A question concerning the ontological argument

[Kilbourne]

Hi Cicero,

Anselm states that existence is a great making property, but I contest that existence is not a great making property at all. Rather, it is a state of being in much the same way that ice is a state of water. For our purposes, a great making quality will be defined as a nonphysical quality that can be measured on a continuous scale of increasing magnitudes, while a state will be defined as different forms of an object that can only be measured on noncontinuous tiers. To clarify the latter, we can use the states of matter as an example. Matter can be defined as a solid, liquid, or a gas. Since there is no transition period between solids, liquids, and gases where the object is half liquid, half solid, we consider these forms of matter as mutually exclusive. Furthermore a transformation in state will not change the essence of the object. For example, water is still water even if it freezes or evaporates.

This is the standard critique of the first form of the argument since Kant (existence is not a predicate). But there is another way to look at it set forth by James Custinger. See his paper at cutsinger.net/pdf/anselm.pdf

Ghosty, I’d be interested in your take on Cutsinger as well.

 

[Cicero54]

Hi Cicero,

This is the standard critique of the first form of the argument since Kant (existence is not a predicate). But there is another way to look at it set forth by James Custinger. See his paper at cutsinger.net/pdf/anselm.pdf

Ghosty, I’d be interested in your take on Cutsinger as well.

I’m new to this site and forgot to edit out the part of the message I was beginning a response to. My post actually is at the bottom a few spaces after the treatment of St Anslem,s position on the proofs of the existence of God. My approach is an attempt at a detailed Thomistic response to Anslem. And so I have begun with the prime matter/substantial form argument to begin my analysis. I’m attempting to include also the cosmological principle of internal and external extension of being in order to build a description of immanence of God.

Cicero54

 

[Ghosty]

Hi Ghosty,

Yup, I be Catlick.

Always nice to have my assumptions shown up as wrong! I’ll take a look at Cutsinger’s work and post my thoughts, hopefully later today.

Peace and God bless!

 

[Cicero54]

Hi Cicero,

No, Anselm merely defines God as TTWNGCBT. Period. Plantinga adds these other attributes to his version of the argument.

yes

Yes, this is the “greater than” principle employed by the first version of the argument in Proslogion II.

Yes, this is the “greater principle” employed by the second (stronger, IMHO) version found in Prosl. III.

sorry, gotta go put the steaks on.

Hi Kilbourne

I’m sorry for the confussion but I didn’t write the post on St. Anslem. My comments are at the bottom a few spaces after the main body of the argument. I should have done a better job of editing.

Cicero54

 

[Kilbourne]

Hi Cicero,

Current scholastic/thomistic thought doesn’t regard this arguement of Anslem defensable due to the remote possibility of causing the intellect to bear the full burdon of reality in it’s conceiving. This can, and has, run the risk of devolving into a pure idealism. The idea that all of reality is in the mind bearing no real relation to intelligible reality in a transpersonal sense.

Are you referring to both arguments from Prosl. II and III, or are you just referring to the definition of TTWNGCBT? What do you mean by “causing the intellect to bear the full burden of reality in its conceiving”?

The current argument keeps the intellect firmly in the transpersonal realm through it’s process of precinding from reality by means of the species impressa which reality imposses upon that faculty capable of that impression i.e. the intellect. The intellect in it’s reflex movements then abstracts that which is proper to itself in the form of non material elements, or those elements proper to it’s nature. These elements are called the intelligable species. And it is this that starts it’s motions even with respect to divine proof. For the intellect can only take from the data of experience in the first place in order to build up those notional properties that will lead to proofs about non material reality including by analogy it’s proofs of God’s existence and those properties called the exemplars in God.

I am going to need you to translate the above. Us old duffers ain’t acquainted with such big college words. Here is my layman’s stab at understanding (with the help of New Advent’s Catholic Encyclopedia newadvent.org/cathen/14210a.htm).

