As an unshakable dogmatic creationist, William Lame Lane Craig dusted off the several-hundred-years-old and thoroughly debunked ontological argument.
Apparently he's been obsessed with it for some time.
In 1977, Craig published his doctoral thesis for University of Birmingham titled The cosmological argument for the existence of god: Historical and critical analyses.
I can't seem to find it anywhere. It's not in his list of publications either. Curious.
I checked out various open libraries and search tools, nada.
But I pursued it further, and found it!
EThOS is the British library's electronic theses online service, and has an entry:
https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?did=1&uin=uk.bl.ethos.509333
Registration is required to download, but the electronic version of this thesis has no cost. No financial details are asked for.
It's 633 pages and nearly 42MB.. It's a crappy oldschool scan done as a bitmap and without OCR. =(
..
So back to the original topic.
"The possibility of god's existence"
Here is a cleaned-up version of YouTube's automated transcript:
0:02 - Number five.
0:04 - The possibility of god's existence.
0:07 - Now I've rarely shared this argument in a public lecture before,
0:13 - Ah not because i think it's unsound but because it's so abstract
0:17 - that students are apt to think that it's either a trick
0:20 - or else that uh... that they just don't understand it but tonight I'm going to
0:24 - go out on a limb and share it with you.[sucking up to the crowd]
0:27 - Now in order to understand this argument you first need to understand
0:30 - what philosophers mean by "possible worlds".
0:35 - A possible world" is just a way the world might have been.
0:40 - It's a complete description
0:42 - of reality.
0:44 - So a possible world
0:46 - is not a planet or a universe or any kind of concrete object, it's just a
0:51 - world description.See possible worlds for an actual description of what philosophers mean.
0:54 - The actual world is the description that is true.
0:58 - Other possible worlds are descriptions that might have been true
1:03 - but are not in fact true.[Other possible worlds are not in fact true.]
1:06 - To say that something exists in some possible world
1:11 - is to say that there is some description of reality which includes that entity.
1:17 - To say that something exists in every possible world
1:21 - is to say that no matter which description is true
1:25 - the entity will be included in that description.
1:28 - So for example,
1:30 - unicorns do not in fact exist, but
1:34 - there is some possible world in which unicorns
1:37 - exist.
1:38 - On the other hand, many mathematicians think
1:42 - that numbers exist in every
1:44 - possible world.. they exist necessarily.
1:48 - Now, with that background in mind consider the ontolgical argument[I love that the automation reads "aren't a logical argument"]
1:53 - which was discovered in ten eleven by the monk Anselm of Canterbury.
[discovered?]
1:59 - God,
1:59 - says Anselm, is
2:01 - by definition the greatest being
2:05 - conceivable. If you could conceive of anything greater than god,
2:09 - then that would be god.[Yes, I'd agree that conceptions fabricate gods.]
[Actually being able to actually conceive of a god is a problem in agnosticism.]2:13 - By definition god is the greatest conceivable being; a maximally great being.
[Using definitions to reinforce an argument is dishonest.]
2:20 - So, what would such a being be like?
[originally "such a beating be like".. haha]
2:23 - well he would be all-powerful
2:26 - all-knowing
2:28 - all good[And all evil, since we can conceive of that!]
2:29 - and he would exist in every logically possible world.
2:32 - a being which lacked any of those properties would not be maximally great.
2:38 - We could conceive of something even greater.
2:42 - But what that implies is that if god's existence is even possible
2:47 - then it follows that god must exist.
2:51 - For if a maximally great being existing any possible world,
2:56 - it exists in all of them. That's part of what it means to be maximally great: to[Again, reasoning which falls back on definitions is dishonest. I define myself as being right, and since by definition I am right.. therefore I am right.]
3:01 - be all-powerful,
3:03 - all-knowing and all good in every logically possible world.
3:09 - So if god's existence is even possible,
3:12 - he exists in every logically possible world[1:03 -- "Other possible worlds are descriptions that might have been true but are not in fact true."]
3:16 - and therefore in
3:18 - the actual world.
3:20 - Now we can summarize this argument as follows. Number one:
3:23 - It's possible
3:25 - that a maximally great
3:27 - being AKA god
3:29 - exists.
3:31 - Two. If it's possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being
3:37 - exists in some possible world.
3:41 - Three. If a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then it exists in
3:47 - every possible world.
3:50 - Four. If a maximally great being exists in every possible world, then it exists in
3:55 - the actual world.
3:58 - Five. Therefore, a maximally great being exists in the actual world.
4:03 - Six. Therefore, a maximally great being exists. Seven. Therefore,
4:09 - god exists.[The original is "sex therefore autographs" haha.]
4:14 - Now, it might surprise you
4:15 - to learn
4:16 - that steps uh two
4:19 - through seven
4:20 - of this argument are relatively uncontroversial.[originally "obvious argument" haha.]
[He claims they're relatively uncontroversial. He's lying through his teeth.]4:25 - Most philosophers agree that if god's existence is even possible
4:30 - then he must exist.[What philosophers? Do we need to start up a Project Steve-equivalent?]
4:32 - So the whole question is premise one.
4:35 - Is
4:36 - god's existence possible?
4:40 - Well, what do you think?
4:42 - The atheist has to maintain that it's impossible
4:46 - that god exists.[Shifting the burden of proof. Dishonest.]
4:47 - He has to say that the concept of god is a logically incoherent.
4:54 - Like the idea of a married bachelor,[That's incoherent because of its definition.]
4:57 - or a round square
[Alright, how about "god is supernatural, things which are super natural are outside of nature and therefore don't interact with our reality" ? See, I can play that game too. Whatever word games exist, the burden of proof is still on theists.]
5:00 - But the problem is that the concept of god just doesn't appear to be
5:05 - incoherent in that way. The idea of a being
5:08 - which is all powerful
5:10 - all knowing and all good in every logically possible way seems[originally transcribed as "all powerful bob dole" haha.]
5:15 - perfectly coherent.
["seems perfectly coherent"]
5:17 - Moreover,
5:17 - as we've seen, there are other arguments for god's existence which at least
5:22 - suggest that it's a logically possible
5:24 - that god exists.
5:27 - So, I'll simply to leave it to you
5:29 - tonight do you think
5:30 - but it's possible that god exists
5:34 - if you do then it follows logically that god does exist
If you'd like to hear more of it from the horse's mouth, there is a playlist of his official videos on the ontological argument:
A basic response is Ideas aren't real, but let's turn the ontological argument against itself.
- It's possible that a god exists which is blady blah blah and also able to be pointed at.
- No god exists which is able to be pointed at, letalone a particular blady blah blah variety.
-
Therefore no god exists.
