity it no longer exists.’

        And if existence is a prerequisite of greatness, then the opening statement can be reformulated as ‘God is defined as both the greatest and as an existing being’ which rather begs the question.

  6. > There’s simply no way that one can prove the existence of something by logic alone, absent any empirical observation.

    I thought this was established by a philosopher: Kant. What did the rise of science have to do with it?

    2. Philosophy lies along a continuum, including some very silly areas, but philosophy becomes science where one declares that physical reality can be discovered by empiricism. Here, science and philosophy are synonyms.

    3. I hear that a lot 🙂

      No, I was genuinely curious, but it appears I spoke too soon. I was aware that the idea about logic alone being a way of accessing reality equal or even superior to empiricism – which haunted since the pre-socratics – was ultimately dismissed only after Kant wrote his Kritik der reinen Vernunft.

      However, I didn’t realize (Thou shalt use Wikipedia before asking dumb questions) that Kant was informed in this by the likes of Bacon, Hobbes and Locke, who I think count as early philosophers of science.

      So apparently the notion that “There’s simply no way that one can prove the existence of something by logic alone, absent any empirical observation” was indeed backed by the rise of science. But it were philosophers who discredited it, not science per se.

      Given that, I think one can counter the professor’s “I’m baffled that the Ontological Argument had any traction among philosophers […], especially after science arose.” – by saying it really did lost its traction precisely then.

      1. “There’s simply no way that one can prove the existence of something by logic alone, absent any empirical observation” is the very difference between science and philosophy. Which is not to denigrate philosophy! It’s just that once your “philosophy” is the result of empirical observation, it has become science, whatever you wish to call it. I guess if your observations are sloppy or wrong, that would be “bad science.” Some philosophy might be bad science, but not all bad science is philosophy.

      2. I think the Romantic period had a love of math and music as the only pure, “almost the thing in itself” disciplines. The other things – language, art were only the means to describe reality.

        I think this bolstered math as the only way to tell if something is true because it seemed to be that thing much more than it represented that thing.

        This probably screwed everthing up for a few decades and that notion seemed to leach into other areas of discourse.

  7. The shorter refutation of the argument is “existence is not a property of a being or object.”

    I would think it be more accurate to say “actual existence is not a property of a merely imagined being or object” or “existence is not a property of a being or object that can made true by merely positing it.” How can existence not be a property of an actual object any less than having mass is the property of that same object, both being properties that don’t apply to imagined versions?

    1. Is this phrasing better?

      “Physical existence is not a necessary property of any conceivable entity.”

      1. And in fact unless this refutation is accepted then one could proceed to make the claim that any object one can imagine must exist, including a less than ultimately perfect god.

    2. What is existence, apart from matter’s manifest physical properties and effects of those properties on matter? The only thing I can think of that doesn’t have physical properties is “nothing,” which is the absence of matter and I’m not sure whether “existing” is how the folks who are in the know would describe “nothing.”

      Perhaps existence is not a property per se because matter and its existence make a tautology? In the way an object “being” red and its “redness” are distinctions of language not reality?

      1. And as I like to say, ‘nothing does not exist’. Even the most empty void of space is a boiling froth of virtual particles winking in and out of existence.

      2. I think “tautological” is a good way of casting the relationship between “existence” and “property”.

        Properties are things we use to describe and differentiate objects. They are meant to convey information. But if “existence” were a property, it would be a property shared by everything else in the universe. It would be useless as a descriptive or differentiating tool. It would convey no information. It would be like saying “this thing is a thing”. Tautological.

        1. “It would be like saying “this thing is a thing”. Tautological.”

          Can ideas have properties? If so, then existence is a property that distinguishes actual, physical things from imagined ones.

          1. See johzek’s comment just below.

            I thought about the possibility that “existence” might be something we could use to differentiate, say, a bear from a banshee. But any of the bear’s other attributes, it seems to me, could do that as well. Existence can be assumed when given other attributes. You might say “but I can give attributes other than existence for banshees, too!” I’d say you can’t. You can describe your or someone else’s conception of a banshee, but not of an actual banshee because there are no actual banshees from which to derive or verify attributes. And conceptions exist, which I don’t think poses a problem for characterizing the relationship between “existence” and “attribute” as tautological.

