If you’ve spent any time reading Christian-atheist dialogues and debates, chances are you’ve come across the “one fewer god” argument (sometimes less grammatically called the “one less god” argument). The most famous articulation of it is from the late historian Stephen Henry Roberts, who said:
I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
Rhetorically, this is very clever, but logically, it’s a total mess. Presumably, you believe that 2 plus 2 is 4, and not 5, or 6, or any other number besides 4. Now imagine that I came along and claimed that there was no answer to 2 plus 2, and that really, we both thought this, it’s just that I rejected one more possible answer than you did. Or assume that you’re trying to remember who wrote a book, and I claimed that there was no author, on the grounds that I’m just rejecting one more author than you are. There’s simply no logically coherent way to get from “Thor is just a Norse myth” to “therefore God doesn’t exist,” any more than there’s a logical way to get from “Paul Bunyan is a myth” to “therefore, George Washington must be, too.”
It’s also not true that the grounds for debunking Thor would be equally good grounds for debunking Jesus. In terms of the sheer historical record, the person of Jesus of Nazareth is attested to in a way that the mythic figures of most world religions simply aren’t. We can point to the time and place in which Jesus lived and died in a way that we can’t do for Thor. We can read the eyewitness testimonies of people who knew Jesus, and who were so convinced of the truth of His message that they would be martyred rather than turn against Him. A person with a poor knowledge of history might be excused for assuming that there’s something like this in other world religions, but a historian like Roberts must have known better. Whether you accept or reject the historical data, there simply is a wealth of historical support for the claims of Christianity, in a way that isn’t true of competing religious claims.
But let’s take a second approach, using logic, science, and philosophy. When we say “God,” we’re referring to the author of created reality. Monotheists believe that there’s one author to all of created reality, polytheists generally believe that there are different authors of different aspects of reality: Zeus is the god of thunder, Poseidon is the god of storms, Demeter is the goddess of seasons, etc.
What does observation of created reality tell us? Is the picture the sort of discordant chaos we would expect from having a dozen different authors? Not at all – we can understand the relationship between things like the seasons, and the resulting storms, with their resulting thunder and lightning, in such a way that it would be illogical to believe that they have different authors. This is perhaps most observable in the world of physics or mathematics. We see universal constants and things behaving in consistent, often predictable, ways across the microcosm and macrocosm. We see the relationship of number to number. None of that is coherently accounted for by saying that it’s the result of a feuding pantheon of two or twelve or thousands of gods, in the way that various polytheistic religions suppose.
There’s another mathematical argument, as well. The monotheistic argument is that there is one actually infinite God, all-powerful, all-knowing, and the like. But there can’t be two contrary infinites, which is why religious systems like Zoroastrianism don’t make logical sense.
But what about those who accept Jesus on the witness of the Biblical evidence, or from an experience in prayer, or some other spiritual encounter with the living God? Perhaps you’re open to the idea of there being various gods, but then become convinced that Jesus is who He says He is. If He is God, then we need to believe Deuteronomy when it says, “To you it was shown, that you might know that the Lord is God; there is no other besides him” (Deut. 4:35). You can’t both believe that Jesus is God and that Thor is God. It’s perfectly logical to hold that “Jesus is God, therefore Thor isn’t.” But by Roberts’ argument, if Thor isn’t God, then neither is Jesus, and for the same reasons, meaning that we would have to conclude that “Jesus is God, therefore Jesus isn’t,” which (as I’ve said) is a logical mess. (The same holds true for those who have actually encountered the true God, for instance, in prayer. By Roberts’ argument, they would therefore have to deny God.)
So is there anything good that can come from this “one fewer god” argument? Yes, I think that there are at least two things. The first is that it can reveal our own anti-supernatural biases. Most of us in the modern world, religious or irreligious, carry with us some amount of inherent skepticism towards anything supernatural-sounding. Some of this skepticism is healthy, but if we dismiss supernatural claims simply because they’re supernatural claims, that’s an irrational prejudice, and it’s one that Christians as well as atheists can be guilty of.
