The Weirdest Argument for God’s Existence

In this episode, Trent explains a strange argument for God that may be the key to proving God exists.

Transcription:

Trent:

What makes an argument for God really weird? Well, most normal arguments for God’s existence start from something we observe in the world that points to God. But one argument starts not with what we observe, but with the very idea of God itself. This argument as my friend Jimmy Aiken once put, it claims that quote, instead of being too good to be true, God turns out to be too good not to be true. The weirdest argument for God’s existence is the one that says God has to exist because, well God. But this is one of those arguments that fits perfectly in the meme where the geniuses and the low IQ people both agree with the profound truth that God must exist by definition while everyone else thinks that’s a crazy idea. So in today’s episode, I’m going to give an overview of the ontological argument for God’s existence and show how it can be a helpful argument for that case.

So let’s get started. First, by ontological we are talking about ontology. The study of being the ontological argument claims that God just is the kind of being where God just is being. So God must exist, therefore, God does exist. The argument’s origin can be found in the writings of the 11th century. Saint and doctor of the church on Somem of Canterbury on Psalm started with the idea that God is quote that which nothing greater can be conceived. If you think God is just a powerful creator of the universe who is made by some other God, then what you are thinking of is not God because there is something greater than what you’re thinking of the God that made this God. Now that we understand God is that which nothing greater can be thought of or conceived. What follows from this definition? Well, God must have all power, all knowledge, and all forms of goodness to be that which nothing greater can be conceived.

Saint Salm then goes on to say the following, if that then, which nothing greater can be conceived, exists in the understanding alone, the very being than which nothing greater can be conceived is one than which a greater can be conceived. But obviously this is impossible. Hence, there is no doubt that there exists a being than which nothing greater can be conceived and it exists both in the understanding and in reality. So Saint Salm is saying that if you imagine the concept of God in your mind, then that’s not really God because there is something greater than a God that only exists in your mind. Remember God is that which no greater can be thought. The greater thing would be a God that exists in reality as well and not just the mind. Therefore, since God is that which nothing greater can be conceived and a God that exists in reality as well as the mind is greater than a God that exists only in the mind.

It follows that God exists. But most people, even if they believe in God, suspect that there’s something wrong with this deceptively simple argument. One of Anselm’s contemporaries, a monk named Golo, tried to refute the argument by parodying it in order to show its absurdities. A technique we now call Reduxio at absurdum said that one could conceive of an island than which no greater could be conceived, but it wouldn’t follow that such a perfect island actually exists. Modern atheists often resort to a variant of goos reply by saying that the ontological argument could be used to prove absurdities like that a maximally great pizza must exist.

CLIP:

You can make the statement that the greatest possible pizza in the world exists, and so therefore there must be a greatest possible pizza, and I don’t think there is the greatest possible pizza. So why can’t you say the same thing about God?

Trent:

But this actually isn’t a fatal objection to alms argument. Unlike the idea of God perfect islands or maximally, great pizzas are incoherent ideas. The idea of an island that must contain all perfections or a pizza that contains all perfections or a pizza of which no greater can be conceived, these ideas are incoherent. They cannot exist in reality, so we can’t even really conceive of them in the mind. In his debate with the late atheist Victor Stanger, William Lane Craig noted that a maximally great pizza is an incoherent idea.

CLIP:

He said, well, couldn’t you have a parallel argument for the greatest possible pizza logical conclusion? So all of these arguments are philosophy and you can’t get out of them simply by saying you’re not a philosopher. He said, well, couldn’t you have a parallel argument for the greatest possible pizza? No, because the notion of the greatest possible pizza is logically incoherent. A greatest possible pizza would be metaphysically necessary in its existence, and therefore it could not be eaten, and therefore it couldn’t be a pizza because pizza could be

Trent:

Eaten. An island could always have one more coconut tree to make a greater, or a pizza could always have one more topping to make it greater. That means there is no island or pizza than which nothing greater can be conceived, but there could be a being than which nothing greater can be conceived because that being had complete possession of what philosophers call great making properties, things like power, knowledge, and existence, things that have intrinsic maximums. They aren’t like adding one more coconut tree or one more topping. One can have all power or all knowledge or perfect existence. But if that’s the case, then why don’t most philosophers, including those who believe in God, except on some’s argument, well, St. Thomas Aquinas said that since we don’t have direct knowledge of God’s essence or what God is like, this means we must reason to God’s existence, which just is his essence from what we do observe in the universe.

