Sean Meslar- Student Choice 4

This time around I'll be explaining the everso famous Ontological Argument. Again, from the angle of the traditional “deep” philosophical argument that usually takes place at around 3 AM after a few too many beers; this is perhaps the most famous and clever way to “prove” that God exists. I’ll give a simplified version of the premises and conclusion:
1. Think of a being greater-than-which-none-can-be-conceived. (Or God, because that’s a lot of hyphens.)
2. A being which exists actually is greater than a being which exists mentally. (Or, more in line with the vernacular here, a being that be’s is better than a being which doesn’t.)
3. God must exist because a fully existing God is greater than the mentally conceived God.

Odds are, you weren’t convinced by that. Either you believe in God and you shrug the argument of as an amusement, or you don’t and you’re asking yourself “is this a joke?” Indeed, this is no joke; many of the great skeptical minds have taken their shot at this argument and failed, leaving Bertrand Russell to simply claim that while it was easy to observe that it was false, it is much harder to prove that sentiment.
The first historical objection to the argument came from a contemporary of the argument’s creator (St. Anselm) by the name of Gaunilo. He applied the same principle to an island rather than to God, that is to say, if I can conceive of a perfect island, the argument would, if it had any validity, spontaneously generate a perfect island (wouldn’t that be nice?). However, Gaunilo’s argument is short-sighted in his use of predication. What can we say about islands and being? Does a real island have to better than an imaginary island? If I were to create a perfect island, how many people would be killed by the massive amount of water displaced by the spontaneous generation? This hardly seems to be greater-than-which-none-can-be-conceived. A being on the other hand only is, we don’t know anything else about it other than that it must exist to meet the criteria of the concept. Thus the principle of the argument is only applicable to beings.
For a more mature examination I will again refer to Alvin Plantinga; he phrased the ontological argument as based on logical axiom S5, which states that for any string of existential quantifiers, we can reduce it to the furthest quantifier on the right (sort of like a series of +-+- in math). So, if we admit the possibility of a necessary being (God), we establish His necessity or: ▢◊▢G.
But, if this really ended the debate then I wouldn’t need to write a blog post about it. What the ontological argument proves is that 1) Necessity exists in logic and 2.) Logic does not like infinite regressions. Nothing can nor will exist to demonstrate the necessity of God loving you or God telling men to kill their sons, but I think that might defeat the purpose of belief if it was possible.