The second thing this argument reveals is how poorly many of us understand what we even mean by “God.” If atheists are imagining that the Christian claim is of a god like Thor or Zeus or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, then we can freely join with them in rejecting the existence of such a god. But the Christian belief isn’t that there’s a powerful wizard in the clouds that creates things out of pre-existing material. So what do Christians believe?
Seven Ideas Pointing to God
- That everything that we witness in the universe is a contingent reality, that is, it’s something that didn’t have to be there. This is true of every person, planet, or particle.
- That contingent realities can’t be all that there is. Contingencies only exist under particular conditions, and so you can’t just have an infinite set of contingencies. You need someone or something non-contingent. Logically, there’s no getting around this, but it means that we have to believe that there is someone or something behind or beyond the known universe, an Author of sorts, without whom nothing could exist.
- That an effect cannot be greater than the sum of its causes. Anything found in an effect must be traceable to one or more of its causes. This is true in math, physics, and so on, because it’s just logically how cause and effect work. (If you imagine that you’ve got a counter-example, I’ll bet that you’re actually just not looking at all of the causes).
- That the qualities we find in the universe (intelligence, love, etc.) must thus somehow be traceable back to this Author. You cannot get from an unintelligent or impersonal Author of the universe to a universe with intelligence and personality. That would be an effect greater than the cause. So the intelligence and personality we see in the world reveals something about God, just as if we found a book written in English, we could say that the author was an English-speaker. The author could be much more than this, but he can’t be less.
- That there’s a hunger in us to know God. This hunger is actually what accounts for all of those various religions – they represent a universal human desire to find God. From a sociological or historical perspective, there’s something aberrant about atheism, a sort of spiritual anorexia that tries to ignore an innate human hunger. Of course, it may very well be the case that some people feel the hunger more strongly than others, particularly in a modern world of distractions, just as a person lost in their work or play might not immediately notice their hunger or their longing for human companionship. But anyone (atheist or theist) should be able to look at the history of the world, or the structure of the brain, and say “humans have what appears to be an innate belief in, and longing for, some kind of god.”
- That this God reveals Himself to us. This is the kicker, and I’m not going to do it justice. The prior five points are knowable from reason alone – that there must be an Author to all of created reality, that He must have certain properties (like non-contingency, intelligence, personality, etc.), and that He created us with a hunger to know Him. But of course, we can’t know Him on our own, so the only two possibilities are that He leaves us searching, or that He reveals Himself to us. Given what we already know about God from logic alone (for instance, that He must possess goodness, in a way beyond the sum of all the goodness in the universe), it’s at least reasonable to believe that He chose to satisfy our desires.
- The way God reveals Himself. God revealed Himself first by creation itself, and then by the existence of our conscience, and then through His prophets by whom He raised up a small tribe of fiercely-monotheistic people in a polytheistic Near East. Finally, “in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world” (Heb. 1:2). When Jesus arrives in history, He both (a) fulfills a slew of prophecies that would be outside of His (merely-human) ability to control, about the coming Messiah, (b) presents a credible moral message while performing what eyewitnesses recount as miracles, (c) prophecies His own death and resurrection, (d) is publicly executed, and (e) rises from the dead, leaving behind an Empty Tomb open to any seeker, and appearing to hundreds more eyewitnesses.
In other words, it’s perfectly reasonable to believe the theistic claims that Jesus is making, in a way that simply isn’t true of the various rival religious claims. If these claims are going to be rebutted, it’s going to take serious intellectual engagement (and atheists taking Christianity more seriously than most of them currently do), not facile slogans about believing in “one fewer god.”
