The ontobollocksical argument is not one of my favourites

A link to BBC Radio 4's In Our Time was posted in the Unbelievable? Facebook group, as it dealt with the Ontological Argument for the Existence of God. In a fit of snarky dismissal I posted the following comment:

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  Paul Jenkins The ontobollocksical argument is not one of my favourites.

  28 September at 19:16 · Like · 1

This was followed by some disingenuous (I felt) puzzlement, which led me to expand on my remark:

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  Paul Jenkins My objection to the ontobollocksical argument is that it's entirely about concepts. A concept is something that exists only in minds, and no matter how much you conceive of an entity — or its maximal greatness — there's nothing to make that magical transition from concept to reality.
  
  Of course it's possible for something to exist as a concept as well as existing in reality, but these are two different things than can be causally related in only one direction: from the real thing to the concept of that thing — not the other way around. For a concept of an entity to have a causal relationship towards an actual entity something else has to be involved. The concept alone is not enough.
  
  The ontobollocksical argument is no more than a fancy and roundabout way of saying, "I can imagine something, therefore it must exist."

  30 September at 00:10 · Like · 1

Yet further responses asserted I was wrong about this, and suggested I should deal with the premises of the argument — something I felt disinclined to do at the time, given that attempts were being made to shift the burden of proof on to me by mere assertion.

Nevertheless I stand by what I posted, and in case anyone's still interested here's how I deal with said premises. The ontological argument goes like this (from Wikipedia):

1. Our understanding of God is a being than which no greater can be conceived.
2. The idea of God exists in the mind.
3. A being which exists both in the mind and in reality is greater than a being that exists only in the mind.
4. If God only exists in the mind, then we can conceive of a greater being—that which exists in reality.
5. We cannot be imagining something that is greater than God.
6. Therefore, God exists.

Premise 1 is fine as far as it goes — you can conceive of God any way you want. But is it really possible to conceive of ultimate greatness? I think not, other than as a label for what is frankly an inconceivable nebulosity. Can you, for example, conceive of infinity? You can have the idea in your mind of a very big number, a number so big that there isn't any number above it — but can you hold that concept in your mind as a number, rather than as a label for something that is, in actuality, inconceivable? Saying — in the St. Anselm formulation — that God is a being than which no greater can be conceived is of no use because you can't actually conceive of even that. You can give it a label, but it's a label that cannot be attached to anything.

So the ontological argument falls at its first premise, proving only that it is — as it has always been — bollocks.

AfF #4 Ontological Argument

(Click here for Arguments for Fred #3)

The most perfect being imaginable is an all-powerful, all-good, all-knowing, all-present super-being who for the sake of argument we shall call God. Obviously (the argument goes) such a being who actually existed would be more perfect than one we simply imagine, but if he doesn't exist, then in fact we can imagine a being more perfect than the one we previously imagined. That is, if we can imagine a god that exists, it must be more perfect than the "most perfect" one we imagined at the outset, which is a contradiction. So therefore God exists (in order not to have this contradiction). Unfortunately for this argument, it fails to recognise that each of the gods, of varying degrees of perfection, are all being imagined, so even if we imagine a god that exists in reality, it is still only existing in our minds.

See Skeptico's recent blog post and the subsequent comments for further discussion of this aspect of the ontological argument. It pretty much comes down to semantic logic-chopping. James Tracy also has a good summary at AnAtheist.Net. For a more formal description of the ontological argument, try Wikipedia.

Personally I've always found the ontological argument for the existence of God to be the least convincing. I thought the reason for this might be that I didn't understand it, but I've come to the conclusion that it doesn't make sense anyway. Try this variation (thanks to Dan Barker): the most perfect void imaginable is one where nothing, absolutely nothing at all, exists. Obviously, if the existence of the perfect void were actually true, and nothing at all existed, then the actual perfect void would be more perfect than the one that is simply imagined. But this is a contradiction, only resolvable by the actual existence of the perfect void, where nothing at all exists. (Where did everybody go? Why can't I see anything?)

UPDATE 2009-08-31: Click here for AfF #5