The Ontological Argument For God's Existence

To be clear as to exactly what the ontological argument says, one very simple form goes as follows:

1. God is the greatest possible being.
2. It is possible that God exists.
3. If God does not exist, He would be inferior to a God which did exist.
4. If (1), (2), (3) then God exists.
5. Therefore, God exists.

It just happens that people have made this argument much more rigorous. For instance, Godel created a version of the ontological argument using modal logic that proceeds as follows: For those inclined to work through how this argument functions, it's available here:

http://skepticsplay.blogspot.com/2009/06/godels-ontological-argument-step-by.html

I find the ontological argument unpersuasive once effort is made to understand it. The casting of the argument using model logic cannot whitewash its flaws.

Here is my breakdown.

1. God is the greatest possible being. To better understand the fallacy of this argument, let's start a parallel argument.

A. Pegasus is the greatest possible flying horse. The word possible is the operative predicate, indicating that there are none better horses, flying or otherwise.

2. It is possible that God exists.

B. It is possible that Pegasus exists.

On what basis should I concede that? It seems to me that the moment that you have a ground for a possibility that X exists, it must possibly exist.

3. If God does not exist, He would be inferior to a God which did exist.

C. If Pegasus did not exist, He would be inferior to a flying horse that did exist.

Now, I'm not expert in modal logic, but this seems gibberish, as an attempt is to prove existence in the using the negative subjuctive: "If X does not exist, therefore Y must exist." By assertion, we are creating the existence of flying horses.

4. If (1), (2), (3) then God exists.

D. If (A), (B), and (C), then Pegasus exists.

5. Therefore, God exists.

E. Therefore, Pegasus exists.

I don't think that follows.

A response from a reader:

Well, it is the consensus opinion that there are severe problems with the ontological argument. I should note that I do not believe in the ontological argument (in fact, I don't believe in God at all.) However, the reasons which you have cited are not the faults which are usually found with the ontological argument. In fact, if I understand your reasons correctly, then much of modern analytic metaphysics is unquestionably false. Given that this is a large body of serious academic work, it is worthwhile to at least try to understand some of the orthodox responses to your comments. I reserve neutrality as to my own position on this statements; I am merely pointing you to the accepted answers, not whether or not I personally accept them (though I do think they would be difficult to properly refute.)You seem to find fault with the modal notion of "possible" (which is sometimes also refered to as "contingency", though that has a slightly different meaning.)

You wrote:

2. It is possible that God exists.
B. It is possible that Pegasus exists.

On what basis should I concede that? It seems to me that the moment that you have a ground for a possibility that X exists, it must possibly exist. Strikes me as nonsensical.

In modern analytic metaphysics, X is said to possibly exist if we can form consistent propositions about it. Unless the notion of pegasus is somehow contradictory we must accept that it possibly exists precisely because, and only because, it is non-contradictory. We are not usually entitled to say that X has necessary existence only in virtue of its possible existence, and this is something that is strange about the ontological argument. Usually, philosophers find it sufficient to say that if they can imagine it, then it exists at some possible world (which is equivalent to saying that it is a non-contradictory notion.) In other words, if we can imagine it, then it is possible. Contradictory notions, meanwhile, are termed impossible. Modal logic gives us the ability to quantify over these varies different modes of existence - necessary, possible, and impossible. Therefore, modal logic is the formal tool that we need to express sentences containing various different modalities (i.e. modes of existence.)I should note that there are many things which are possible but do not exist in our world. I think it is non-controversial that Pegasus is an object of that kind (i.e. Pegasus is possible, but does not exist in our universe.) Of course, there are philosophers who believe in all kinds of things, so you can find philosophers who identify themselves as "modal realists". They believe that all possible worlds are real, whatever that might mean. This is different from the multiverse theory, though there are some who believe that these are the same thing. Most philosophers feel that these ideas are silly. I therefore will not spend more time on them.