So we cannot have self-evident knowledge that God exists even through something like alms argument. Emmanuel Khan’s criticism of the argument though is the more common one today, and it relies on the idea that existence is not a term that describes what something is. Existence is just the fact of whether something is or is not. Now, not everyone accepts cons objection to the ontological argument, but most people remain unconvinced of ONMs distinction between greatness in the mind and greatness in reality as being a real distinction between things. Instead, they view it as just a way of hypothetically talking about things that could exist. IE Saint Alms argument only proves that if God existed, then God would exist necessarily as the greatest maximal being that which no greater can be conceived, but it can’t prove that God actually does exist. Now in 1960, the philosopher Norman Malcolm offered a summary of on Psalms argument using contemporary philosophical language that focused on the concept of necessary existence, which he says avoids concept objection about mere existence not being a predicate since necessary existence is a unique property that can be predicated the Christian philosopher Alvin Planting and did something similar in his 1974 book, the Nature of Necessity with his version of the Modal Ontological Argument.

Modal logic is a system of reasoning that helps us understand concepts like necessity or possibility. If something is necessary, then that means it has to be, there can be no world without that necessary thing. If something is possible, however, then that just means it can be. It doesn’t have to be. So for example, in modal logic, we would say that if something is necessary then it is also possible. If it has to be, then it can be. Another way to understand this kind of logic is through the language of possible worlds. The actual world is the universe or the reality in which you and I currently reside. A possible world is just an alternative way to describe the actual world a way the actual world never actually happened. For example, in another possible world, you never watched this episode or I never even existed. While some philosophers speak of possible worlds as if they were real existing things, sort of like parallel dimensions, most people understand this as just the language of possibility.

We use the language of possible worlds to talk about how things could have been different, but when we do that, we notice that some things are always constant no matter what possible world we talk about. For example, no matter what possible world we can conceive of, two plus two always equals four. We say these truths are necessary. They exist in every possible world, but could there also be a being that exists in every possible world? William Lane Craig summarizes Alvin planting as ontological argument. In this way, it is possible that a maximally great being exists, the kind of being who exists in every possible world. If it is possible that a maximally being exists, that a maximally great being exists in some possible world, if a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world. If a maximally great being exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world.

If a maximally great being exists in the actual world than a maximally great being exists, therefore God, a maximally great being exists. So if it is possible, God exists, then God must exist in some possible world or description of reality. If it’s possible, it exists in one of those descriptions. But if God exists in one possible world, then God must exist in every possible world because God by definition is that which exists in all logically possible worlds, but the actual world is a possible world. Remember, if something has to be, then it can be so That means God exists in the actual world too. So God exists according to atheist Arnold Kaminsky, it is generally agreed that the argument planting his ontological argument is formally valid, and I think that it is fairly obvious, assuming that a maximally great being is defined as a maximally excellent being that exists in every possible world, that if a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then that being exists in all possible worlds and therefore in the actual world.

So that’s it. God exists Game over atheists not so fast. Some philosophers have challenged premise three of the argument and its reliance on the S five axiom and modal logic, specifically the claim if possibly necessarily a then necessarily a, but most philosophers set their sights on the argument’s first premise. It is possible that a maximum great being exists. If this premise means hypothetically possible or for all we know it’s possible, then the argument doesn’t really prove anything because it’s also hypothetically possible that a maximally great being exists in no possible world and such a premise could be used to form a valid anti ontological argument against God’s existence where you just replace the word exist in the argument with the phrase does not exist in every premise, and then you would get the conclusion God does not exist in the actual world or any possible world, but if the first premise means metaphysically possible, as in it’s the same way, it’s metaphysically possible and the roulette table, it could have landed on black rather than red, there real possibilities, well then we need some reason to believe God’s existence is a real possibility and God’s non-existence is not a real possibility.