I’m always curious to see how monotheists answer this objection because they invariably remark on polytheism. I don’t think they do so in a fair or convincing way. As a pagan apologist, this is a subject I’d be really interested in engaging you on. I don’t want to derail this post, just put a bug in your ear 😛
Why try to annoy, when you can explain your idea of truth as Joe has done. You say you want to ‘engage’, yet you immediately contradict yourself with a false excuse of “I don’t want to derail this post”….as if any comment on the subject would actually ‘derail’ it.
I just suspect that you are too lazy to write down your honest perspective, even as Joe is very generous in providing his thoughtful analysis for others to support or attack.
But to say that you want to ‘engage’, and then offer a ‘false humility’ excuse for not engaging…or even waiting for a response….shows that in reality you never intended to engage…but on the contrary, you were very satisfied to merely put a “bug in your (Joe’s) ear”. And then you add a silly emoji ….that proves my point.
It seems that ‘pagan apologists’ are ‘quite the brutes or imbeciles’….as even the craziest of Protestant apologists who comment on this blog haven’t lowered themselves to this level of intellectual laziness and worldly banality. If you are an example of a pagan apologists, then I guess Catholics and other Christians have not much to be intellectually concerned with regarding pagan apologetics.
JMHO.
awims: you’ve either got a mood imbalance, an extremely poor reading comprehension level or both and I don’t intend to find out which 😄
Let’s take it from the top. God, in Catholicism, is utterly simple. What this means to the Catholic is that God’s essence is identical to God’s existence. This is where the second deepest problem for monotheism occurs, and I will be getting to the first after this simple introduction. In order to understand any single subject, topic, idea, etc., it must first be established that were are talking about a single thing. That is, the subject must be individuated, a whole unit, so that we can understand it in it’s totality. So we must be able to speak of concepts like essence and existence as if they are distinct, complete units. The Catholic conception of God prevents this full understanding immediately upon claiming that in God, both subjects are somehow the same thing. This effectively means that essence and existence are separate and distinct, while also in some sense being the same thing for at least one individual. This of course makes complete nonsense of any attempt to understand what essence and existence really are, as it violates the principle of individuation.
The second, more pressing issue for monotheism is that, according to it’s metaphysics, the principle of individuation is ALSO an Individual itself. That is, God is taken as the principle of individuation, especially in Thomistic metaphysics. This largely comes from a misappropriation of the concept of Plato’s One. To the Platonist, the One is the Good, precisely in that existing as a unit, as a whole, is good. That does not mean that the One itself is such an individuated unit, for if it was, it would be an example of what it was to explain, which would be circular nonsense. “The One is not, and is not one.” -Plato, Parmenides 141b. For Platonists like Steven and myself, then, the One can only be understood as a negative principle. It is this negativity that essentially (ha!) makes conceptual room for positive individuation. In closely reading Plato, we can see that as the One is not causative, since it is not an individual, it does not limit the amount of individuals that are utterly simple. That is, there can be no way to determine how many Gods there would be.
It should also become clear that, as the One is not substantial, it is supra-essential, utterly beyond any question of nature, Being, or even Being Itself. As such, we have to see that it is not a principle ABOVE the Gods, since it does not cause Them, but the Gods are at the same “point” or “level” that the One is. Indeed, each God, existing as a perfect example of unity, could not fail to be so. As a result it becomes clear that each God is also supra-essential.
I will now bring the argument back to the traditional Catholic understanding of God, and using the above explication, show why it is deficient. The three qualities of God, given in Joe’s article above, are omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. God’s omnipotence is such that He can bring about any logically coherent outcome He so desires. God’s omniscience is such that He fully understands everything, for He is the fundamental cause of everything that has been, is, or will be. God’s omnipresence is such that He is everywhere there is any -thing-, as He is the cause of those things and does not suffer the limits of extension as we or anything else does. This is an exhaustive description, I believe, of God as Pure Act, and it serves as a fundamental lynch-pin for Thomistic arguments for monotheism. Now, let’s have some fun.
