To Hume is he going to prove it to? Give him a chance. Don't Locke him out too soon. He might Pierce you with a solution you hadn't thought of. Thanks to Google for that list of philosophers.
@@PaulTheSkeptic He might Pierce me? I didn't realize he carried one... You may want to Pierce-sue an education in philosophy so you know how to pronounce that.
I define @AntiCitizenX as a CZcams account that has a subscriber count of 1,000,000 (despite that being a synthetic proposition based on the subscriptions of each of the individual users). I state the criterion for manipulating the synthetic proposition as randomly picking the remainder of 1,000,000 users and subscribing them to him. Might as well do this for @TheraminTrees, too.
“A world where all bachelors have three wives” - actually this is possible without redefinition. It only requires that the world contains zero bachelors.
If that’s true, then it would also be the case that all bachelors don’t have three wives. Both of these statements can’t be true so this is a world that cannot possibly exist.
@@cooperpilot8094 technically it is true. If we turn it into a math equation, the amount of bachelor's would be 0. So if B= 0, the the amount of wives B has wouldn't matter. B100000000=0 still. This would mean that the amount of wives each bachelor has would be irrelevant, as no bachelors are there to have said wives.
@@noway6133 This is more akin to the logic equivalent of dividing by zero. You could say all bachelors have any number of wives when there are no bachelors. This type of behavior is usually called “undefined” since any answer you give is just as valid. Functions with multiple outputs for a given input can be defined like the square root of 25 is defined as ±5 (although for most cases we just take the positive part). However, for functions that have infinite valid outputs for a single input (like n divided by 0), from negative infinity to positive infinity, it’s generally accepted that this is not a valid function.
@@cooperpilot8094 it is undefined, but when viewing it in the terms given it would be true. Otherwise me saying "all bachelors are bachelors" in a world with no bachelors would be false.
Well, it worked in the sense that it works for apologists. You defined yourself as a human with a very hot girlfriend and you get to define yourself however you want. It won't change reality. A Victoria Secrets model won't manifest out of the aether and start nagging you and spending your money. But it does mean you get to say "I have a very hot girlfriend." knowing it's still a bit dishonest but then, it is apologist logic. On the bright side, you get to keep your money and spend it on whatever you want. Lol.
I am so glad I found this channel. This argument has bothered me since I first heard it from WLC, but I've never heard deconstructed quite so thoroughly. "Existence is not a predicate" is brilliant. I know this seems like child play to you, but, in many ways, I'm still emerging from the fog of fundamentalism.
You can derive some crazy shit from the idea that God exists necessarily, especially when combined with basic theodicy: 1. God exists in all possible worlds (Plantinga) 2. God coexists with evil if and only if there are morally sufficient reasons to permit that evil (theodicy) 3. The set of all possible worlds contains all possible acts of evil (by definition) 4. God coexists with all possible acts of evil (from 1 and 3) 5. There are morally sufficient reasons to permit all possible acts of evil (from 2 and 4) C. All possible acts of evil are morally permissible (by definition from 5) Or if you take Leibniz's approach and say that God would create the best possible world, you're left with the conclusion that every possible world is the best possible world, which is completely incoherent.
Wait... that's an interesting thought. 1) Imagine a possible world just like our own, but where I experience a constant pain in my joints. 2) If I experience a constant pain in my joints, then the suffering in our world is greater than it could have been otherwise. 3) If all other factors remain equal, that extra suffering is gratuitous. 4) Gratuitous evil and God are not logically consistent. 5) God exists in all possible worlds. 6) Therefore, there is no possible world like our own where I experience a constant pain in my joints. 7) Therefore, it is necessarily impossible that I experience a constant pain in my joints. This seems to utterly destroy the whole principle of possible worlds. Any world other than our own is potentially not possible.
AntiCitizenX You're right, it does seem to make nonsense of possible worlds. What would it mean to say that God exists in all possible worlds if there's only one (namely the best one) that God would create and therefore could exist within? Taken together, it seems to suggest a sort of determinism which Christians like Plantinga would be quite allergic to. I can imagine one alternative, though. Plantinga could deny the antecedent of your 3rd premise, that all other factors remain equal. In other words, in the possible world where you have joint pain, someone else's equivalent pain is absent. This would seem to allow for other possible worlds, BUT none that are better or worse than any other. They each would contain the same amount of evil and suffering, just distributed differently. But this too would poison theodicy. Since each possible world must be morally equivalent, there can be no moral reason for God to actualize one world over another. No reason for one person to suffer rather than another. Why do your joints hurt? God's whimsy. In any case, I'm thoroughly entertained by the clusterfuck. Some Christians are so eager to argue that God exists necessarily, I have half a mind to let them drink that Kool-Aid before telling them what's in it.
Andrew Cooper *Plantinga could deny the antecedent of your 3rd premise, that all other factors remain equal.* That doesn't really solve the problem. He's declaring any world with a shred of gratuitous suffering to be outright impossible. That means simple statements like "Imagine a possible world where I get cancer tomorrow" could, in principle, not be possible. The result is like you said. We're forced into a kind of hard determinism because I'm not allowed to conceive of a universe where bad things unnecessarily happen to me.
You're correct, it doesn't solve the fundamental problem. Either way, Plantinga cannot appeal to possible worlds that contain gratuitous suffering. My point was merely that there could be multiple possible worlds that contain no gratuitous suffering. That would technically avoid the charge of strict determinism, but as we've agreed, it's just another dead end for Plantinga.
Its so hard to imagine being so hung up on an idea, so dependant on the trueness of it that you have to make something as convoluted as this argument, simply to disguise the fact that all you are saying is "x exists because x is so great it couldnt possibly not exist".
Thank you for making this video! One of my greatest dislikes of apologetics is that they depend on the lack of careful scrutiny of the average layman. I hate to admit it but despite my great improvement in coherent processing from say about 5 years ago, I nonetheless got blindsided by this argument. I knew from the beginning that it didn't work and that it didn't make sense, but I couldn't figure out why. It took me watching an older video of yours a couple times and watching this video in order to understand where the flaws in the structure are. We could definitely use more people of such coherency as you. *Keep up the great work please.*
I view laws of logic more like legislation than observation. We use logic to structure our propositions about reality. There is one level of indirection between reality and logic - us labeling things. Logic is like sort of language. It's one of conventions that seems to work, so we use it. So in my view, logic came right from our heads.
+Jiri Havel *"more like legislation than observation,"* but then you follow with *"seems to work, so we use it."* "seems" suggests observation. KEvron
Terncote i don't think he's a theist trying to have it both ways, i just don't think he's thought it all the way through. jiri, if logic is merely the product of our own legislation, then we, as its legislators, may legislate those laws however we like. of course, this is not the case. instead, we observe logic to be inviolable (on pain of incoherence), so we describe its axioms as _laws._ KEvron
@@christopherrussell63 strictly speaking you cant given that naturalism is more of a methodology than a set of beliefs well I suppose it depends what definition of naturalism youre using
Yeah... this argument always annoyed me - "existence" is only a property of something that manifests in reality; A thing must first manifest in reality, (preferably in some verifiably measurable way), and only then, can it be said to "exist".
Thanks AntiCitizenX. I've heard Plantinga's argument ad nauseam. I've never been able to put my cognitive finger on what it is that sounded so f'ed up when he starts describing a "necessary being" but now I do, perfectly. When starts with, "A necessary being is...", he is already making it something that exists!!!! Beautiful. Thanks again!
"When starts with, "A necessary being is...", he is already making it something that exists!!!!" Not in the way you think. He's not being sneaky. He just means it analytically. So the argument does't fail because of that. The real question is whether or not a necessary being can ACTUALLY exist.
By pointing out the flaw in Plantinga starting with "A necessary being is...", would it be clearer if I were to stress the word "is"? To talk about "something" that "is", implies existence of that which "is", because we something can never be not something. Does that make sense?
Yes, it makes sense. That's similar to the reason that Descarte's famous attempt to prove his existence to himself "cogito ergo sum" ("I think, therefore I am") fails. To even say/reason that "I think" already presupposes the existence of the self, and hence the consequent (i.e. "therefore I am") does not validly follow. For all we know "we could simply be a brain in a vat" as they say. However, in this particular case such an objection is not valid. When Plantinga defines a maximally great being as he does, which entails necessary existence, he is not actually defining God into actual existence. The problem that you're having is that in fact existence is being used in TWO different senses within the MOA (which certainly isn't helpful to people trying to understand the argument, like yourself). The first sense is a mere semantic or analytic sense. God is basically defined as necessarily existing. Now there's not actually anything wrong with that, since nothing synthetic (i.e. nothing real/metaphysical) follows. What philosophers call "actual existence", the kind that we enjoy, is still off in the philosophical distance at this point. The way that the argument gets from the mere definition of necessary existence to the actual existence of God is via the notions of metaphysical possibility/necessity and Possible Worlds. In contrast to what is presented in the video above, the nature of Possible Worlds is actually quite different (at least within the context of the MOA). Possible Worlds aren't merely logically possible, they actually have to be metaphysically possible. In order to qualify as a Possible World any world has to be what Plantinga calls "actualizable". That is, they have to be able to be made real/tangible. The question is whether or not God (as a necessary being) is in even one of these metaphysically possible worlds. Which if true would entail that they are in all of them, which includes the actual world, and hence they actually exist. But notice that it is not enough for the Christian etc. to simply define God as a necessary being in order to be in one of these special worlds. They need to not merely be logically possible but also metaphysically possible. Hence, the conclusion that God actually exists is NOT derived from the definition of a necessary being, but rather from the actual possibility of God themselves.
Let's look at EXACTLY what Plantinga says about Necessary Existence: 1) A necessary being is one that can't fail to exist, no matter how things have been, or we could say 2) a necessary being is one that exists in every possible world, where 3) A possible world the way things could have been, a sort of total way things could have been that says something about everything 4) One of these possible worlds IS actual, the rest of them aren't 5) The necessary being is one such that, for ANY possible world at all, had it been actual, it would have existed. According to Plantinga Necessary Existence 1) God is a maximally great being 2) Maximal greatness is defined to exist in all possible worlds 3) Therefore, God exists in all possible worlds It is not possible to prove an actuality from a mere possibility or accept a possibility without supporting empirical evidence. See my proof... God is unable to do anything 1) God is a necessarily being 2) A necessary being is maximally great 3) A being that is maximally great cannot be less than maximum 4) Therefore the state of maximal greatness is a continuous, never changing state 5) Therefore God is a changeless being 6) Therefore God is a static being 7) A static being cannot do anything 8) Therefore God cannot do anything I can say this because nobody has ever defined "maximal greatness". If you thought you observed maximal greatness how would you ever confirm it???? See, God can't do anything and a god that can't do anything is useless.
