The Ontological Argument (1 of 2) | by MrMcMillanREvis

you hello my name is mr. McMillan and welcome to part 1 of my introduction to the ontological argument for the existence of God in part 1 I'll introduce you to the background ideas necessary to understand the argument before progressing on to examining and Sam's classical form in part 2 I will outline some of the other versions of the argument before examining the main criticisms of the ontological arguments all of the arguments the existence of God claimed to be logical attempts to demonstrate why we should accept the existence of God the cosmological argument appeals the existence of the universe itself as well as the concept of causation the teleological argument appeals to the concepts of purpose and design now we move on to the ontological argument which claims that once we understand the idea of God that we should see that God must exist in reality it is a very different type of argument compared to those I've just mentioned both the cosmological and teleological arguments were examples of inductive arguments which means they try to build a case of evidence that might persuade us of their conclusion but they cannot provide a strict proof for example if I were to say the Sun will rise tomorrow this is an inductive argument it assumes that what has happened in the past will continue in the future which means although the conclusion is highly likely it is not 100% certain the ontological argument by contrast is deductive this means that if we accept the premises of the argument aren't true then we have to accept its conclusion here's a simple example of a deductive argument premise 1 all Labradors are dogs premise 2 Jerry is a Labrador therefore I conclude that Jerry is a dog if premise 1 and 2 are true my conclusion must also be true as this is a valid deductive argument the cosmological and teleological augments are both a posteriori arguments this means their truth would be established after looking evidence from the world around us an example of a simple a posterior I statement would be there is life on Mars I could only find out if this is true after looking for evidence by contrast the ontological argument is a priori which means that its truth can be assessed prior to means in other words it is based on understanding the definitions of things for example all bachelors are unmarried is an a priori statement we know it is true without having to meet any actual bachelors finally the other arguments claim that the statement God exists is a synthetic statement which means its truth could only be established by looking for evidence much like the statement white bears exist could only be proven true by visiting the South Pole or a decent Zoo however the ontological argument claims that the statement God exists is an analytic statement an analytic statement is one where the predicate is already included in our definition of the subject for example this statement triangles have three sides is analytic I don't have to verify it by going and finding a triangle analytic statements can be verified without the need for external evidence what makes the ontological argument so bold and so different is that it claims that once we understand what we mean by the idea of God we can be certain that God actually exists the most famous form of the ontological argument was formulated by former Archbishop of Canterbury and we're a very large hats Saint Anselm and some said he wrote as someone with faith seeking understanding which is why his work is written as a prayer rather than a philosophical thesis and some in fact wrote two forms of the ontological argument which in some ways could be considered as two sides of the same coin answer was medieval style of writing can be quite intimidating so I'm going to summarize his argument although I do recommend you try to read the original yourself Anselm's argument effectively forms what mathematicians call a proof by contradiction he makes an assumption but shows that this leads to a logical contradiction and therefore the assumption must be false his argument is based on accepting three premises number one God is something than which nothing greater can be thought of premise two things can exist either in the mind only or in the mind and reality premise three it is greater for a thing to exist in the mind and reality rather than just in the mind only at this point in time we don't know whether God exists in the mind only or in the mind and reality so Ansem asks us to make the assumption that God exists in the mind only so let's call our assumption a1 but if we add our assumption a1 God exists in the mind only two premise 3 which says it is greater to exist in the mind and reality than the mind only then it is possible for us to imagine a being who exists in the mind and reality and this being would therefore be greater than the God who exists in the mind only this would mean that the god we started off with is now not something in which nothing greats can be thought of since we can think of something greater ie some kind of super God who actually exists therefore God is now both something than which nothing greater can be thought of and at the same time not something that which nothing greater can be thought of this is a logical contradiction therefore our assumption a 1 that God exists in the mind only must be false which means according to premise 2 that the only alternative is that God must exist in the mind and reality which means God exists thus we have a proof by contradiction and some wrote a second form of the ontological argument which uses almost the exact same logic as the first form all we have to do is adjust premise 2 and 3 and then follow the logic 3 this time premise 2 says God can either exist contingently which means he is dependent on something else or necessarily not dependent on anything else and premise 3 says it is greater to exist necessarily than contingently if this time we make our assumption that God exists contingently then when we follow the logic 3 we arrive again at a proof by contradiction ie if God exists contingently but it is greater to exist necessarily then it would be possible to think of a being greater than God and therefore we have the same logical contradiction as before so we come to the conclusion that God must exist not contingently but necessarily that's the end of part 1 for part 2 please follow the link below if you found this useful please feel free to follow me on Twitter YouTube or Facebook you can also find an audio-only version of this video on pond being calm you

Channel: MrMcMillanREvis

Views: 152,149

Rating: 4.9490447 out of 5

Keywords: philosophy of religion, philosophy, as level, a level, anselm, descartes, russell, god, existence of god, revision, mr mcmillan, Ontological Argument, Introduction, Bertrand Russell (Author), René Descartes (Author), religion

Id: jsNdL_ANjAA

Length: 7min 6sec (426 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 15 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/marxit]

I found this video that I thought did a fair explanation of a neutral explanation of what the Ontological Argument is. I have had a hard time getting my head around the four arguments for a god's existence (Cosmological, Teleological, Ontological and Moral) Atheist tend to jump quickly to the fallacies in the argument before fully explaining it and Apologists just tap dance without really saying anything. Part 1 mainly defines what it is and Part 2 has the criticism of it ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIkVU0AcSMw ) Let me know what you think

[u/everfalling]

Very useful! Thanks!