Does God Exist? Part 2 - The Ontological Argument
Seth Busby
November 26, 2020
“Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable…” Psalm 145:3
“God is great.” We say it, read it, sing it all the time. But do we really know what it means? Take a second and think, “What does it mean that God is great?”
Is God great because he has done some wonderful thing in your life? Is God great because he loves us? Or maybe God is great because he changed your life? While all of those things are true, they are only a portion of what God’s greatness is. To us, the word great means to be really good. But, in the philosophical sense, to be great means to be perfect in all ways. When referring to God’s greatness we mean that he is lacking nothing. He is everything. He is exactly as his name describes him--I AM. He is perfect goodness. He could not possibly be more good. He is perfect justice. He could not possibly be more fair. He is perfect love. He could not possibly love more. He is perfect knowledge. There is nothing that he does not know. Perhaps an illustration would help. You know when you play (or played for those of you who are getting too old) certain video games where you have to create a character? On the character creation page the character has a set of attributes to which you can assign point values, usually 1-99. In Madden, these attributes might be things like speed, strength, jumping ability, etc. In a fantasy game, your character might have attributes like defense, attack, vitality, etc. You get the point. When creating the character, you can assign points to each attribute category. Usually the game limits how many points you can assign to each category, but sometimes it gives you the freedom to max out every category. God is like that. His every attribute is “maxed out”. With this knowledge, we can begin to form another argument for the existence of God.
The Ontological Argument
In 1078 AD, Saint Anselm of Canterbury proposed a controversial argument for the existence of God. In a nutshell, his thesis was the following: “If it is possible that God exists, then God exists.” On the surface, this seems very shallow and applicable to a number of other things. However, when we look at the premises of the argument, we see that his conclusion is logically sound.
Anselm’s argument has gone through a few revisions and has ultimately come to be called the “Ontological Argument”. The argument begins by defining what we mean by “god”. God can be defined as a maximally great being. As we discussed above, to be maximally great means to lack nothing. In other words, God is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, omnibenevolent, etc. Further, a maximally great being would have all these attributes not only in the world we live in, but in any possible world. Now, by “possible world” I do not mean that he would still have all these attributes even if we lived on Mars (he would but that’s beside the point). No, by possible world I simply mean that God would have these attributes in any universe that might have been possible to create. There are countless ways the universe could have looked. We could have had a universe that looks exactly like the one we live in except that the sky is green instead of blue. Or we could have lived in a reality in which dogs did not exist (what a sad world that would be). Any small change you make to our reality constitutes a possible world. You might hear of these worlds referred to in popular culture as “alternate universes”.
It is mind-boggling to think of all the ways the world could have been. But, there are some worlds that are not possible. For example, there cannot be a world filled with square circles. There cannot be a world in which there are married bachelors. A world where 2+2=5 cannot exist. These things are logically impossible. So, is it logically impossible for a maximally great being to exist? Is it impossible that there is a being that is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good, etc? Even the most dedicated atheist would have to admit that it is at least possible that such a being exists even if the likelihood is next to none. There is no logical barrier to God’s existence. But, just because it is possible that something exists does not mean that something does exist. It is possible unicorns exist, but yet they do not. That is quite right. How, then, does this help us prove God’s existence?
While there is little to no evidence for alternate universes, let’s, for the sake of argument, assume that there are alternate universes. These universes would contain every possible world imaginable. Some have pink cows, some have blue cows, and others have no cows at all. Any of those three worlds would be logically possible. We have already determined that it is possible for a maximally great being to exist. So, if it is possible that such a being exists, then we can say that it exists in some possible world out there. But, to be truly maximally great, the being must exist in ALL possible worlds or else he would not be maximally great. Therefore, if the being exists in all possible worlds, then he exists in the actual world. Through deductive reasoning, we have now determined that we live in a world in which a maximally great being exists. While this argument does not get us all the way to the God of the Bible, we have made a great stride in showing that the existence of a being like the one described in the Bible is inescapable. The Ontological Argument, combined with the Cosmological Argument discussed in the previous article provides a great scientific and philosophical foundation from which to build our argument for the God of Christianity. In a future article, we will show how historical evidence shows that the being revealed in the Ontological Argument is in fact the God of Christianity.
The Ontological Argument is one of the most solid arguments for God’s existence. However, as you have probably noticed, it is also very difficult to wrap your mind around. The folks at Reasonable Faith have made an illustrated video explaining the argument using visuals that I think you will find helpful.