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By definition, God is a being than which none greater can be imagined.
1. A being that necessarily exists in reality is greater than a being that does not necessarily exist.
2. Thus, by definition, if God exists as an idea in the mind but does not necessarily exist in reality, then we can imagine something that is greater than God.
3. But we cannot imagine something that is greater than God.
4. Thus, if God exists in the mind as an idea, then God necessarily exists in reality.
5. God exists in the mind as an idea.
6. Therefore, God necessarily exists in reality.

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Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen it to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
But then... maybe this isn't about imagining just anything but specifically about an all-powerful creator God. And then surely the problem is that it seems to be saying that only this kind of God is available, all other options are not available. It's a binary choice, take-or-leave-it. Which also can't be true, there must be a range of possible deities which could exist.

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

It's not sensible to put forward a philosophical argument for the existence of Thor or Apollo. There's no particular reason why the Scandinavian gods should exist and not the Greek gods, or vice versa, or neither. Even if the Greek gods exist, if Zeus doesn't sleep with Leto, then there's no Apollo.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

It's not sensible to put forward a philosophical argument for the existence of Thor or Apollo. There's no particular reason why the Scandinavian gods should exist and not the Greek gods, or vice versa, or neither. Even if the Greek gods exist, if Zeus doesn't sleep with Leto, then there's no Apollo.

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This is what puzzles me - are you saying that the monotheistic god is capable of being investigated with philosophical argument but any other kind of god is not?

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Also I don't really accept that there is a single monotheistic god option available. There could be a single god who is not all-powerful and not the creator of all things. For example the universe could be eternal and the deity could be eternal, but the one was not created by the other.

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The deity could not be the ultimate power (there may in fact not be an ultimate power at all) but still worthy of worship if he has the power to control this universe, this existence, this dimension.

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And does the fact that I can imagine such things mean that therefore this kind of God must exist?

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Originally posted by Sipech:
The idea of starting by defining as God as X seems to be where the whole venture falls down. And where X="a being than which none greater can be imagined" is just an example. It rather reminds of this cartoon from NakedPastor. To define God and then try to work from there is just a great big straw man argument, nomatter how complicated and nuanced that straw man might be.

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Originally posted by Sipech:

The idea of starting by defining as God as X seems to be where the whole venture falls down.

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Originally posted by agingjb:
Perhaps I'd turn it round. If God exists, then the Ontological proof is sound.

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Originally posted by Martin60:
For X try Stilton and for x try cheese.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:


However, it has been contradicted by the issue of necessary existence. The perfect island does not necessarily exist, whereas God does.

It still smacks of sleight of hand to me.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

I think this illustrates the problem very well. Of course the cheese connoisseur will recognise the brilliance that is the best Stilton, the pinnacle and King of all that is cheese. This goes without saying. But surely that can enchanted cheese moment can only be experienced not reasoned. The person who has never heard of the wonder that is Stilton cannot imagine it into being. The imagination of a cheese fan is not related to the existence of a fine Stilton.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:


However, it has been contradicted by the issue of necessary existence. The perfect island does not necessarily exist, whereas God does.

It still smacks of sleight of hand to me.

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When IngoB posted large amounts of text defending "necessary existence" here last year, it made no sense to me and still doesn't. If I can imagine a scenario where a deity is not needed (the universe is eternal or the time is like an elastic band with reality forming out of the ashes of itself), then how is it a "necessary existence" - other than someone asserting that the thing is necessary because he/she has defined it as necessary?

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Gaunilo (a contemporary of Anselm), made the argument that one can imagine a perfect island, therefore, since existence is better than non-existence, the perfect island exists.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
When IngoB posted large amounts of text defending "necessary existence" here last year, it made no sense to me and still doesn't. If I can imagine a scenario where a deity is not needed (the universe is eternal or the time is like an elastic band with reality forming out of the ashes of itself), then how is it a "necessary existence" - other than someone asserting that the thing is necessary because he/she has defined it as necessary?

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
A necessary truth is one that couldn't be otherwise. We might think we're able to imagine it otherwise, but only if we haven't quite thought everything through (possibly because we're not able to do so). Just because we can imagine something is possible doesn't mean it is possible. (The ontological argument may have many flaws, but it at least makes an effort to avoid that particular pitfall.)

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OK but just because we might think the deity is a "necessary" truth in the sense that it couldn't be otherwise - by the same logic - does not mean that it is. We might think that a deity is the only explanation, we might be wrong.

