Truth Unites - The Ontological Argument is Sound!

Episode Date: February 26, 2024

In this video Gavin Ortlund gives an overview and defense of Anselm's ontological argument for the existence of God. My book on Anselm: https://www.amazon.com/Anselms-Pursuit-Joy-Commentary-Proslogion/dp/0813232759/ Josh Rasmussen, "New Thoughts on My New Gödelian Ontological Argument": https://worldviewdesign.substack.com/p/new-thoughts-about-my-new-godelian David Chalmbers, "Does Conceivability Entail Possibility?": https://consc.net/papers/conceivability.html Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

This video is going to be an overview of the ontological argument. I've worked very hard on this, read some new books, looked back through some old books, wrote out a script. Actually, I was going to say a compact script. This is going to be a pretty long video. But I've tried to organize it well. I try to be worth your time here. This is important to me because the ontological argument is my favorite idea ever. It's such a cool argument. It's trying to argue for the existence of God by thought alone, apart from any prior observations or experiences, just from the idea of God, even if you don't, I'm going to try to make the case that it should be taken seriously. And that's true, even if you don't think it's a successful argument, because it's actually

wrestling with this argument is a good introduction to philosophy in general. My goal, what I've tried to do in writing out my script here is break it down into as clear an expression as possible to make this as popular level and accessible as possible. Because a lot of people, I mean, this argument gets really technical. So I'll try and not to sacrifice, that's the balancing act. Try not to sacrifice the technicalities and the accuracy and that side of things and bring in the best of the scholarship to the discussion, but also be as clear as possible. That's one of the goals of my YouTube channel. I'm trying to find that balance so that people leave the videos saying, hey, I understand this better and that kind of thing.

So to that end, I'm going to have four steps. First, we'll give an overview of the argument and I'll make five introductory comments. If you just watch that far, because this is going to be. going to be a long video. But if you just watch that far, you'll get a basic sense. Then, secondly, I want to give three reasons why it's worth engaging this argument. And that'll get into the history a little bit. Then we'll, in the third section, this will be probably the longest, we'll go through the two most famous objections to the argument, and I'll defend it from those objections. First, Guanillo's parody objection, and second, Emmanuel Kant's objection, that existence is not a predicate. I'll explain those as we get there. And we'll interface

a lot with two books that are right behind me over there. Now fresh on my shelf, a book by Graham Opie, which is really good, and a book, a couple of books, some that he edited as well, and then a book by Jordan Sobel, which is really good. These are two high-level critics of the ontological argument today. And then the fourth section, finally, we'll just sum things up. I'll mention a few of the other responses that can be given, and stay tuned for that, because I'm going to give you my overall conclusion and basically how I think you can avoid the argument and reject the if you want to, because I'm going to basically make the case that the argument is valid and sound within the context of certain presuppositions, but it's also rationally avoidable because you can

reject those presuppositions, though there's some cost to rejecting them. So we'll get there and I'll explain that. Diving in, it's, it's late here. It's probably the definition of insanity to try to talk about the ontological argument late at night when your brain is tired. Mine is, but I'll do my best here if I misspeak at points. I'll try to clarify it later in the editing with some text on the bottom. Sometimes I try to do that. Okay. First, just an overview of this because there's lots of different ontological arguments and it's disputed exactly how to classify them.

But I believe basically after all these centuries, one of the best and one of the most intriguing and most kind of subtle of the ontological arguments is the original one that goes back to Anselm in the 11th century. Some people say there's anticipations of it before him, like in Augustine and Plato and others, but the first real ontological argument, I think, is in Anselm. So that's going to be the focus in this video, rather than later, you know, the thing right now, people love to talk about the contemporary modal ontological arguments like Alvin Plantiga has a great one.

Kurt Gödel has a fascinating one that we'll touch on and so forth. But I'm going back to the beginning to Anselms. And basically, I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the personal. which is where this argument comes up. And the whole point of my dissertation is basically a commentary on the pro slogion, basically saying the thesis of it is that there's more to that book than just an argument for God's existence. So I'm a big believer in reading this argument in context, and that explains so much about it, why it's in the form of a prayer, while you've got 24 more chapters after the argument establishing God's existence and so forth, more on all that later.

but let's just start here with the portion of Anselm's argument that is concerned with God's existence. And that's in chapter two. Anselm defines God as a being than which nothing greater can be thought. Remember that phrase. And then he distinguishes existing in thought or in the understanding or in the mind in intellectu is the Latin word versus existence in reality. And then he says this. And certainly that greater than which cannot be understood cannot

exist only in thought. For it exists only in thought, it could also be thought of as existing in reality as well, which is greater. If, therefore, that than which greater cannot be thought exists in thought alone, then that than which greater cannot be thought turns out to be that than which something greater actually can be thought. But that is obviously impossible. Therefore, something then which greater cannot be thought undoubtedly exists both in thought and in reality. So this is kind of like a reductio-type argument, meaning he's establishing a claim by showing that the opposite leads to a contradiction. You can put this in a syllogism. I'll put up the one from Alvin Plantica's book, The Nature of Necessity, and you can pause the screen and read that through if you'd like to.