God, as He is, in and of Himself, is not the cause of Himself, and cannot change Himself in any way, as He lacks any potentialities to actualize. This means that, when we erase contingent existence from our concerns and fixate only on Him, omnipotence evaporates as a consequence. There is no way when we are considering God alone that we can discern any activity, for God does not change in any way, does not relate in any way, does not move in any way. Since the three omni-qualities are actually identical with each other, omniscience and omnipresence also go away. This shouldn’t be a problem to really grasp, since it is clear that God does not cause Himself, He also does not know Himself in the same way as what He causes, and He is not present to Himself as He is present to what He causes. In considering God alone, his distinguishing features all fall away. His essential activity vanishes. He is a lone, existential unit. Which is exactly what one would expect, given that EACH God is supra-essential.
Fail at the beginning : God is not “A” thing, “A” being. God IS Being. Fatal mistake, demolishes the whole argument.
If God isn’t “something”, an individual unit, then you are worshiping nothing at all. “Being”, even “Being Itself”, is individuated, it can be understood comprehensively as a whole unit. I did not accuse the Christian God of being a mere thing, or a mere being. “The second, more pressing issue for monotheism is that, according to it’s metaphysics, the principle of individuation is ALSO an Individual itself.” Learn to comprehend what you are reading.
RN,
First, a general comment. If you have an order in your arguments, please follow it. Do not start from the second point, in such condescending way (“simple introduction” – really?).
Now, from the top:
“So we must be able to speak of concepts like essence and existence as if they are distinct, complete units” is not contradicted by the fact that in God these two concepts coincide. We can speak of concepts in a distinct way, which helps with the understanding of their nature.
“in God, both subjects are somehow the same thing” = I wouldn’t express it this way. In God, both subjects are present at the same time, but we can understand them separately. They do not become interchangeable.
“one individual” = God is not “one individual”; He is. Period. Without attributes. Your response to ML seems to indicate a slight confusion with the physical realm (perhaps due to the insufficiency of words, whereas they relate to God’s nature).
“This of course makes complete nonsense” = if it’s “of course”, doesn’t need to be stated. Perhaps, it doesn’t make sense to you, a self-professed Platonist. Personally, I choose Aquinas over Plato.
“misappropriation of the concept of Plato’s One” = Aquinas simply reconciles Plato’s One, or Good, with his idea of God’s nature – how’s that misappropriation?
Too many things now to comment, except maybe for this at the end:
“God, as He is, in and of Himself, is not the cause of Himself, and cannot change Himself in any way, as He lacks any potentialities to actualize’ = incorrect, in my view. God cannot change Himself because there’s no need for. If He needed change, He would’ve been imperfect a) before the change or, b) after. Since God is perfection, change is unnecessary.
Fun, for sure.
“So we must be able to speak of concepts like essence and existence as if they are distinct, complete units” is not contradicted by the fact that in God these two concepts coincide. We can speak of concepts in a distinct way, which helps with the understanding of their nature.- In response all I have to say is: “In God it is impossible that existence be distinct from essence.” St. Thomas Aquinas. So there is Aquinas affirming that in God they do not just coincide, but are really the same thing.
“one individual” = God is not “one individual”; He is. Period. Without attributes.- If God is not an individual subject of understanding, then He is not. If God is an individual subject of understanding, then He IS, that is, He exists. Individual does not mean “a being among many.” At this point, one can say that without attributes, God is identical to His identity, as identity is not an attribute but is instead what attributes would be attributed to. But following my argument further down, this is what one can say of any God.
“misappropriation of the concept of Plato’s One” = Aquinas simply reconciles Plato’s One, or Good, with his idea of God’s nature – how’s that misappropriation?- The One is not God in Plato’s philosophy, as it does not positively exist, or exercise causal power. When Plato writes “The One is not, and is not one.”, he’s not saying that the One is some apophatic approach to Deity before the comma, and he is not saying that the One is to be understood as something like Being Itself afterwards to distinguish it from mere beings. The One is a negative principle, whereby we can understand the goodness of EACH thing, insofar as each thing is a unity, a whole. Which is what I lay out in my argument above.
