I don’t see how the argument even begins
I’ve read an advance copy of Reasonable Atheism by Scott Aikin and Robert Talisse. It’s a good book. I have some disagreements though, and some things I don’t understand, or suspect I don’t understand, or both; I’ve been waiting to post about them, until closer to the pub date, but now that they’re posting about it, I figure it’s close enough.
One (highly reasonable) point they make is that atheists should argue well instead of badly. One example of arguing well, they say, is taking the Ontological Argument seriously.
We take the Ontological Argument as the litmus test for intellectual seriousness, both for atheists and religious believers alike. Anyone who takes the question of God’s existence seriously must grapple with this fascinating argument. Those who simply cast it aside, or wield it indiscriminately, prove themselves intellectually careless. [p 81 – but this is uncorrected proof]
This is one of the places where I suspect I don’t understand. I don’t get the need to grapple with the ont. arg., because it has no purchase on me to begin with. It starts with premises that I see no reason to start with. I “simply cast it aside.” I don’t see how saying “but a perfect being that didn’t exist would be imperfect and we can conceive of a perfect being therefore that being exists” causes anything to happen. I know I’ve garbled the argument, but this is where the suspected not understanding comes in. I seem not to understand how the argument is anything more reasonable than that. I seem not to understand why anybody has ever thought that an ability to imagine something plus logic can cause the something to exist.
On the next page they say how Hitchens garbles the argument, then give the right version.
[T]he argument derives God’s existence from something we know about God, whether we think he exists or not, namely, that He is perfect.
That’s accurate, by the way; it’s he first, and then He. The “he” must be a mistake; they use capital H throughout the book, which I think is odd for atheists. I don’t think we’re required to be reverent. But never mind that – just explain that sentence to me, because I don’t get it. I don’t know that about “God.” I know that some people who do think “God” exists also think that “God” is “perfect” – but I don’t take that to mean that I “know” “God” “is” “perfect.” I don’t know a single one of those four words, much less all four of them in combination.
Therefore I don’t see how the argument even begins. I see how it begins for people who do think they know all four of those things, but I don’t see how it begins for people who don’t. Do you?
Doesn’t this argument just boil down to:
1. Perfection implies existence
2. Therefore, existence
I don’t see how that could be anything but fallacious.
I don’t either. But that’s the trope that was drilled into my sensitive little head as a little boy, and since ‘He’ was ‘perfect’, and everyone strove for perfection, ‘God’ was alive. It took me awhile to realize that the same reasoning applied to the FSM equally well.
Quite frankly, I put the Ontological Argument in the “not even wrong” category. Define perfect. It can’t really be done. It’s an ambiguous word with different meanings for different people. And, if it can’t be stated, it can’t be argued.
I view Ontological Argument much in the same way I view Zeno’s paradoxes of motion. “Hey, that’s a neat rhetorical/logical/linguistic trick you did there, but I’m not really convinced it actually means anything.” The kind of thing that sounds profound because it is confusing, and maybe even has some validity as an abstract thought experiment. But the OA isn’t going to convince me of a God any more than the paradox of the arrow is going to convince me I can’t move.
The Ontological Argument is a fun little exercise in logic and the (ab)use of language, and not without merit as such. But as a serious argument that God exists? WTF?
For us to KNOW something about god presumes that it already exists, a circular argument methinks.
Bertrand Russell claimed that he was taken in for some time by the OA, which seems odd; perhaps he shares some kind of mental blind spot with the authors. To me it’s just a classic example of mistaking a process — thinking about God — with an object — God ‘existing’ in the mind as a ‘thought’. Once we get away from the crazy notion that using ‘x’ as a noun somehow creates a thing called ‘x’, it falls apart.
My one friend likes to call the Ontological Argument, something like The Argument From Confusion, or The Argument From Misdirection. Besides the obvious problem with it (it smuggles in the conclusion as a given early on), it also assumes, for no truly justifiable reason other than hand-waving and personal preference, that perfection requires existence. Why? Ideal, platonic forms of most things don’t actually exist; does this make the concepts less “perfect”? What does “perfect” even mean? If I define “Atlantis” as “a perfect island” does that prove it must exist? Ugh. It’s sophistry; wankery of the highest order!
:)
Until you can define what you mean by “God,” no one should be expected to take it seriously.
Victor – yes, that too. I spent a happy few minutes when I first read that section, thinking about the difficulty of determining a settled meaning for “perfect.” Perfect at what? Perfect how? Perfect in terms of what?
It seems to make sense in geometry, but of a supernatural person? No.
Double-post to reply to McWaffle: It also reminds me of the “classic” math proofs that 1=0 or 2=1. Except people take it seriously…
As I understand it, the ontological argument is as follows:
Premises:
1. God is perfect (or would be if it existed)
2. We can conceive of God
3. God would be more perfect if it really existed
Conclusion: God exists
As far as I am concerned there are 4 major problems with the ontological argument.
1. The first premise isn’t justified. Why should we say God is perfect?
2. The second premise isn’t justified. Can we really conceive of a perfect being? I think by definition we can’t
3. The third premise isn’t justified. Why should we say that a being that exists is more perfect than one that doesn’t?
4. The conclusion doesn’t follow from the premises. It confuses “would be” with “is”. Just because something would be more perfect doesn’t mean it is more perfect.
Of the three premises, I think the third is actually the most problematic. This is because it only holds if you define “perfect” as “existing”. But by doing that, the argument reduces to “I define God as existing. I can conceive of God existing. Therefore God exists.” But that is obviously a circular argument. So the only way that you can actually get the argument to work is to make it circular.
And yes, I too thought “we know about God…that He is perfect” is wildly question-begging. But then I’m not a philosopher, so I suspect I don’t understand. I must be missing something.
Then again that thought has no purchase on me. It certainly doesn’t move me one angstrom closer to thinking god exists.
Black Cat – oh yes, that reminds me – I also thought of some reason “existing” actually makes a being less perfect rather than more (putting aside the fact that “less/more perfect” is nonsensical). I don’t remember what it was though.
I can’t even conceive of “that which nothing greater can be conceived.” And I genuinely wonder whether anyone can.
No, you’re not missing anything. I know people have played tricks with this argument, but they are clearly tricks. You can’t prove from the logic of concepts that something exists. Can’t be done. Even if you were sure that you knew that God was perfect and you knew what that meant. But it might well be that a perfect God would be more perfect if he didn’t exist. After all, fathers are good up to a point, but there comes a time when they have to get out of a child’s way. Same with gods. And, as for ‘H’es. Theologians have been writing God’s ‘he’ with a lower cap for ages. Anyone who is worth taking seriously will do so. If a theologian caps the H, then you can be sure he’s (and it’s almost always a he) hasn’t anything worthwhile saying. If I open a book of theology and the H’s are capped, I don’t bother to read further. Philosophers of religion have a bad habit of doing it, and they should stop. After all, from a Christian point of view, familiarity is the correct address for God. That’s why he’s a thou, not a you. It’s like “Du” in German.
Even if you want to give the benefit of the… doubt? fallacy?… to it, the error arrives (as always) when you try to apply the ontological argument to the god figure that scripture describes. The amount of errors and mind-changing that the various gods all manage to achieve rules them out of the “perfect” category, meaning that any god supported ontologically is not the one you’ve been looking for. Even arguments that this is part of the perfect plan imply that our inability to grasp such a plan is a flaw, thus imperfect. Shouldn’t perfection by nature be self-evident?
See? It’s easy to run this into tight little circles that show it to be nonsense.
Was it:
1. God is perfect.
2. We can imagine a perfect being.
3. A perfect being would exist.
4. Therefore God must exist.
5. A perfect being would be omnipotent.
6. The greatest barrier to omnipotence is non-existence.
7. A perfect being can surmount any barrier.
8. Therefore God must not exist.
Or something like that. I don’t remember exactly how it goes. It’s all rubbish anyway, it’s already been proven that imagining myself as perfect doesn’t make me any different.
