The Ontological Proof (II)

• We have seen that, if someone wishes to challenge the soundness of the Modal Ontological, he denies the truth of the second premise of the simplified version:– It is possible for God to exist.

(‘God’ being understood in Anselmian terms, i.e the Being than Whom none

greater can be conceived.)

• One way to show that it is not possible for an Anselmian God to exist is to show that the Anselmian conception of God is incoherent

– In other words, one shows that the Anselmian conception of God is just as incoherent, though in a subtler way, as the concept of a square circle, or a four-sided triangle, or a married bachelor.

• The Anselmian conception of God is incoherent because the concept of an omnipotent Being is incoherent.– Can an omnipotent Being create a stone

too heavy for Him to life?• If you say “yes,” then there is something

the supposedly omnipotent Being cannot do, namely lift the stone He’s created.

• If you say “no,” then there is still something the supposedly omnipotent being cannot do, namely created the stone.

• This paradox, say the critics of the possibility of an omnipotent Being proves that the concept of an omnipotent Being is incoherent. Therefore, there cannot be one.

– The Proper Conception of Omnipotence.• “For [EVERY] proposition p, if it is

logically possible that God bring it about that p [is true], then God [is omnipotent]”

Richard Gale in the Phillips Anthology, p. 44

• More simply, God is omnipotent if He can bring about any logically possible event or entity.

• Consequentially, it is not a blow to God’s omnipotence that He cannot create a logically impossible entity, e.g. a square circle.

– A square circle is not a logically possible entity.

– A square circle is bogus and phony.– A square circle is a fraud and

chimera.

– Thus, God’s “inability” to make a square circle is not a genuine limitation on His power or abilities.

– Response to the “Paradox of the Stone”• ‘A stone too heavy for an omnipotent

Being to lift’ is just as bogus and phony as a square circle.

• If the Being in question is truly omnipotent, then there is never a stone too heavy for Him to lift.

• This is so in exactly the same way that there is never a square that is a circle.

– If it is a square, then it is not a circle.

– If the being is truly omnipotent, then the stone is not too heavy for Him to lift.

• Since it is just as bogus and phony as a square circle, God’s inability to make ‘a stone too heavy for an omnipotent Being to lift’ is not a genuine limitation on God’s power or abilities.

• The Anselmian conception of God is incoherent because the various Aselmian divine attributes are not compossible, i.e. the same being cannot possess all of them at once.

• For example, omnibenevolence is not compossible with omniscience.

– Definitions

• Omniscience: A Being is omniscient if and only if the Being possesses all possible knowledge, including knowledge of what it is like to do everything that can be done.

• Omnibenevolence: A Being is omnibenevolent if and only if the Being is perfectly just and merciful. Thus, an omnibenevolent Being would never wrong anyone.

– An Argument for the Incompossibility of Omniscience and Omnibenevolence

1.) There can be a Being, call the Being D, that is both omniscient and omnibenevolent. (Assumption for Reducio)

2.) D knows what it is like to torture an innocent child to death (from No. 1 and the Definition of Omniscience)

3.) If D knows what it is like to torture an innocent child to death, then D has actually tortured an innocent child to death. (Premise)

4.) D has actually tortured an innocent child to death. (from Nos. 2 & 3)

5.) If D has tortured an innocent child to death, then D has wronged someone. (Premise)

6.) D has wronged someone. (from Nos. 4 & 5)

7.) D has not wronged anyone (from No. 1 and the Definition of Omnibenevolence)

8.) D has both wronged and not wrong the same person, i.e. the innocent child D has tortured to death. (from Nos. 6 & 7) [No. 8 is self-contradictory.]

9.) Therefore, there cannot be a Being that is both omniscient and omnibenevolent. QED.

– Response to the Argument• The argument is valid, i.e. if all of its

premises are true, then its conclusion must be true.

• Thus, an Aselmian theist must challenge the truth of one of the argument’s premises.

• It would be rather hard for an Anselmian theist to challenge the truth of No. 5

– No. 5 claims that torturing an innocent child to death is sufficient for one’s having wronged someone, namely the innocent child one has tortured to death.

– If this is not true, then it’s nearly impossible to see what can be sufficient for one’s having wronged someone.

• An Anselmian theist must deny the truth of No. 3. Why believe No. 3 is true?

– One might claim that the only way someone can know what it’s like to do something is to actually do that thing.

– Thus, if one knows what it is like to torture an innocent child to death, one must have actually tortured an innocent child to death.

– Is it possible for someone to know what it is like to do a thing without actually having done that thing?

» Through imagination, humans often seem to know what it is like to do something without actually having done that thing.

» Writers often are able to imagine what it’s like to do something they never have done and then describe what it’s like in their fiction.

» For example, Stephen Crane had never been in an actual battle when he wrote The Red Badge of Courage, a novel about, among other things, what it was like to be in a Civil War battle.

» Many veterans of the Civil War claimed that Crane captured what it was like to be in a Civil War battle better than anyone else.

» Thus, it seems Crane was able to use His imagination to gain at least some knowledge of what it was like to be in a Civil War battle.

» If Crane, with his limited imagination, could do this, then why can’t God, with His unlimited imagination, know perfectly what it is like to torture an innocent child to death?

– God’s “Creative Knowledge”

» Since God is the Creator of humans, he must have a unique and special knowledge of them.

» This unique and special knowledge must be analogous to the unique and special knowledge a parent, especially a mother, has of her children.

» God’s unique and special knowledge of humans must include knowledge of what it is like for a human to torture an innocent child to death.

» “Since God has a [special and unique] knowledge of all His [creatures], knowing each one of them as it is, distinct in its own nature, He must know all the opposed negations and

» “opposed privations . . . . Consequentially, since evil is the privation of good, by knowing any good at all and the measure of any thing whatsoever, [God] knows every evil thing.Saint Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate,

Question No. 2, Article No. 15

» In this argument, Aquinas relies on the Augustinian (ultimately Platonic) idea that every evil is the privation, or negation, or perversion of some good.

» Thus, one may know any evil by knowing the good of which it is a perversion.

» Let us assume that to know what it is like to torture an innocent child to death is to know a particular species of hate.

» Since hate is the perversion of love, God can know what it is like for humans to hate by knowing what it is like for them to love.

» Another way to put it is to say that, since God is their Creator, God knows what it is like for humans to sin.

» “[Satan is sinful because he vacated [the] being God have him, emptied it of all of its once scintillating possibilities. [Satan is sinful], not for what he is, but for what he is not.”

D. Q. McInerny, “Evil” in Perennial Wisdom for Daily Life, p. 106

» Since sin is nothing more than humans’ vacating the existence God gave them, who would know better than God what that vacating is like.

– Given all of the above, Anselmian theists have reasonable, if not conclusive, responses to the claim that omniscience and omnibenevolence are not compossible.

• I’ll give Alvin Plantinga the final word on the Modal Ontological Proof.– “[I]f we carefully ponder [Step (B.) of the

simplified version], if we consider its connections with other propositions we accept or reject and still find it compelling, we are within our rights in accepting it . . . . Hence . . . our verdict must be as follows: [S]ince it is rational to accept its central premise, [the modal ontological proof] does show that it is rational [if not obligatory] to accept its conclusion. And, perhaps that is all that can be expected of any such argument.”

Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity, p. 221