“God, as He is, in and of Himself, is not the cause of Himself, and cannot change Himself in any way, as He lacks any potentialities to actualize’ = incorrect, in my view. God cannot change Himself because there’s no need for. If He needed change, He would’ve been imperfect a) before the change or, b) after. Since God is perfection, change is unnecessary.- This argument doesn’t challenge the point I make, as it is simple rephrasing.
RN,
“In response all I have to say is…” = Aquinas is responding to the objection that God does not “possess” (for lack of a better term) both essence and existence, not that the two concepts are one and the same in Him. Aquinas, in his answer, uses God’s qualities to refute this objection, and demonstrates why God must possess both. But the two concepts -essence and existence – must be kept and defined individually, or the argument cannot stand: if I claim possession of two contrasting attributes, but define them as one and the same in myself, my claim fails. Furthermore, a better quote from the angelic doctor would be, “Therefore God is His own existence, and not merely His own essence”.
“If God is not an individual subject of understanding, then He is not…” = Since you have corrected (or explained) what do you mean by “individual”, I think we agree in part. Your further remarks, though, are (in my opinion) incorrect: “But following my argument further down, this is what one can say of any God” = not necessarily. Your argument is a reminder of the (moronic one, if you allow) atheist argument of the teapot in the sky. If the teapot is a teapot, it is not God. If it’s God, it’s not a teapot. Similarly, any god out there who is not God has (or would have, if they existed – which I do not believe) specific attributes, most noticeably mortality, or at least changeability, hence they are not God.
“The One is not God in Plato’s philosophy, as it does not positively exist, or exercise causal power” = I never claimed it did. My remarks are, a) why would this be misappropriation, which has a negative connotation in itself (mis-), and b), why is appropriation (neutral term) a problem, since it’s the way our thoughts and culture evolve. Just because Plato expressed a concept, doesn’t mean that said concept must remain static and untouched for eternity. Aquinas builds upon Plato’s One his (much more effective, again in my opinion) definition of God.
“This argument doesn’t challenge the point I make, as it is simple rephrasing” = I beg to differ. You seem to imply that God cannot (i.e., doesn’t have the power) to change, hence His claim of omnipotence is unjustified. I stated that change is not outside of God’s reaches (for lack of better terms, again), it is simply unnecessary. If you truly believe what have written few paragraph above (“He can bring about any logically coherent outcome He so desires”, “logically coherent” being the defining terms), it follows that, since change would imply imperfection either before of after, God had not put in place a “logically coherent” succession of events from the start, which is in contrast with His perfection.
Again, fun. You can have the last words, if so wish. But, so far, none of your arguments holds their own against Aquinas’.
If God IS identical with His existence, and IS identical with His essence, then they are the same and not distinguished in any way. That is how Gods individuation is understood. God is God, without attributes or parts.This is reaffirmed multiple times in Scholasticism. This is why the Scholastic interpretation of Deity fails. In taking yourself as an example, as you do above, the point seems to get missed. You are contingent, and your essence and existence are distinct by your very nature, whereas in God they cannot be. So I would say that objection begs the question rather than answers it.
An individual is something that in some way is a whole, a unit, as that is what allows us to understand it and examine it in whatever way is appropriate. As it stands, any individual cannot also be the principle of individuation, as it would be an example of what the principle is to explain. So the principle of individuation cannot be a positively existing individual in order to avoid circular argumentation. As far as it goes for the teapot example, Gods differ via identity, not by “qualities”. If the One is a negative principle, it is not substantial, and is non-causative. If it is not substantial, it is supra-essential. As no Deity so understood could be beneath any principle, each God must also be supra-essential. This means that each God is not a member of any class, kind, or species, but is instead a wholly unique existential Individual. This is what is meant by Plato when he says that EACH God is the best and most beautiful thing. Being wholly unique, there can be no comparison between Them. It would also follow naturally that they cannot be compared to mere “teapots”.