What you wrote, while ultimately at odds with philosophical orthodoxy, is not entirely different from one of the standard refutations of the ontological argument. Personally, I like to formulate a parallel argument using the "ultimate taco":

1*. The Greatest Taco is the greatest possible taco.
2*. It is possible that the Greatest Taco exists.
3*. If the Greatest Taco does not exist, it would be inferior to a taco which did exist.
4*. If (1), (2), (3) then the Greatest Taco exists.
5*. Therefore, the Greatest Taco exists.

Now, the flaw here cannot be that the argument is invalid. After all, it is a simple modus ponens argument and its validity can be trivially shown. What we are concerned with is its soundness. I think it is non-controversial that the Greatest Taco does not exist. Therefore, we can conclude that the taco argument must make a mistake somewhere.

How is this different from the Pegasus argument? It's different because I did not attack the ontological argument on either the grounds that you cite (i.e. your problem with modality or your problem with negative subjunctives. You might be wondering why I did not give the orthodox response to your worry about negative subjunctives. I have to confess that I am not familiar with the formal fallacy that you are indicating if, in fact, such a fallacy exists.) Rather, this is simply a reductio argument showing that something must be wrong with arguments of this kind; the exact error is not specified.There is a problem with this counterargument (and so we begin the counter-counter-argument!) The first problem is that it does not tell us where the issue occurs in arguments of this kind. Maybe there is a Greatest Taco, greater than any other taco and perhaps Pegasus exists as well. We doubt that these two statements are true, but on what grounds do we come to believe them? Perhaps an evil demon is tricking us into believing that super tacos and flying horses don't exist. Egads -- we've been deceived our entire lives! But most people are willing to think that this response is probably false, at least on the basis of inductive evidence.The second problem with this counterargument is the possibility that Anselm meant something else, something more subtle. Examine premise (1*) of this argument and premise (1) of the ontological argument. These premises are slightly different:1*. The Greatest Taco is the greatest possible taco.1. God is the greatest possible being.In premise (1), what is a "being"? And, in particular, what exactly did Anselm mean? If he just meant object, thing, or entity, then this is very different from saying that God is the greatest possible "supernatural man with a beard". It's not that God is the greatest possible god; it's that, of all things/objects that could possibly exist, God is the greatest. So, pick out any object in the world and God will be greater than that object. Toasters? Yep, God is greater. Laptops? Yep, God is greater. Janet Reno? Yep, God is greater. Burger King? Still, God is greater. I think you get the picture.But this is not true of premise (1*). Here, we are told that the Greatest Taco is the greatest possible taco. Maybe toasters are superior to tacos for some reason. I don't why that would be true, but bare with me. The idea is that proposition (1*) only speaks about possible tacos and not the full set of possible objects. Thus, we should be able to identify objects, either possible or actually existent, which are superior to the Greatest Taco, if, in fact, no possible taco is the greatest possible object.Unless, that is, we change premise (1*) to read:1**. The Greatest Taco is the greatest possible thing.Now, we claim that premise (1) and premise (1**) are equivalent modulo the name of the greatest possible thing. One might think, on a variety of different grounds, that there can only be one greatest possible thing (i.e. "greatest possible thing" is a unique object.) If this uniqueness claim holds, then God is the Greatest Taco and the Greatest Taco is God. You might object here on the grounds that relating God to tacos is clearly absurd. But what this really shows is that any object, when it is given the status of "greatest possible thing", must have the properties of God. We can imagine a taco that is the most intelligent, the most beautiful, the most good, the most merciful, etc, possible. Such a taco doesn't really have the properties of taco-ness; it has the properties of Godness. We probably wouldn't call such an object a "taco" since it does not have the properties we expect tacos to have. Just the same, if (1**) is true, then God and the Greatest Taco are identical.In case you're sceptical about the uniqueness claims, one simple way to argue for the uniqueness of the greatest possible thing is just to state that a non-unique thing is always inferior to a unique thing. Therefore, the greatest possible thing must be unique in virtue of its being the greatest possible.Another problem that you might cite in the ontological argument is the vagueness of the term "greatest". In virtue of what is God said to be the greatest? He obviously isn't the greatest evil. He's also not the greatest womanizer or the greatest misogynist. On all of these qualities, God seems to be the polar opposite (at least in the conception of God that mainstream Abrahamaic religions profess.) Yet, if we just say that He is the greatest possible in all categories, we are left with deducing clearly false propositions like this. There do exist solutions to this vagueness problem in the literature; however, none of them are really satisfying to me.There is another problem, though it is much more technical. In the ontological argument, the property of existence is ascribed to God. Further, He is said to be the greatest possible at existing; i.e. a non-existent deity is inferior to an existent deity. However, this is at odds with how existence is normally understood in the philosophical and logic literatures. In the literature, the orthodox position is that existence is a quantifier. But if existence is a quantifier, then it is not something which can be ascribed to an object. -- i.e. there would be no such thing as an existence predicate. However, it is impossible to formulate the ontological argument without an existence predicate. I understand that this last counterargument is still controversial. I also understand that there exists the position that existence is a second order predicate. I do not know very much about this last position nor do I know how it relates to the ontological argument.