Their philosophical shibboleth has the opposite effect on me. I can’t take anyone who takes the ontological argument for god seriously as credible. Like so many theological arguments for god the ontological argument is, I’d say, merely a convoluted obfuscation to make a bald assertion (“My preferred god exists”) seem like a logical necessity–as if the existence of something is contingent on people’s ability to conceive of it (which means that a first cause god can’t exist because there weren’t people to conceive of a perfect god before he existed). And, on top of all the arguments already presented in the thread, who is to say that the most perfect kind of god isn’t a *nonexistent* god. I can certainly conceive of such a god :-)
@ Ophilia: You might be thinking of Gaskings counter to the ontological argument:
The creation of the universe is the greatest achievement imaginable.
The merit of an achievement consists of its intrinsic greatness and the ability of its creator.
The greater the handicap to the creator, the greater the achievement (would you be more impressed by Turner painting a beautiful landscape or a blind one-armed dwarf?)
The biggest handicap to a creator would be non-existence
Therefore if we suppose that the universe is the creation of an existing creator, we can conceive a greater being — namely, one who created everything while not existing.
Therefore, God does not exist.
:- )
The continued persistence of the ontological argument among allegedly sophisticated and apparently intelligent philosophers is, for my money, a powerful argument that there are no standards of quality or rigor to which philosophy can be expected to hold. It boils down to arguing about whether or not the balrog has wings: perhaps an entertaining pastime but nothing that says anything useful about the universe. When my Catholic philosophy teacher insisted that the ontological argument was a serious position, I very nearly asked him in as many words what the hell was wrong with his brain.
I know that the day I win a multi-million dollar jackpot in the lottery will be the perfect day for me. Being perfect, that day must exist,but it has a higher level of perfection if it happens early in life (saves me more stress about money that way). Therefore, that day has already occured. Why the hell can’t I remember that day?
Ack, how could I comment on a post about arguments for God without referring to the hilarious-because-its-true Hundreds of Proofs of God’s Existence from Godless Geeks! The relevant proofs:
ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT (I) (1) I define God to be X. (2) Since I can conceive of X, X must exist. (3) Therefore, God exists.
ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT (II) (1) I can conceive of a perfect God. (2) One of the qualities of perfection is existence. (3) Therefore, God exists.
MODAL ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT (1) God is either necessary or unnecessary. (2) God is not unnecessary, therefore God must be necessary. (3) Therefore, God exists.
ARGUMENT FROM MULTIPLICITY (II), a.k.a. TERCEL’S ARGUMENT (II) (1) I have a large number of arguments for God. (2) There is a small chance that at least one of them is true. (3) Using voodoo probability calculations, this means that there is a much greater chance that all of them are true taken together! (4) And this ISN’T just the mathematical version of the Ontological Proof; I’m a real mathematician and you obviously can’t understand this proof because you don’t know as much about math as I do. (5) Oh, and don’t confuse things by mentioning how many atheistic arguments there are, and the probability of each of them being correct… (6) Or the fact that I basically pulled the probability of each of my arguments being correct out of my ass… (7) And admit that I know more about math than you, and you’ll see that… (8) Therefore, God exists.
PETER KREEFT’S ARGUMENT FROM POSITIVE NUMBERS, a.k.a. FIRST CAUSE ARGUMENT (V), a.k.a. ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT (III) (1) Positive numbers are not caused by negative numbers. (2) There is a parallel in the number series for a first cause: the number one. (3) If there were no number one, there could be no subsequent addition of units. (4) Two is two ones, three is three ones, and so on. If there were no first, there could be no second or third. (5) God is like the number one. (6) Therefore, God exists.
ST THOMAS AQUINAS’ ARGUMENT FROM PERFECTION, GOODNESS OR VALUE, a.k.a. ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT (IV) (1) We rank things as more or less perfect, or good or valuable. (2) If this ranking is false and meaningless, then souls don’t really have any more perfection than slugs. (3) Therefore, there must be an ultimate standard of perfection for this ranking or all our value judgments are meaningless. (4) Our value judgments are not meaningless. (5) God is the ultimate standard of perfection. (6) Therefore, God exists.
ST ANSELM’S ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT (1) God exists in our understanding. This means that the concept of God resides as an idea in our minds. (2) God is a possible being, and might exist in reality. He is possible because the concept of God does not bear internal contradictions. (3) If something exists exclusively in our understanding and might have existed in reality then it might have been greater. This simply means that something that exists in reality is perfect (or great). Something that is only a concept in our minds could be greater by actually existing. (4) Suppose (theoretically) that God only exists in our understanding and not in reality. (5) If this were true, then it would be possible for God to be greater then he is (follows from premise #3). (6) This would mean that God is a being in which a greater is possible. (7) This is absurd because God, a being in which none greater is possible, is a being in which a greater is possible. Herein lies the contradiction. (8) Thus it follows that it is false for God to only exist in our understanding. (9) Hence God exists in reality as well as our understanding. (10) Therefore, God exists.
11th CENTURY’S ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY’S ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT, a.k.a. TRANSCENDENTAL ARGUMENT (III) (1) God is, by definition, a being greater than which nothing can be conceived or imagined. (2) Existence in reality is better than existence in one’s imagination. (3) God must exist in reality; if God did not, then God would not be that than which nothing greater can be conceived or imagined. (4) Therefore, God exists.
Sorry for the TL;DR Wall of Text; there were more than I thought. Spot the fallacies!
So “reasonable atheist” means “being as senile as Flew”?
Double post: holy crap, I used the wrong form of “there” /facepalm clearly, my grammar error makes my post wrong; therefore, god exists. Sorry everyone!
Doug, BC, no, it wasn’t a formal argument, just some quirk about existence. It’s dirtier, or messier, or something like that. Perhaps just a joke. I forget….
(I’m most imperfect, I must say.)
I’ve just discovered this blog… wonderful stuff…. Doug Kirk (and relation to James T?) your 8 little bullets have made my day… mind if I use them?
A lesson for us all: if you ever want a lively thread, do a post on the ontological argument!
“T]he argument derives God’s existence from something we know about God”……
We know nothing about doG. How can we assign perfection, or gender, or any other attribute to something that we know nothing about because we have never seen it, heard it, touched it, tasted it, smelled it or detected it on short and long range sensors – most likely because it doesn’t exist?
“We take the Ontological Argument as the litmus test for intellectual seriousness, both for atheists and religious believers alike. Anyone who takes the question of God’s existence seriously must grapple with this fascinating argument. Those who simply cast it aside, or wield it indiscriminately, prove themselves intellectually careless.”
This is the rankest kind of pseudo-intellectual arrogance. I rephrase this thus:
“We believe in doG and if you don’t then we hold you to be an idiot”. Great. I’m an idiot then. But whatever these guys are, they sure are not atheists. Nor are they intellectual.
It’s hard to believe you got through the rest of the book.
I’ll meet the ontological argument halfway and concede that, if a perfect being existed, it would exist. Is that enough? :)
Wait, what? I keep reading this and it’s making my head hurt. I think it says that my position is that I know God is perfect but He doesn’t exist. As someone earlier noted, that is not even wrong. But I’m not a philosopher…
Which is why, no doubt, I can’t begin to understand why I have to take the ontological argument seriously. When I was 9 I didn’t believe my Nana when she said,”God exists because I say so!” and don’t see why I should start now.
1. To the best of all human knowledge, every being – human or otherwise – that exists or ever has existed is/was imperfect.
2. Therefore perfection is inconsistent with existence.
3. Therefore a perfect being cannot exist.
4. If god is defined as a perfect being, then god does not exist.
Actually, while we’re on the topic: the ontological argument is interesting because it fails at every possible level.
Let’s work backwards. Suppose we concede the whole proof up to the existence of the maximally perfect being. Fine. There’s nothing to link this being to the god of any religion. Using the term “God” for it is begging the question.
Step back. Apparently an attribute of a maximally perfect being is existence. But if there is no maximally perfect being, then it doesn’t exist, so all we’ve established is that if X exists, X exists, which is true for all X anyway.
Step back. We only think the maximally perfect being exists because the idea of it exists. But the idea of X is not X.
Step back. The idea of the maximally perfect being doesn’t exist, because it’s incoherent. I define Zoot as “the rational number which is the square root of two”- there is no Zoot, there isn’t even a coherent idea of Zoot, there’s just a string of words which I’m falsely claiming define a coherent notion. “Maximally perfect” doesn’t define a coherent notion.