+OnePointSix12 "1) God is a maximally great being 2) Maximal greatness is defined to exist in all possible worlds 3) Therefore, God exists in all possible worlds" Your construal of the argument is purely analytic, whereas the MOA is partly synthetic. This is a more accurate rendition of the argument, although I've tried to cut out the definition of God as necessary, which seems to cause a lot of people to think that God is simply being defined into existence: 1. It is metaphysically possible that there is a being with necessary existence 2. Metaphysical possibility entails description ("existence") in at least one possible world 3. Therefore, there is a being with necessary existence in at least one possible world (from 1 and 2) 4. Necessary existence entails existence in all possible worlds 5. Therefore, there is a being with necessary existence in all possible worlds (from 3 and 4) 6. The actual world is a possible world 7. Therefore, there is a being with necessary existence in the actual world (from 5 and 6) The key premise is 1. By "metaphysical possibility" we simply mean (at minimum) that the proposition/statement etc. under question is free from both explicit and implicit contradictions. Some argue that "metaphysical possibility" is even narrower than this, and that is certainly an open question (as most are in philosophy). "4) Therefore the state of maximal greatness is a continuous, never changing state" Why couldn't there be multiple states which are maximally great? A shift from one to another would allow for an exertion of power, and hence God wouldn't be causally impotent. Your argument attempts to demonstrate that God must be abstract and not concrete. "7) A static being cannot do anything" A static being cannot BEGIN to do anything. However, they may have been causing an effect for as long as they were in that state. For example, the indentation a metal ball would make on a pillow that it was placed upon. Both are static and yet there is a continuous effect present.
maybe no......because Plantinga would point out the fictional nature of tweedledum and tweedledee; because the christian god is definately verified empirically and not through emotional reasoning and horrible deduction and abduction Craig would say that Tweedledee and Tweedledum haven't revealed themselves to him in a private relationship which is the way Craig used to truly reveal the christian god to him
I just stumbled upon this video for what I thought was the first time until it started to seem familiar after watching a bit. Then I checked if I had put it in my watch later section, only to see it was already in my favorites.
+munstrumridcully "And don't call him "Shirley"!" He did not say "surely"... he wrote SURLY, which means as much as GRUMPY or ILL TEMPERED. :P Poor ACX... always in a sour mood :(
(1) Hewhay neccessarily exists in all possible worlds. (2) If Hewhay exists in a world, Yahweh cannot exist in that world. (3) If Yahweh doesn't exist in a world, Hewhay cannot exist either. (4) If Hewhay doesn't exist in a world, Yahweh cannot exist there either. (C) Neither Yahweh nor Hewhay exist in any possible world. Is this how modal ontology works? Any thaughts?
A is in all below still If A is then B can not be If B isnt then A can not be If A isnt then B can not be B n A isn't in all above Read n think of logic.
First, so glad to see you doing videos again. Love your videos. Second, the argument sounds very pretty and can be hard to wrap your head around when it is initially given, but yeah, its basically attempting to define god into existence. Third, maximally greatness seems to be very subjective, that and I can always imagine something which eats maximally great beings for lunch. I know philosophy has its uses, but Christians putting forth arguments like this for god is one reason, I think, that so many people are just dismissing philosophy.
Just remembering that contingent and necessary are concepts from language, where words that are contingent are justified, and necessarily means that a word doesn't have a particular reason to exist or mean anything besides mere say so. So, metaphisically speaking, saying that god exists necessarily is the same thing as saying that god exists for no good reason besides that i said so.
Probably because serious philosophers tend to focus on the coherency of a proposition within the parameters of its context, instead of trying to clean up and organise another's invented reality. Besides that, for people that don't have a strong grasp of philosophy, they tend to have a highly skewed view of what is going on as a competition of some sorts with a clearly defined goal of winning, when that is not how philosophers want their discipline to be defined. Then there are mediocre somewhat familiar people like me, that can only follow the topic so far before getting utterly confused by the vocabulary.
The phenomenon of treating words like magic, has been on the rise for quite some time, gaining acceptance as a social norm even. Arguments from definition have become common among laymen, and generally believed to be good among the young. :(
@@hanoverfist2234 if you have a empirical proof of the existence of thing, it gets a label and we are sure about it existence. The correct thing to say is that the concept of defining the existence of something does not implies it necessarily exists in reality
@@hilariofernandes5299 What I wanted to communicate was that it should be patently obvious that using logic to prove god's existence is a fool's endeavour. Obviously god doesn't exist, but logical proofs won't change anyone's mind that believes it to be the case.
The Modal Ontological is the most embarrassingly simplistic and nakedly empty "proof" of god ever devised. And that's a pretty notorious group of embarrassing and simple and nakedly empty logical "proofs.".
Surroundx Theists love to claim this without actually demonstrating how its being strawmanned. I understand it perfectly well, but what I don't understand, is how any serious philosopher trained in critical thinking skills, could possibly take it seriously. So please, enlighten me.
+Some Guy common sense destroys this argument. There is no fucking way an honest person can take the Modal Ontological argument seriously. It literally is, and I do mean literally "God exists because God exists." It's the most pure and sad absurdity.
The greatest runner exists. It is great to run 100 meters in 1 millisecond or faster. Existing runner is greater than non-existing runner. Therefore there exists a runner, who can run 100m in 1 millisecond.
Very good video, and has clearly outlined the problems with necessity. But here's a paradox that has been troubling me, that I don't see being reconciled with the point of this video. If you would suppose that there are many (self consistent) possible worlds, but only one real world, and every truth could be imagined not to be true, then what underlying reality could be used for the universe determine which one is real? And if you would suppose that there exist no possible self-consistent world other than the existing one, then wouldn't that just be assigning the role of necessity to this world (it would actually be real because of its logical status)?
I didn't truly grasp this in a way I could properly explain it to others until I read Kant. The predicates of any object describe how we should recognize it should it be encountered it in the real world. To include "existence" in an object's definition is to assert that if we were to encounter it in the real world, one of the traits we would notice is that it exists. But it's redundant to say that if you find something that exists, you'll find that it exists. This shows that the conception of something's existence is implicit in the conception itself; i.e. you are imagining what the object would look like if it existed. Therefore to say that something exists by definition is actually not an a priori proposition, but an a posteriori one; it is the affirmation of the object's existence in the real world with all of its predicates, and that requires independent validation. So when a christian says that God exists by definition, they think they're ending the debate, but all they're truly doing is stating their position. They have yet to justify it. Cool.
It could be worse. There are possible worlds where both are president one after the other, or where they are running mates. On the other hand there is the world where Trump is a really nice guy. That one gas a goatee.
Greetings all, First of all, Alvin Carl Plantinga is not actually arguing for the “existence” of just any specific ‘necessary being.’ How do we ‘know?’ A simple search reveals what he ‘ultimately’ means. In part, ‘[…] Plantinga is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is widely regarded as the world’s most important living Christian philosopher. […]’ When you check his writings, he either argues for the ‘Classic God of Theism’ or Yahweh, the God of the Christian Bible. These, depending upon how he words things, include the attributes and premises of being eternal, spaceless, tenseless, timeless, and changeless. With those front-loaded all-inclusive attributes in mind (as you can’t just argue them piecemeal), we would simply ask him: A. Yes or no, does your argued-for eternal, non-contingent (“necessary Being’s”), timeless, changeless Christian God (Yahweh of the Bible) ever go from a relationship of seeing or sensing our Universe as non-created to created? B. Yes or no, does your argued-for eternal, non-contingent (“necessary Being’s”), timeless, changeless Christian God (Yahweh of the Bible) ever go from a non-x to an x relationship with itself? C. Yes or no, if you were standing next to your eternal, non-contingent (“necessary Being’s”), timeless, changeless Christian God (Yahweh of the Bible) in an unchanging eternity (for the sake of argument, let's assume that's possible), did you ever see Yahweh without the Universe? D. What ‘previous’ factors contributed to your eternal, non-contingent (“necessary Being’s”), timeless, changeless God’s (Yahweh of the Bible) existence He finds himself in-and therefore eternally sees or senses? A. No; B. No; C. No; D. None. It’s my opinion, Alvin Plantinga argues using one of the most brilliant ‘bait and switches’ of all time! I.e., his ‘necessary Being’s’ attributes do not actually fit into the ‘worldview’ or actual god/God he ultimately argues-for or promotes. His inconsistency, and reckless abandon of proper argumentation, renders his conclusion invalid and incoherent. Has Alvin Plantinga ever argued from a specifically defined ‘necessary being’ (let’s call this A) to the God of the Christian Bible (let’s call this Z)? If not, why not? If so, show me! Ref. - plato.stanford.edu/entries/time/ - Lord Bertrand Russell (The Paradox of Set Theory) - Ref. A. C. Grayling (What do you [specifically] mean by god?) - Stephen Law (Principle of Charity and Mutually Exclusive God Claims) - ‘What Aristotle Got Wrong.’ - Law of non-contradiction. - Law of identity. - Law of the excluded middle. yYM
+VillageHeroOfTime What was your purpose in posting, "tl;dr?" And, too long for whom? Are you attempting to 'police' comment sections and decide what is and/or is not an appropriate length? What does 'your' lack of time to read a particular comment say about said comment and/or someone else's attention span or interest in said comment? Do you, likewise, post 'tl;dw' to CZcams videos? While in school, did you tell your teachers/instructors, "Hey, too long; stop talking,' or 'too long; didn't listen.' At this point, do you doubt I've encountered such rhetoric before? Did you get to the end of tthis reply to you before...either contemplating my point and/or before formulating, at least in your mind, a response? That was fun. Thanks for the practice in Socratic (albeit sarcastic) dialogue. ;)
+VillageHeroOfTime Clearly you cannot summon the time to read or appreciate good writing or arguments? Clearly you cannot address my questions? And even clearly, I 'Got your Goat'...clearly? ;) Thanks again.
Ralph J. Esposito That's not even necessary. For example, if I were to claim that on Mars, every unmarried man has three wives, then that statement would be true because there are on Mars no unmarried men who fail to have three wives.
Great video! Plantinga's "a necessary being is one that can't fail to exist" is basically a giant IF: "IF a being can't fail to exist, THEN we call that being 'necessary'". That says nothing about whether such a being actually exists, or about any of its properties. Even if such a being does exist, it might turn out to be a single photon, which has no morality, hasn't created anything ex-nihilo, and certainly doesn't have a human-like son that died one a cross. Good luck with that being your god.
It is true that a greatest possible being exists in a universe with beings. Its similar to saying that in an ordering of things there is necessarily a first. There is use in defining certain things as necessary in order to make sense of logic and reason. Just like attributes of eternal things is incomprehensible when speaking of existence as we perceive it. That is to say, the necessity of things which exist with in our universe can not exist unless they began to exist. Cause > Effect
Jewish, Christian, or Muslim philosophers will always start with a circular argument. Whenever a religious philosopher argues for "God", he or she does not stop at "there must be a creator and one that we should all worship", they continue on to define the only possible creator as the one he or she as an individual believes in due to his or hers personal interpretation of the religious book that he or she has chosen to believe in. In other words without even starting with an "if/then" statement, proclaim: "My version of my god exists... Therefore... I will twist logic and word definitions to make my pre-established conclusion work. William Lane Craig and Alvin Plantinga, though they both claim that "God" exists, believe in different versions of the Christian God(s)/trinity because they both start with their conclusions and then create a way of arriving at said conclusions.
Okay, I really, really like this video. My only dispute is that it doesn't really allow for imagination. Or at least it doesn't address imagination directly. For example, we know goblins and dragons are imaginary...yet an argument _can_ be made for their existence, just not an empirical, objective, non-human-dependent existence. In fact, how the word "existence" is defined is a bit tricky, given that it can be applied to anything at all...it's just the _manner_ of existence can be different from one thing to another. It's just something the video didn't really address, and it got under my skin a little bit. Not really a huge deal; there were a few snippets here and there that could actually be quite reasonably stretched to cover the existence of imaginary things, but since we're talking about _god,_ a being I consider imaginary, I was kind of waiting for it to come up. Ah, well. Great video, regardless. :)
I actually had to restrain myself from going into a 10-minute side-bar explanation about the meaning of "existence." That's a really nasty philosophical rabbit hole I didn't want to go down.
wouldn't that fall into the category of existing within other possible worlds as described in this video? The set of all goblins in the "real world" being apparently 0, while the the set of all goblins in Lord of the Rings being greater than 0 following the empirical tone of the video and the idea of verification for definitions existing things need to at least in principal be capable of being experienced. This doesn't say that a thing can not exist but never being experienced, only that this thing could not be verified and it'd thus be rather useless to claim it exist. though take an edge case example like a hallucination of a goblin. Does this mean a goblin exists because a person experiences it? I think most cases this event would be better a hallucination with some shared characteristics of a goblin exists.
