1.) Imagine a being greater than which nothing can be conceived.

2.) This being exists in your imagination.

3.) It is greater (or better) to exist in reality than it is to only exist in the imagination.

4.) Therefore, if the being exists ONLY in one’s imagination, then a greater being (i.e. one that exists in reality) could be conceived.

5.) Therefore, there exists in reality a being greater than which none could be conceived.

6.) This being is God.¹

Now this argument is interesting to me because it’s a seductive one.  It’s one of my canonical examples of a specious argument that appears logical, even though it’s so logically flawed that it’s almost incoherent.  To illustrate this point, let me rattle off a few quick critiques.

a.) Point 3.) is unsupported.  Can one say it’s really greater to exist in fact than in imagination?

b.) Point 1.) is flawed because it’s very unlikely that a person can imagine something so great that nothing greater could be imagined.  Either by the original thinker or a later one.

c.) “Greatness” is not unipolar, so a thing “greater than which nothing can be conceived” misses the point.  Many dimensions of “greatness” may, in fact, be implicit tradeoffs so that they can’t both be maximized.

d.) Existence is not, strictly speaking, a predicate.  That is to say, it’s problematic to assert that “existence” is a property of the object to which it refers in the same way that size or color is.  (I get the impression that this point is still up for some debate, but I’m not aware of any compelling arguments to the contrary.  If someone else is, please do post them in comments.)

These are just the four critiques that are on the top of my head.  I doubt I can claim originality for any of them, (and definitely not for d.) ), but the point is that the flaws with the argument are numerous and fatal.  Which is why it’s interesting to me that the ontological argument, in its many forms, is still regarded by some as a valid or, at very least, compelling proof.

Going to a Catholic university, I encountered people all the time who point to this and other easily-refuted “proofs” as being linchpins of their faith.  These were people who could (and often did) routinely construct tight, well-reasoned arguments and attack my own succinctly and incisively when they were flawed.  These are people are well versed in logic and skilled in its use.  And yet their love for this weak, easily-dismissed argument remains.

As near as I can tell, this is due to some form of internal sophistry.  They need the conclusion to be true for their philosophical framework to hold and for their world to make sense.  So they develop a blindspot for arguments that have a logical form and the desired conclusion but whose premises or steps are flawed, sometimes in fatal ways.

This points to one thing that bears consideration about the argument; it is, more or less, formally sound.  That is, the problems with it are not with the individual steps in the argument² but rather it’s the premises from which the argument is made that are flawed.  My critiques above all attack the underlying assumptions of the argument, not the logical steps it employs.

Another such argument is the appeal to a first mover.  It’s another instance in which flawed premises but fairly sound logic end up producing an argument that’s equally flawed and has proven to be equally seductive.  After all, there’s nothing logically incoherent about either an infinitely regressing chain of causation OR about a chain of causation kicked off by some initial, yet natural base condition.³

It seems to me that the key factor that a lot of these seductive arguments have in common is that they’re formed in an essentially rigorous fashion.  But where a strong argument would have strong premises and strong logic, these arguments have strong logic married to premises that are either deeply flawed or, worse yet, semantically meaningless.  It’s open question to me whether “a being greater than which no other can exist” even means anything.⁴ It may be in the same semantic class as the phrase “a gnome which contains more glass jelly than any bunny rabbit.”  It’s syntactically correct, but what it’s actually describing eludes me.

If that’s the case, and the premise of the argument is based on semantically empty statements, then really, the argument’s not erroneous, so much as everything that follows from the premise is incoherent.  This, then, becomes a classic case of “Not Even Wrong“.  And if that’s the case, then I guess I shouldn’t trouble myself about it overly much.  But so long as otherwise brilliant people are turning to arguments that are, at the very best, wrong or, at worst, total nonsense in order to prop up their personal philosophies, then I’m sure I’ll have a hard time letting the issue drop.  It may well be simply my contrarian nature or it may be the pedantism inherent in all philosophy, but either way, so long as people are being seduced by these bits of pseudo-logic, I’ll have a hard time ignoring them.

UPDATE: Commenter J points me to an excellent parody of Anselm’s argument by the inimitable Julian Sanchez:

1. For every good thing that exists, I can imagine a still better version that does not exist.
2. Generalizing, extant things are always less perfect than those that exist only in the imagination.
3. God is defined as a supremely perfect entity.
4. Therefore God is purely imaginary.

² – This is especially true with later, more refined versions of the Ontological Argument which improve on Anselm’s in some meaningful ways.

³ – If you’re one of those people that asserts that whatever that natural starting condition was is what we call God, then we don’t have anything to talk about. I mean that literally.  You’ve added nothing to the conversation and have just shuffled the problem away behind a semantic curtain.