          3. I’m not particularly well-acquainted with Wittgenstein. Do you mean his Argument for Substance?

            “2.0211 If the world had no substance, then whether a proposition had sense would depend on whether another proposition was true.

            2.0212 It would then be impossible to draw up a picture of the world (true or false).”

            Yes, this seems to be saying that if a thing does not exist, you can’t describe it.

          4. Yes, this seems to be saying that if a thing does not exist, you can’t describe it.

            Which is, if you think about it, a description of the indescribable.

            Philosophy is fun. 🙂

    3. Think of it this way. Existence is not a property or attribute because existence is the precondition of having properties or attributes. To name a property or attribute is to have already assumed the existence of the being or object in question and thus this argument is a circular argument, it assumes what it seeks to prove.

      1. Except, unfortunately, this is out of date in contemporary logic.

        There are perfectly respectable logical systems with existence predicates, referencing a property of things, existence. (In some systems the reference relation is more complicated, but we can start there.) See above for the rest of the story.

  8. I think this Jesus and Mo is a repeat, or rather, a resurrection, but an excellent one that cannot be repeated too often.

    1. Lack of empiricism in the face of ambiguous definitions. This is the only argument worth having with a religious person. This argument above all else should agonize the faithful.

      The only thing that ontological arguments succeed at doing is showing that all definitions of God are arbitrary.

  9. Could not agree more. The first time I heard of the OA I was very curious to take a look at this incredible bit of logic that gave so many academics such assuredness about the existence of their god. I was sure I was going to have to expend some effort to get through it and come to an understanding of this refined, superior bit of logic.

    Well, it did take some effort. It some effort to accept that anyone could take such drivel the least bit seriously. It literally sounds like the reasoning of a 3 year old dressed up with philosophobabble. It was also my first coming to terms with the reality that in any occupation, from accountant to zoologist, at least half the people are idiots, and pretty much all of us are idiots about something. A depressing moment for a teenager.

    1. Well depressing but also liberating! I don’t know if I would say that half are idiots, but half are below average. Which means, hey, maybe I’ve got a chance! Joe Strummer said was intimidated by great musicians until he realized it didn’t matter that he wasn’t as good because plenty of people were doing just fine and having a good time while completely sucking.

      1. All true. But, in the context of a teenager who, of course, knows everything and is smarter than everybody, especially parents, it is depressing to realise that you too are, even if just partially, an idiot!

        1. Nonono!

          Realizing you’re an idiot should be encouraging! It’s the wise man who understands how much he doesn’t know. Or, as Bertie Russell put it:

          “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.”

          Dunning-Kruger and all that.

    2. ” It some effort to accept that anyone could take such drivel the least bit seriously.”

      I don’t think anyone would take the argument seriously if you applied it to something they didn’t have a prior commitment to believe.

      In fact, even skeptics tend to be more forgiving of bad arguments when the arguments support conclusions they already accept.

  10. In modern symbolic logic, the existential operator is separate from the attributes. In other words, before you assign properties to an entity, you first have to establish that it exists. As pointed out above, the ontological argument treats existence as a property.

    2. The so-called “existential quantifier” can be treated (and in my view, given pure mathematics, should be) a “someness” operator. The name is a misnomer; one can have existence predicates.

  11. If I remember correctly, there was a loooong school of philosophical thought (beginning with Socrates/Plato, I think) where people thought you could divine true things about existence just by thinking about them. And actual empiricism was looked down on because it was seen as low-class.

    It’s from that world where the ontological argument gained currency. It’s definitely not a product of Enlightenment thinking.

    1. I had an interesting commentary from a “philosophical historian” once:
      For some in the Greek culture being a philosopher was a status-symbol showing that you was so rich and indipendent that you did not need to work; Working was empirical and low-class..
      So materialism became something the lower-classes did and sophistry was the “real” deal.
      Can we se the same tendency today? PR/Marketing with postmodern relatisvism in truth understanding (media, politics, theology). People learn a language that sells individuals, they do not learn the tool of analytical language. We get a culture that do not understand scientists and blames scientists.

      1. It’s tempting to conclude that large parts of philosophy is based on boredom.

        And wine.

      2. Greek philosophers were seen as people who eschewed material concerns. You can see this in the way they are portrayed – wearing dischevlled togas with now tunic underneath – they are half naked in public. They are equivalent to the “absent minded professor” trope – eschewing all worldly concerns in favour of thinking about more important things.