We cannot say that it is metaphysically possible that God exists and that it is metaphysically possible. God does not exist because that would entail a contradiction a and not a being true at the same time. What the modal ontological argument shows is that it is either impossible for God to exist or it is impossible for God not to exist, but which one is true at this point. Philosophers look for various kinds of symmetry breakers, differences in these possible worlds that would show one of the possibility premises is more plausible than the other. James Henry Colin offers this in defense of the ontological argument in his paper, the Reverse Ontological Argument, and Joe Schmidt at Majesty of Reason has published a reply entitled Symmetries Revenge. Other Attempts at Breaking Symmetry combine the ontological argument with known facts about the world that we live in, such as showing that it is possible there is an explanation for the universe, so therefore there is an explanation for the universe.

Though this could be subject to the same symmetry problems. If you think it’s possible, there is no explanation for the universe. Josh Rasmussen develops an argument like this in his book, how Reason Leads to God, and Robert Maal uses a temporal contingency, ontological argument that combines Aquinas’s. Third way with the ontological argument. The philosophers Brian Leow and Alexander Press, however believe that the ontological argument can be strengthened by noting that people’s experience of God supports the premise that God is a real possibility because people don’t have experiences of metaphysically impossible things or logically impossible things like square circles, and there are many other forms of the ontological argument as well. Kurt Goodell, a mathematician famous for his incompleteness theorem put forward an ontological argument symbolize in about a dozen premises of mathematical logic and not to be outdone May’s temporal contingency ontological argument that could be found in the Blackwell companion to natural theology has 87 premises.

Now, personally, I don’t use the ontological argument when I discuss God with atheists because most people think the ontological argument is a kind of semantic trick. They aren’t receptive because they already have an antagonism towards this kind of reasoning and because of the controversial nature of the modal logic and the arguments inferences, even people like Alvin Plantinga who developed the modal ontological argument has said the following, these arguments cannot perhaps be said to prove or establish their conclusion, but since it is rational to accept their central premise, they do show that it is rational to accept that conclusion. What this means is that the ontological argument works best for particular people, so it may be helpful for someone who does believe in God for various reasons, but modal logic helps ’em to have a much firmer foundation that God must exist or it can be helpful for someone who is predisposed to this kind of thinking In general.

I mean honestly, every argument for God or every argument for any position works in this way. The argument may seem sound to some people, but it may not convince other people. When I posted my episode on how the fine tuning argument is the argument atheist fear the most, I heard from many atheists who say they consider it the weakest argument for God. Of course, when I said atheists in that episode, I was referring to prominent atheists and it didn’t seem like a coincidence that the argument kept popping up among them. I also heard from Christians who said that they consider things like the moral argument to be the strongest argument for God’s existence. Even though many professional philosophers think the moral argument’s actually the weakest argument for God, I think forms of the moral argument do work, and so I’m happy to present them to people who are open to that kind of argument.

Every argument for God’s existence has strengths and weaknesses. For example, the contingency argument for God is logically rigorous and philosophers tend to think it’s among the better arguments for God, but laypeople can have a hard time following the contingency argument. That’s probably why CS Lewis didn’t use a contingency argument in mere Christianity, even though they were popular at the time, he wrote among academics, but instead he used a moral argument for God’s existence. The ontological argument will not be persuasive to people whose eyes glaze over when you talk about modal logic or someone who is convinced reverse or parody arguments disprove the ontological argument, but some people will be intrigued by the idea of a maximally great being. It may just click for them for that such a being is at least possible, and so the notion of impossibility better applies to a godless universe than to a maximally great being, and I may not share this argument with everyone, but I’ll present this argument or really any valid argument with plausible premises to someone.

If there’s at least a chance, the argument will click for that person and lead him or her to a relationship with God. This is similar to St. Paul’s advice. In one Corinthians chapter nine, I have become all things to all men that I might by all means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel that I may share in its blessings. If you’d like to learn more about the ontological argument, check some of the links in the description below, and if you’d like a sophisticated philosophical defense of God’s existence, check out Ed ER’s book five Proofs for the Existence of God and the Best Argument For God by Patrick Flynn. Thank you guys so much and I hope you have a very blessed day.