As I have made clear in the above comment, Aquinas did not build upon the One, he made a circular argument out of it instead, as his concept of individuation is also an Individual.
If God is purely actual, and has no potentials as they would constitute parts, then God cannot change. Hence, it is logically impossible that God can change Himself in any way. It is absolutely out of His reach to do so. This is because God is already, perfectly Himself. This is because God, like any Deity, is actually supra-essential.
LLC: For classical theists, there is no *real* distinction between God’s essence and God’s existence; they’re both different ways of referring to the exact same thing. So, while the principle of individuation for everything else is essence or existence; according to classical theism, for God it is not either, because neither is *really* there for him: in reality, or ex parte re, there is only *God*. We can talk about analogy, we can even talk about metaphor, but at the end of the day, ex parte re, there’s no such ‘thing’ as essence or existence in God, there is only God.
This is not the controversial part, it’s just standard classical theism.
The issue is then how it can be that “the” principle of individuation is one thing for everything else and another for God. This principle *just is* what makes *anything* whatsoever to be itself, including God (even if only by analogy). Insofar as you say the principle of individuation is essence and or existence, you violate this principle by going on to deny it of God. Inasmuch as you make God to be this principle, you not only make essence and or existence explanatorily superfluous as individuators, thereby showing there is a deeper way to understand God than as ipsum esse subsistens, *but* you also say that what individuates absolutely all things is another thing, which is manifestly incorrect.
S,
To tell the truth, your post is quite confusing to me. It’s not necessarily from your side; it may be my limitation, but to me, it sounds as copied and pasted from diverse sources.
If you wish, can you possibly (meaning, you can express these objections in a different way, and are willing to do it), rewrite it?
Thanks in advance.
LLC: No worries this stuff can get abstract. At the end of the day, I see monotheists addressing this atheistic objection jist like Joe did: by distancing “God” from “gods.” But, this is *such* a disservice to folks who may never otherwise hear either from actual polytheists today or from the polytheist philosophers and theologians of old that the Gods are not contingent or finite and that these overly literal interpretations of the myths are just as simplistic as taking Gensis literally. I don’t expect you to find cracks in the Thomistic foundation in com boxes, but I hope Richard and I can at least bring it to people’s attention that polytheism should not be dismissed by monotheists and atheists when talking about this objection. It should be refuted, not dismissed, and that requires hearing the polytheists out.
S,
I agree; these discussions can get quite abstract. Perhaps this is due to the inefficiency of our communication channels. If we could communicate by thoughts, instead of words, maybe mutual understanding (not necessarily agreement) would be easier to achieve. I can tell from RN’s remarks that either I failed to explain my thoughts, or that he is not understanding them. I don’t see any purpose in repeating the same arguments, so I prefer to take my leave. I am not a teacher, and I am not good in explaining the same concept in different ways.
Personally, since I accept the God of the Bible and His Thomistic description (premises that are completely satisfactory to me, both intellectually and spiritually), polytheism never made sense to me. I don’t know if I would characterize Joe’s argument as simply “distancing” God from the gods; to me, God’s Thomistic description makes Him necessarily unique.
If I accept God as described above, one is enough. You say that “Gods are not contingent or finite”; ok, so, how can you theorize coexistence (again, for lack of a better word) of two infinite gods? Why not ten, then? How about an infinite number of infinite gods, “wholly unique, each the best and most beautiful thing”? Where is the logical necessity behind it?
But, as you say, at the end of the day it’s important to have an open discussion.
Anyhow, again, good fun. Thanks for the (short) discussion. Incidentally, if your pic is indicative of your line of employment, also thank you very much for your service, and be safe!