A description of the problem of having existence be a predicate (at least as formulated by Kant) is available here:

http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/theistic-proofs/the-ontological-argument/st-anselms-ontological-argument/existence-is-not-a-predicate/

As for why the ontological argument cannot be formulated without having existence as a predicate, we have to turn back to examine what exactly it is that the argument says. Let's consider a modified form of the argument that I already gave:1. God is the greatest possible thing.2. It is possible that there exists an x such that x=God.3. If God does not exist, He would be inferior to a thing which did exist.4. If (1), (2), (3) then God exists.5. Therefore, God exists.However, premise (3) now has problems. First, I note that premise (3), as currently expressed, cannot possibly be coherent if existence is a quantifier since it was in that sentence as a predicate. Namely, proposition (3) is a sentence of the kind "x is p" (expressible in predicate logic as ). Now we look for a way to suitably alter (3) without changing it's meaning.Consider the sentence "If there does not exist x, such that x=God, then there exists some existent t such that God is inferior to t." We might formalize this as: inf where G is God, t is a thing which exists. and inf is a order relation such that if AinfB then A is inferior to B. But why would this proposition be true? Since we have existentially quantified over G, and not attributed some property to it, there is no property by the lights of which G is inferior to t. In other words, the relation tinfG returns false whenever A=G and B=t. But that's not at all the idea that we wished to express; we wished to express the idea that a non-existent God would be inferior to an existent God.

Objections To Proofs That God Exists

Here is a run down of my objections to so-called proofs for the existence of God.

Cosmological. If God was the theoretical catalyst for existence, it doesn't follow that God still exists and nor does it answer the question as to why there cannot be a predicating cause to the first cause.

Telelogical. The complexity and order of the universe merely defines what the universe is and perhaps always was and will be. We cannot logically infer from that complexity God. If that complexity always was, then it would follow that God would not be necessary and will not be necessary.

I was once seduced by the ontological argument, but then came to see it as Platonism. God might not merely be a conceptual bucket-- an intellectual abstraction-- but could also psychological projection of our fears and hopes. We certainly cannot make the leap that a "being greater than that which cannot be conceived" exists. Also, we have no way of knowing if God is a being.

If the basis of our belief in God is the Bible, we can only assume that God is what is stated: spirit or Logos, and not being at least as we normally conceive a being.

I'm skeptical of the moral argument-- that a belief in God is necessary to moral law and order, as there are countless godless people and legal systems who root their ethics in something other than a belief in God, for example, in the categorical imperative or in custom.

Testimony as evidence is worthless for many obvious reasons.

One of the stronger arguments (although it still seems weak to me) is the prevelence of the belief in God(s). It seems that humans are generally wired to believe in God for some reason.

I asked why wife why she believed in God, and she simply answered: "My eyes." That's not a bad argument-- the miraculous ability to see and also the things we do see. But I can also see how one can be a hard atheist and at the same time get a sense of numinous in looking at a new baby or the Grand Canyon.