I hear a different definition of "necessary being" in that it is a being that is non-contingent. Yes, it is for the contingency argument rather than the onthological argument, but I would like to hear your thoughts on that particular definition of "necessary being".
That’s not a coherent use of modal logic. A necessary being is one that exists in all possible worlds. By definition, that means it is impossible to talk about such a being as if it hypothetically didn’t exist. That only happens if existence is defined into the being.
Thrilling! Thanks! Opinion: when apologists take the stage, it might appear to you and I that they are making ludicrous leaps in logic and I’ll-defining concepts, but to their target audience, their demographic, they are providing comfort, reassurance, confidence, peace, ease, and happiness, by jumbling together a bunch of fancy words that sound smart enough so that their audience can continue to feel certain, and experience happy feelings. It’s marketing, 101. Pitch your commercial to your target audience, sell strong emotions, tell them what they want to hear, and ignore anybody else who happens to be listening, and possibly balking. When an apologist takes the stage, they aren’t talking to the atheist. They might be looking in the direction of the atheist, but that’s just superficial. They’re communicating with their demographic, selling them products and services. It is performance art for an audience who needs certain emotions met. They are giving their sermon as a priest would, and building their brand. They are selling t-shirts and DVDs. A debate is just an opportunity to sell to the flock. What else would they do, engage in meaningful conversation to learn how they might be mistaken and correct their position? Their prefrontal cortices don’t assign dopamine that way, otherwise they’d be skeptics.
I've tried for millions of years to stop my own existence, I've shot myself in the head, I've drank poison, overdosed on drugs...you name it...however hard I try, I always seem to pop back into conscience...it's very frustrating, as I prefer the moments of non existence that I can get...so basically I spend a lot of time just staring at the wall.
I use the word existence to assign some concept to some ontological category. There are many different ontological categories. They form a nested structure such that, if you are invoking a more specific category, implicitly, it is entailed by the broader categories. I'll be using set theory as a linguistic heuristic to guide my attempt at communication. ............................................. The first kind of category is the empty set. Nothingness. The broadest possible category is the set of "All Sets (except itself)". The categories inside of the set of all sets splits off into two categories: 1) the set of all coherent things (lacking contradictions between its members) 2) the set of all incoherent things (there is at least one explosive contradiction between its members). The main types of categories inside the set of coherent things are different types of logics, each built on their own axioms and having their own un-explosive rule-sets. Somewhere inside the set of coherent things is the set which contains our physical universe. ........................................... If I think about the idea of necessary being, I am considering whether a concept belongs in the set of "incoherent things" vs the set of "coherent things". If something exists inside our physical universe, it is necessarily also a part of the set of coherent things. The concept of a maximally great being exists inside the set of incoherent things. That's because an omnipotent agent has a paradoxical relationship to truth. By definition, things are true or false according to the presence (or lack there of) of an explosive contradiction. If an omni-potent being existed, he would be able to "rewrite truth". This property places the concept squarely into the category of incoherent concepts.
Here's a slightly more robust argument against the ontological argument that allows for them to keep the stupid definition: P: "God: A Maximally Great Being" Maximally Great Being: an entity that is greater than all other possible entities and is therefore capable of making itself exist necessarily. {God}: Set of all entities that fit the definition of god. {Maximally Great Being}: Set of all entities that fit the definition of Maximally Great Being. ∴ P→God=Maximally Great Being⊢ {Maximally Great Being}={God} There is no logically bound upper limit to how great a being could be.* ∴ {Maximally Great Being}=∅ ∴ P→{God}=∅ ∴ P→God doesn't exist. *Q.E.D.* *I was going to put a longer argument here, one that demonstrated the contradiction of the definition, but I don't really have the time.
It saddens me that presuppositionalism - taking an unproven assertion and assuming it is true - should need refuting. Most logical arguments for god at least try to hide the flawed logic with a few different steps and some wordplay. Presuppositionalism doesn't even try. It's a logical argument with just one step: 1) Just believe God exists I think the best litmus test for any of these logical arguments is to replace 'god' with something absurd (Yeti, Russell's teapot, flying spaghetti monster). If the 'logical' argument proves something absurd then it can't be accurate. Logical arguments with true premises and correct conclusions cannot lead to flagrantly incorrect results. Applying this test to presuppositionalism can clearly get us to believe nonsense things. We could plug any absurd thing in place of God and decide that it exists. Applying the same test to the ontological argument can equally lead to absurd conclusions. I can just define the flying spaghetti monster as a necessary being and I'm done. It exists. Kalam cosmological argument - tick. If I define the flying spaghetti monster as timeless, all-powerful etc then he is logically the creator of the universe. Watchmaker argument - that was the flying spaghetti monster too. He made all complex life we see around us.
@@proton8689 not all things have a reason A rock falling off a cliff doesn't really have a reason to falls and hit you ,we humans have evolved to recognize agents (beings with agency) the problem is that we're so good at putting agency to things and caring about them, we put agency to things that doesn't have it, like *dancing for the sky* to give you rain or *praising fire* or saying the *world itself hate you*, or *screaming at machines* cause they *hurt the earth*
You don't understand the definition of necessary existence. A being with necessary existence is a being that, IF it exists, relies upon nothing else for its existence. Distinct from contingent, in which something might exist or not. A unicorn is contingent. The ontological argument put forth by Plantinga uses the combination of God's definition and the definition of necessary existence to demonstrate God's existence, but even Plantinga has said that it's not a successful argument for most people. Now, contra the video title, if nothing exists necessarily than nothing would exist today. If you have an infinite regress of contingent things causing other contingent things, then you never arrive at our current moment of 'effect.' So something must be necessary, or dependent upon nothing for its existence. It cannot be the universe, since it seems to have had a beginning, and necessary beings don't come into existence. So there's that. Perhaps reading some Aquinas might be helpful, he argues convincingly from contingency.
*A being with necessary existence is a being that, IF it exists, relies upon nothing else for its existence.* That's not what it means at all. That's a made-up bastardization you apparently pulled out of your imagination. Neither Plantinga nor Craig use that definition, nor is it consistent with the conventions of modal logic. I even showed you a direct clip from Plantinga himself explaining necessary existence in the first 30 seconds of this video, and his definition flat-out contradicts the definition you just gave.
I wonder if you have read Plantinga's ontological argument? The first premise is "It is possible that a maximally great being exists." This must be affirmed or denied for the argument to be sound. If necessary existence is defined how you do around 1:21, by apparently cherry-picking quotes and concepts, then the first premise makes no sense. No, the argument does not assume that God just exists, but that IF it is possible that He (or it) does, He (or it) would be a certain kind of 'thing.' That's not to say that I find the ontological argument that convincing, though I think it is sound. Maybe try to suppress the fog of your clear emotional bias long enough to actually study what smarter people than you or I have been pondering for millenia. It's really pretty interesting, and not as obviously idiotic as you want to make it seem.
I love how you completely ignored my response to you and instead just powered ahead with a bunch of points that were already debunked specifically by this very video. I just demonstrated decisively that you have no clue what the phrase "necessary existence" actually means, and I even proved that point from a direct quote by Alvin Plantinga himself. Yet here you are, still pretending as if none of that ever happened. You then have the gall to accuse me of "emotional bias" when you can't even pay attention to basic points of fact or address direct failures in your position. Then to top it all off, you say this: *That's not to say that I find the ontological argument that convincing, though I think it is sound.* You literally just admitted that the premises are true and the argument is valid, yet you still don't find it convincing. Pray tell, how am I supposed to react to this without exuding an "emotional bias," you jackass?
Right, you pulled a clip out without understanding its context. I responded to it by saying that you are not being fair to the actual argument. Here is a source that does not agree with Plantinga. This is an older, simplistic formulation of the argument, but notice premise 1: plato.stanford.edu/entries/ontological-arguments/#PlaOntArg So, it's not the way you represent it in the numbered premises above, since we'd have to establish whether such a being is possible or not - that is where all the argument is centered, really. A good way to demonstrate your lack of emotional bias is to call names, I might add. I said that the argument wasn't * convincing* . It seems like a trick to people, and many don't understand it. But it is sound. Plantinga himself calls it "not a successful piece of natural theology." It's more an intellectual exercise, or maybe a coup de grace once God's possible existence is established through other arguments.
*Right, you pulled a clip out without understanding its context.* What possible context could change a mere statement of definition? Plantinga was asked what "necessary existence" means. He then proceeded to give his definition. That's it. That's the entirety of all relevant context for this discussion. The end. It's amazing to me how utterly dishonest you are in such a benign philosophical subject. Why do you people habitually insist on lying so brazenly just to defend some obtuse philosophical view?
Hi! Someone just said this to me, and I was wondering if it breaches the analytic/synthetic distinction or not: "I know there are no square circles in the universe." That there can be no square circles can be derived purely from the definitions, it would seem to be purely analytic. But he's gone to a synthetic conclusion, that there are none in the real, external world.
In order to make a synthetic proposition, you first have to propose something coherent. If I told you there is no such thing as a glarblewarp, is that really a synthetic proposition? However, if you really want to get technical, we would have to say that "glarblewarp" is simply a nonsense word. It is therefore meaningless (literally) to speak of whether or not such things exist. But since that's a pain in the ass to be all formal and technical with everyday language, we can just cut to the chase by declaring "there are no glarblewarps." Likewise, "square circle" is an incoherent concept. It is not a question of whether or not such things exist, because such things are not even logically coherent to begin with. You will never find anything in the universe that satisfies both the properties of a square AND a circle because they are mutually exclusive concepts. That's not a statement about the universe, but a statement about the words you've used to propose a thing.
If bachelors are required to have three wives, do Masters and Doctors get to divorce one or do they need to mary even more women? (Bachelor is not an unambiguous word as it can have both the meaning " unmarried male person" and the meaning "person with the lowest academic degree")
9:00 in sci fi novels there are word that are not imperically verifiable then are they not words or be in language for words in possible words. I hope to get an answer.
Re: Plantinga's argument - is the notion of "maximally great being" logically coherent? The implied infinities in such a notion mean that it must surely be handled with extreme care, and the whole argument, at the very least, teeters on the brink of circularity.
i'd appreciate your answer, as a fellow atheist who has a n interest in philosophy for about 30 years: since apparently you are not one of those people who think that philosophy is worthless, could you adress the question: what's the difference between valid and invalid philosophical inquiry? that sort of introduction, however belated, would be useful to us all.
My only issue with this video is that I don't see the concept described here as simple or intuitive. If it was I think everyone would quickly change their beliefs. It's really easy as an intelligent person to think everyone is or close to as intelligent as you are. You are a very smart person and I've been repeatedly told my whole life I'm very intelligent. These concepts took me considerable effort to follow. I needed to look up terms, googling concepts presented to understand them better. Get other perspectives just to fully follow what you have presented here. I'd suggest being patient with those that don't understand and attempt to work with them where they are at. Some will never be willing to change but some will. I don't think it's necessary to belittle them.