When I first read the ontological argument, I thought, “But nobody takes this seriously, right?” To my mind it’s always been the stupidest f*cking god argument ever! And, like all of the other generic god arguments, even if it were granted as true it would not identify any particular god, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or otherwise. In fact, given the alleged nature of the Abrahamic God as per their holy books, it would disprove this particular god’s existence, given any fair-minded, reasonably intelligent person’s definition of perfection.
*”it” being the Ontological Argument.
Rest assured that the vast majority of sophisticated intelligent philosophers take the ontological argument exactly as seriously as it takes to eviscerate it thoroughly during the week in PHI101 that arguments for God’s existence are on the table. :)
Samnell:
I have to object to this vile calumny. The large majority of philosophers think that the Ontological Argument, like all the classic “proofs” of God’s existence, is clearly invalid garbage. They think Kant and Hume did a pretty fine job of demolishing all but one of the classic “proofs” them to be bullshit over two hundred years ago. (And Darwin pretty well demolished the other one, the Argument from Design.)
That’s one reason the large majority of philosophers are atheists, and the overwhelming majority are not orthodox Theists. Most philosophers really aren’t stupid, and many are quite the opposite.
Don’t tar philosophers in general with this kind of nonsense. They generally know better, and often use the classic “proofs” of God’s existence as textbook examples of invalid arguments, useful only as an exercise in detecting how people invalidly sneak their conclusions into their premises.
There are exceptions, of course—some philosophers do take the fancy footwork seriously—but they’re disproportionately at sectarian schools, where bad philosophy that’s out of the philosophical mainstream, but pro-religion, is subsidized to a considerable extent.
In philosophy, people who take the Ontological Argument seriously are generally regarded as kooky. The kooks have a little cottage industry of reworking the thoroughly discredited arguments and claiming they’re somehow valid, but most philosophers just ignore them like the crazy aunts and uncles in the attic that they are, tinkering with their perpetual motion machines and claiming they’ve got one that <i>actually works</i> this time.
Even at sectarian places like Notre Dame (where Alvin Plantinga teaches), the better philosophers are embarrassed by their colleagues doing this sort of utter crap. They’re also rather annoyed that if you say this sort of goofy stuff, you get a lot of attention, where reasonable philosophy generally doesn’t.
But don’t tell me a perfect martini can’t exist; I’ve had several recently….
Be it noted that now we’ve all considered and disproved the Ontological Argument, we are all Serious People and allowed to be discuss religion.
Yay :)
@McWaffle —
Zeno’s paradoxes of motion are actually incredibly subtle and many are still unresolved today. Where I think our disagreement stems from is that you seem to think that Zeno’s paradoxes apply to motion itself where I see them applying to the way we think about motion. That is, Zeno was pointing out flaws in the way we think, not flaws in the universe.
The other problem with the Ontological Argument is that it can be applied to anything. Do fairies exist? Well, since I can conceive of a perfect fairy, then they must exist!
That’s a fine rational reconstruction, but didn’t Zeno himself think he was describing reality? I seem to recall that he drew some pretty contentful conclusions from that. (E.g., that motion really is an illusion, and that what we observe isn’t real, and there’s some deeper or higher plane of reality, sorta like Plato’s realm of the Forms. Or something.)
Not a philosopher myself, much less an Ancient guy, so feel free to correct me, but I thought Zeno was serious.
Existence claims are not logical, they are empirical. They must start with a premise secured by evidence derived from observation. In some cases existence might be the logical consequence of a theory that’s itself empirical in origin, as in the case of an unobserved subatomic particle predicted by a theory that has been confirmed.
A simple way of looking at it is that we have no experience of confirming existence from a logical premise. No one knows how it can be done, and I would say there is no reason to imagine that it can be done. It’s perfectly OK to dismiss all such arguments IMO. They are very old and it’s wildly improbable that any form of the type will somehow succeed.
This is a very curious stance for the book to take. Perhaps an element of diplomacy is involved in taking these arguments seriously. The subtitle “A Moral Case for Respectful Disbelief” is a bit of a giveaway. This isn’t about the quality of arguments, it’s about how moral and respectful atheists are supposed to be. But how could this possibly justify a different view of the merits of any argument? No, this won’t do.
pulseteresa @ #34:
Exactly! Since when has perfection implied existence? The only things which are “perfect” are idealistic abstractions. As soon as something becomes real, it ceases to be perfect. Ergo, God can only be perfect if he is fictional concept in people’s heads.
@themann1086 #11
I was thinking of those mathematical tricks too! The ones where the logic seems to make sense yet the conclusion is ridiculous, and then one realises one has been tricked into dividing by zero along the way and made a nonsense of everything.
Another way I often think the Ontological Argument is nonsensical in this way is to look at its implication – if God didn’t exist he would be imperfect – which to my mind is very much like the ‘dividing by zero’ moment above; if God didn’t exist he wouldn’t exist, and ascribing any characteristic to something non-existent is absurd. I may be able to imagine a fictional black cat, but it’s not really black in any real way, since it doesn’t exist, but the OA seems to imply that if he didn’t exist God would still somehow manage to have the real, actual characteristic of imperfection, which is confused to say the least.
At their blog they claim to already be under attack by unnamed atheists for the cardinal sin among New Atheists, “accomodationism,” based solely on the title of their book. They claim that their case for “respectful disbelief” is the rational thing–which is odd since their subtitle is that it is the *moral* thing–not necessarily the same thing. If nothing else their subtitle implies the converse, that it is immoral to be a “disrespectful” atheist–what ever that is.
The book might have its good points, but with their support for the ridiculous Ontological argument and the straw man attack on New Atheists in their post they are coming off as the New Mooney–even if they probably don’t and can’t aspire to anything quite that low.
Though not a big fan of philosophy in general I have to agree with Paul W here, most philosophers wouldn’t touch the Ontological Argument with a barge pole. Plantinga does philosophy no favours by spouting this rubbish. Kant dismissed the Kalam Cosmological Argument as just another variation of the Ontological Argument so this shows what he though of it.
1. We can conceive of a perfect god (we’ll use ‘your’ concept of perfect just to make things easy).
2. God would be better (more perfect) if he existed.
3. Therefore God exists.
4. But wait, He would be better still if he was “all natural”
5. Therefore an All Natural God exists.
6. What about bacon?
7. Therefore an all natural god “now- with bacon!” exists
8. I disapprove of __________ (supply your own prejudice here)
9. Therefore an all natural god with bacon who disapproves of ______ exists
The possible ‘improvements’ never end so the OA never gets off the ground- except when you desperately need to claim that it has achieved flight.
I used silly examples above, but if I were to engage seriously I might try this:
1. We can conceive of a perfect god (we’ll use ‘your’ concept of perfect just to make things easy.
2. God would be better (more perfect) if he existed.
3. Therefore God exists.
4. But a god that did NOT create evil would be more perfect
5. Therefore Evil does not exist
6. A perfect god would not be deceptive
7. Therefore the evidence for an old universe is true and the biblical account of Genesis is wrong
8. A perfect god would not promote genicide, hate, bigotry, etc.
9. Therefore the Old Testament is false
I can go on and on, playing by their rules
I think someone above stated more-or-less Nagarjuna’s argument for the non-existence of a substantial being whom we might conceive of as God… Instead of referring us only to Anselm and those other Xtian thinkers with a stake in God’s existence, Aikin & Talisse should also, if they are genuinely interested in intellectual seriousness, have referred us to Nagarjuna’s argument, an argument that is equally hallowed by time, if we want to suppose that time hallows anything. Quite honestly, a reading of Keith Ward’s gesturings at Dawkins (one can hardly regard them as constituting an attack), in which the ontological arguments are trotted out, is enough to make anyone realise that intellectual seriousness is the last attribute they have.
No – really – it isn’t. A & T aren’t Mooney! They really aren’t. They aren’t saying we have to be gnice, and it really is about the quality of the arguments.