Why is this problem unsolvable? It is unsolvable because the question "Does God exist" is not logically and linguistically meaningful. It I was to ask the question: "Do cats exist in the universe?" it would also be unanswerable. Why? It is because the subject "cats" is definable whereas the predicate "universe" is undefinable. If you were to ask" "Is there a cat on my desk?" it is answerable because both subject "cats" and predicate "desk" can be apprehended within the natural world. Until we define "God" and "exist" within the context of the natural world, we can never prove that God exists in the natural world.

So what is the resolution? For me, it is to simply accept Genesis 1:1 at face value: "In the begininning God . . .". We must accept or don't accept God's existence as axiomatic.

But why choose as an a priori "The God of the Bible is"? I think the choice must be of necessity a leap of faith which we must then road test by personal experience. While personal experience proves nothing, it does prove everthing to those who are looking for confirmation that a belief in God's existence as an operating and organizing principle for life is sound.

The bridge between belief and non-belief is not reason but faith in Jesus. If the essence of Christianity is faith and if God has revealed Himself by appealing to a facility in men and women other than reason, then argument is not enough. Apologists for Christianity use one rational argument after another, only to find as Locke said “as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly: and where it fails them, they cry out, ‘it is a matter of faith—and above reason.” It’s an illusion that we can arrive through reason at a belief in God, as the ground for that belief must be reason itself. Thus, the person who can discern through reason that God exists has only discerned that Almighty Reason exists, since reason is what that person ultimately trusts. “God can no more prove His existence than He can swear,” Kierkegaard said. “He has nothing higher to swear by.” The goal for validating the existence of God must be on meaning rather than reason.

I believe for the same “reason” that monkeys scramble up a tree to avoid the teeth of a hungry lion.

Bonhoeffer wrote that we can only speak "of" God, we cannot fruitfully speak "about" Him. I didn't get this at first but now I find this is true. We must speak of God in the way God wants it. We must stay close to scripture and to honesty and to wisdom. Conversations like this have God reaching down from Heaven. But conversations "about" God pull Him down on our level and we toss Him around like a basket ball. We must be aware that God is holy, and without seeking holiness we cannot progress in knowing God. See, try to imagine someone who wants to have peace with God. He cannot have peace with God on his human terms ... he must allow God to make peace with him, the human, on God's terms. God wants everything to start at the cross where He can restart lives on His terms and with His vision.

Beautifully expressed. In talking"about" God, I think Christians are in error by using as a chief justifier reason just as I think they are in error by using science as a chief justifier about the Bible. It puts us into a position of chasing a God of the gaps while losing sight that the chief gap may be within.

I’d be interested in why you think this is true. It seems to me that if we posit "Either God exists, or He does not" then we can reach a well grounded conclusion."

Why? What if we ask the question: Does glghrr exist? Can we really have a well-grounded conclusion as to whether glghrr exists? How so?

"Which, of course, doesn’t address evidence for the existence of God, at all. It simply says "I like my explanation better than yours". He then proceeds to change the subject from Design to Evolution, begging the question."

Evolution at least can be decomposed into units that be be analyzed, refuted, or confirmed. A statement that "God created the Grand Canyon" can be believed but it cannot be refuted or confirmed.

"You seem to be implying that Christians hold an irrational belief simply by saying God is Personal."

I don't suggest Chrsitians are irrational if they believe in a personal God. I am saying that such a belief is arational, not subject to principles of induction or deduction. It doesn't follow that the subject of their belief doesn't exist.

"What is your ‘idea of truth’? Truth is a characteristic of a claim: either it corresponds with reality (true) or it does not (not true).."

There are different kinds of truth, including spiritual truth and aesthetic truth. But truth as commonly understood pertains as you suggest to correspondence between what is subjectivly apprehended and what objectively exists. This is an ethical as well as an epistemlogical principle, as when I asked my child: "Did you or did you not take that cookie." The resolution is only yes or no. In the case of God, it is not enough that God is in our heart but that God exists outside all hearts. I believe that is true. I only contend we cannot know that is true through reason.

"Going back to the original statement, let me explain my reservations. By the way, thanks for clarifying that you do not advocate Logical Positivism. However, leaning on Wittgenstein and Ayers, both Logical Positivists, lends some difficulty in distinction."