        I don’t know that they were really seen as not needing to work but not wanting such material things and possibly, they were seen as a bit mad.

        1. This is only true starting with Socrates, arguably. Even Thales, for whom Plato tells a (malicious) story about him forgetting the feet beneath him as he fell into a well, was also credited with more practical “smart guy” activities, like being good with the olive crop predictions.

    2. And not just divining existence but divining into existence!

      I have heard it proposed that the universe itself is a product of our thinking about it and observing it – I think that’s the gist of “biocentrism,” I think it’s called – which is Deepakitally extended to the belief that we alter our own reality with our thoughts. So the stars were just points of light until a human determined they were distant suns, the Milky Way is all that there was until we observed galaxies, and so on with Relativity, quantum mechanics, etc. If that’s the case, then obviously we can manifest desired reality through visualization.

      It sure makes sense to me that status-seekers would demand increasing sophistication in their philosophy – of course materialism is for the masses who will never know the grace of an audience with the Dahli Lama or the zen of sunning themselves on a yacht.

      The more and less overt message of Deepak & Co seems to be not that we can know God, but that we are gods.

  12. There are many refutations of the ontological argument, and perhaps it would be a waste of time to spend time with this topic, except that apologists do use it (also,as Kant pointed out, the cosmological argument relies on the OA, so destroying one destroys the other), and it is good to know how to point out its flaws.

    Here’s one simple refutation based on Kant, who if I recall correctly referred to the OA as a “vicious tautology.” If “God” is defined as a necessarily existing being, then what we are really saying is that a necessarily existing being necessarily exists. Clearly that is a tautology which establishes nothing; it is just grammar.

  13. Since there is no objective meaning or purpose in nature, the notion of perfection is incoherent.

    More narrowly, simultaneous possession of the 4 omni’s is also incoherent.

    So “no” to the first question.

  15. I was particularly surprised that Bertrand Russell wasn’t exactly sure what the problem with the Ontological argument was.

    The refutation that existence is not a property was most famously stated by Immanuel Kant, whose ‘transcendental’ argument for God’s existence may be a tad better, but not overwhelmingly so, and some find it even harder to understand.

    I refer to the argument against God from the existence of cancer as the Oncological argument.

    1. “I was particularly surprised that Bertrand Russell wasn’t exactly sure what the problem with the Ontological argument was.”

      His famous quote on the subject said that it was easier to recognize as fallacious than to point out where, which doesn’t quite mean that he didn’t know why it was fallacious.

  16. “The shorter refutation of the argument is “existence is not a property of a being or object”

    Yeah, but it’s not a good refutation because the layman won’t perceive that the argument has been skewered.

    Better, IMO, to say “Actually, NON-existence is more perfect than existence, therefore God cannot exist.” The arbitrariness of this assertion highlights the absurdity of the argument.

    I actually heard Francis Collins advance this argument during a debate with Christopher Hitchens. It came out in a chaotic moment, and Hitchens never addressed it.

  17. I don’t have much of a problem with the ontological argument. It’s just abstract talk. What bothers me is when religious people desperately try to reconcile this deistic idea of an absolutely perfect being with the narratives of their particular myths. A perfect being, existing outside space and time, completely incomprehensible to humans, cannot at the same time make petty requirements about our behavior, expect to be worshipped, send his son to Earth so he can be tortured and killed in order to save humanity (that was created deeply flawed to begin with)… all those are attributes of a decidedly imperfect being. You can’t have it both ways.

    1. A perfect being, existing outside space and time, completely incomprehensible to humans, cannot at the same time make petty requirements about our behavior, expect to be worshipped, send his son to Earth so he can be tortured and killed in order to save humanity (that was created deeply flawed to begin with)… all those are attributes of a decidedly imperfect being.

      Furthermore if this being truly is incomprehensible to humans, then what’s the point of religion and theology.

      An attempt to understand the not understandable?

      It makes no sense whatsoever.

    2. Or, beyond the logical inconsistency you point out, what is the basis for the claims asserted, apart from received, unverifiable stories? What I mean is, even an atheist may not be 100% sure there was not an intelligence that initiated existence via the Big Bang – but, assuming there is an intelligence outside of spacetime, how do we know that intelligence cares to be worshipped, can read our minds, is immortal, intervenes in human affairs, and so on?