I’ve probably given an unfair impression by picking out this bit. I picked it out because I don’t get it! Not because it’s representative of the whole book.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Charlie Barton, Ophelia Benson. Ophelia Benson said: I don’t see how the argument even begins http://dlvr.it/G61Tk […]
I think I posted something tangential to this on Eric’s blog the other day.
Basically, it relates to the phrase ‘you can’t prove a negative’. Which as stated is false. You can prove that 5 is not less than 4. That’s a negative. You can prove De Morgan’s laws which are negative and so on. What it boils down to is that you cannot prove that a being or thing (that isn’t logically incoherent) doesn’t exist. It’s contingent. This also means you cannot prove that is does exist . You need to go outside, and find evidence. I know that some will beg the question and say but existence is part of God’s essence or perfection, but how do they know?
A modal ontological argument.
1) If God exists, God exists necessarily.
2) God existence isn’t impossible
3) A possibly existing being isn’t necessary
4) Therefore God, who’s existence is possible is not a necessary being
5) Therefore God cannot exist.
Logic could be better stated, but m’eh I’ve proven God cannot exist.
Seems to be a big three religion argument as well. Polytheists like some Hindu’s would be surprised to find that Shiva with his anger is supposed to be perfect. And besides Hindus could(I suppose) conceive of multiple perfect beings so – so much for the single God. I dont think any monotheist finds such arguments credible , Im not sure why we should.
I just had a half-arse thought. If the ontological argument succeeded then what good would it do? You’ve got a perfect God who exists. But, the problem still is, how does anyone know the God they worship is this guy’s perfect God or that guy’s perfect God? It’s the same problem with Platonism. You say you’ve meditated on the Good for so long that you can now perceive it’s ideal form in the Platonic realm, but Bob, down the road, says the same thing, and he seems sincere, and his ideal isn’t anything like yours. How do we know that you and Bob aren’t just blowing smoke up your respective derrieres?
This book is starting out badly to me. However, what can I say, I haven’t read it, good luck to them, I hope they change minds and have an effect. But I have a sneaking suspicion that this will join the other dozens of dusty atheist books that deal with the proofs of God. Because as most of us are aware, religion is not about reason, it’s about giving up reason for faith.
Another problem! If God is perfect, then God cannot think, feel, act or change his mind. All those things imply change and thought. A person can’t be perfect, it’s an ideal. So, a perfect god is not a person. But a providential god is a person. So, the ontological argument, if it worked, would get a god nothing like God.
No, that is only because you are assuming that there can be only one state of perfection–one of the same problems the ontological argument also assumes. There could be an infinite number of perfect states.
Hm, I think that might be my forgotten reason for deciding existence was imperfect. I think I decided nothing was more perfect than something, and that existing was kind of vulgar in comparison.
that is only because you are assuming that there can be only one state of perfection.
That is what perfection is. Stateless. It’s perfect, unchanging. The word means complete. It doesn’t mean changing to another equivalent state, then it wouldn’t be perfect it’s just be changeable.
We take the Babel Fish as the litmus test for intellectual seriousness, both for atheists and religious believers alike. Anyone who takes the question of God’s existence seriously must grapple with this fascinating argument. Those who simply cast it aside, or wield it indiscriminately, prove themselves intellectually careless.
Ophelia, I accept your description of the contents. The title (and the subtitle) may be a sweetener to get nervous believers to read it. Amazon has this about the book:
Quite. Perfection is utterly boring, and alien to humans. “God” is first of all a person, and a person can’t be perfect.
Maybe that was the forgotten reason – maybe it wasn’t existence but perfection. A perfect person is a completely whack idea – it makes no kind of sense.
Oh why didn’t Richard call it that? Douglas Adams was one of his best friends; he introduced him to Lallah; why didn’t Richard use that title?
On second thought, I’m beginning to suspect that the person who wrote that didn’t mean it to be taken seriously. It actually seems that he’s making fun of religious people, and philosophers too. What a dick. He must be one of those New Atheists I’ve been hearing about.
Ernie – good. Amazon is telling the truth.
No, you are just assuming that perfect is mutually exclusive. Which snowflake is perfect? There is no reason that perfection can’t be like infinite sets. One might think there can be only infinity, yet that is not the case, there are multiple sets of infinite sets. There is no reason that the perfection of a god could not also have multiple states–especially if I use the fallacy of argument by definition like the ontological argument does and just assert my preferred state as being necessary, saying that a perfect god has multiple states ;-)
Ooh, let me try this:
(1) God is, by definition, a being greater than which nothing can be conceived or imagined.
(2) Spaghetti in reality is better than spaghetti in one’s imagination.
(3) God must be spaghetti in reality; if God was not, then God would not be that than which nothing greater can be conceived or imagined.
(4) Therefore, God exists and is spaghetti.
RAmen. I shall call this the noodletological argument.
I don’t understand your problem when you say:
Not all believers think that “God” is ”perfect” , but for those that do perfection is part of the definition.
For such people (and for you when talking about their “God”) it should not be particularly challenging to accept that “God is perfect”. This is no different from accepting that “a real square root of negative number is real”. It is tautologically true but vacuous in application.
The most appropriate counter to the “Ontological Argument” is as follows:
Everything that exists is imperfect.
Therefore existence implies imperfection.
God is perfect.
Therefore God does not exist
I have found Peter Angeles’ short book The Problem of God to be very useful for these arguments.
David Hume said, “The idea of existence, then, is the very same with the idea of what we conceive to be existent.”
Immanuel Kant said, “Being is evidently not a real predicate, or a concept of something that can be added to the concept of a thing. It is merely the admission of a thing, and of certain determinations in it.[…] The proposition, God is almighty, contains two concepts, each having its object, namely, God and almightiness. The small word is, is not an additional predicate in relation to the subject. If, then, I take the subject (God) with all its predicates (including that of almightiness), and say, God is, or there is a God, I do not put a new predicate to the concept of God , but only put the subject by itself, with all its predicates, in relation to the concept, as its object.”
Well, if you’re thinking of that god as just a word, or as something like a geometric figure, then maybe so, but why should anyone think of that god that way? As far as I know the ontological arg isn’t limited to “an abstract ‘god’ that only some people believe is god.” This is one reason so many “arguments for god” are such a dog’s breakfast – they just treat “god” as self-evident or already understood, and also as covering all the different versions of “god,” which could mean 5 billion or so. What good is an argument for anything as nebulous and capacious and meaningless as that?
Anyway it’s still not true, not even if I say “Your argument is that the ‘god’ you have in mind is perfect” and go on from there. That’s because “god” always means, minimally, a person. Once it becomes apophatic or Tillich-Armstrongian or metaphorical, we’re talking about something else. The rules have changed; all bets are off. I’m not talking about that kind of “god”; it makes no difference to anything; I don’t care about it. I’m an atheist about god-the-person. God is a person. A person can’t be perfect. So even if I try to accept that definition of “god” – that it is perfect by definition – it still is difficult, because that “god” is gibberish. A perfect person is gibberish. It’s true only if both “god” and “perfect” are treated as random empty labels – in which case we’re not talking about anything, so why bother?
The premises can be attacked by querying vague terms like ‘perfect’, of course, but Mackie showed that even allowing these the argument fails; and it is because of Kant’s ‘existence is not a predicate’ objection. If God is a perfect being then saying ‘God is non-existent’ is a contradiction, but it doesn’t stop us saying ‘There is no God’. If one did allow existence as an attribute then, as Brian intimates above, contradictory conclusions can be supported, so it cannot be the case. Kant said:
We intuitively know this is true, but Mackie spends 9 pages to confirm Kant’s view; I guess that passes the litmus test? I’ve read it, and understood some of it, so do I qualify too?
Plantinga has a modal version involving many worlds, but my heart drops at the sight of ‘Plantinga’ and ‘modal logic’, so any masochists will have to look it up themselves.
I’m told Richard Gale is very good on the subject, and he’s both a philosopher and an atheist.
Paul W, I am weakly sympathetic. But the fact that philosophers persist with the ontological argument when no scientist in his or her right mind still takes phlogiston seriously speaks volumes about the difference in the fields, all of it to science’s manifest advantage.