+AntiCitizenX I MUST translate some of your videos to Portuguese. How do I proceed? Any tips? I don't know editing but you sure do. Atheists and Agnostics or Nonreligious are just less than 10 per cent here in Brazil. I want to be the dissident ally to present them with a thing called LOGIC, a thing that apparently we don't learn in school or college. You are amazing, you intuitively presents logic. Please help me to spread it in Portuguese.
AntiCitizenX Yes, thank you, but I would like to translate the texts in your videos, in order for that to happen, I would have to edit the video\images you used. I have to edit the texts because, as you can see in this text, we Brazilians don't know English very well (specially nowadays, our government literally banished English lessons from our public schools). I have never edited a video before. That's why I would like to know the program\aplication you used to make your videos, that would make it easier to me, since I would be able to look for tutorials. Thank you. Bad for my sorry English.
The Bible said that other things existed before Man did, which does undermine the Ontological Debate a bit, if only one believes that man is a non-essential part of Existence as we know it, which is debatable. However, it must be noted that although one may debate that existence is not a predicate, it is true that something had to preceed existence itself.
That's the special symbols for logic. (1) A or not A (2) A implies A (3) not ( A and not A ) (4) for all x of R(x) implies (there does not) exist an x not of R(x) (5) A implies B if and only if not B implies not A
If God is 'unknowable' and 'mysterious' how do you know He is necessary, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent etc.? That doesn't seem very unknowable to me.
Under normal semantics, an existence predicate is always satisfied except for when we deal with empty domains but most first order semantics that I see exclude empty domains. But you can have some weird meinongian semantics for a first order language where not all objects in a domain have being/exist. With this, you could conceivably say that 'x is an unmarried man' and 'x is an unmarried man who exists' are not logically equivalent. This isn't to say the meinogian metaphysics is correct but it is a possible route that a weird theist could take
The “impossible” possible world you introduce in 4:32 is perfectly possible. In fact, this world may turn in to that one. All it requires is that there are no bachelors. This could happen if marriages were assigned before birth and every widdower immediately remarried, or more plausibly if humans went extinct.
While "existence is not a predicate" it can be the subject, thus we should not start with the concept of God and then prove that the concept exists, but we could start with the concept of absolutely necessary existence (auto to on) and prove that it is God.
7:20 As I understand it, it is a bit more subtle than that. God isn't defined as existing, but it is argued that he possibly exists, i.e. there is a way to conceive of a logically consistent universe governed by a godly being (precisely one with that power to exist beyond its own realm of possibility). God was never defined to exist, but the concession that he, along with his possible-world-transcending power, that we define him to have, would be sufficient to prove his existence in our world. Why then, precisely, is it impossible for something with the metaphysical power to exist beyond possible worlds, to exist at all? Don't get me wrong, I don't buy this argument but I won't let I rest until I fully understand it. I feel like there's some innate contradiction in here (along with the absurdity of omnipotence, omnibenevolence, etc.). But I do really appreciate this video. I need to know more about the existence as a philosophical (non-)predicate.
You might like "Human Action" by Ludwin Von Mises, and/or "Epistemological Problems of Economics" and/or "The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science" -- these books take a look at the philosophy of economic science and in doing so reveal many interesting things about epistemology and economics and the study of human action.
Good suggestion, just one remark. MOA doesn't use epistemological possibility at all. If you use it, the argument is not even valid. It relies on metaphysical possibility, where the argument is just not sound. Epistemological possibility is sometimes used by apologists, when they mix those two to try to support premises of the argument. They just rarely mention the distinction, since it's part of the smoke and mirrors.
Jiří Havel I've never understood the appeal of MOA. It's essentially defining God into existence. It merely presupposes a thing, and that presupposition isn't justified.
+BobWidlefish If you think that the MOA attempts to define God into existence then you've misunderstood the argument. Or worse still, only become familiar with the argument through improper presentations of it. When God is defined as a necessarily existent being "existence" isn't being used in the same sense as it is when I say that we both exist. In the latter case it refers to reality, while in the former case it simply means analytically.
Surroundx Understood. I wasn't making that superficial point, but rather the deeper one that reflects what you said. MOA does indeed define God into existence. By defining God as a maximum-of-everything being (or equivalent) and defining existence as an attribute this is defining God into existence. It's making assumptions about the term "God" and metaphysical reality and basing the "proof" of MOA on these presuppositions contained in their definition of God. The MOA itself is just a no-op, the "argument" is contained entirely within the definition of God, which they merely assume. In logic a conclusion is only sound if the premises are true. MOA attempts to use a valid argument structure with unsound premises, because the premises assume the truth of their conclusion. It's a form of circular reasoning. God-by-presupposition.
+BobWidlefish No, the argument isn't actually based upon defining God into existence. It's based upon the metaphysical possibility of a necessary being, not merely the logical possibility. Defining God as a necessarily existent being doesn't do anything for the Christian etc., and they know it. They need to go much further, and they attempt to do so. Whether they succeed is another matter altogether.
The verifiability criterion of meaning faces a problem. It’s ultimately self-defeating. For any statement or word to have a meaningful definition, it must be grounded in empirical observation, yes? (Please correct me if I am wrong). In what empirical basis do we find the verifiability criterion of meaning? It seems we are just creating a definition and applying it to all of these statements or terms we use (which is what we wanted to avoid). So the criterion is not a good criterion by any stretch of the imagination. When applied to itself, the criterion makes no sense.
*For any statement or word to have a meaningful definition, it must be grounded in empirical observation, yes?* No. It can also have meaning through analytic definitions. *In what empirical basis do we find the verifiability criterion of meaning?* Analytic definition of "meaning" itself. Also, it's how we literally teach language to children, and therefore you can see it first-hand.
1) If we are dividing matter to infinity, we will reach either nothing, or something that can no longer be divided. 2) If it were nothing, there would be nothing and we would not be here. 3) Only that something remains that can no longer be divided. It is something that constitutes and forms everything that exists. The necessary being. He must necessarily have the capacity to form everything, otherwise we would not be here. Ancient atomists like Leucipo and Democritus called it an atom (it literally means indivisible). 4) A thing only exists if the atom forms this thing, and not only that, the things that the atom forms also form other things in a succession of forms (A chocolate cake only exists because before there is time, space, earth, seed , chocolate, confectioner, etc.) 5) Something only does not exist if it cannot be formed by the pure atom or if it cannot be formed by other forms in the succession of forms (That is why no chocolate cake is born in clouds). 6) The atom and its forms go on forming everything that is possible to form. Everything that is possible to exist, exists. Everything that exists is determined to exist. Everything that happens is determined to happen. 7) We are here because we are a possibility in the formation of the atom, we are determined by the atom in the succession of forms to exist. 8) As we saw above, it is no longer necessary to go further, the atom and its succession of forms already explain why we are here. There is no need to suppose that he has a superintelligence or anything else in that sense (occam razor). 9) Therefore, we can call the atom and its forms of matter, the only thing that exists is matter and its infinite forms, we are matter and we exist because it would be impossible not to exist. The name of this is Cosmological Materialism.
I define a maximally great pie, a pie that exists in all mouths. Therefor pie exists in my mouth. So where is my pie?
omnipresent pie...you screwed something up and now it is your fault that people find PI in nature all the time and freak out about it.
Eureka!
replacing pie with dick in 3...2...1...
Problem Anselm?
Jonathan Morgan Im an Aproblemist. I dont believe in problems
"Existence isn't a predicate"
Bet you Kant prove it.
I literally read this at the SAME EXACT TIME as the video said it
To Hume is he going to prove it to? Give him a chance. Don't Locke him out too soon. He might Pierce you with a solution you hadn't thought of.
Thanks to Google for that list of philosophers.
@@PaulTheSkeptic
He might Pierce me? I didn't realize he carried one...
You may want to Pierce-sue an education in philosophy so you know how to pronounce that.
@@APaleDot I just Googled "list of philosophers" dude.
I define +anticitizenx as a being that makes 2 videos per week.
*millennia
Well, quality can take as long as it needs
I define @AntiCitizenX as a CZcams account that has a subscriber count of 1,000,000 (despite that being a synthetic proposition based on the subscriptions of each of the individual users). I state the criterion for manipulating the synthetic proposition as randomly picking the remainder of 1,000,000 users and subscribing them to him. Might as well do this for @TheraminTrees, too.
“A world where all bachelors have three wives” - actually this is possible without redefinition. It only requires that the world contains zero bachelors.
If that’s true, then it would also be the case that all bachelors don’t have three wives. Both of these statements can’t be true so this is a world that cannot possibly exist.
@@cooperpilot8094 technically it is true. If we turn it into a math equation, the amount of bachelor's would be 0. So if B= 0, the the amount of wives B has wouldn't matter. B100000000=0 still. This would mean that the amount of wives each bachelor has would be irrelevant, as no bachelors are there to have said wives.
@@noway6133 This is more akin to the logic equivalent of dividing by zero. You could say all bachelors have any number of wives when there are no bachelors. This type of behavior is usually called “undefined” since any answer you give is just as valid. Functions with multiple outputs for a given input can be defined like the square root of 25 is defined as ±5 (although for most cases we just take the positive part). However, for functions that have infinite valid outputs for a single input (like n divided by 0), from negative infinity to positive infinity, it’s generally accepted that this is not a valid function.
@@cooperpilot8094 it is undefined, but when viewing it in the terms given it would be true. Otherwise me saying "all bachelors are bachelors" in a world with no bachelors would be false.
Inexistent bachelors can't have wives.
Dear Christian Apologists,
What part of "existence is not a predicate" do you fail to understand?
Why do care about Christianity so much. Why not Islam, hinduism, and other religions... Especially Islam.
Oompa Loompa
Because Islam is not infesting my government with dogmatic sociopaths.
+Oompa Loompa The same arguments can be applied to those religions.
+Oompa Loompa
why do you care about xtian counter-apologetics so much? why not islam, hinduism and other counter-apologetics, especially islam?
KEvron
+KEvronista i think because the major religion in the US is obviously Christianity.
i am a human being with a very hot girlfriend by definition!
damn... didn't work :(
Therefor you don't exist
that prove you exist
Well, it worked in the sense that it works for apologists. You defined yourself as a human with a very hot girlfriend and you get to define yourself however you want. It won't change reality. A Victoria Secrets model won't manifest out of the aether and start nagging you and spending your money. But it does mean you get to say "I have a very hot girlfriend." knowing it's still a bit dishonest but then, it is apologist logic. On the bright side, you get to keep your money and spend it on whatever you want. Lol.
I am so glad I found this channel. This argument has bothered me since I first heard it from WLC, but I've never heard deconstructed quite so thoroughly. "Existence is not a predicate" is brilliant. I know this seems like child play to you, but, in many ways, I'm still emerging from the fog of fundamentalism.
Hi Laurelin,
I asked ACX whether mode of existence can be a property of a thing and have received no reply. Your thoughts?
Congrats on freeing yourself
I call it the Don't-ological Argument...
Thank you for all the work you put into making complicated subjects so accessible.
Great video.
Excerpt from Genesis:
And God said "Light is electromagnetic emission that necessarily exists", and there was light.
Derp
Every video i've seen on your channel is solid and well thought out. This is no exception. Excellent job.
