Hello. I've been examining some of the ontological proofs, and their refutations, and critiques of the refutations too. It appears to me that there is an understanding among academicians that there isn't a proper refutation. Parodies abound, but for some reason, they are not considered sufficient or adequate refutations. Neither, it seems, are the simple "negation" approaches quite valid (though I can't see why, since we generally assume that any proposed logic that leads to absurdity is in fact flawed.)
Well, I admit that perhaps that is something I don't know enough to comment on, so I won't. But what I would like to do is take the approach of finding unsustainable 'logic' in the premises of the argument itself. I know that in doing so, I'm purporting to identify flaws that must have escaped logicians even like Bertrand Russell who famously claimed (at least at one point in his life) that "the Ontological Argument is sound!". But better to be found wrong than go to bed wondering. :-)
Very well ... so here is what I think is a good account of one of the most common of the ontological proofs:
1. It is possible that a maximally great being exists.
2. If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some possible world.
3. If a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world.
4. If a maximally great being exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world.
5. If a maximally great being exists in the actual world, then a maximally great being exists.
6. Therefore, a maximally great being exists.(Read more: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/dawkins-critique-of-the-ontological-argument#ixzz1ssUOLU5u)
The author of the above commentary then states that
"Premises (2)-(5) of this argument are relatively uncontroversial. Most philosophers would agree that if God's existence is even possible, then He must exist. The principal issue to be settled with respect to Plantinga's ontological argument is what warrant exists for thinking the key premiss "It's possible that a maximally great being exists" to be true."But let's in fact scrutinise 2-6 more closely. It states:
If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some possible world.
The reader might be tempted to point out that such logic makes for the possibility of a anything -- a God, a 100,000 miles long car, or a unicorm -- or indeed of an anti-God or of non-existence -- without even the need for maximal greatness. (That attribute is only needed in conjunction with 3 and 4 to establish the proof of existence.) And the reader would be right. But if I'm not mistaken, it seems that scholars agree that the possibility of existence of all these other things, as absurd as it may sound, does not refute the argument per se. We're not going to go there anyway. Let's just examine the logical consistency and the real meaning of premise 2, focusing on the term possible world:
In what sense does this possible world exist? To answer this, we need to understand what the term possible world means. To my understanding, it's pretty much the same as when we colloquially use the terms "in a perfect world", or "in the best of all worlds". There is nothing necessarily corresponding to reality in such a world. It simply implies, "if everything were perfect"-- which is clearly not the same as saying "If we were living in this place that I know exists and is perfect."
Herein lies the flaw in the argument, I think. The "possible world" has no reference to anything even possibly literally physical. It could, but then the possibility of such a physical world would have to first be established; but it isn't. It could just as easily be supposed that such a world is impossible, which stops this argument in its tracks, since, clearly, what is purportedly proved in this argument is the existence of this maximally great being (aka God) in the physical world.
Furthermore, if it is suggested that it is not the physical world to which this applies, then the circularity of the argumentation is clearly exposed, for we are doing no more than saying, in proposition 2, that if is possible that a maximally great being exists it exists in my head in an area I assign the property of logical, but not physical, possibility.