I suppose I should clarify though that I don’t think the persistence of the ontological argument cranks is a conclusive argument that all philosophy is crap. It’s certainly damaging to the discipline’s credibility, but not fatal to it.
This argument makes no sense to me. It seems to be based around the statement that because someone perceives something to exist, it must exist, which is just stupid. Am I missing something?
Casual B&W fan stops by, opens door. Oh, man, the place is packed with philosophers. Quietly turns around, walks out. :-)
Oh, cool… I get it!
1. My ideal mate would be perfect.
2. She would not be perfect unless she existed.
3. Since I can imagine a girl who is perfect for me, she must exist!
…and why stop there…
!. My ideal computer would be perfect…
It’s magic! I can create anything with variations on the ontological argument–in fact, I now live in a perfect palace full of perfect stuff. Thanks, Ophelia!
The Ontological Argument is demonstrably false. To take it seriously is silly and only a few dead-enders take it seriously. The basic form of the argument doesn’t work because if there is not <b>then we can use its logic to prove things that we have no reason to believe to be true.</b> For example it is possible to construct an argument with exactly the same form as the ontological argument, that purports to prove the existence of the perfect cat and the perfect cat must exist, for if it did not then it would be possible to conceive of a cat greater than that cat than which no greater can be conceived, which is absurd. If you don’t like that, you change cat to ice cream, computer game, fish, anything… Even though it is absurd to believe there is a perfect cat, or bowl of ice cream, or fish, or anything…
A second major flaw is that the conclusion of God’s existence, despite the lack of evidence, is presupposed. Kant explains this in far greater detail and subtly than I ever will achieve.
So, understanding this… And these clowns write a book and tell me I must believe the people who are advancing this discredited idea are ‘very serious people whom I must engage…’ Even though when someone engages in this fallacious position, I immediately know they’re a hack…
Sorry, the book will not be bought. Bring something intelligent to the table, I’ll buy it. Bring a load of horse-hockey to the table, I won’t…
I think we need an argument for the existence of actual persons who have been persuaded by the ontological argument.
@Paul W —
We know almost nothing about Zeno himself and even his writings are all second- and third-hand and some of the sources disagree with each other (some say the Achilles and the Tortoise paradox was originally by Parmenides, for instance). Having said that, I have no doubt that Zeno was serious about his paradoxes and he probably did think that motion was an illusion. But that doesn’t disrupt with my point that Zeno was showing that the way we think about the universe is wrong. Clearly Achilles does pass the tortoise; clearly the arrow reaches its target. He wasn’t claiming that these observations were untrue. What he was claiming is that what we perceive as motion is an illusion.
I wouldn’t go as far myself — I think like almost everyone else that motion is a real phenomenon, and some of Zeno’s paradoxes are as weak as the Ontological Argument — but I still find Zeno’s approach very powerful. In fact I feel a sense of awe about his paradoxes. He strikes me as the flip side to Einstein. Where Einstein used thought experiments to find the simplest, most elegant way to discover new things about the physical world, Zeno used thought experiments to find the simplest, most elegant way to throw a spanner into our assumptions about the physical world.
Ontological, schmontological,these arguments are a waste of neurones. Where’s the evidence for a deity or the supernatural?
It would be perfect if I had a million dollars, therefore…..
…..nevermind. :-(
I’m with Scote @#19: Aiken & Talise have it exactly backwards. When I encounter a philosopher who takes the Ontological Argument seriously, I know NOT to take that philosopher seriously. A fascination with moribund arguments and completely bankrupt theories is a dead giveaway that someone suffers from rampant intellectual dishonesty.
Come to think of it, my reaction to encountering a philosopher who takes the OA seriously is a lot like my reaction to encountering someone in my everyday life who takes astrology seriously, or is a fan of Ayn Rand: instant dismissal. Sorry, you are just *not* someone whose intellect I can take seriously.
The notion that there can be an unambiguously identifiable “perfect”, or greater-than-all-others, entity really only makes sense if you’re operating under the Great Chain view of the universe (which IIUC Anselm, Aquinas et al were). Today, we dismiss that whole way of thinking, and the OA fails at the beginning.
Paul W:
Fun fact: I actually attended Notre Dame for several semesters (go Irish!), and this is dead-on. I can’t remember the man’s name, but my philo prof for a course called “Minds Brains & Persons” spent the first week going over the history of dualist thought, then called it “garbage” and said, if I may paraphrase, “only a few holdouts exist, mostly at religious colleges like, well, here. It’s embarrassing.”
Ophelia, with respect to “knowing” that God is perfect – that’s because in setting the initial parameters of the argument God is defined as perfect. It’s true justified belief, therefore knowledge, to use the word according to its definition. So that’s the move there. It is not justified by reference to the world, but a priori. Then the argument goes on to try to prove that, in effect, God’s definition requires his existence. It’s geometry proofs with words, not science.
Samnell, as for the appalling persistence of the argument, the problem is that philosophers who reject it have to play on a wider field than scientists. To show that something is bad science, you just have to rub your opponent’s nose in the evidence. If he then goes on to say that, evidence or no, he’s still right because his reasons for accepting what he accepts are non-scientific, he’s conceded your point. But then it falls to scientifically minded philosophers to show him why reasoning scientifically is the only way to go. I think most philosophers would concede that there are (usually if not always) good reasons to prefer scientific reasoning, but the point is that, even when she’s on science’s side, the philosopher has one more job to do than the scientist.
In the case of the ontological argument, it isn’t even meant to be scientific/empirical. It’s a logical parlor trick which can be dispelled by pointing out that it relies on a logical fallacy. The problem is that the philosophers who push the argument keep trying to make it work by simply making it more logically complex, and the only rule is that they aren’t allowed to contradict themselves. Ultimately, you end up with successive games of “hide the contradiction.” The contradiction is always there, but the opponents are at least clever logicians, so they can be quite clever about concealing it (perhaps even from themselves).
I’ve seen at least a dozen ontological arguments, and not a single one of them required more than a few sentences to rebut. The hardest is the modal ontological argument, which equivocates between the colloquial meaning of “possible” and the meaning of “possible” in S5 modal logic:
“In modal logic, necessary means ‘in every possible world.’ There are three possibilities for a necessarily existing God. He can exist in all possible worlds and be necessary. He can be shown to exist in some possible worlds and not others, in which case we have a contradiction and our definition of God is not consistent with the modal logic (just as defining a set of converging parallel lines is not consistent with Euclidean geometry). Or he can exist in no possible worlds, and be impossible.
“If by ‘possible’, we mean ‘conceivable’, it is clear that the second possibility is the case, because we can both conceive of a universe with (some type of) God, and one without him. Modal logic is not consistent with these definitions of ‘possible’ and ‘God’. For any other definition of ‘possible’, we would need to show that God exists in all possible worlds in order to show that the first possibility is true and neither of the others. But if we knew how to show that God exists in all possible worlds, we would not need the ontological argument!”
Every, and I mean EVERY other ontological argument that I’ve seen, can be dismissed with “That argument is stupid and ‘proves’ the existence of the shiniest conceivable unicorn, just as much as God.”
No, you are just assuming that perfect is mutually exclusive. Which snowflake is perfect? There is no reason that perfection can’t be like infinite sets.
Not really. I’m telling you that the argument, as argued, aims to get one perfect being. Xtians would not be happy with infinity perfect beings. They view it as a singleton set, an equivalence class. The other problem is that there is no perfect snowflake, except the perfect Platonic snowflake (if you are a Platonist), so there’s only one. Likewise, if God could have more than 1 perfect state, then we could imagine a God that had only 1 perfect state and that God would be greater than the God that had more than 1 perfect state. As we conceive of God as that which nothing greater can be conceived of, God is perfect and has only 1 state, and exists…..
Oh wait……
George, I thought it was a philosophers duty, written in the secret philosophers code, to take any argument seriously that some person, somewhere, at some time, took seriously. Even if only to see how a great mind could come unstuck.
The ontological argument is clearly stupid. It can be countered by the King Steer argument.
That goes like this:
1 – The perfect burger is perfect.
2 – We can imagine a perfect burger
3 – The perfect burger would be more perfect if it existed, required no effort beyond you imagining it to get ahold of it, was free and in easy reach.