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Originally posted by hatless:

The concept of God implies the truth that the universe makes sense, so the truth of God is entailed in naming God. That's heading towards an ontological argument. It doesn't seek to establish the existence of God, but it claims the usefulness or truth value of the concept of God, that we can best understand the world by talking about God.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

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Originally posted by hatless:

The concept of God implies the truth that the universe makes sense, so the truth of God is entailed in naming God. That's heading towards an ontological argument. It doesn't seek to establish the existence of God, but it claims the usefulness or truth value of the concept of God, that we can best understand the world by talking about God.

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I don't think this is true: it is postulated as a proof of the existence of God.

But you do make an interesting point in that one might be able to point to it as a reason for belief, that it might not be an inarguable fact, but serves to inform a worldview that seeks to make sense of the universe in specific way.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
It reminds me of working with people who didn't think that love exists. Any arguments you might offer, would be torn to shreds, so really arguments are of no value. What you can do is wait, and see if love goes off in them like a light-bulb. Well, it might or it might not.

Some people have also said that loving them works, but often it doesn't, and might produce further scorn and denial. But you can be with them, which is a form of love, also deniable of course.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
That's an interesting approach, but a historical study of Jesus will by definition exclude the supernatural. I don't see then how you make the jump from history to the supernatural, without some kind of argument for God.

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Originally posted by Sipech:
]I disagree that history must exclude the supernatural. Of course, a good historian wouldn't jump to that conclusion if they were simply short of evidence or rationale, but it remains a tool that should be available. If one adopts Conan Doyle's phrasing of Occam's razor (when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth) then the question becomes "is the supernatural impossible or improbable"?

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As a slight tangent, every maths student gets taught how to prove ideas rigorously; an early example typically being the proof that there is no rational number whose square is 2 (not quite the same as proving that the square root of 2 is irrational, as you may not have yet proved the existence of such a number). But this proof is a proof by contradiction. i.e. you assume such a number exists and then show that this leads to a contradiction. But the logical positivists didn't like this (it was too negative) and an attempt was made to prove the theorem without using a proof by contradiction. That attempt failed, because they threw away the right tool for the job.

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Originally posted by Sipech:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
That's an interesting approach, but a historical study of Jesus will by definition exclude the supernatural. I don't see then how you make the jump from history to the supernatural, without some kind of argument for God.

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I disagree that history must exclude the supernatural. Of course, a good historian wouldn't jump to that conclusion if they were simply short of evidence or rationale, but it remains a tool that should be available. If one adopts Conan Doyle's phrasing of Occam's razor (when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth) then the question becomes "is the supernatural impossible or improbable"?

As a slight tangent, every maths student gets taught how to prove ideas rigorously; an early example typically being the proof that there is no rational number whose square is 2 (not quite the same as proving that the square root of 2 is irrational, as you may not have yet proved the existence of such a number). But this proof is a proof by contradiction. i.e. you assume such a number exists and then show that this leads to a contradiction. But the logical positivists didn't like this (it was too negative) and an attempt was made to prove the theorem without using a proof by contradiction. That attempt failed, because they threw away the right tool for the job.

If some kind of supernatural (whatever that actually means) is needed to gain an understanding of Jesus' historicity, then is discounting its use a matter of methodological rigour or prejudice?

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

OK but just because we might think the deity is a "necessary" truth in the sense that it couldn't be otherwise - by the same logic - does not mean that it is. We might think that a deity is the only explanation, we might be wrong.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

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Originally posted by Sipech:
]I disagree that history must exclude the supernatural. Of course, a good historian wouldn't jump to that conclusion if they were simply short of evidence or rationale, but it remains a tool that should be available. If one adopts Conan Doyle's phrasing of Occam's razor (when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth) then the question becomes "is the supernatural impossible or improbable"?

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Which is the most ridiculous thing anyone has ever uttered - how can anyone eliminate all possible options? There is always an unknown number of unknown factors which could have a bearing on any given situation, and therefore one could always be looking at something with incomplete information about it and jumping to a conclusion which is wrong - simply because one doesn't know about the truth.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
A necessary truth is one that couldn't be otherwise. We might think we're able to imagine it otherwise, but only if we haven't quite thought everything through (possibly because we're not able to do so). Just because we can imagine something is possible doesn't mean it is possible. (The ontological argument may have many flaws, but it at least makes an effort to avoid that particular pitfall.)

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OK but just because we might think the deity is a "necessary" truth in the sense that it couldn't be otherwise - by the same logic - does not mean that it is. We might think that a deity is the only explanation, we might be wrong.

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Originally posted by Martin60:
For X try Stilton and for x try cheese.

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Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
We concluded that the logical proofs for God are all flawed, because (in essence) logical proofs and the existence of God are in different ontological spaces. We cannot apply one to the other.

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