      That there we can conceive of an inconceivable First Cause does not necessitate that entity be “perfect” and/or a god, much less a particular god or even one that has the least bit of interest in humans.

  18. We have hypotheses all the time. These are things we picture in our minds. We don’t trust them until proven.

  19. Why would a perfect God, who wants for nothing, need to create anything, such as a Universe? Especially a Universe that is riddled with apparent imperfection.

    A perfect God exists in a perfect reality, so modification of that reality would mean that there must be multiple possible perfect realities. I suppose that is defensible (maybe?), but I cannot see a reasonable explanation for how a perfect being can alter a perfect reality into something less perfect, such as a Universe that contains evil.

    No product of a perfect God can be imperfect, and no perfect God can coexist and interact with imperfection. Even if God has a “plan” for the Universe to become perfect at some point in time, at any time before that we still have the imperfection to deal with. An incomplete or unfinished thing is still not consistent with a perfect being.

    1. Leibniz might respond that the universe is just as perfect as God, and all things work out for the best – because it is only God’s definition of good that matters in his universe. There are realities that don’t make sense to us and which we don’t like, so, too bad for us. Still perfect! Still good!

      1. I haven’t encountered many people who adhere to the mainstream religions who think that the Universe is perfect – in fact it seems contrary to the belief in evil and sin.

        As for the notion that “God’s definition of good is what matters” – this seems like a maneuver to put the argument outside of any rational thought. Any Universe, no matter how apparently evil, could be rationalized as good with this “logic”.

        If Leibniz was around, I’d ask him if there was any observable difference b/t a Universe headed by a bad God and a Universe headed by a good, perfect God.

        Also, something “working out for the best” at a future date by definition means that it is not currently perfect. A perfect God would see to it that all things at all times are functioning optimally. That must have been the state of things before the physical Universe was belched into existence by him.

        1. Actually, I think he had a pretty spirited debate about those points with Sir Isaac Newton himself. I don’t recall anything about the correspondence – I think at one point they debated whether it would matter if God had created the universe twenty feet to the right of where he started – it’s been more than 30 years and I only read selections. I always figured I’d go back and read them, but by the time I got to Kant I’d had quite enough of philosophy thanks very much.

          I’m not sure “working out for the best” – I think he may have said this is “the best of all possible universes” – is a comment on imperfection but on the unfolding of time, that everything which happens is the best whether we like it or not. I’m sure there are lots of ways to characterize that view – naïve, a dodge, a tautological two-step – Newton probably had some zingers as well – but it also makes a good strawman as the logical extension of the OA: we can posit the concept of perfection, but, imperfect as we are, we can’t grasp the totality of perfection. The “worst thing that ever happened” is a matter of individual human judgment and in any case occurred as natural, necessary and predetermined outcome of every preceding event stretching back to creation which must be perfect and so on. I’m not saying I buy it by any stretch but it is the only way to reconcile the OA with the human experience of creation, which sucks for us most all of the time.

          1. Voltaire sent Leibniz up in ‘Candide:’ ‘All’s for the best in this best of all possible worlds,’ and pace the Lisbon Earthquake.

        2. This is slightly wrong – is the *aggregate*, over all time and space, that is supposedly for the best. Best *what*? Best *combination* of harmony and variety (which he claims is, in modern terms, the power of the continuum). He says something like that an unchanging block of homogeneous stuff is harmonious but not varying. God is said to have optimized both at once. Leibniz is remarkably evasive how that yields *one* optimum, even granting the rest.

          So what observable evidence is there? One has to look *everywhere* and *everywhen*.

          I have a t-shirt with L. and “in another world it would be worse”, which is strictly speaking wrong, according to Leibniz, for the reason above.

  20. Philosophers like taking things to pieces. I should point out a survey a few years ago found that of the philosophy faculty responding 72.8% lean towards atheism and 12.5% were other, leaving only 14.6% as leaning theist (it was a survey of mostly anglophone analytical philosophers). http://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl

  22. I’m trying to will the most perfect coffee bean into existence because coffee is a more realistic bar than a genie. I have yet to conjure up a pantheon of delightful beans through wishful thinking.

  23. Would I be right in thinking that if the OA were correct, the simple matter of pointing out how imperfect God actually is refutes the argument itself? Or is that just a paradox?