Still hungry aren’t you?
Doesn’t the argument depend on an Aristotelian framework to supply implied premises about hierarchies of being and perfection? An Aristotelian like Aquinas might have presupposed that we only recognize and conceive of real things through their ideal forms (so they “exist”); and that in the case of God form and reality are not meaningfully different; so he would see “how the argument even begins”. It doesn’t seem that there’s any point discussing the argument in abstraction from it’s matrix, hence it’s near-absolute vapidity in isolation. My question is — Might someone like Russell have held to some attempt to update Aristotle, so that the implicit premises could transfer across, and the argument seem more persuasive?
Brian,
Geometry deals with perfect triangles. There are an infinite number of perfect triangles. Therefore it is possible for Geometric Triangle God to change state an infinite number of times while maintaining perfection at all times.
It is true that Christians (and Jews and Muslims), being monotheists, will always assume that there is one true god that is perfect, but that is an unsupported assumption of theirs and not a logical consequence of perfection.
Very silly South-West-Asian-centric view of a monotheistic deity, as has been mentioned in passing above. Buddhist thought would retort that existence is suffering, and perfection is non-existence, so where’s your Ontological Proof there, bozo?
“…it is possible for Geometric Triangle God to change state an infinite number of times while maintaining perfection at all times.”
Which would make Him an ideal screensaver, among other possibilities…
As some has said, there are versions of the ontological argument, that pivots around the contention that existence is better than nonexistence. These are open to the objection that existence is not an attribute.
Plantingas argument hinges on the rules of modal logic, particularly the formulation called S5. Modal logic uses possible and necessary in addition to the “normal” terms used in logic, and in s5, if something is possibly necessary, then it is necessary.
This means that any premise which holds something to be possibly necessary, leads to the conclusion that it is necessary.
This can be used, and it is used by Plantinga to sneak god in under the radar. It goes like this:
Evangelical: Surely you will agree that while you do believe god does not exist, you accept that it is at least possible that a god might exist?
Doubter: Well yeah sure, whatever. Universal negatives are a bother so I’ll grant you that.
Evangelical: Well since God is defined as being maximally great, which means he exists in every possible world, which means he is necessary, then when you agree it is possible that He exists, you accept that he is possibly necessary, so you accept he is necessary, by S5, and thus you must believe in the holy trinity!
As if imagining a more perfect way of making a thread lively could make it come into being…
I’ve tried imagining the waashing up in the sink in the most perfect state I can. It’s still not clean. :-(
I still like Carl Sagan’s brief but effective comment on the Ontological Argument. In his Gifford Lectures in the late 1980s, Sagan said that Bertrand Russell had the worrying thought — but only for about 15 minutes — that St. Anselm was really onto something with the O.T.
1
A perfect being that doesn’t exist couldn’t be perfect because it doesn’t exist.
This is because there is no “something” that doesn’t exist, by definition.
But if it is perfect, it must exist.
Except that “it” wouldn’t be perfect to start with, because there is no “it”.
………………..
2
A perfect being that doesn’t exist….
…doesn’t exist.
A perfect being that does exist…
…does exist.
Therefore…
…sorry, what was the question again?
………………..
3
We cannot conceive of a perfect being, whether it exists or not.
So we don’t know what we’re talking about, right?
………………..
4
If I could imagine a perfect being, it would be an imaginary perfect being.
………………..
5
If I can imagine a perfect being, I must have a perfect faculty of imagination.
Only a perfect being (aka God) can have perfect imagination,
Argal, I must be God.
………………..
6
Perfection is imaginary;
But if it were perfect, it would be perfectly imaginary.
………………..
7
Brother Anselm can conceive of a perfect being;
The perfect being would not be perfect if it didn’t exist,
Because it wouldn’t exist.
But Brother Anselm can conceive of it anyway.
………………..
8
Brother Anselm can conceive of a perfect being.
Can anyone else?
Does this mean that Brother Anselm is God?
………………..
9
God is ineffable, therefore it cannot be conceived.
I cannot conceive of God.
Neither can Brother Anselm.
But if he could, his conception of God would be greater and more perfect than mine.
Because I can’t.
Jolly good, then.
………………..
10
“Nothing” is a noun.
Nothing is the subject of this sentence.
Therefore, nothing exists.
No, wait a minute…
………………..
11
Nothing is perfect.
Brother Anselm thinks that this means “nothing” is perfect.
Oh well…
That’s the trap. Thing is, I doubt anyone caught in it has ever been convinced. It’s a cheap trick. A slightly more sophisticated doubter might say something like:
I don’t have any idea what’s possibly necessary in some possible world, or if anything is necessary in any of them.
Hume said that for anything that exists it would not be a contradiction if it didn’t. That sounds good to me. At least there should be an argument that it’s wrong, if it is.
@GordonWillis: good poem!
Plantinga’s modal form of the argument fails just as badly as the older form. To start with, it only works in the S5 modal logic, because he works by claiming his God is possibly necessary and uses S5 to say that it’s therefore necessary. Different logics describe different logical systems; Plantinga needs to establish that S5 is the right logic for reasoning about the possible existence of deities in reality, before he gets to use it.
He also equivocates over possibility. The “possibly necessary” part comes from imagining a possible world in which a god is necessary. The god is necessary to that world, but Plantinga then tries to make it necessary in every world; an error of scope.
And the usual existence problem: if you define God as a being that’s necessary in every possible world, then at most you can prove that if there is a being that is necessary in every possible world, then there is a being that is necessary in every possible world. Hooray.
Anyway we can disprove Plantinga in one go. I can imagine a possible world in which no god is necessary; ergo. there is no god which is necessary in every possible world.
Yes Plantinga must use S5 to get of the ground.
And remember in modal logic “possible” is nothing. There is giant different in the consequences of something being possible as opposed to something being necessary.
For instance it is not a problem to assume at the same time that it is possible that god exists, and it is possible that god does not exist.
A statement is possible when it is not necessarily false, which permits you to assume contradictionary stuff to be possible.
This makes sense when you look at it as possible worlds. There could be a possible world with a god, and another possible world without a god, this is no contradiction, but at the same it says fuck all about this world.
And here we have S5, which connects all possible worlds with a super highway, if its possibly necessary in that world over there it must be necessary in every world, including ours.
—
Well its a fun topic, but still – its a hard argument to take serious. No matter which version you hear, it is clear that it is 100% sophistry.
But surely this perfection that exercises certain kinds of thinkers (I speak politely) is merely the Parmidean totality or stasis (that’s where Zeno comes from – all movement is an illusion) given a set of Judaic whiskers and a foul temper.
This is pre-scientific thinking. The Greeks, especialy Plato, reasoned that there was a connection between what a person could conceive and reality. No observation, no testing, no agreement on definitions. This is why modern christians are enamored of Plato.
Since I hope new atheists embrace empiricism and not rationalism, I can only hope that we reject these kind of arguments for the nonsense that they are.
Ooh, I mist be an intellectually serious atheist then. I deconstructed The Ontological Argument for God nearly two years ago. Essentially it’s just equivocation between two different definitions of god, namely (1) a god who exists in reality and (2) a god who exists only in the mind. It’s intellectual smoke and mirrors.
So the OA shows that god is the ideal screen-saver; I call that progress!
Existence is suffering only for sentient entities though. Would god be perfect only if insentient, or only if sentient? Answers on a postcard.
I hope these authors are not of the John Shook school that suggests to be an atheist you must study and understand all of the “sophisticated” arguments of the christian “intellectuals.”
I think that for those who wish to advocate atheism, engaging the Ontological Argument and its many flavors is a worthwhile endeavor. The very fact that the argument is so bad is, IMO, where its power lies. In both the traditional Anselm form, as well as Platinga’s modal form, the trick is to do a little semantic sleight of hand, whereby the victim is misdirected from the proposition they are actually agreeing to, so they think they are agreeing to something different entirely. It’s a sneaky trick, and the very lack of any substantive argument makes it difficult to point out the flaws to those who have been convinced by the argument. The Ontological Argument is pure vapor, and you can’t punch vapor.
