The Reverse Modal Ontological Argument Refutes God

Thanks Con.I tried to keep it below 1,000 words, but failed… Voters - I beg of your forgivness.RebuttalsPremise 1No rebuttal is given for this premise. Note that the definition of God within this debate is not a “maximally great being”, thus his arguments are so far red herrings. He can in principle attempt to argue that a maximally great being would possess the property of modally necessary existence, however refuting the argument on the basis of application to a maximally great being would entail a strawman argument.P1 follows from the definition of God already provided, thus Con can only use his definition in a counter-argument, rather than a direct rebuttal.Premise 2It is more of a case of simply modal definitions "It is not necessary that X" is logically equivalent to "It is possible that not X".[ https://books.google.co.uk...] Hence this premise cannot be seriously contested except for sake of wasting space.Premise 3“Any possible world must have all necessary entities. Because it is a tautology that A is necessary if and only if it is not possible for A not to be. Something that is necessary must then exist in all worlds.”Con misunderstands ontology here – since existence is not a predicate. The attributes of God are contingent on God existing in the first place. A triangle only exemplifies the attributes of “having three sides” if it exists, similarly God only exemplifies the state of “existing necessarily” if God exists in the first place. Properties are conditional. One cannot define something with existence for it to then exist.There is no difference between the concept of “a million dollars in Envisages bank account” and “a million sollars in Envisage’s bank account, that exists” – this notion of ontology is obviously absurd. Thus physical and metaphysical properties/states/etc. are contingent on the subject existing first.I have no idea where Con gets his assertion that “Any possible world must have all necessary entities.” – this is only true if one adheres to modal collapse – nor do I see how it is relevant to the argument.A good way to illustrate this is with mathematical truths, mathematical truths are almost unanimously thought to be necessary truths – thus is they were found to be logically possible within this world, then they are necessarily true in all possible worlds. However the fact they are “a would be necessary truth” doesn’t predicate it to “be true”. Their necessary “truthfulness” is contingent on them being true in this world in the first place (hence why we need to solve mathematical conjectures first).Example worlds“ Containing no members it contains nothing that is necessary, which is not possible.”I have no idea what Con’s argument is here, to formalise it we end up with something like:P1. Possible Godless world entails nothing is necessaryP2. A world where nothing is necessary is impossibleC. Therefore, a possible godless world is impossibleThis may not be a fully accurate representation of Con’s rebuttal, but he wasn’t very clear in his argument in the first place. He has not justified premise 1 of this formulation at all, an atheist does not need to commit to the notion that no necessary entities exist, since there is nothing about necessary existence that intrinsically entails intelligence, or sentience on any level, thus P1 is false. P2 is also unsound, since Con has given absolutely no reason to believe it. What is logically incoherent about all metaphysically possible worlds containing nothing but modally contingent entities> I see no reason why we should believe this is a problem.NihiloMajorCon conflates “a world that exists” with “a metaphysically possible world”, and this conflation in terminology births his rebuttal. I explicitly said it was a state of affairs – it is a way things could have turned out for the world. We could have not existed, the universe could have not existed, and everything could not have existed.Con’s rebuttal amounts to a trivial fallacy of equivocation.If “nothing” is a possible state of affairs, then P3 is upheld.MinorI have no idea what Con's argument here is meant to be. If the set contains nothing, then clearly an intelligent being (or any being for that matter) cannot be among them. This rebuttal is moot. Moreover Con has yet to show how “maximal greatness” has anything to do with modally necessary existence.Abstract WorldCon seems to misunderstand my argument with the abstract world. The argument isn’t that “a MGB could not exist in such a world”, but rather “is such a world logically consistent without requiring a God”.The coherent of a “Godless world” is actually completely independent of the coherence of God itself. We do not require brooms to exist for a cupboard to be consistent, nor do we need God for an abstract world to be consistent. This is my point.Thus, it is another example of a state of a godless affairs that is logically possible – hence fulfilling P3 of the argument I have set out.To further my point, I digress from Con’s assertion that God could exist in an abstract world – for this makes absolutely no sense, since God would not exist in any more sense than a number, or an abstract concept. It would have no causal agency, and clearly would never be able to fulfil the definition of “intelligent”, and outright contradicts the fact that god is a being. Clearly numbers and letters are not beings, thus a world is indeed incompatible with God regardless – and nor would it even matter if it was compatible with a God that exists in it.Con argues the following:My worldW1 – A world with only abstract entities (A) and no God (~G)W1= A & ~GCon's worldW2 - A world with only abstract entities (A) and also God (G)W2= A & GWhether or not W2 is possible is irrelevant to the argument (and hence a red herring) since we are discussing the metaphysical possibility of W1 – if W1 is metaphysically possible then my argument is already sound.I digress even further on Con's notion of ontology, dasein roughly translates to “being there”, in what sense does is an abstract object “being there”>Single Particle UniversesThis is not a rebuttal. I showed that such a world entails no logical contradictions, and in fact one could write the world within a single equation. For example:[ 9.50] Good luck to Con in finding a contradiction in that! Especially given it is tried and tested physics.Theories Of EverythingCon ignores this example. Mathematical frameworks exist for putative worlds – not necessarily the one we exist in, but a logically possible world nonetheless. These are self-contained without needing a God to remain logically consistent – hence fulfilling P3 of the argument.Magical Powers of IntuitionCon ignores this argument, and hence makes mockery of our amasing powers of intuition - which proves that such worlds are logically possible. We rely on intuition for virtually everything in evryday experiences, we rely on trust to know that the laptop in front of us is real - by extension these putative worlds are possible. Generalisation of Case My case is simply a refutation of the claim that any possible world must contain God to remain logically consistant. Examples of logically consistent worlds with no God essentially is equivalent to refuting the claim “there exists no black swans” by showing an example of a black swan.