By “current argument” I assume you mean both forms of Anselm’s argument, or at least what is common to them (i.e. the definition). Human knowledge is always partly caused by the object being thought about and the human subject contemplating that object. But the OA is an exercise or attempt to form knowledge about God, who so utterly transcends us. So how do we form knowledge about God? Is it even possible? We can’t form an image of God like we can any created object. We do so by working with what we have, namely the data of our human experience and the world around us. Thinking by analogy, our minds can ascend to ever higher levels of abstraction and generality. Thus we can gain some knowledge of God’s attributes.

 

[Ghosty]

Having now read Cutsinger’s work that was linked to above, I’m prepared to comment on it though I can’t vouch for my own perfect understanding of it.

There are some major problems with his “attack on the attacks” against Anselm’s argument. First and foremost is that he doesn’t actually address the first attack which is shared by Aquinas and Kant, namely that you can’t leap from existence in the mind to existence outside the mind. Cutsinger merely and says they can’t have actually read Anselm, because there are intervening steps between the idea and the actual existence. The problem is that those intervening steps don’t bridge the gap that (at least) Aquinas is talking about, and in fact it is those steps that make the leap that Aquinas argues can’t be made.

The problem is that TTWNGCBT remains a thought by definition. Supposing something greater exists in actual reality than TTWNGCBT, there is no contradiction because they are two different terms; it would only be a contradiction if we said that something greater exists than that which nothing greater can exist, or something greater can be thought than that which nothing greater can be thought. It is no contradiction to say that something greater exists than that which nothing greater can be thought.

So Cutsinger’s #5 and #6,

1. To exist in reality is greater than to exist in the mind alone.
2. That-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought cannot exist in the mind alone.

fall flat and don’t prove what he purports to prove. I can grant #5 without following to #6. Since he argues later, correctly IMO, that thoughts have true-but-lesser being than actual things, and that anything that actually exists is greater than the grandest idea, then even an actual speck of dust is great than TTWNGCBT. This is not my assertion, it’s actually Cutsinger’s, and it undercuts his own argument completely; not only can I say that something greater exists in reality than TTWNGCBT, I must say it if I believe anything actually exists at all, and this does not contradict the greatness of the thought, it merely points out that actual existence is greater still, and this does not prove the actual existence of TTWNGCBT. I am compelled to admit the existence of the actual speck of dust because I experience it, and this speck of dust is greater than TTWNGCBT by Cutsinger’s definition, but what experience compels me to admit the actual being that corresponds to TTWNGCBT?

Leaving aside Cutsinger’s critique of Kant, as I don’t find Kant’s argument compelling in any way, his critique of Aquinas’ second point also appears to miss the point. Cutsinger is correct that TTWNGCBT must be a negation if it can be thought in any sense, but herein lies a serious problem for his argument: a negation can’t have actual existence. In this sense there really can’t be an actual being that corresponds to TTWNGCBT, not in a one-to-one sense, and therefore it is foolish to state that TTWNGCBT can exist actually and mentally, or just mentally. If TTWNGCBT is merely a pointer and not a *datum, *then no actual being must correspond to the pointer, and it is no contradiction to say that the pointer exists only in the mind and not in actual reality also, so #6 is false. Furthermore, since it is merely a pointer with no definite object, I can think that the “actual” TTWNGCBT is less than the actual God.

In short, TTWNGCBT is not “solid” enough to carry over into actual existence; it points in a direction, but it is not clear that there is only one object, namely God, in that direction, nor that the path of actual existence that this pointer shows us doesn’t stop short of God.

Anselm’s “fault”, if you can call it that, is that he is thinking as someone already convinced of God and doesn’t seem able to grasp the perspective of one who is not convinced of God. His “proof” is not actually a proof, but a prayer of praise from one who already knows, it is assertion and not demonstration. Aquinas is different because he is able to get into the mind of the unbeliever and show them the Truth from what they must already accept. Anselm’s work, like a beautiful love poem, is worthy, wonderful, and true, but is not proof that the object of the affection exists in reality and not just the mind of the author; it tells us about Lenore, but doesn’t ever introduce us to her or show her to be actual.

Peace and God bless!