⁴ – Whether it does mean something or not, hinges largely on the definitions of “greater” and on how one resolves the seeming equivocation between existence-in-thought and existence-in-reality.

Personally, I believe that one of the few roles of government is to protect people’s rights, including property rights.  If someone owns a chunk of land and wants to build a minaret there then they should damn well be able to.  And neither the government nor the majority of society should be able to stop them.  (Unless there are compelling negative externalities to such construction.)

“[Protesters] held up placards reading ‘Shariah for the Netherlands’ and ‘Islam will be superior’.

Protester Abu Mousa said: ‘What he says deserves the death sentence under Islam.’

Sayful Islam, said he wanted to see [Dutch MP] [Geert] Wilders ‘tried in an Islamic court’ for ‘insulting the Prophet’.

He added: ‘We need to put this dog on a leash.’”

“The American still thinks that it is virtuous to crack the skull of a sinner who professes no faith at all, but he has learned to keep his hands off the sinner who merely professes the wrong one.”  – H. L. Mencken, The American: A Treatise, “The American: His Morals”

Thoughts?

31 So Moses went back to the LORD and said, “Oh, what a great sin these people have committed! They have made themselves gods of gold. 32 But now, please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written.”

33 The LORD replied to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me I will blot out of my book. 34 Now go, lead the people to the place I spoke of, and my angel will go before you. However, when the time comes for me to punish, I will punish them for their sin.”

35 And the LORD struck the people with a plague because of what they did with the calf Aaron had made.

Let me put that another way.  A man who lives in a palace, on what amounts to a 110 acre urban estate, and surrounded by opulence that would make Saudi princes blush had the temerity to say that money sucks and we should all focus ourselves on God.  He leads a religion that claims to denounce conspicuous wealth, and yet his holdings made him over $8,000,000 in the 2000 fiscal year and lives surrounded by the finest amenities life has to offer.

Well I say, you first, Mr. Ratzinger.  If “only God’s word is solid reality”, why don’t you just go ahead and throw open the doors of your palace to Italy’s homeless?  Or sell off your jewels and trappings to feed the starving?  How about tearing down St. Peter’s Basilica and replacing it with shelter for the world’s needy?

Or you could just keep up with your Janus-faced ways and try not be surprised when the rest of the world sees you for the wealth-bestrewn hypocrite you are.  As far as I’m concerned it’s win-win.

. . . Really?  That’s the kind of God these people want to worship?  One that will kill a bunch of people in the third world, but will intervene to save you some money at the pump?

Fortunately, it looks like that particular version of God doesn’t exist, since gas prices have risen significantly since they started their little experiment in applied theological economics.

You know, I normally see these kinds of prayer actions as quaint, but this one is honestly offensive.  Here they are, disrupting business (so much so that they’ve already been run off at least once, so that they can save a little bit of money.  And I’m sorry, high gas prices are a sign of the end times?  Are you kidding?  If you’re so self-absorbed that you think getting your wallet pinched a little harder when you fill up your car is a sign of the immanent eschaton, then please stop for second.  Now, find a mirror and take a long, hard look in it.  I’ll wait .  .  .

Done?  Good.  Now punch yourself right in your stupid, self-centered face.

Here’s the way it works.  Petroleum companies are human institutions.  They sell a product.  They are free to sell that product at whatever price they want.  If you can’t afford it or don’t want to pay that much for it, then you have a recourse: don’t buy the product.  Don’t go disrupting the business of their resalers and shouting into a void after a deity that didn’t even care to save Chinese schoolchildren from an earthquake.  If he exists, he sure as hell doesn’t care about your fuel expenses.

And if he cares about the status of your gas tank and bank account but not about the lives of innocent children?  Then fuck him.  He’s not worth praying to or associating with.

(Of course, this argument is aside from any theological argument about free will, both the petroleum execs’ freedom to charge whatever they want and our individual freedom not to pay it if we don’t want to.  Somehow I doubt once someone’s to the point of praying in front of a gas pump, they’re probably beyond the point of reasonable theological discourse.)

Hat tip to the always funny Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

“Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago) interrupted atheist activist Rob Sherman during his testimony Wednesday afternoon before the House State Government Administration Committee in Springfield and told him, ‘What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous . . . it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists!

‘This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God,’ Davis said. ‘Get out of that seat . . . You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon.’”

She’s not my representative, she represents constituents thousands of miles away from me, but for a civil servant and an employee of the public to behave in such a way is disgraceful.  If Ms. Davis really feels so vehemently opposed to Atheism, perhaps she ought to step down.  Aside from the whole “separation of Church and State” thing we traditionally have going here in the US, if she can’t work with her non-Christian colleagues and constituents, then perhaps she’s not fit for the job.

A more complete transcript is here.

(Hat tip to Thirdpower from Days of Our Trailers and Eric Zorn of Change of Subject.)