Now, what distinguishing feature would each supra-essential God possess, so that They are not all collapsed into one another? Identity. Each God would be Themselves, and would be Themselves absolutely. Dionysus is Dionysus, perfectly. Zeus is Zeus, totally and completely. Aphrodite, before the chosen display of any limiting characteristic, could only ever be Aphrodite. Here there is no confusion about “kinds”, or “species”, for these are essential determinations, and these determinations do not hang over the Gods, but instead depend upon Them.
Now consider the concept of non-extension. If each God is non-extended, when we conceptually “see” the God, when we go as far as we can in grasping the God with intellect, we come to a place where each God can be so grasped with thought. At least, as far as we are able. That is to say, we arrive at a point where we can see that each God is in each God, as there is nowhere else for them to be. This is the concept of panta en pasin, or that all things are in all things, but in each appropriately. If then each God is in each God, and Gods cannot have parts, then it cannot be understood that each God is a part of each God, but instead that this is a consequence of each being a non-extended whole. If one arrives at a conception of the identity of Zeus, say, one should also be able to grasp the identity of Loki, or Indra, or Amaterasu-no-kami. As this is a consequence of existing as a First Thing for every God, there can be no pantheonic limit to the application of this principle. So here we have in the first moment of apprehending these Individuals a mutual affirmation of their existence for Themselves, with Themselves. It should be clear by this point that attempts to reduce this existential sharing down to a singular Individual is deeply nihilistic and is the absolute seed of modern atheism.
The beauty of bsing an argument : let me take words from Catholics and Christians, and turn them into a parody, then obviously conclude that the argument is wrong. This is what you’re doing.
And it can easily be shown : how can you prove that your “pantheon of deities” is nothing more than multiple aspects of the same thing ? This is exactly what you’re doing.
I can show that they aren’t aspects of the same thing via my argument, while you can’t even show what I’ve gotten wrong in my argument. Do you even syllogism, bro?
As Georges Courteline said…
…”To sound like an idiot in the eyes of a fool is a gourmet pleasure.”
Thank you for granting me such a pleasure, RN.
In other words : “Learn to comprehend what you are reading.”? All I see is a baboon contemplating his own butthole, and calling it the moon.
I’ve always liked St Anselm’s Proof of God.
1- God means the greatest conceivable being
2- A being that exists in actuality is greater than a being that exists in potentiality.
3- Therefore God exists.
Perfection is not at the top of a scale, for all scales deal implicitly or explicitly in relation, and relation obliterates any notion of transcendence, which is a required component when it comes to understanding any Deity. Anselm fails.
No, you fail.
Your entire comment and pseudomonstration is an equivocation on “individuation”. Go back to Logic and Argument 101.
Anselm’s Proof actually treats God as the greatest conceivable “Being”, not as Being Itself, and if God is the greatest such Being we can consider, then it follows that the relationship between God and each other thing is then scalar in its nature. Furthermore, my comments on individuation are not even in this comment, but others. And in those arguments, while I am not explicit, it can be seen that those who have equivocated on Individuation aren’t polytheists, but monotheists instead. Please try to calm down and actually focus on arguments in a considerate manner.
Well written article.
It goes a bit similar to https://lastedenblog.wordpress.com/2019/11/14/some-of-us-just-go-one-god-further-2/ . Good work, Joe !
The author is completely missing the point. Comparing two non-beliefs is a comparison of epistemology, not the evidence. A better comparison would be the comparison of the Catholilc deity to the Mormon deity, or Allah, or Vishnu, etc. etc. etc.
Also, he gets the evidence wrong. We do not have the writings of a SINGLE eyewitness of Yesuha while he was alive. The gospels are anonymous. Paul had a vision. Additionally, the stories of most martyrs are simply stories the early church made up. There is no hard evidence that these people died for their faith (other than maybe Peter, and that is questionable whether he died for his faith). Of course dying for one’s faith is not that impressive either, given the number of people who die for Allah.