 

[Kilbourne]

There are some major problems with his “attack on the attacks” against Anselm’s argument. First and foremost is that he doesn’t actually address the first attack which is shared by Aquinas and Kant, namely that you can’t leap from existence in the mind to existence outside the mind. …

Cutsinger is saying is that both St. Tom and Kant think the argument “obliges us to move directly, and analytically, from a notion in the mind to an existent being in the world.” That we know is not true. There are multiple intervening steps in the argument, and the problem is that both do not address them. It would have been nice if they had addressed the full argument, as you have done, and shown why the intervening steps do not bridge the gap. What’s more, Kant incorrectly defines God as an “absolutely necessary being,” which is certainly not the definition.

The problem is that TTWNGCBT remains a thought by definition. Supposing something greater exists in actual reality than TTWNGCBT, there is no contradiction because they are two different terms; it would only be a contradiction if we said that something greater exists than that which nothing greater can exist, or something greater can be thought than that which nothing greater can be thought. It is no contradiction to say that something greater exists than that which nothing greater can be thought.

This I do not understand. When you say “Supposing something greater exists in actual reality than TTWNGCBT,” you are conceiving of something greater than TTWNGCBT. So you are really saying “something greater can be thought than that which nothing greater can be thought,” which is a contradiction.

So Cutsinger’s #5 and #6 fall flat and don’t prove what he purports to prove. I can grant #5 without following to #6. Since he argues later, correctly IMO, that thoughts have true-but-lesser being than actual things, and that anything that actually exists is greater than the grandest idea, then even an actual speck of dust is great than TTWNGCBT. This is not my assertion, it’s actually Cutsinger’s, and it undercuts his own argument completely; … but what experience compels me to admit the actual being that corresponds to TTWNGCBT?

It isn’t experience that compels one to admit the actual being that corresponds to TTWNGCBT; rather it is logic. Cutsinger is saying that, if TTWNGCBT is only a mental being (exists in the mind only), then it is what atheists claim, namely a mere figment of our imagination. In which case even a speck of dust would be greater.

Also, I think it is misleading to speak in terms of “actual being” when referring to God because it implies that God is just another “existent being in the world.”

Leaving aside Cutsinger’s critique of Kant, as I don’t find Kant’s argument compelling in any way, his critique of Aquinas’ second point also appears to miss the point. Cutsinger is correct that TTWNGCBT must be a negation if it can be thought in any sense, but herein lies a serious problem for his argument: a negation can’t have actual existence. In this sense there really can’t be an actual being that corresponds to TTWNGCBT, not in a one-to-one sense, …

In short, TTWNGCBT is not “solid” enough to carry over into actual existence; it points in a direction, but it is not clear that there is only one object, namely God, in that direction, nor that the path of actual existence that this pointer shows us doesn’t stop short of God.

I find Cutsinger and Anselm quite cogent on this score. TTWNGCBT definitely is a thought about something. It’s just that I can’t capture the object of that thought except that it is unsurpassably great. Anselm quite readily admits that we cannot conceive of God exactly as He is, but we can certainly think about his unsurpassably greatness.

Anselm’s “fault”, if you can call it that, is that he is thinking as someone already convinced of God and doesn’t seem able to grasp the perspective of one who is not convinced of God. His “proof” is not actually a proof, but a prayer of praise from one who already knows, it is assertion and not demonstration. …l.

Anselm’s audience was his fellow monks, especially those who, even though they are predisposed to believe in God, nevertheless may entertain doubts about his existence.
To be sure, it does not amount to a strict proof, but it does constitute a beguiling argument which has occupied philosophers and theologians for almost a thousand years.

What I am wondering is whether, despite its difficulties, it still may have some apologetic value.

 

[Kilbourne]

Ghosty,

Thank you very much for being willing to converse on this subject. God bless you and your tribe and have a Merry Christmas!

Yours very truly,

Kilbourne

 

[Ghosty]

Cutsinger is saying is that both St. Tom and Kant think the argument “obliges us to move directly, and analytically, from a notion in the mind to an existent being in the world.” That we know is not true. There are multiple intervening steps in the argument, and the problem is that both do not address them. It would have been nice if they had addressed the full argument, as you have done, and shown why the intervening steps do not bridge the gap. What’s more, Kant incorrectly defines God as an “absolutely necessary being,” which is certainly not the definition.

