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God is defined (in this argument) as "A being greater than which no other can exist."

Even an athiest can conceive of such a being.

So God exists--at least in the imagination.

But I can conceive of a still greater being. This being is not limited to existing only in the imagination. Among His attributes is existence in reality. Surely a being who cannot exist in reality is not greater than one who can.

Therefore one of the attributes of God--a being greater than which no other can exist--is existence in reality.

What is the flaw in this argument?

Hint: I got an "A" in my Philosophy 101 exam, so I know the answer.

I believe in God. But man has constructed myriads of fallacious "proofs" of His existence.

--Boris

Ah, boris, how did you know? I can't imagine receiving a more pleasant post. No wonder you got an A. Its 2:30 am where I am, so I'll reply tomorrow, if I can unravel your knot by then. Good night :-)

Ah, Guanilo, inspired and far more deeply educated men than currently popular ideology believe can exist have bequeathed myriads of eloquently crafted reasons for opening our minds to the actuality of God.

Perhaps their ‘arguments’ are not as foolish as we are taught, but instead, our minds, so clearly focused upon the mechanical (but for good reason), have lost sight of the principle.

In your wonderfully prescient critique of my as yet unproposed ontological argument perhaps the flaw in the ointment is the presupposition of the flaw, however popular such a suppostion may be [since Kant].

However I stand by my now explicit assertion: That God indeed is that than which nothing greater can be conceived. Equally, I accept your apt formulation of my previously unstated postition: That God is a being greater than which none other can exist. And what then logically follows from these, however formulated, is that the greatest existence is not merely potential, or merely actual, but in fact must be both.

We live in an age were directness is more a virtue. So let me be simpler:

God is being itself. That is, God is existence itself. That is why none greater is conceivable. Get it? [This is why I don't depend upon an evolutionary view of God, even though I'd hold ‘God’ to be the ultimate effect of such a process.]

Unfortunately, in times past, one couldn't be so direct. Why? Because of a far more potent critique of the ontological argument's real basis: If by the term ‘God’ one means existence in itself, then ‘God’ must be so pan-theistically material and so universally mundane as to be irrelevant. Or put another way, the fool says in his heart, "God may be granted to be ‘being’, existence itself, but clearly then, ‘God’ would be dead, for so clearly mechanical and lifeless is the bleak realm we inhabit".

Ah, Death, what sting! You've taken our very God away! But wait. What is that sound? The dead stone! Rolled away! And who stands there but the Light, so clearly shining, saying this: "I am Life, and Being, and Existence, and in Me there is no death, non-being or non-existence. So that which is not ***in*** Me is ***not*** to the exact ***degree*** in which it is ***not*** in Me [ie Being].

Or put even more bluntly: God is only that which exists to the degree to which it actually exists. Another formulation is to say that God is ‘integrity’. Or that God is ‘unity’ [not uniformity!].

Interestingly, the ***actual*** human (ie subjective) ***experience*** of ‘being’ or ‘unity’ or ‘integrity’ is what we call ‘love’. But that is another subject.

Another very related subject is to show the reason why ‘truth’, and ‘goodness’, and ‘beauty’, and most other positive qualities have for so long been attributed to ‘God’. Clearly these are all properties of what we would call ‘integrity’ or the actual being of a thing, as opposed to the lack of being, or ‘dis-integration’, or lack of existence of any given thing. But I won't raise that here.

boris, you are clearly a very effective man of science. Most scientists these days ***will not*** [not "cannot"] conceive of any of these issues, seeing only the emptiness of space in these vast issues rather than the potent ground of all their relatively unexamined suppositions about reality, thought, logic, number and measurment. But just as for many, if not most of the great founders of modern science, unique insight and breakthrough awaits those willing to examine the exterior of our gilded box.

I don't know about the arguement you pose. Have you heard of this one? An animal brain evolved such as we may suspect we have and indeed have some evedence bespeeking such evolution, could not concieve of something beyond animal evolution. There would be no evolutionalry force to fire such 'thinking'. Therefore the near universal proclivity exhibited by man in postulating spiritual beings and spiritual existence is not of this world. It is wholly unnatural and at least evidence for implantation of such thinking from an 'outside force'.