For those who just wish to feel intellectually secure in their atheism, the Ontological Argument is not worth even considering for a moment. A coherent intellectual airtight atheism has no need to even address the Ontological Argument, because it’s no argument at all. (FWIW, now that Darwin has demolished the Argument from Design, I think the only argument that even needs a cursory addressing is the Cosmological Argument — and as our understanding of the first few picoseconds of the universe advances, even that may become unnecessary)
The only reason to dig into the OA is a) if you find it entertaining, as I do; or b) if you expect to be trying to convince people who have been taken in by the rhetorical switcheroo. If (b), then yes, I agree it is worth spending some serious time examining the Ontological Argument, because it’s very lack of substance makes it difficult to attack directly. “That’s just fucking bonkers” is indeed a correct characterization of the OA, but of course it has no traction with those who have previously bought into it.
Locutus, that’s not quite what Shook says, if I remember correctly. He says its useful to know the good arguments. Well it is, isn’t it!
That advice from Shook would be very good advice if only there were some good arguments in favour of the existence of god. If some exist then either I am incredibly ignorant of them (not impossible) or the theologists are keeping them a secret from the rest of us.
I would say that, pre-Darwin, the Argument from Design was a pretty good one. Still ultimately fallacious (because it only defers the origin question rather than resolving it, and because even if the appearance of design implied a designer it would not necessarily imply Jesus) but still difficult to address properly in the absence of a decent theory for the origin of species.
Our modern equivalent would the Cosmological Argument, but it suffers even more glaringly from the “only defers the origin question” problem. Compare: “Why are there animals? Because God made them. Then where did God come from?” vs. “Why is there anything? Because God made it. Then where did God come from?” In the former case, the two questions being asked are fundamentally different. The rules of what would constitute a valid answer to “Why animals?” and “Why God?” are quite different from each other. God is not an animal, so the question of God’s origin is in a fundamentally different class than the question of species origin. However, God is “anything”, i.e. something, so in the latter case, the two questions being asked are fundamentally of the same class.
The Argument from Design and the Cosmological Argument are both pure argumentum ad ignorantiam — but in the former case, the God hypothesis has some limited explanatory potential. In the latter case it has none at all.
But it’s still probably the best argument left, because like the Design Argument in the pre-Darwin days, science cannot quite provide a clear and unambiguous and uncontroversial explanation. (Yes, I am aware of Krauss’ “Nothing is unstable” as well as various other theories, but there’s still quite a lot of uncertainty) All remaining arguments are either readily explained away by science (e.g. the Argument from Morality), are brazen logical fallacies (e.g. Pascal’s Wager), or are rhetorical tricks (e.g. the Ontological Argument).
It is fun to know some of them, but as Hitchens says, what is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
But argument isn’t the same thing as evidence.
Ontological Argument from Atheism: The story of Yahweh is the perfect argument for his non-existence. That which is perfect is more perfect if it exists. Therefore, Yahweh exists.
Next question: Can Yahweh build a pile of stones bigger than the stones needed to stone to death all the potential people he might wish to stone?
But argument can still be very very useful.
Euclidian geometry works to get true knowledge about Euclidian space, and you don’t even have to go check with the world to know that it’s true.
Ken – I did a little joke with the stone too heavy for god to lift, in 50 Voices of You’ve Got to be Kidding.
@119: The bit about grapefruit? Yes, one of the more memorable passages, and made your essay one of my favorites from the book.
!
What a memory, Eamon! Yes that’s the one. Thank you. :- )
Come to think of it…
Might as well link.
@Chris L
I didn’t mean to completely dismiss Zeno’s paradoxes, per se. I meant it more along the lines of if somebody were to use them to convince me motion was physically impossible, like how people use the OA to prove the existence God.
Honestly. Rosenau has done a post on this, and as always, he can’t manage to do it without telling a whopper about me. Talk about the ethics of argument……
http://scienceblogs.com/tfk/2011/02/ontological_arguments_and_nega.php
No I don’t! I never said that – I never even used the word “silly” – I said several times that I might simply not understand the argument. I do not think it’s a silly standard and I never said I did.
I still go with the answers:
1) it might be posible, but is it probable? Show your work and data, please.
2) it might be necessary, and if it is, then you have evidence? Present it please.
@117 – Yahweh couldn’t beat iron chariot wheels, and his moral standards are hideous, so if Yahweh is supposed to be a perfect being, then perfection ain’t what it used to be!
Ophelia – he also took Coyne to task (see his “snert” post), but I followed the link and didn’t see any argument – just an ad hominem and an appeal to authority, along with some rather bizarre comments that didn’t relate to what Jerry wrote. That’s par for the course, but still pathetic.
Edit – sorry, the “snert” post was a link to someone else, but he approves. Didn’t mean to imply that it was his reply.
re 124
I think the lamprey does it to suck some traffic his way. He’s become an accomodationist flea.
@128 – my rss reader (Newsfire) gets the whole post, so I can read it and not visit the site. Since it is set for the Scienceblogs entire feed, I don’t think it adds to his traffic. Best way to go.
The Ontological argument for the existence of the nasty new atheist.
I can imagine the nastiest new atheist possible – one thats thoroughly rude and insulting to religious peope everywhere (basically the Tom Johnson version of new atheism.)
To be perfectly nasty this new atheist must exist (otherwise he or she can only cause problems on The Intersection)
Therefore the famed nasty new atheist exists!
@124
Rosenau also invokes Keats’ notion of negative capability. Philosophers have, over the years, taken the idea of NC and run with it. What Keats originally meant by it was rather narrow: he was talking about what he perceived to be a very specific poetic skill, not an epistemological one. It’s upsetting to me that the term has now come to mean If something doesn’t make logical sense to you, that’s OK because it’s good to dwell in mystery sometimes. Which is fine (I guess), but that has little to do with what Keats originally meant.
Caryn, I agree. But only our experience with triangular shapes tells us what the geometry is useful for. IOW you do have to check with the world to find out if there are triangles. So whether formal proofs mean something in the world is still an empirical question. You can then say if there are triangles, they have such and such properties.
That’s why I think Dawkins is right and Rosenau wrong about the OA being infantile. It’s infantile to imagine that purely logical arguments can prove existence, no matter how much empathy you have for people seduced by this view. You still have to refer back to the world to see what the argument is good for beyond it’s value as a logical exercise.
Good one Sigmund!
Andy, I know, the Keats thing is very annoying, because Keats was Keats and Rosenau isn’t. As for negative capability, yes all that plus it was in a letter that was transcribed by Keats’s brother’s wife’s second husband, and it’s not for sure that he even got the words right. (That is, the original is lost, and the transcript is the only source.)
Keats was a remarkable human being. He died at 26, therefore god does not exist.
I saw the stuff about Coyne, too. R’au has really gone over the edge lately.
Maybe Josh had a Road to Damascus experience…
Fell off his horse, you mean? Could be.
Was Keats talking about a poetic ‘skill’ when he invented the term ‘negative capability’ (a very good quality, in my opinion, as someone who has done some acting and directing)? As I recall, he was talking about the ability – which he thought exemplified by Shakespeare – to enter imaginatively into ways of being, feeling and thinking and to explore them without taking a critical stance towards them so that such characters as Falstaff, Macbeth and Hamlet could be created. Rosenau’s point is anyway a silly one. Certainly, one can enter imaginatively and with a degree of sympathy (a sort of Husserlian bracketing, perhaps) into the mind of a believer and understand why the ontological argument has a significance for the believer, but this has nothing to do with taking the ontological argument seriously as an argument, which is what Aikin and Talisse appear to be advocating.
To give credit where credit is due, that phrase is originally due to Frank Wilczek, not Lawrence Krauss. It was used in an old column Wilczek used to write for Physics Today, although I don’t have time to dig up the precise reference right at the moment.
Well Shakespeare was a poet! :- )
Here’s the passage:
What he says applies, oddly, or not oddly, to that passage itself. It’s so absurdly beautifully written that I really don’t care that I don’t entirely agree with it. His letters in general are like that. He can persuade me of things that if said by absolutely anyone else would cause me to scowl unattractively.
And he died at barely 26! He was too ill to write for a year before that! He was bitterly unhappy. God does not exist!