You can derive some crazy shit from the idea that God exists necessarily, especially when combined with basic theodicy:
1. God exists in all possible worlds (Plantinga)
2. God coexists with evil if and only if there are morally sufficient reasons to permit that evil (theodicy)
3. The set of all possible worlds contains all possible acts of evil (by definition)
4. God coexists with all possible acts of evil (from 1 and 3)
5. There are morally sufficient reasons to permit all possible acts of evil (from 2 and 4)
C. All possible acts of evil are morally permissible (by definition from 5)
Or if you take Leibniz's approach and say that God would create the best possible world, you're left with the conclusion that every possible world is the best possible world, which is completely incoherent.
Wow. That... wow... "God" is some fucked up shit.
Wait... that's an interesting thought.
1) Imagine a possible world just like our own, but where I experience a constant pain in my joints.
2) If I experience a constant pain in my joints, then the suffering in our world is greater than it could have been otherwise.
3) If all other factors remain equal, that extra suffering is gratuitous.
4) Gratuitous evil and God are not logically consistent.
5) God exists in all possible worlds.
6) Therefore, there is no possible world like our own where I experience a constant pain in my joints.
7) Therefore, it is necessarily impossible that I experience a constant pain in my joints.
This seems to utterly destroy the whole principle of possible worlds. Any world other than our own is potentially not possible.
AntiCitizenX You're right, it does seem to make nonsense of possible worlds. What would it mean to say that God exists in all possible worlds if there's only one (namely the best one) that God would create and therefore could exist within? Taken together, it seems to suggest a sort of determinism which Christians like Plantinga would be quite allergic to.
I can imagine one alternative, though. Plantinga could deny the antecedent of your 3rd premise, that all other factors remain equal. In other words, in the possible world where you have joint pain, someone else's equivalent pain is absent. This would seem to allow for other possible worlds, BUT none that are better or worse than any other. They each would contain the same amount of evil and suffering, just distributed differently.
But this too would poison theodicy. Since each possible world must be morally equivalent, there can be no moral reason for God to actualize one world over another. No reason for one person to suffer rather than another. Why do your joints hurt? God's whimsy.
In any case, I'm thoroughly entertained by the clusterfuck. Some Christians are so eager to argue that God exists necessarily, I have half a mind to let them drink that Kool-Aid before telling them what's in it.
Andrew Cooper
*Plantinga could deny the antecedent of your 3rd premise, that all other factors remain equal.*
That doesn't really solve the problem. He's declaring any world with a shred of gratuitous suffering to be outright impossible. That means simple statements like "Imagine a possible world where I get cancer tomorrow" could, in principle, not be possible. The result is like you said. We're forced into a kind of hard determinism because I'm not allowed to conceive of a universe where bad things unnecessarily happen to me.
You're correct, it doesn't solve the fundamental problem. Either way, Plantinga cannot appeal to possible worlds that contain gratuitous suffering. My point was merely that there could be multiple possible worlds that contain no gratuitous suffering. That would technically avoid the charge of strict determinism, but as we've agreed, it's just another dead end for Plantinga.
Its so hard to imagine being so hung up on an idea, so dependant on the trueness of it that you have to make something as convoluted as this argument, simply to disguise the fact that all you are saying is "x exists because x is so great it couldnt possibly not exist".
My sentiments exactly.
Apologists think logic is sorcery ,you speak the words in the proper order and just puffs god into being.
The Bible does describe words as the source of the universe.
Thank you for making this video! One of my greatest dislikes of apologetics is that they depend on the lack of careful scrutiny of the average layman. I hate to admit it but despite my great improvement in coherent processing from say about 5 years ago, I nonetheless got blindsided by this argument. I knew from the beginning that it didn't work and that it didn't make sense, but I couldn't figure out why. It took me watching an older video of yours a couple times and watching this video in order to understand where the flaws in the structure are. We could definitely use more people of such coherency as you. *Keep up the great work please.*
The ontological argument fails with the unsubstantiated definition of the "maximally great being".
+Terncote Where did laws of logic come from? randomness? Answer why there is something rather than nothing?
+Terncote They exist and operate whether we observe them or not.
I view laws of logic more like legislation than observation. We use logic to structure our propositions about reality. There is one level of indirection between reality and logic - us labeling things. Logic is like sort of language. It's one of conventions that seems to work, so we use it. So in my view, logic came right from our heads.
+Jiri Havel
*"more like legislation than observation,"* but then you follow with *"seems to work, so we use it."* "seems" suggests observation.
KEvron
Terncote
i don't think he's a theist trying to have it both ways, i just don't think he's thought it all the way through.
jiri, if logic is merely the product of our own legislation, then we, as its legislators, may legislate those laws however we like. of course, this is not the case. instead, we observe logic to be inviolable (on pain of incoherence), so we describe its axioms as _laws._
KEvron
If we go with "every possible world," then by definition at least half of those worlds doesn't have a 'necessary being'.
I am not on the christian's side, but they can just say the idea of god exists and no necessary being exists is logically impossible
@@papetoast saying no necessary being exists is logically necessary, existence is not a predicate and cannot be used when defiing something
How about math?
I can imagine a possible world where naturalism is true
@@christopherrussell63 strictly speaking you cant given that naturalism is more of a methodology than a set of beliefs well I suppose it depends what definition of naturalism youre using
I'm going to have to watch a couple more times. Great work.
omg I just watched this video while not drunk. this may be your finest video. please make more!! more videos I mean
One of the most useful channels on youtube.
Yeah... this argument always annoyed me - "existence" is only a property of something that manifests in reality; A thing must first manifest in reality, (preferably in some verifiably measurable way), and only then, can it be said to "exist".
Thanks AntiCitizenX. I've heard Plantinga's argument ad nauseam. I've never been able to put my cognitive finger on what it is that sounded so f'ed up when he starts describing a "necessary being" but now I do, perfectly. When starts with, "A necessary being is...", he is already making it something that exists!!!! Beautiful. Thanks again!
"When starts with, "A necessary being is...", he is already making it something that exists!!!!"
Not in the way you think. He's not being sneaky. He just means it analytically. So the argument does't fail because of that. The real question is whether or not a necessary being can ACTUALLY exist.
By pointing out the flaw in Plantinga starting with "A necessary being is...", would it be clearer if I were to stress the word "is"? To talk about "something" that "is", implies existence of that which "is", because we something can never be not something. Does that make sense?
Yes, it makes sense. That's similar to the reason that Descarte's famous attempt to prove his existence to himself "cogito ergo sum" ("I think, therefore I am") fails. To even say/reason that "I think" already presupposes the existence of the self, and hence the consequent (i.e. "therefore I am") does not validly follow. For all we know "we could simply be a brain in a vat" as they say.
However, in this particular case such an objection is not valid. When Plantinga defines a maximally great being as he does, which entails necessary existence, he is not actually defining God into actual existence. The problem that you're having is that in fact existence is being used in TWO different senses within the MOA (which certainly isn't helpful to people trying to understand the argument, like yourself). The first sense is a mere semantic or analytic sense. God is basically defined as necessarily existing. Now there's not actually anything wrong with that, since nothing synthetic (i.e. nothing real/metaphysical) follows. What philosophers call "actual existence", the kind that we enjoy, is still off in the philosophical distance at this point.
The way that the argument gets from the mere definition of necessary existence to the actual existence of God is via the notions of metaphysical possibility/necessity and Possible Worlds. In contrast to what is presented in the video above, the nature of Possible Worlds is actually quite different (at least within the context of the MOA). Possible Worlds aren't merely logically possible, they actually have to be metaphysically possible. In order to qualify as a Possible World any world has to be what Plantinga calls "actualizable". That is, they have to be able to be made real/tangible. The question is whether or not God (as a necessary being) is in even one of these metaphysically possible worlds. Which if true would entail that they are in all of them, which includes the actual world, and hence they actually exist. But notice that it is not enough for the Christian etc. to simply define God as a necessary being in order to be in one of these special worlds. They need to not merely be logically possible but also metaphysically possible. Hence, the conclusion that God actually exists is NOT derived from the definition of a necessary being, but rather from the actual possibility of God themselves.
Let's look at EXACTLY what Plantinga says about Necessary Existence:
1) A necessary being is one that can't fail to exist, no matter how things have been, or we could say
2) a necessary being is one that exists in every possible world, where
3) A possible world the way things could have been, a sort of total way things could have been that says something about everything
4) One of these possible worlds IS actual, the rest of them aren't
5) The necessary being is one such that, for ANY possible world at all, had it been actual, it would have existed.
According to Plantinga
Necessary Existence
1) God is a maximally great being
2) Maximal greatness is defined to exist in all possible worlds
3) Therefore, God exists in all possible worlds
It is not possible to prove an actuality from a mere possibility or accept a possibility without supporting empirical evidence. See my proof...
God is unable to do anything
1) God is a necessarily being
2) A necessary being is maximally great
3) A being that is maximally great cannot be less than maximum
4) Therefore the state of maximal greatness is a continuous, never changing state
5) Therefore God is a changeless being
6) Therefore God is a static being
7) A static being cannot do anything
8) Therefore God cannot do anything
I can say this because nobody has ever defined "maximal greatness".
If you thought you observed maximal greatness how would you ever confirm it????
See,
God can't do anything and a god that can't do anything is useless.
+OnePointSix12
"1) God is a maximally great being
2) Maximal greatness is defined to exist in all possible worlds
3) Therefore, God exists in all possible worlds"
Your construal of the argument is purely analytic, whereas the MOA is partly synthetic. This is a more accurate rendition of the argument, although I've tried to cut out the definition of God as necessary, which seems to cause a lot of people to think that God is simply being defined into existence:
1. It is metaphysically possible that there is a being with necessary existence
2. Metaphysical possibility entails description ("existence") in at least one possible world
3. Therefore, there is a being with necessary existence in at least one possible world (from 1 and 2)
4. Necessary existence entails existence in all possible worlds
5. Therefore, there is a being with necessary existence in all possible worlds (from 3 and 4)
6. The actual world is a possible world
7. Therefore, there is a being with necessary existence in the actual world (from 5 and 6)
The key premise is 1. By "metaphysical possibility" we simply mean (at minimum) that the proposition/statement etc. under question is free from both explicit and implicit contradictions. Some argue that "metaphysical possibility" is even narrower than this, and that is certainly an open question (as most are in philosophy).
"4) Therefore the state of maximal greatness is a continuous, never changing state"
Why couldn't there be multiple states which are maximally great? A shift from one to another would allow for an exertion of power, and hence God wouldn't be causally impotent. Your argument attempts to demonstrate that God must be abstract and not concrete.
"7) A static being cannot do anything"
A static being cannot BEGIN to do anything. However, they may have been causing an effect for as long as they were in that state. For example, the indentation a metal ball would make on a pillow that it was placed upon. Both are static and yet there is a continuous effect present.
I've missed your videos. Welcome back.
I miss you, man. Looking forward to more great content.
Can I define Tweedledum and Tweedledee into existence?
If you believe hard enough, and say all your prayers/poems about clams, then yes.
Yes. Thats what Plantiga just did
Sure. Just state that 'dee and 'dum are "beings" and, as such, beings exist. Isn't that what "being" means? It's sort of the opposite of not-being. :P
Read the Secret then you can
maybe no......because Plantinga would point out the fictional nature of tweedledum and tweedledee; because the christian god is definately verified empirically and not through emotional reasoning and horrible deduction and abduction
Craig would say that Tweedledee and Tweedledum haven't revealed themselves to him in a private relationship which is the way Craig used to truly reveal the christian god to him
Are you... like making non-stream like videos again?
Yay!
I just stumbled upon this video for what I thought was the first time until it started to seem familiar after watching a bit. Then I checked if I had put it in my watch later section, only to see it was already in my favorites.