(Wittgenstein is one of the few philosophers I've tried to understand.) It isn't accurate to say that Wittgenstein was a logical positivist, although he influenced logical positivism.

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Logical_positivismHis writings also lend no credence to the view that Wittgenstein disclaimed belief in God. To the contrary, I came across the following in his "Notebooks". "How things stand, is God. God is, how things stand. To believe in God means to understand the question about the meaning of life. To believe in God means to see that life has meaning. To believe in God means to see the facts of the world are not the end of the matter." Compare this last statement to Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Chapter One: "The world is everything that is the case" and you have Wittgenstein's acognosticism-- a category other than theism, atheism, and agnosticism.
Ludwig Wittgenstein closes his Tractatus with: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.” Into Wittgenstein’s silent category go statements such as “Personal encounter is the only sure avenue to truth.” Since these are neither true by definition nor empirically verifiable, they are meaningless. (Edit: This also applied to the statement: "Only emperically verifiable statements are meaningful"! Doen't all synthetic a priori truth-- all what Kant calls transcendental forms-- fall into this category? ) Of the “Last Judgment,” Wittgenstein writes that “I couldn’t say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the statement that there will be such a thing. No ‘perhaps’ nor ‘I’m not sure’. It is a statement that does not allow for such an answer.” It is meaningless to affirm or deny that God exists or even to raise that question. It is not a meaningful question to raise, because God is in the realm of value, and the world is the realm of fact. What Wittgenstein tried to do was to refocus philosophical debate away from questions that elicit meaning to words as they are used. For example, "what is time" is exceedingly difficult to answer, whereas it isn't so hard to answer the question "what is the time." I think Wittgenstein is correct in his repudiation that the spectrum of belief is merely theisim or atheism, or theism, agnosticism, or atheism, as if these were all embracing and mutually exclusive categories. Consider the sentence: “Jesus is God.” Wittgenstein would say that such a statement cannot be affirmed or denied or even addressed any more than we can evaluate the sentence “@#$ is %^&.” We cannot even suspend judgment on the question as we have no basis for any kind of a judgment. This is not to say that "Jesus is God" cannot be an article of faith and that Jesus is God" is an irrational statement or is false.
"I’m not sure at all why you think the question meaningless: it certainly seems like a question that has value, and can be answered."
It is certainly and often intensely personally meaningful. It is just not logically and linguistically meaningful. (Edit: I have often noted in rligious and philosophical debates long discussions that fall and rise on the meaning of words, as we struggle to associate English with the presumed reality behond that English. It is I think an erroneous assumption that the words we use corresponds to the reality we are trying to describe or define.)

"Why, certainly it can be answered. All I have to do is find a cat. I actually don’t even have to do that. I can ask for a measurable definition of ‘cat’ then find a reliable report of a cat from a trustworthy source."

Not so. I would not quarrel with you identification of the entity "cat". (I dropped off such a not especially happy furry entity at Pet Mart's cat spa this afternoon.) But, speaking not in the venacular but as strict logicians, we cannot assume that the "cat is in the universe" until we know what the "universe" is-- some kind of domain of reality of which the cat is a part. We cannot assume that the cat is in the universe like we can see that the cat is on the desk. It is perhaps no more meaningful to ask ourselves whether or not "a cat has a soul" or whether "a cat has a ghrty" or whether or not a "hyrt has a tq$4." Without some reference to Wittgenstein's world of facts, we are left wandering in a Jabbocky universe where cats "gire and gimble in the wabe."