But anyway, yes, Aikin and Talisse aren’t talking about negative capability or empathy at all.
The supposed records of the purported god’s words and actions don’t seem very perfect to me.
If “god” is perfect, I would cite the aphorism, “Perfect is the enemy of the good.” Heh, heh.
It would seem to confirm Orwell’s alleged statement: “Some ideas are so absurd that only an intellectual couldbelieve them.”
My Latin is rusty, but let me see if I can modify Tertullian to be consistent with Orwell’s alleged statement: “Incredo quia absurdum.” Loosely translated, “because it is absurd I find it unbelievable.”
My Latin professor is rolling in his grave.
One last thought on Keats: My only thing is, when Keats writes “…without any irritable reaching after fact and reason,” I think he’s a poet who is talking poetry. He is not endorsing the idea that, as a general matter, seeking fact and reason is somehow detrimental or unenlightened.
@134:
Yeah, Rosenau has guns blazing lately. But, strangely, I find him harder to dislike than some of his fellow accommodationists. To me his arguments are odd in an entertaining way more than an infuriating way.
Ernie, exactly.
When “know” gets used this way, it’s exactly the same use as we’d use in “Let x=4. Okay, we know that x=4. If we substitute 4 for x in the equation…” Which is lovely, but unless one checks with the world and confirms that x actually equals 4…
So this becomes an argument over what it is that counts as justification, and when.
Keats’ negative capability is a throwaway line in one letter where he’s talking about poetic inspiration. The phrase got picked up by Dewey and the Pragmatists, who used it in relation to hypothesis-testing, I think, where you have to be able to keep an idea in mind long enough to explore its implications, even if your first impulse is to discard it. Subsequent misuse of the term is not Keat’s fault :)
Scientifically, we shouldn’t have needed Keats or Dewey to tell us this, because Bacon already told us 400 years ago that if several different ideas seem to explain the world equally well (as the heliocentric and geocentric systems seemed to at the time), a natural philosophy ought to know and use both rather than leaping to one or the other; eventually a difference will turn up allowing you to reject one or the other. Yay Bacon.
Best Keats quote ever:
“Talking of Pleasure, this moment I was writing with one hand, and with the other holding to my Mouth a Nectarine — how good how fine. It went down all pulpy, slushy, oozy, all its delicious embonpoint melted down my throat like a large, beatified Strawberry.”
Mmmmmmmmm.
No, of course Keats wasn’t suggesting that seeking fact or reason was detrimental or unenlightened. He was after all trained as a doctor. What he is saying does not seem so different to me from Edward O. Wilson’s and Bert Hoelldobler’s description, in Journey to the Ants, of Karl von Frisch’s and Martin Lindauer’s philosophy of research, which, they say, was based on ‘a throrough, loving interest in – a feel for – the organism, especially as it fits into the natural environment. Learn the species of your choice every way you can, this whole-organismic approach stipulates. Try to understand, or at the very least, try to imagine how its behaviour and physiology adapt it to the real world…’ The only thing I should want to change is the sentence beginning ‘Try to understand…’; it would surely not merely read better, but be truer to experience, if it were re-worded as: ‘Try to imagine, and thereby to understand, how its behaviour and physiology adapt it to the real world.’ But I suspect that Wilson, at least, in his concern to be properly hard-headed and ‘scientific’ found the other wording preferable.
Another reason why Rosenau shouldn’t use Keats is that Keats, like Shelley, was another one of those horrible Gnu Atheists, who write contemptuous dismissals of religion and wish it would just die out.
SONNET WRITTEN IN DISGUST OF VULGAR SUPERSTITION The church bells toll a melancholy round, Calling the people to some other prayers, Some other gloominess, more dreadful cares, More harkening to the sermon’s horrid sound. Surely the mind of man is closely bound In some black spell; seeing that each one tears Himself from fireside joys, and Lydian airs, And converse high of those with glory crown’d Still, still they too, and I should feel a damp, – A chill as from a tomb, did I not know That they are dying like an outburnt lamp; That ’tis their sighing, wailing ere they go Into oblivion; – that fresh flowers will grow, And many glories of immortal stamp.
Yikes, it didn’t look like that in preview. Sorry. I’ll try that again.
SONNET WRITTEN IN DISGUST OF VULGAR SUPERSTITION The church bells toll a melancholy round,
Calling the people to some other prayers,
Some other gloominess, more dreadful cares,
More harkening to the sermon’s horrid sound.
Surely the mind of man is closely bound
In some black spell; seeing that each one tears
Himself from fireside joys, and Lydian airs,
And converse high of those with glory crown’d
Still, still they too, and I should feel a damp, –
A chill as from a tomb, did I not know
That they are dying like an outburnt lamp;
That ’tis their sighing, wailing ere they go
Into oblivion; – that fresh flowers will grow,
And many glories of immortal stamp.
Ah, thanks for quoting the passage, Ophelia – I’ve just come across it; yes, it is about poetic inspiration, and, really, improvisation of the kind of which Ben Jonson, speaking of those actors who said admiringly of WS that he never blotted a line, wrote, ‘would he had blotted a thousand’ (as I recall). But Keats’s term does nevertheless (I think!) point towards a more general imaginative capacity, which is why I believe it is rightly remembered. It has a resonance (and not of the Kitcherian religious kind) and a suggestiveness that is thought-provoking and illuminating.
“A thing of beauty is a joy forever” Zale’s Jewelry national chain store (in America) motto for their diamonds.
Uncredited, naturally.
And, Mine’s a Newt, the eighth line should end with a period: ‘… with glory crowned’; and the next line, the first line of the sestet, should read, ‘Still, still they toll…’ (not ‘Still, still they too…’).
Tim – yep. Therefore I dispute SA Wells – it’s not a throwaway line. It’s a quickly written line, because that’s clearly how Keats wrote the letters – they rush on in a spoken word kind of way. But quickly written is not necessarily throwaway; ten times more so in Keats’s case. It’s clearly not throwaway because it was something he’d been thinking about before and during the discussion with Dilke (Charles Dilke, one of his closest friends at that time) and even more so after it.
It hooks up with something he said in another letter, I don’t know whether it came before or after, about not having any self of his own, and always participating in the selfhood of others. There’s something about entering into everyone in the room at parties or large gatherings. I make it sound pious and self-flattering but it’s not, he’s describing it as a kind of oddity, but also one that’s connected to the way he writes poetry.
But you can tell he has it right – you can tell he really does that. There’s a place in one of the early letters, to Benjamin Bailey, where he blurts out some advice – something like “but do not take it to heart, my dear fellow, I pray you do not” – it shows the way he merges himself into other people.
Talk about OT. I might start a thread on the letters. Somebody I talked to at the pub in Vancouver – Christine – was keen on the idea of an online book group after I mentioned that I’d led one for years. Maybe I’ll start with Keats’s letters.
@Ophelia: Feel free to read “quickly written” instead of “throwaway”, no negative connotation was intended. It is, I think, a phrase he only used that once (that we have on record) but then he had so little time for anything.
Keats’s letters: grand!
Thanks for this post, it is really fun to read, and I could not agree more.
For Keats lovers I recommend the Jane Campion movie Bright Star, released in 2009, which focuses on his romance with Fanny. But perhaps this readership has already seen it.
I am fond of the following variant on the ontological argument:
Consider the worst possible argument for the existence of God. Clearly this “exists in the imagination”; but what sort of thing is it? Well, to begin with, it wouldn’t do for it merely to fail to prove God’s existence. Invalid arguments are two a penny. No; to be truly worst-possible, it would have to do the exact reverse of what it set out to do, and conclusively *disprove* God’s existence. And, of course, an argument that is merely imagined to disprove God’s existence is not so bad a theistic argument as one that actually does it. Therefore, the WPAFTEOG actually exists, and it proves conclusively that God does not exist. Therefore, since whatever is conclusively proved is true, God does not exist.
Well, someone imagined the X-Men, but that doesn’t mean that Wolverine exists.
[…] as there are various versions) has popped up in the blogs a few times recently: e.g. Ophelia Benson, Josh Rosenau, Jerry Coyne. You’ve probably heard this one; it was most famously formulated […]