Always a pleasure listening to you
"Anticitizenx's not dead he is surly alive!"
living on the inside, scoring like a lion.
😊
Goddammit, now I've got a Newsboys concert in my head. Go to so much hell.
Fat Boy He is both dead and alive; Schroedenger's AnticitizenX! And don't call him "Shirly"! ;)
Fat Boy He is both dead and alive; Schroedenger's AnticitizenX! And don't call him "Shirley"! ;)
+munstrumridcully
"And don't call him "Shirley"!"
He did not say "surely"... he wrote SURLY, which means as much as GRUMPY or ILL TEMPERED. :P
Poor ACX... always in a sour mood :(
(1) Hewhay neccessarily exists in all possible worlds.
(2) If Hewhay exists in a world, Yahweh cannot exist in that world.
(3) If Yahweh doesn't exist in a world, Hewhay cannot exist either.
(4) If Hewhay doesn't exist in a world, Yahweh cannot exist there either.
(C) Neither Yahweh nor Hewhay exist in any possible world.
Is this how modal ontology works? Any thaughts?
Thoughts and yeah absolutely flawless
A is in all below still
If A is then B can not be
If B isnt then A can not be
If A isnt then B can not be
B n A isn't in all above
Read n think of logic.
First, so glad to see you doing videos again. Love your videos.
Second, the argument sounds very pretty and can be hard to wrap your head around when it is initially given, but yeah, its basically attempting to define god into existence.
Third, maximally greatness seems to be very subjective, that and I can always imagine something which eats maximally great beings for lunch.
I know philosophy has its uses, but Christians putting forth arguments like this for god is one reason, I think, that so many people are just dismissing philosophy.
I can't fail to exist. I should know; I've failed at everything else.
Just remembering that contingent and necessary are concepts from language, where words that are contingent are justified, and necessarily means that a word doesn't have a particular reason to exist or mean anything besides mere say so.
So, metaphisically speaking, saying that god exists necessarily is the same thing as saying that god exists for no good reason besides that i said so.
Great explanation. I am late obviously!
Knowledge is timeless however
Is the world where 2+2 doesn't equal 4 possible?
@@enterthevoidIi no not given the definitions of 2 and 4 that humans use
anticitizenx: you need to post more videos, more frequently. I very much enjoy your videos. thanks. seeya.
*Brilliant.* Why don't other well respected or famous philosophers call them out on this point.
Probably because serious philosophers tend to focus on the coherency of a proposition within the parameters of its context, instead of trying to clean up and organise another's invented reality.
Besides that, for people that don't have a strong grasp of philosophy, they tend to have a highly skewed view of what is going on as a competition of some sorts with a clearly defined goal of winning, when that is not how philosophers want their discipline to be defined.
Then there are mediocre somewhat familiar people like me, that can only follow the topic so far before getting utterly confused by the vocabulary.
The argument I gave in this video is actually just Kant's original argument in more detail.
@trey Mckray
"no good points 'were' made" not was. Which is BS anyway.
The phenomenon of treating words like magic, has been on the rise for quite some time, gaining acceptance as a social norm even. Arguments from definition have become common among laymen, and generally believed to be good among the young. :(
Read Eramus Montanus, it's a play from the 17th century that makes fun of this.
Saying that something "exists" is just a language game and it doesn't deserve to be treated as anything but.
Ok ... Jarvi exists! Oh, wait ... I can't say that ... it's only a language game. :-(
@@hanoverfist2234 if you have a empirical proof of the existence of thing, it gets a label and we are sure about it existence. The correct thing to say is that the concept of defining the existence of something does not implies it necessarily exists in reality
"Just" a language game? Wittgenstein argues that everything is...and that's sort of the point! (just to be clear, I'm an atheist and so on)
@@hilariofernandes5299 What I wanted to communicate was that it should be patently obvious that using logic to prove god's existence is a fool's endeavour. Obviously god doesn't exist, but logical proofs won't change anyone's mind that believes it to be the case.
dude, your just awesome :)
You know those videos that you stupider after watching? This one's the opposite of those. Thanks, AntiCitizenX. I subscribed!
The Modal Ontological is the most embarrassingly simplistic and nakedly empty "proof" of god ever devised. And that's a pretty notorious group of embarrassing and simple and nakedly empty logical "proofs.".
Yeah with all of its glaring holes, it's amazing that heavyweight theologians and apologists actually take it seriously.
+Darran Kern then clearly you don't understand the argument. Instead you accept the strawman version of it presented in this video for example.
Surroundx Yeah no. "God exists because I say so" is a bullshit argument 100% of the time, no exceptions.
Surroundx Theists love to claim this without actually demonstrating how its being strawmanned.
I understand it perfectly well, but what I don't understand, is how any serious philosopher trained in critical thinking skills, could possibly take it seriously.
So please, enlighten me.
+Some Guy common sense destroys this argument. There is no fucking way an honest person can take the Modal Ontological argument seriously. It literally is, and I do mean literally "God exists because God exists." It's the most pure and sad absurdity.
The greatest runner exists. It is great to run 100 meters in 1 millisecond or faster. Existing runner is greater than non-existing runner. Therefore there exists a runner, who can run 100m in 1 millisecond.
My god can run a thousand kilometers in a Planck-time! Checkmate, atheists!
@@JellyMyst well my God can run an uncountably infinite kilometers in a planck time AND he could beat up your dad so checkmate
Very good video, and has clearly outlined the problems with necessity. But here's a paradox that has been troubling me, that I don't see being reconciled with the point of this video. If you would suppose that there are many (self consistent) possible worlds, but only one real world, and every truth could be imagined not to be true, then what underlying reality could be used for the universe determine which one is real? And if you would suppose that there exist no possible self-consistent world other than the existing one, then wouldn't that just be assigning the role of necessity to this world (it would actually be real because of its logical status)?
I didn't truly grasp this in a way I could properly explain it to others until I read Kant.
The predicates of any object describe how we should recognize it should it be encountered it in the real world.
To include "existence" in an object's definition is to assert that if we were to encounter it in the real world, one of the traits we would notice is that it exists. But it's redundant to say that if you find something that exists, you'll find that it exists.
This shows that the conception of something's existence is implicit in the conception itself; i.e. you are imagining what the object would look like if it existed.
Therefore to say that something exists by definition is actually not an a priori proposition, but an a posteriori one; it is the affirmation of the object's existence in the real world with all of its predicates, and that requires independent validation.
So when a christian says that God exists by definition, they think they're ending the debate, but all they're truly doing is stating their position. They have yet to justify it.
Cool.
Damn it. Why can't I be in the possible world were George Clooney is president? Instead I end up in the one were we get either Clinton or Trump.
lol!
It could be worse. There are possible worlds where both are president one after the other, or where they are running mates.
On the other hand there is the world where Trump is a really nice guy. That one gas a goatee.
Greetings all,
First of all, Alvin Carl Plantinga is not actually arguing for the “existence” of just any specific ‘necessary being.’ How do we ‘know?’ A simple search reveals what he ‘ultimately’ means. In part, ‘[…] Plantinga is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is widely regarded as the world’s most important living Christian philosopher. […]’
When you check his writings, he either argues for the ‘Classic God of Theism’ or Yahweh, the God of the Christian Bible. These, depending upon how he words things, include the attributes and premises of being eternal, spaceless, tenseless, timeless, and changeless. With those front-loaded all-inclusive attributes in mind (as you can’t just argue them piecemeal), we would simply ask him:
A. Yes or no, does your argued-for eternal, non-contingent (“necessary Being’s”), timeless, changeless Christian God (Yahweh of the Bible) ever go from a relationship of seeing or sensing our Universe as non-created to created?
B. Yes or no, does your argued-for eternal, non-contingent (“necessary Being’s”), timeless, changeless Christian God (Yahweh of the Bible) ever go from a non-x to an x relationship with itself?
C. Yes or no, if you were standing next to your eternal, non-contingent (“necessary Being’s”), timeless, changeless Christian God (Yahweh of the Bible) in an unchanging eternity (for the sake of argument, let's assume that's possible), did you ever see Yahweh without the Universe?
D. What ‘previous’ factors contributed to your eternal, non-contingent (“necessary Being’s”), timeless, changeless God’s (Yahweh of the Bible) existence He finds himself in-and therefore eternally sees or senses?
A. No; B. No; C. No; D. None.
It’s my opinion, Alvin Plantinga argues using one of the most brilliant ‘bait and switches’ of all time! I.e., his ‘necessary Being’s’ attributes do not actually fit into the ‘worldview’ or actual god/God he ultimately argues-for or promotes. His inconsistency, and reckless abandon of proper argumentation, renders his conclusion invalid and incoherent.
Has Alvin Plantinga ever argued from a specifically defined ‘necessary being’ (let’s call this A) to the God of the Christian Bible (let’s call this Z)? If not, why not? If so, show me!
Ref.
- plato.stanford.edu/entries/time/
- Lord Bertrand Russell (The Paradox of Set Theory)
- Ref. A. C. Grayling (What do you [specifically] mean by god?)
- Stephen Law (Principle of Charity and Mutually Exclusive God Claims)
- ‘What Aristotle Got Wrong.’
- Law of non-contradiction.
- Law of identity.
- Law of the excluded middle.
yYM
I'm sorry but tl:dr?
+VillageHeroOfTime What was your purpose in posting, "tl;dr?" And, too long for whom? Are you attempting to 'police' comment sections and decide what is and/or is not an appropriate length? What does 'your' lack of time to read a particular comment say about said comment and/or someone else's attention span or interest in said comment? Do you, likewise, post 'tl;dw' to CZcams videos? While in school, did you tell your teachers/instructors, "Hey, too long; stop talking,' or 'too long; didn't listen.' At this point, do you doubt I've encountered such rhetoric before? Did you get to the end of tthis reply to you before...either contemplating my point and/or before formulating, at least in your mind, a response? That was fun. Thanks for the practice in Socratic (albeit sarcastic) dialogue. ;)
+yinYangMountain
Wow you really do love to hear yourself talk. Clearly you don't want to summarise whatever you wrote... I'll show myself out.
+VillageHeroOfTime Clearly you cannot summon the time to read or appreciate good writing or arguments? Clearly you cannot address my questions? And even clearly, I 'Got your Goat'...clearly? ;) Thanks again.
"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."
Great content.
Hi ACX, if bare existence cannot be a predicate of any thing, can the mode of existence of the thing nevertheless be a predicate?
4:32 A world in which every unmarried man has three wives can exist as long as that world doesn't contain unmarried men. :p
Haha the power the zero!
Vacuous truth FTW!
You mean possible worlds, which in reality do not exist?
Ralph J. Esposito That's not even necessary. For example, if I were to claim that on Mars, every unmarried man has three wives, then that statement would be true because there are on Mars no unmarried men who fail to have three wives.
+Martijn Bouman It assumes there are men on Mars. That means there are also no men on Mars, married or other.
Dictionaries are not prescriptive.
Great video!
Plantinga's "a necessary being is one that can't fail to exist" is basically a giant IF:
"IF a being can't fail to exist, THEN we call that being 'necessary'".
That says nothing about whether such a being actually exists, or about any of its properties.
Even if such a being does exist, it might turn out to be a single photon, which has no morality, hasn't created anything ex-nihilo, and certainly doesn't have a human-like son that died one a cross. Good luck with that being your god.