I can’t speak for Kant, but Aquinas does go into more detail in his Summa Contra Gentiles; the argument he presents in the Summa Theologica, as with pretty much all arguments presented in that work, is the “cliff notes” version.

This I do not understand. When you say “Supposing something greater exists in actual reality than TTWNGCBT,” you are conceiving of something greater than TTWNGCBT. So you are really saying “something greater can be thought than that which nothing greater can be thought,” which is a contradiction.

The whole point of the ontological argument in question is that it is greater to exist in reality than merely in the mind, and that the thought “TTWNGCBT” implies the actual existence of “TTWNGCBT”. In order to prove this we first establish that TTWNGCBT exists in the mind (point #2 and #3 for Cutsinger), and then argue that existing in both the mind and reality is greater than merely existing in the mind (#5 for Cutsinger). This supposedly implies a contradiction for the Fool (#6) which leads them to admit (#7). Up to this point TTWNGCBT is need only be admitted as a thought, and indeed that’s all the Fool admits to, but supposedly they are compelled to carry this thought into reality because the reality is greater than what they’ve thought so far, and this appears to imply a contradiction since this actual reality is greater than the Fool’s “TTWNGCBT”. At this point the Fool is compelled to admit that for TTWNGCBT to truly be TTWNGCBT, it must exist in reality as well as the mind.

The problem that I’m highlighting is that this “final product”, this “TTWNGCBT and exists in actual reality as well as the mind” is still just a thought, not an actual reality. The Fool can admit that they were thinking too lowly of TTWNGCBT, and admit to not thinking of the “actually real TTWNGCBT”, but doesn’t have to admit that this new thought exists in reality. The contradiction was, and always will be, between two thoughts, not a thought and reality, unless you first demonstrate the actual reality of the thought, but that is precisely what this is supposed to do. Since the actuality isn’t demonstrated before coming to this point (and can’t be, by the ontological argument, as you seem to have admitted above when importing the Third Way into the process) all I need to do, all I can do, to meet the logic so far presented is think of a new TTWNGCBT that truly fits the bill, one that exists actually, but since I’m merely ***thinking ***this it remains a thought and not actual. I’m now thinking of an “actual TTWNGCBT”, but this is still a thought.

This can go on forever, as now you can say “Ahh, but this ‘actual TTWNGCBT’ must be actual and not merely the thought of an actual thing”, and the Fool can reply “Touche, there must be an actual ‘actual TTWNGCBT’, but this again is just a thought, so there must be an actual ‘actual actual TTWNGCBT’”, ect. At no point does pure logic compel the mind to jump from a thought to the recognition of an actual TTWNGCBT. This relates, I believe, to Aquinas’ point about always being able to think of something greater by mere addition.

It isn’t experience that compels one to admit the actual being that corresponds to TTWNGCBT; rather it is logic. Cutsinger is saying that, if TTWNGCBT is only a mental being (exists in the mind only), then it is what atheists claim, namely a mere figment of our imagination. In which case even a speck of dust would be greater.

Logic doesn’t compel us to admit the actual existence of TTWNGCBT, it compels us to “add 1” to TTWNGCBT by thinking it actual and not thinking it merely mental, and so on forever. It is not illogical to say that numbers go up infinitely even when admitting that it is impossible for such an infinite climb to exist in actual reality.

Also, I think it is misleading to speak in terms of “actual being” when referring to God because it implies that God is just another “existent being in the world.”

I agree, but then that’s why I don’t accept the premise that TTWNGCBT applies to God, since it will always be “a being” and not “being”, since “being in and of itself” can’t be thought. In fact, in Byzantine theology we even at times say “God does not exist” precisely to underscore this point.

I find Cutsinger and Anselm quite cogent on this score. TTWNGCBT definitely is a thought about something. It’s just that I can’t capture the object of that thought except that it is unsurpassably great. Anselm quite readily admits that we cannot conceive of God exactly as He is, but we can certainly think about his unsurpassably greatness.