I presume that you use the term ‘natural world’ in the sense of ‘all of creation’. "

The natural world is the world that you and I live in. (Edit: It is the exterior world, the world that is not a projection based on abnormal cognitions. For example, there can be no overlap between the world of facts and solipsism or nightmares or mirages or delusions.) I grant that there are people with intuitions beyond other people and creatures that can see colors and hear sounds that humans cannot not. But my bar for logical and linguistic permissibility is extremely low, but it nevertheless exists. The subject and predicate must be apprehended in some way from something or someone other than ourselves. It is the distinction between "I believe in angels" and "I see angels in my living room." I have no brief with the first statement as a conviction. As to the second statement, I don't think it is inappropriate that exceptional claims require exceptional evidence and if it can be proved, it must be proved.
In my earlier post, I made this point. You tell me what this entity "God" is and I will tell you whether or not this entity "God" exists. Only on the surface, is this question an easy one, for the word God is one of those words that everyone uses but no one really defines. When politicians say that we’re one nation “under God”, the question becomes exactly what is it precisely that we are under? If the answer is: a supreme being, the question then ecomes, what exactly is this supreme being and how do we know that it is interested in us or if it even exists? The Bible isn’t clear as to whether God is a “being” and if “supremacy” is a quality of God. It surely rejects the notion of the old man with the white beard and the deep voice, as God is defined as spirit (John ), fire (Hebrews ), light (1 John 1:5), love (1 John 4:8), and logos (John 1:1). The Church of England defines God as “living, without body, parts or passions” but I certainly have trouble picturing a life that is without body, parts, and passions, like an autistic the Friendly Ghost. If God is spirit, is God therefore emotion-- a chemical reaction or firings of neurons? Does God exist in the same way that my cat exists or in the same way that my love for my cat exists? Is God a metaphor for what we don’t know or cannot know? Is God real in the same way that Santa Claus is real? Is God a sewer that flushes away the waste and the worst of this world? Does God exist in the same way that a unicorn exists? What is it that distinguishes the reality of the Christian God from, for example, the unreality of Zeus? Can we believe in God if we cannot define or describe God? If God is consciousness, is that consciousness human consciousness, which would die when all humans die? Is God nature, as the Deists believe, or the sum of all natural laws, as Albert Einstein believed? Is God all that which is not—all that which is outside an imaginary circle drawn around all that exists? Is God localized in persons, places, or things—the Buddha, volcanoes, or money? Is God someone playing with her retarded sister in a playground while both giggle with delight? Are we, as some New Age religionists believe, God? Could God not be noun at all but a transitive verb— like the loving relationship of my boy to his worthless but comforting teddy bear? Does God care about us? Is our Father in Heaven a reflection of our fathers on earth—a cruel and distant father on earth makes us believe in a cruel and distant God, a loving and tender father lets us believe in a loving and tender God? Is God numinous—the awe we feel when we look at a sunset or a baby? Is the word God a mental bucket—a meaningless word that only gains meaning when we fill it with meaning? Is belief in God animated only by the fear of our death and the fires of hell? Is belief in God a utilitarian decision-- because the majority of people are theists, our lives will be easier if we are theists? Is belief in God a kind of celestial bet? Is God a projection of our hopes, a mass delusion, or a part of our biological wiring? Do we believe in God because our fathers and their fathers believed in God? Is God as Karl Barth said ganz Anders—wholly different? Is God the absolute, all matter and all force, swirls of atoms and hurricanes and galaxies, the first cause and the end of history, the alpha and the omega? Is God not here, not yet, evil, impotent, a crutch, a drug, a clown, asleep?

I hope by now you see the problem.

Why does the existence of a moral law require a law giver? Because that is the nature of imperatives, mandates, laws: they carry authority only because they are mandates from a personal being. Your description (along with other problems) doesn’t justify the ‘oughtness’ of moral laws (to borrow from another). "

I fail to see why a moral rule: "That shalt not kill" requires either a belief in God or God. Humans from the beginning of time have had such a prescription for their own self-preservation and the preservation of their tribe. This is true even in the most bloodthirsty of peoples, such as the Vikings, Mongols, or Mayas. As a utilitarian device, they combined this moral rule with their theism to give their moral rule legitimacy. As law became more secularized, legitimacy found its roots not in theism but in the consent of the governed or in godless totaliterianism. Arguably, with this has come greater morality generally-- for example, less tolerance for child abuse and labor, the subjugation of women, and slavery. The mandate "Thou shalt not kill" carries authority because its violation tears asunder the fabric of society, not because an Thor or Yahway said "Thou shalt not kill." Such a mandate doesn't come from an assumed supreme being but all normal beings.