It is true that a greatest possible being exists in a universe with beings. Its similar to saying that in an ordering of things there is necessarily a first. There is use in defining certain things as necessary in order to make sense of logic and reason. Just like attributes of eternal things is incomprehensible when speaking of existence as we perceive it. That is to say, the necessity of things which exist with in our universe can not exist unless they began to exist. Cause > Effect
Jewish, Christian, or Muslim philosophers will always start with a circular argument.
Whenever a religious philosopher argues for "God", he or she does not stop at "there must be a creator and one that we should all worship", they continue on to define the only possible creator as the one he or she as an individual believes in due to his or hers personal interpretation of the religious book that he or she has chosen to believe in.
In other words without even starting with an "if/then" statement, proclaim:
"My version of my god exists...
Therefore... I will twist logic and word definitions to make my pre-established conclusion work.
William Lane Craig and Alvin Plantinga, though they both claim that "God" exists, believe in different versions of the Christian God(s)/trinity because they both start with their conclusions and then create a way of arriving at said conclusions.
Exactly.
Okay, I really, really like this video.
My only dispute is that it doesn't really allow for imagination. Or at least it doesn't address imagination directly.
For example, we know goblins and dragons are imaginary...yet an argument _can_ be made for their existence, just not an empirical, objective, non-human-dependent existence.
In fact, how the word "existence" is defined is a bit tricky, given that it can be applied to anything at all...it's just the _manner_ of existence can be different from one thing to another.
It's just something the video didn't really address, and it got under my skin a little bit. Not really a huge deal; there were a few snippets here and there that could actually be quite reasonably stretched to cover the existence of imaginary things, but since we're talking about _god,_ a being I consider imaginary, I was kind of waiting for it to come up.
Ah, well. Great video, regardless. :)
I actually had to restrain myself from going into a 10-minute side-bar explanation about the meaning of "existence." That's a really nasty philosophical rabbit hole I didn't want to go down.
Believe me, I understand. :)
wouldn't that fall into the category of existing within other possible worlds as described in this video?
The set of all goblins in the "real world" being apparently 0, while the the set of all goblins in Lord of the Rings being greater than 0
following the empirical tone of the video and the idea of verification for definitions existing things need to at least in principal be capable of being experienced. This doesn't say that a thing can not exist but never being experienced, only that this thing could not be verified and it'd thus be rather useless to claim it exist.
though take an edge case example like a hallucination of a goblin. Does this mean a goblin exists because a person experiences it?
I think most cases this event would be better a hallucination with some shared characteristics of a goblin exists.
I hear a different definition of "necessary being" in that it is a being that is non-contingent. Yes, it is for the contingency argument rather than the onthological argument, but I would like to hear your thoughts on that particular definition of "necessary being".
That’s not a coherent use of modal logic. A necessary being is one that exists in all possible worlds. By definition, that means it is impossible to talk about such a being as if it hypothetically didn’t exist. That only happens if existence is defined into the being.
well just the idea of it being non-contingent wouldnt mean it actually exists though
God is a necessary being in all possible worlds.
Hell is a possible world.
Hell is the absence of God.
There is a mistake at 4: 10
"Possibly P if and only off"
I think 'off' should have been 'if'
But great video anyway :)
I wonder if that was a combination of "if and only if" and "iff" going off the rails.
Oops. You're absolutely right. That should have read "if and only if."
Thrilling! Thanks!
Opinion: when apologists take the stage, it might appear to you and I that they are making ludicrous leaps in logic and I’ll-defining concepts, but to their target audience, their demographic, they are providing comfort, reassurance, confidence, peace, ease, and happiness, by jumbling together a bunch of fancy words that sound smart enough so that their audience can continue to feel certain, and experience happy feelings.
It’s marketing, 101. Pitch your commercial to your target audience, sell strong emotions, tell them what they want to hear, and ignore anybody else who happens to be listening, and possibly balking.
When an apologist takes the stage, they aren’t talking to the atheist. They might be looking in the direction of the atheist, but that’s just superficial. They’re communicating with their demographic, selling them products and services. It is performance art for an audience who needs certain emotions met. They are giving their sermon as a priest would, and building their brand. They are selling t-shirts and DVDs. A debate is just an opportunity to sell to the flock. What else would they do, engage in meaningful conversation to learn how they might be mistaken and correct their position? Their prefrontal cortices don’t assign dopamine that way, otherwise they’d be skeptics.
We should be able to literally sue them for fraud if they unironically make claims that are simply not true. That's just how it should work.
I've tried for millions of years to stop my own existence, I've shot myself in the head, I've drank poison, overdosed on drugs...you name it...however hard I try, I always seem to pop back into conscience...it's very frustrating, as I prefer the moments of non existence that I can get...so basically I spend a lot of time just staring at the wall.
I use the word existence to assign some concept to some ontological category.
There are many different ontological categories. They form a nested structure such that, if you are invoking a more specific category, implicitly, it is entailed by the broader categories.
I'll be using set theory as a linguistic heuristic to guide my attempt at communication.
.............................................
The first kind of category is the empty set. Nothingness.
The broadest possible category is the set of "All Sets (except itself)".
The categories inside of the set of all sets splits off into two categories:
1) the set of all coherent things (lacking contradictions between its members)
2) the set of all incoherent things (there is at least one explosive contradiction between its members).
The main types of categories inside the set of coherent things are different types of logics, each built on their own axioms and having their own un-explosive rule-sets.
Somewhere inside the set of coherent things is the set which contains our physical universe.
...........................................
If I think about the idea of necessary being, I am considering whether a concept belongs in the set of "incoherent things" vs the set of "coherent things". If something exists inside our physical universe, it is necessarily also a part of the set of coherent things. The concept of a maximally great being exists inside the set of incoherent things. That's because an omnipotent agent has a paradoxical relationship to truth. By definition, things are true or false according to the presence (or lack there of) of an explosive contradiction. If an omni-potent being existed, he would be able to "rewrite truth". This property places the concept squarely into the category of incoherent concepts.
Here's a slightly more robust argument against the ontological argument that allows for them to keep the stupid definition:
P: "God: A Maximally Great Being"
Maximally Great Being: an entity that is greater than all other possible entities and is therefore capable of making itself exist necessarily.
{God}: Set of all entities that fit the definition of god.
{Maximally Great Being}: Set of all entities that fit the definition of Maximally Great Being.
∴ P→God=Maximally Great Being⊢ {Maximally Great Being}={God}
There is no logically bound upper limit to how great a being could be.*
∴ {Maximally Great Being}=∅
∴ P→{God}=∅
∴ P→God doesn't exist. *Q.E.D.*
*I was going to put a longer argument here, one that demonstrated the contradiction of the definition, but I don't really have the time.
Ah, the "my god can beat up your God" argument. I've used this before. :)
Do you ever intend to address presupositionalism?
It saddens me that presuppositionalism - taking an unproven assertion and assuming it is true - should need refuting. Most logical arguments for god at least try to hide the flawed logic with a few different steps and some wordplay. Presuppositionalism doesn't even try. It's a logical argument with just one step:
1) Just believe God exists
I think the best litmus test for any of these logical arguments is to replace 'god' with something absurd (Yeti, Russell's teapot, flying spaghetti monster). If the 'logical' argument proves something absurd then it can't be accurate. Logical arguments with true premises and correct conclusions cannot lead to flagrantly incorrect results.
Applying this test to presuppositionalism can clearly get us to believe nonsense things. We could plug any absurd thing in place of God and decide that it exists.
Applying the same test to the ontological argument can equally lead to absurd conclusions. I can just define the flying spaghetti monster as a necessary being and I'm done. It exists.
Kalam cosmological argument - tick. If I define the flying spaghetti monster as timeless, all-powerful etc then he is logically the creator of the universe.
Watchmaker argument - that was the flying spaghetti monster too. He made all complex life we see around us.
John Smith Oh boy you haven’t come across Darth Dawkins have you..?
ahhh the only argument for Gods existence more blatantly circular than the ontological argument
another great video
I can not remember a time where I did not exist
therefore I always existed
What about the universe existing necessarily? It is far more reasonable than a deity that exists necessarily.
Right.
no, just no 🙄
We know it exists, we just need to know why it exists and then we can see if the reasons for it's existence are inevitable
@@proton8689 not all things have a reason
A rock falling off a cliff doesn't really have a reason to falls and hit you
,we humans have evolved to recognize agents (beings with agency) the problem is that we're so good at putting agency to things and caring about them, we put agency to things that doesn't have it,
like *dancing for the sky* to give you rain or *praising fire* or saying the *world itself hate you*, or *screaming at machines* cause they *hurt the earth*
A rock falling off a cliff does that because the laws of gravity and cause of effect resulted in it.
Perhaps the better question would be 'how'.
You don't understand the definition of necessary existence. A being with necessary existence is a being that, IF it exists, relies upon nothing else for its existence. Distinct from contingent, in which something might exist or not. A unicorn is contingent. The ontological argument put forth by Plantinga uses the combination of God's definition and the definition of necessary existence to demonstrate God's existence, but even Plantinga has said that it's not a successful argument for most people.
Now, contra the video title, if nothing exists necessarily than nothing would exist today. If you have an infinite regress of contingent things causing other contingent things, then you never arrive at our current moment of 'effect.' So something must be necessary, or dependent upon nothing for its existence.
It cannot be the universe, since it seems to have had a beginning, and necessary beings don't come into existence.
So there's that. Perhaps reading some Aquinas might be helpful, he argues convincingly from contingency.
*A being with necessary existence is a being that, IF it exists, relies upon nothing else for its existence.*
That's not what it means at all. That's a made-up bastardization you apparently pulled out of your imagination. Neither Plantinga nor Craig use that definition, nor is it consistent with the conventions of modal logic. I even showed you a direct clip from Plantinga himself explaining necessary existence in the first 30 seconds of this video, and his definition flat-out contradicts the definition you just gave.
I wonder if you have read Plantinga's ontological argument? The first premise is "It is possible that a maximally great being exists." This must be affirmed or denied for the argument to be sound.
If necessary existence is defined how you do around 1:21, by apparently cherry-picking quotes and concepts, then the first premise makes no sense. No, the argument does not assume that God just exists, but that IF it is possible that He (or it) does, He (or it) would be a certain kind of 'thing.'
That's not to say that I find the ontological argument that convincing, though I think it is sound.
Maybe try to suppress the fog of your clear emotional bias long enough to actually study what smarter people than you or I have been pondering for millenia. It's really pretty interesting, and not as obviously idiotic as you want to make it seem.
I love how you completely ignored my response to you and instead just powered ahead with a bunch of points that were already debunked specifically by this very video. I just demonstrated decisively that you have no clue what the phrase "necessary existence" actually means, and I even proved that point from a direct quote by Alvin Plantinga himself. Yet here you are, still pretending as if none of that ever happened. You then have the gall to accuse me of "emotional bias" when you can't even pay attention to basic points of fact or address direct failures in your position. Then to top it all off, you say this:
*That's not to say that I find the ontological argument that convincing, though I think it is sound.*
You literally just admitted that the premises are true and the argument is valid, yet you still don't find it convincing. Pray tell, how am I supposed to react to this without exuding an "emotional bias," you jackass?
Right, you pulled a clip out without understanding its context. I responded to it by saying that you are not being fair to the actual argument. Here is a source that does not agree with Plantinga. This is an older, simplistic formulation of the argument, but notice premise 1:
plato.stanford.edu/entries/ontological-arguments/#PlaOntArg
So, it's not the way you represent it in the numbered premises above, since we'd have to establish whether such a being is possible or not - that is where all the argument is centered, really.