If we can’t think of God “as He is”, then we can’t think about His unsurpassable greatness as a proper attribute. If it is merely “whatever you can think of, He’s bigger” this may be true in an absolute sense, but it doesn’t compel us to admit His actual existence because there is always something “greater” than what I can think, just as there is always a greater number than I can count, yet this falls short of what we call God (again, going back to Aquinas’ infinite climb of ideas). In short, there is no such thing as “TTWNGCBT”, it is a false premise and false definition of God for various reasons.

continued…

 

[Ghosty]

Anselm’s audience was his fellow monks, especially those who, even though they are predisposed to believe in God, nevertheless may entertain doubts about his existence.
To be sure, it does not amount to a strict proof, but it does constitute a beguiling argument which has occupied philosophers and theologians for almost a thousand years.

What I am wondering is whether, despite its difficulties, it still may have some apologetic value.

If it is not a strict proof, or demonstration, then it doesn’t have real apologetic value, at least not in any absolute sense. It may beguile the Fool, but being baffled is not the same as being convinced. It reminds me of an old saying I heard “if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with BS”; some people are more easily baffled, but not knowing how to answer an argument doesn’t make one believe it, especially if you have an intuitive understanding that something doesn’t add up.

The reason that cosmological arguments are typically so much stronger is that they can’t be denied without ignoring some actual experience that the person must take for granted every single day just to survive. They may feel that there is something amiss with the argument from motion, but they can’t be so baffled as to deny motion itself. With the ontological argument I can deny any actually existing correspondence to my thoughts without violating any of my basic assumptions and intuitions about reality, and therefore I can deny the basic premises of the argument without facing some kind of existential self-contradiction.

I myself was convinced to believe in God by cosmological arguments, so I can personally attest to their apologetic value, but I’ve never known anyone who was convinced by the ontological arguments, only believers who were impressed by them.

Thank you very much for being willing to converse on this subject. God bless you and your tribe and have a Merry Christmas!

You as well!

Peace and God bless!

 

[Kilbourne]

I sed: This I do not understand. When you say “Supposing something greater exists in actual reality than TTWNGCBT,” you are conceiving of something greater than TTWNGCBT. So you are really saying “something greater can be thought than that which nothing greater can be thought,” which is a contradiction.

Ghosty replied in part:

The problem that I’m highlighting is that this “final product”, this “TTWNGCBT and exists in actual reality as well as the mind” is still just a thought, not an actual reality. The Fool can admit that they were thinking too lowly of TTWNGCBT, and admit to not thinking of the “actually real TTWNGCBT”, but doesn’t have to admit that this new thought exists in reality. The contradiction was, and always will be, between two thoughts, not a thought and reality, unless you first demonstrate the actual reality of the thought, but that is precisely what this is supposed to do. Since the actuality isn’t demonstrated before coming to this point (and can’t be, by the ontological argument, as you seem to have admitted above when importing the Third Way into the process) all I need to do, all I can do, to meet the logic so far presented is think of a new TTWNGCBT that truly fits the bill, one that exists actually, but since I’m merely thinking this it remains a thought and not actual. I’m now thinking of an “actual TTWNGCBT”, but this is still a thought.

This can go on forever, as now you can say “Ahh, but this ‘actual TTWNGCBT’ must be actual and not merely the thought of an actual thing”, and the Fool can reply “Touche, there must be an actual ‘actual TTWNGCBT’, but this again is just a thought, so there must be an actual ‘actual actual TTWNGCBT’”, ect. At no point does pure logic compel the mind to jump from a thought to the recognition of an actual TTWNGCBT. This relates, I believe, to Aquinas’ point about always being able to think of something greater by mere addition.

So thoughts of things can never require the object of our thought to exist?

 

[Ghosty]

So thoughts of things can never require the object of our thought to exist?

I’m not quite sure what you mean by your question, but I’ll give it my best. No, obviously the thought of something doesn’t necessarily mean the thing exists outside of the mind. I can think of unicorns, or moons made of cheese, or a flat Earth, and none of these things exist outside the mind.

Now obviously all of these things are based on some (name removed by moderator)ut from the outside, so you might object that all of them have some kind of existence outside of the mind, the unicorn has horses and horns, there are moons and there is cheese, ect. The problem with this is that there is literally nothing we experience that corresponds directly to God, so any TTWNGCBT, if composed of different experiences from outside the mind, will necessarily be a contingent being.

