The Ontological Argument as Proof of God

Thanks to Con for the debate. Con asserts that I have never explained what greatness is and how it should be "measured" even though I did point to it my first round with explanation of what some great-making properties would be and in my second round I explicitly wrote: "Anselm understood the predicate 'greater than' to mean 'objectively better or more worthy than.'" Not to mention I gave several examples how and why something would be considered greater than something else and I even gave a modern day example of people implicitly assuming that there is some objective fact of the matter that makes humans greater than rocks and that precisely consists in properties that humans have that rocks don't have (knowledge, moral value, abilities, etc). Which I then related, repeatedly, with God as God would possess more knowledge, more moral value, and more abilities than mere humans. I'm not sure how this isn't clear. Given my previous rounds and which properties we were focusing on (goodness, knowledge, power) "objectively better", which I explicitly said is what "greater than" means in this context, means to appromixate the ideals the best ore the closest. As I showed in my previous round very clearly Anselm thought there was a maximal degree (i.e. "the ideal") to which certain properties admitted an upper-bound to. So, obviously he thought there are such things as most knowledgeable, most powerful, most good, etc. This was never challenged. It's also clear he thought that the closer one got to the ideal the greater it was. Which shows why he thought a horse was greater than a tree as it possesses more of these properties to a greater degree than a tree does. I also showed why this has primafacie intuitive support with my example of modern day people and them comparing the greatness/worth of humans and rocks. As far as I can tell Con hasn't done anything to challenge this intuitive support except to point out there are other conceptions of greatness out there. The closest thing that Con has to criticizing this notion of greatness is his alternate conception of what greatness means by conceiving in terms of degrees of encompassment or breadth. The truth is, it isn't readily clear to me that I couldn't use his conception "greatness" and still argue to much the same conclusion as Anselm's OA. For example: let's say that God is omniscient; I could argue that that means that God's knowledge covers all truths (i.e. it encompasses all truths). Omnipotence: Gods power is all encompassing or that this power spans the breadth of all abilities. Omnibenevolence: God's morality spans the breadth of all possible goods or that his nature encompasses all that is good. To be fair, Con may mean "encompass" as a sort of spatial or temporal term but even then I'm not sure his conception would support his case. For example, if one took another property that the God of classical classical theism is supposed to posses, omnipresence, then that would mean God is present in all places at all times. His presence is all-encompassing. So, looking at Con's counter-example it seems it actually lends support to my argument and not to Con's. I think Con misses the point with his pie example. For one, I don't ever remember hearing included in any definition of God one of his properties of having to do with taste. So, in that respect, his counter-example isn't analogous to the properties that are in question here. The OA isn't arguing for "the tastiest being possible." It's arguing for an all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing being. In this, mirrors what I had stated in my first round when this kind of debate in certain ways mirrors ethics. It does no good against a moral objectivist or realist to point out that people consider different foods "good" and then from this innocuous fact triumphantly point out this must mean that there is no objective moral standard. What's precisely at issue there is the issue of whether "good" in that sense of good is the same as subjective as "good" in the sense giving to charity. The same thing is at play here: Con points out how people could consider pie great while others do not and that shows there is some issue with the notion of great - and the supposed subjectivity of it - presupposed in Anselm's OA. He's not answering the issue with a salient counterexample - he's just restating the problem being discussed and question-beggingly assuming his notion of greatness somehow defeats Anselm's OA! He never explains how it does. In other words, he's assuming Anselm's OA is false from the get-go. That is begging the question which is a logical fallacy. At the end Con says that unless I can show that God characteristics exclude their opposites that only then will I have show Anselm's argument meaningful. All I can say is I admit to being thoroughly puzzled. This is a matter of simple logical implication. If God by definition is perfectly good then necessarily that would exclude him having bad characteristics. It makes no sense that God could have a "bad" characteristic like capriciousness if he is perfectly good! Furthermore, look at what I gave as a definition of "greater than" - one of part of that is more worthy. Who in their right mind thinks that a capricious being is worthy of worship?! I conclude Con has not defeated Anselm's OA. Thanks for reading.