A good way to demonstrate your lack of emotional bias is to call names, I might add. I said that the argument wasn't * convincing* . It seems like a trick to people, and many don't understand it. But it is sound. Plantinga himself calls it "not a successful piece of natural theology." It's more an intellectual exercise, or maybe a coup de grace once God's possible existence is established through other arguments.
*Right, you pulled a clip out without understanding its context.*
What possible context could change a mere statement of definition? Plantinga was asked what "necessary existence" means. He then proceeded to give his definition. That's it. That's the entirety of all relevant context for this discussion. The end.
It's amazing to me how utterly dishonest you are in such a benign philosophical subject. Why do you people habitually insist on lying so brazenly just to defend some obtuse philosophical view?
Hi! Someone just said this to me, and I was wondering if it breaches the analytic/synthetic distinction or not:
"I know there are no square circles in the universe."
That there can be no square circles can be derived purely from the definitions, it would seem to be purely analytic.
But he's gone to a synthetic conclusion, that there are none in the real, external world.
In order to make a synthetic proposition, you first have to propose something coherent. If I told you there is no such thing as a glarblewarp, is that really a synthetic proposition?
However, if you really want to get technical, we would have to say that "glarblewarp" is simply a nonsense word. It is therefore meaningless (literally) to speak of whether or not such things exist. But since that's a pain in the ass to be all formal and technical with everyday language, we can just cut to the chase by declaring "there are no glarblewarps."
Likewise, "square circle" is an incoherent concept. It is not a question of whether or not such things exist, because such things are not even logically coherent to begin with. You will never find anything in the universe that satisfies both the properties of a square AND a circle because they are mutually exclusive concepts. That's not a statement about the universe, but a statement about the words you've used to propose a thing.
the thing is there are no square circles by definition so its about as meaningful as saying "a thing that does not exist does not exist"
If bachelors are required to have three wives, do Masters and Doctors get to divorce one or do they need to mary even more women? (Bachelor is not an unambiguous word as it can have both the meaning " unmarried male person" and the meaning "person with the lowest academic degree")
9:00 in sci fi novels there are word that are not imperically verifiable then are they not words or be in language for words in possible words.
I hope to get an answer.
Like psymath in foundation.
11:00 bachelor can exist in a married world just as an logical possibility.
Re: Plantinga's argument - is the notion of "maximally great being" logically coherent? The implied infinities in such a notion mean that it must surely be handled with extreme care, and the whole argument, at the very least, teeters on the brink of circularity.
Suite Life of Zach and Cody reference at 1:40?
I would like to know how to argue against free will can you give me some tips. that would be nice. thanks
Define free will.
i'd appreciate your answer, as a fellow atheist who has a n interest in philosophy for about 30 years: since apparently you are not one of those people who think that philosophy is worthless, could you adress the question: what's the difference between valid and invalid philosophical inquiry? that sort of introduction, however belated, would be useful to us all.
My only issue with this video is that I don't see the concept described here as simple or intuitive. If it was I think everyone would quickly change their beliefs. It's really easy as an intelligent person to think everyone is or close to as intelligent as you are.
You are a very smart person and I've been repeatedly told my whole life I'm very intelligent. These concepts took me considerable effort to follow. I needed to look up terms, googling concepts presented to understand them better. Get other perspectives just to fully follow what you have presented here.
I'd suggest being patient with those that don't understand and attempt to work with them where they are at. Some will never be willing to change but some will. I don't think it's necessary to belittle them.
+anticitizenx
So is the apologist argument for "necessary existence" basically equivalent to:
A=B
B=C
Therfore
A=C
essentially, yes.
I just noticed one of Craig's listed professions in the last few frames here include 'apologist'. That rather speaks for itself...
God is necessary thus god exists. The ontological argument in a nutshell.
+AntiCitizenX I MUST translate some of your videos to Portuguese. How do I proceed?
Any tips? I don't know editing but you sure do. Atheists and Agnostics or Nonreligious are just less than 10 per cent here in Brazil.
I want to be the dissident ally to present them with a thing called LOGIC, a thing that apparently we don't learn in school or college.
You are amazing, you intuitively presents logic.
Please help me to spread it in Portuguese.
You are welcome to use my videos as you need to. Beyond that, I don't know how to help you with translations. Maybe just put together closed captions?
AntiCitizenX Yes, thank you, but I would like to translate the texts in your videos, in order for that to happen, I would have to edit the video\images you used.
I have to edit the texts because, as you can see in this text, we Brazilians don't know English very well (specially nowadays, our government literally banished English lessons from our public schools).
I have never edited a video before.
That's why I would like to know the program\aplication you used to make your videos, that would make it easier to me, since I would be able to look for tutorials.
Thank you.
Bad for my sorry English.
The Bible said that other things existed before Man did, which does undermine the Ontological Debate a bit, if only one believes that man is a non-essential part of Existence as we know it, which is debatable. However, it must be noted that although one may debate that existence is not a predicate, it is true that something had to preceed existence itself.
Can someone please explain me these formulas at 3:47? I'm to stupid for that
That's the special symbols for logic.
(1) A or not A
(2) A implies A
(3) not ( A and not A )
(4) for all x of R(x) implies (there does not) exist an x not of R(x)
(5) A implies B if and only if not B implies not A
If God is 'unknowable' and 'mysterious' how do you know He is necessary, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent etc.? That doesn't seem very unknowable to me.
Under normal semantics, an existence predicate is always satisfied except for when we deal with empty domains but most first order semantics that I see exclude empty domains. But you can have some weird meinongian semantics for a first order language where not all objects in a domain have being/exist. With this, you could conceivably say that 'x is an unmarried man' and 'x is an unmarried man who exists' are not logically equivalent. This isn't to say the meinogian metaphysics is correct but it is a possible route that a weird theist could take
i suppose plantinga never read yudkowsky's "parable of the dagger" :)
How is this different than logical positivism' "principle of verification"?
What does verificationism have to do with modal logic?
The “impossible” possible world you introduce in 4:32 is perfectly possible. In fact, this world may turn in to that one. All it requires is that there are no bachelors. This could happen if marriages were assigned before birth and every widdower immediately remarried, or more plausibly if humans went extinct.
While "existence is not a predicate" it can be the subject, thus we should not start with the concept of God and then prove that the concept exists, but we could start with the concept of absolutely necessary existence (auto to on) and prove that it is God.
Guess my plug is a bachelor now.
can I define mayonnaise as an instrument?
Hey man! I missed the music in this video...
Hello
I really like your videos
How can I contact you ?
well, i learned something today.
7:20 As I understand it, it is a bit more subtle than that. God isn't defined as existing, but it is argued that he possibly exists, i.e. there is a way to conceive of a logically consistent universe governed by a godly being (precisely one with that power to exist beyond its own realm of possibility). God was never defined to exist, but the concession that he, along with his possible-world-transcending power, that we define him to have, would be sufficient to prove his existence in our world. Why then, precisely, is it impossible for something with the metaphysical power to exist beyond possible worlds, to exist at all? Don't get me wrong, I don't buy this argument but I won't let I rest until I fully understand it. I feel like there's some innate contradiction in here (along with the absurdity of omnipotence, omnibenevolence, etc.).
But I do really appreciate this video. I need to know more about the existence as a philosophical (non-)predicate.
You might like "Human Action" by Ludwin Von Mises, and/or "Epistemological Problems of Economics" and/or "The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science" -- these books take a look at the philosophy of economic science and in doing so reveal many interesting things about epistemology and economics and the study of human action.
Good suggestion, just one remark. MOA doesn't use epistemological possibility at all. If you use it, the argument is not even valid. It relies on metaphysical possibility, where the argument is just not sound. Epistemological possibility is sometimes used by apologists, when they mix those two to try to support premises of the argument. They just rarely mention the distinction, since it's part of the smoke and mirrors.
Jiří Havel I've never understood the appeal of MOA. It's essentially defining God into existence. It merely presupposes a thing, and that presupposition isn't justified.
+BobWidlefish
If you think that the MOA attempts to define God into existence then you've misunderstood the argument. Or worse still, only become familiar with the argument through improper presentations of it. When God is defined as a necessarily existent being "existence" isn't being used in the same sense as it is when I say that we both exist. In the latter case it refers to reality, while in the former case it simply means analytically.
Surroundx Understood. I wasn't making that superficial point, but rather the deeper one that reflects what you said. MOA does indeed define God into existence. By defining God as a maximum-of-everything being (or equivalent) and defining existence as an attribute this is defining God into existence. It's making assumptions about the term "God" and metaphysical reality and basing the "proof" of MOA on these presuppositions contained in their definition of God. The MOA itself is just a no-op, the "argument" is contained entirely within the definition of God, which they merely assume. In logic a conclusion is only sound if the premises are true. MOA attempts to use a valid argument structure with unsound premises, because the premises assume the truth of their conclusion. It's a form of circular reasoning. God-by-presupposition.
+BobWidlefish
No, the argument isn't actually based upon defining God into existence. It's based upon the metaphysical possibility of a necessary being, not merely the logical possibility. Defining God as a necessarily existent being doesn't do anything for the Christian etc., and they know it. They need to go much further, and they attempt to do so. Whether they succeed is another matter altogether.
nicely done
I actually strongly suspect the physical world, the universe exists necessarily.
Many of us do.
You exist inside my brain as a holographic picture.
Is not easier to say, 'To imagine it, doesn't make it possible'?
The verifiability criterion of meaning faces a problem. It’s ultimately self-defeating. For any statement or word to have a meaningful definition, it must be grounded in empirical observation, yes? (Please correct me if I am wrong). In what empirical basis do we find the verifiability criterion of meaning? It seems we are just creating a definition and applying it to all of these statements or terms we use (which is what we wanted to avoid). So the criterion is not a good criterion by any stretch of the imagination. When applied to itself, the criterion makes no sense.
*For any statement or word to have a meaningful definition, it must be grounded in empirical observation, yes?*
No. It can also have meaning through analytic definitions.
*In what empirical basis do we find the verifiability criterion of meaning?*
Analytic definition of "meaning" itself. Also, it's how we literally teach language to children, and therefore you can see it first-hand.
1) If we are dividing matter to infinity, we will reach either nothing, or something that can no longer be divided.
2) If it were nothing, there would be nothing and we would not be here.
3) Only that something remains that can no longer be divided. It is something that constitutes and forms everything that exists. The necessary being. He must necessarily have the capacity to form everything, otherwise we would not be here. Ancient atomists like Leucipo and Democritus called it an atom (it literally means indivisible).
4) A thing only exists if the atom forms this thing, and not only that, the things that the atom forms also form other things in a succession of forms (A chocolate cake only exists because before there is time, space, earth, seed , chocolate, confectioner, etc.)
5) Something only does not exist if it cannot be formed by the pure atom or if it cannot be formed by other forms in the succession of forms (That is why no chocolate cake is born in clouds).
6) The atom and its forms go on forming everything that is possible to form. Everything that is possible to exist, exists. Everything that exists is determined to exist. Everything that happens is determined to happen.
7) We are here because we are a possibility in the formation of the atom, we are determined by the atom in the succession of forms to exist.
8) As we saw above, it is no longer necessary to go further, the atom and its succession of forms already explain why we are here. There is no need to suppose that he has a superintelligence or anything else in that sense (occam razor).
9) Therefore, we can call the atom and its forms of matter, the only thing that exists is matter and its infinite forms, we are matter and we exist because it would be impossible not to exist. The name of this is Cosmological Materialism.
I can imagine where the word bachelor does not exist
World*