If I’m merely formulating a negation then there is no “being” that is thought of at all, but an “unbeing”, and this “unbeing” doesn’t correspond to anything I experience nor that I must admit exists (at least not from merely thinking about it; it can be demonstrated in other ways). When we demonstrate God’s existence in a cosmological manner we are also dealing with the via negativa, but we’re showing the necessity and reality of this “absent thing” through things that we do experience and must admit exist, and once we know this thing beyond experience must exist we can start to formulate true statements about it even without truly knowing the thing in itself.

The problem only arises if we try to go purely from the knowledge and definition of the thing itself to reality, without first proving the reality. Since TTWNGCBT doesn’t correspond to anything we experience, and it remains a purely negative definition (what it’s not), there is no reason to suppose that it does exist.

I don’t know if this gets to your question, but I hope it helps.

Peace and God bless, and Merry Christmas!

 

[Kilbourne]

Here is a better formulation of my question. Are all propositions asserting the existence of some thing possibly false?

The answer to this question has to be no; otherwise metaphysics would be impossible. So your objection goes to the method by which we arrive at metaphysical propositions. You say, along with St. Tom and all the other Thomists, that we argue from the data of experience and build “from the ground up” to an ultimate conclusion.

This is what W. Norris Clarke says in his marvelous book, The One and the Many. He doesn’t get to God’s existence until near the end of the book (“The Final Unification of All Being”), after he has assembled the necessary tools and material from which he can conclude that a Source of all Being is the only way to make intelligible the created order which we observe.

 

[Kilbourne]

But I think that the OA, especially in the second form, still has value. A Thomist such as yerself is not willing to take the two crucial premises of the second form for granted (the definition and that not all existence is contingent), and maintains that after demonstrating the truth of the second premise you’ve actually proven the existence of God, which makes the OA superfluous.

But one never knows what argument will convince someone. And the argument is logically valid given the premises.

I also suspect that the first premise can be demonstrated in a Thomistic manner. Starting from our observation of the created order, we draw the inference of the Great Chain of Being. As our minds ascend the continuum of greatness, using the via negativa, to TTWNGBT, which we call God. The argument then is an illustration that necessary existence, and possible the rest of God’s attributes, are entailed by his unsurpassable Greatness. So the OA at least illustrates how the various truths about God are mutually supporting.

 

[Kilbourne]

Regarding the apologetic value of the argument, some atheists have come to acknowledge that an unsurpassable reality exists, even if they conceive of it in purely material and naturalistic terms. So, I tell them, you really are a theist. You just can’t conceive of a supernatural entity greater than the material universe. This may seem like a trivial concession, but I think it illustrates that, in the end, we are only arguing about God’s attributes. If we have our thinking straight, everyone has to concede that an Unsurpassable Reality, must exist.

 

[Ghosty]

Here is a better formulation of my question. Are all propositions asserting the existence of some thing possibly false?

The answer to this question has to be no; otherwise metaphysics would be impossible. So your objection goes to the method by which we arrive at metaphysical propositions. You say, along with St. Tom and all the other Thomists, that we argue from the data of experience and build “from the ground up” to an ultimate conclusion.

This is what W. Norris Clarke says in his marvelous book, The One and the Many. He doesn’t get to God’s existence until near the end of the book (“The Final Unification of All Being”), after he has assembled the necessary tools and material from which he can conclude that a Source of all Being is the only way to make intelligible the created order which we observe.

Obviously some propositions asserting the existence of something are not just true, but absolutely and necessarily true. The problem is that the existence of God (and even necessary being in general) is not one of these things from the level of the human mind.

God’s existence is necessarily and self-evidently true in and of itself, but not to our minds because His essence and definition is entirely beyond our comprehension and conception. Some things are self-evident to us because they fall within the “jurisdiction” of our minds, things like a part being less than a whole, or the metaphysical fact that a contingent thing can’t be its own cause.

