#ontological argument

[confusedcanaries]

So, the ontological argument, roughly: “god is perfect, perfect things exists, therefore god exists”

On first glance this seems yuckily circular, however, Kurt Gödel, mathematical logic extraordinaire, converted it into a rigorous argument in 2nd order modal logic. Here’s a link to the Wikipedia page, check it out!

The axioms used do kinda lead to the logical system falling apart is the thing. So probably not the greatest argument, but fun that it’s rigorous!

[d1s4strous]

anselm of canterbury, known medieval philosopher, argued that, since there are things that are better or worse than others, there must be one Supreme Best Greatest Thing, which is god, which is why god exists.

he fails to mention that this implies the existence of a second greatest thing. and a third greatest thing. and, continuing thusly, even an entire universal (both as in relating to the entire universe and as in understood by all) hierarchy of goodness.

surely we must act accordingly; i propose a new religion, Ranked Pantheism.

the least great thing gets 1 worship point. the second least great thing gets 2 worship points. the nth least great thing gets n worship points. ad supremum.

[king-of-men]

God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived

Ok phloomer. Suppose there was a greatest conceivable entity, E. Clearly, we may easily conceive of its creator, the E-generator g(E), which is obviously greater.

Additionally, it is clear that two such entities would be greater than one, three greater still, and so on; and again, we may easily conceive of any number of any entity we have already thought of.

[wisdomfish]

Ontological argument of St. Anselm (1033–1109) according to which God’s existence can be deduced merely from the definition of God, such that atheism leads inevitably to self-contradiction. One distinctive of the argument is that it relies on pure reason alone with no dependence on empirical premises. Various versions of the ontological argument have been developed and defended, and opinion is sharply divided even among Christian philosophers over whether there are, or even could be, any sound versions.

[bythefiraplace]

some musings

thought I'd give a bit of an update since I've dropped it and picked it up again. Just finished Lecture 6: Anselm and the Ontological Argument yesterday.

philosophers tend to like to use the word "indeterminate" a lot. Like, a LOT.

surprisingly, not many people have actually studied philosophy, not from an academic basis at least. do note that I am self-studying via free academic lectures uploaded on youtube that anyone can access. see pinned. I'm just saying I've directly witnessed this via comment discourse in philosophy video essays that I watch

philosophy can come from anywhere; I've found it pleasantly surprising when consuming content completely unrelated to philosophy (or so I thought) and find philosophical content being discussed

philosophy is not unlike programming in the sense that it uses "if then" statements which is absolutely fascinating and a great example of crumbs of philosophy appearing in places I did not expect

I have found the lectures to be insanely useful because having a teacher break things down unconstrained from textbooks makes things so much easier to understand (i.e. I couldn't figure out Anselm and his ontological argument nonsense until it was explained to me and given real world examples from the professor. lectures save you a lot of time trying to figure something out yourself.)

[nicolae]

Criticisms of ontological argument for the existence of God

Criticisms of ontological argument for the existence of God

Gaunilon and Thomas Aquinas opposed, in the Middle Ages, the ontological argument developed by Saint Anselm: it is not because we imagine and design a fortunate island that it necessarily exists, Gaunilon objects in substance. Similarly, it could be objected that there are many things whose existence nothing prevents and yet do not necessarily exist (or even do not exist at all): monsters, the…

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[nicolae]

Ontological argument for the existence of God, exposed by famous philosophers

Ontological argument for the existence of God, exposed by famous philosophers

Spinoza It is in proposition 11 of the first part of the Ethics that Spinoza proposes a proof of the existence of God by the essentialist approach. The statement of this proposition is: “God, that is, a substance consisting of an infinity of attributes, each of which expresses an eternal and infinite essence, necessarily exists.” Spinoza gives three different proofs of this. First…

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[atheistcartoons]

Theists often tie themselves up in knots about this as a part of what they call the “ontological argument”. 

One of their common claims is that "everything must have started somewhere", and hence a god is necessary. The inevitable response from the atheist is that if "everything must have started somewhere", where did the god start? This logic hole is patched up by stating that god did not have a beginning, or exists "outside time".

Those with advanced critical thinking skills will notice that this is a lot of words and a lot of arguments to reframe “a god exists because I believe a god should exist”.  And that means nothing.