    My list of imperfections would begin with suffering and evil and move on to why there are multiple religions since God’s perfection surely requires only one religion (why cannot this perfect God persuade everyone to worship Him?).

    I could foresee lots of wriggling. Oh, wait. Isn’t that what theologians do anyway?

  24. Is perfection a set of canonical characteristics or is it simply a philosophical construct?

  25. It is nice of theology to tell us up front that it can’t distinguish between fact and fantasy!

    If theologians hadn’t invented the “ontological” argument, we would have had to do it for them…

  26. “There’s simply no way that one can prove the existence of something by logic alone, absent any empirical observation.”
    I remember Hume saying something to that effect in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.

  27. The ontological argument is merely a form of the ridiculous Aristotelian notion of perfection and the existence of perfect things. Although attributed to Aristotle, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if it’s a much older notion. A typical argument would be something like: look at a tree – you can imagine a triangle in the tree, and we can imagine a perfect triangle – perfect triangles must exist somewhere in nature even though we have never seen such a thing.

    1. I’ve run into a somewhat contrasting version of this argument in the past. A guy asked me if I can imagine a circle, then proceeded to say that I believe in circles without having ever seen one, so I should be able to do this with God.

      Of course, circles don’t exist in reality because the physical manifestation of a point isn’t necessary to define a circle. A point in mathematics has no size. Once we give a size and a margin of error for the size of a point, we can have physical circles. Of course, there is nothing like this we can do with God’s proposed attributes to make him exist in reality.

  28. One among many valid refutations – which I’ve never seen stated before – is that the first premise is flawed: I CAN’T imagine a “perfect being”, and I don’t think anyone else can, either. We can only imagine that such a thing MIGHT exist.

    Despite all the childrens’ songs, the human imagination is not infinite (as evidenced by our inability to grasp things like the wave/particle duality), and a “perfectly perfect” thing can only be posited in one of any number of conflicting forms. Wouldn’t such a being encompass ALL kinds of perfection, including perfect evil? The MOST perfect entity I CAN imagine would be an infinite mass of contradictions, such that nothing could be argued on its basis.

    1. Correction: I can’t really imagine that mass of contradictions, either – it just seems more plausible than the Judeo-Christian deity posited as being any kind of perfection.

  29. I think the simplest refutation, or at least avoidance, of this argument is to answer “No, I cannot imagine that.” In my case, at least, that would be an honest answer, because I can’t imagine things that are completely theoretical and devoid of any characteristics to which I can relate from my experience. And a perfect god is such a notion.

    1. Notice they never define the qualities of perfection either and it makes the assumption that all attributes are comparable on some kind of ordinal basis. Theists almost ubiquitiously define love and compassion as traits of a perfect god. Now, see if you can get them all to agree on what perfect love is. They can’t; hence the 40000+ denominations of Christianity. So, no, I can’t imagine such a being and even if they claim that they can, a large number of them are wrong about both the perfection and the being.

  30. The other flaw here is even if we grant existence to be a quality of a thing, who says that it is a necessary quality of perfection. They’re just defining things into existence at multiple levels.

  31. Whenever the ontological argument is trotted out, I like to counter with Gasking’s Ontological Argument for the Non-existence of God.

    1. The creation of the world is the most marvellous achievement imaginable.
    2. The merit of an achievement is the product of (a) its intrinsic quality, and (b) the ability of its creator.
    3. The greater the disability or handicap of the creator, the more impressive the achievement.
    4. The most formidable handicap for a creator would be non-existence.
    5. Therefore, if we suppose that the universe is the product of an existent creator, we can conceive a greater being—namely, one who created everything while not existing.
    6. An existing God, therefore, would not be a being than which a greater cannot be conceived, because an even more formidable and incredible creator would be a God which did not exist.
    7. (Hence) God does not exist.

    1. To borrow from William Lane Craig’s vernacular, this is the knockdown argument against all arguments for God. It demonstrates the theme that is consistent throughout the comments here, that logic alone is not sufficient to demonstrate the reality of something.

      Here, we have an example of a logically consistent argument showing that there is no God and we have others showing that there are gods. We need actual observations somewhere to determine which arguments are actually correct, not just theoretically possible. Put succinctly: evidence.

  32. I can imagine an ultimately perfect material sphere. If existence is a perfection, that sphere must exist. But any existent material sphere must be made of subatomic components and therefore cannot be as geometrically perfect as the one I imagine.

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