So the problem isn’t that every proposition is possibly false, it’s that propositions about God are not self-evident, including His existence. Since they are above our mode of operating, like colors to a blind man, they can’t be self-demonstrative, and rather must be built to from things we can experience and know.

But I think that the OA, especially in the second form, still has value. A Thomist such as yerself is not willing to take the two crucial premises of the second form for granted (the definition and that not all existence is contingent), and maintains that after demonstrating the truth of the second premise you’ve actually proven the existence of God, which makes the OA superfluous.

But one never knows what argument will convince someone. And the argument is logically valid given the premises.

A threat of death might convince someone to believe as well, but that doesn’t make it a reasoned proof. That’s my point. The premises, while perhaps logically valid in themselves, must be assumed and asserted, and are neither self-evident nor proven by argument (unless one imports another proof of God, making the OA superfluous as a proof). One can make all kinds of logically valid formulas and arguments that are, in fact, untrue.

I also suspect that the first premise can be demonstrated in a Thomistic manner. Starting from our observation of the created order, we draw the inference of the Great Chain of Being. As our minds ascend the continuum of greatness, using the via negativa, to TTWNGBT, which we call God. The argument then is an illustration that necessary existence, and possible the rest of God’s attributes, are entailed by his unsurpassable Greatness. So the OA at least illustrates how the various truths about God are mutually supporting.

Yes, it’s illustrative once God is accepted as existing, but it doesn’t prove God. That’s what I meant earlier when I said it merely refines one’s idea about God. Unfortunately it wasn’t proposed as a refinement, but as a proof, and on that count it fails.

  Regarding the apologetic value of the argument, some atheists have  come to acknowledge that an unsurpassable reality exists, even if they  conceive of it in purely material and naturalistic terms.  So, I tell  them, you really are a theist.  You just can't conceive of a  supernatural entity greater than the material universe.  This may seem  like a trivial concession, but I think it illustrates that, in the end,  we are only arguing about God's attributes.  If we have our thinking  straight, everyone has to concede that an Unsurpassable Reality, must  exist.

If they believe that the unsurpassable greatness is material and naturalistic then they are not theists. Theism regards a transcendent, active deity, not simply a belief in something that is greatest. If their upper-limit on greatness is non-transcendent, then they aren’t theists.

Peace and God bless!

 

[aragonjohn1]

I’m not quite sure what you mean by your question, but I’ll give it my best. No, obviously the thought of something doesn’t necessarily mean the thing exists outside of the mind. I can think of unicorns, or moons made of cheese, or a flat Earth, and none of these things exist outside the mind.

The problem only arises if we try to go purely from the knowledge and definition of the thing itself to reality, without first proving the reality. Since TTWNGCBT doesn’t correspond to anything we experience, and it remains a purely negative definition (what it’s not), there is no reason to suppose that it does exist.

I don’t know if this gets to your question, but I hope it helps.

Peace and God bless, and Merry Christmas!

but, how and why would you know that?

Merry Christmass
God bless

 

[Ghosty]

but, how and why would you know that?

Merry Christmass
God bless

How and why would I know what?

Peace and God bless!

 

[Kilbourne]

Merry Christmas Ghosty!

I sed:

Regarding the apologetic value of the argument, some atheists have come to acknowledge that an unsurpassable reality exists, even if they conceive of it in purely material and naturalistic terms. So I tell them, you really are a theist. You just can’t conceive of a supernatural entity greater than the material universe. This may seem like a trivial concession, but I think it illustrates that, in the end, we are only arguing about God’s attributes. If we have our thinking straight, everyone has to concede that an Unsurpassable Reality, must exist.

You replied:

If they believe that the unsurpassable greatness is material and naturalistic then they are not theists. Theism regards a transcendent, active deity, not simply a belief in something that is greatest. If their upper-limit on greatness is non-transcendent, then they aren’t theists.

They would not be Christian theists, but they could be either pantheists or panentheists. In either case, a step in the right direction.

Kilbourne

 

[aragonjohn1]

How and why would I know what?

Peace and God bless!

Thanks : )

The information I just quoted is kinda confusing how you got to that point in you’re statement and why does this apply to the second part of post?

Merry Christmas
God bless