But the basic idea involves this logical inference from the idea of God in the human mind. Now, a lot of people, when they first, I remember when I first heard this argument, same reaction as most people have. And I've heard philosophy professors say the same thing when students first hear it. You want to laugh at it. And you want to say, surely this is just a trick. This is just a word game. The philosopher Schopenhauer talked about this as a charming joke. And a lot of people have that immediate intuition, or you'll hear this assertion, which will come back to this later, that, well, you can't just define God into existence. And I'll address that at the end of this. But just let's make some observations about it. And then actually, in the the second section of this video, I'm going to really hammer the point that it's worth taking this argument seriously. It's not something that you should just wave your hand at like so often happens. But just let's first understand it a little bit, like what is going on here? So five observations, just to introduce this argument, notice that Anselm does not define God as the greatest possible being, or the greatest thing that you can think of. You know, you hear these misunderstandings

all the time. Anselm's definition is much more subtle. It avoids assuming that God can be thought. Speaking of that than which nothing greater can be thought does not actually assume a positive conception of that entity in your mind. And that's very important because actually Anselm wants to preserve the incomprehensibility of God. That's actually one of the very conclusions of the argument later on in the pro-Slogion in chapter 15. That is just as important to Anselm in his journey to the beatific vision, the sight of God as anything else, including God's existence. So Ansel wants to say, you know, in other words, by the very same reasoning, Anselm is later going to prove that basically not only are you that than which a greater cannot be thought, but you are also something greater

than can be thought. So that's part of his, so we just want to understand there that Anselm is not assuming you can think of God. The exact technical clunky wording is actually important to that. Okay, second thing, what does Ansel mean by greatness? There are different kinds of greatness, one philosopher distinguishes between four different ways something can be great, and it's the last of these, I'll put these up on the screen, that Anselm is dealing with. He's talking about intrinsic greatness. By greatness, Anselm means basically objectively better and more excellent and so forth. So Anselm has a kind of hierarchical conception of greatness. And that's a very controversial assumption, and we're going to return to that at the end of the video as a potential weak spot, but I just want to

flag that for now. Third thing, what does it mean when he says exist in the understanding? Okay, so things that exist in the understanding, or you could just say exist in the mind, are simply things you can think of. So Anselm's metaphor is a painter who's about to paint something before he actually paints it. He's imagining it. He's thinking of it. It exists in his mind. Now, this distinction of existence in the mind versus in reality is very tricky. Don't picture it like this. You're looking out. at the world and you're seeing people walking around and there are these little cloud bubbles over their head that contain some things. And then outside of that, there are physical objects outside

of the cloud bubbles. And so you have these two parallel kinds of existence, the things people are thinking about and the physical objects that are kind of equally in existence. Instead, think of it more like this, that there's two different ways to exist in the first place. And existence in the mind is this kind of shadowy, degraded realm of existence. The philosopher Alexius Minong called this subsistence. And so if you want to learn a new vocabulary word, Minongianism, which I have no idea if I'm pronouncing that, right, because I've never, believe it or not, it doesn't come up in conversation. It just comes up in books. But this is basically the philosophy that there are different kinds of existence. And there's more to it than that.

but for our purposes, just think of things that subsist, okay, rather than exist, would be things like Sherlock Holmes or the stone table in Narnia, or the present king of France. You can think of them, so they exist in your mind, but they're not in reality. So they have a different, the point is they have a different kind of existence. Now, not all versions of the ontological argument assume Minangianism or something else like that, where you have different kinds of existence, but mine does, because I'm arguing, because I'm using Anselm's version, and that's another really controversial feature of the argument that can be challenged, and we'll come back to a little bit at the end, but I'm just trying to be fair in laying this out,

laying out my presuppositions up front. Okay, fourth thing to notice, if you noticed when I put up that passage from Anselm, and I would encourage people to read through the whole proslogion, it's my favorite book ever written, it's so fascinating. If you noticed, it came in the form of a prayer. Anselm was a monk at the time of writing this, and his whole goal in the proslogion is not really to prove that God exists. That's involved. That's like one tiny step. It's like think of Anselm was running a marathon, and that's like six feet of the marathon. That's just, I mean, that's kind of saying it too strong, but that's just one penultimate step in the larger goal of a spiritual meditation that by which he's trying to prove everything he believes about God.

And that certainly includes his existence and the unique way that God exists, but it goes way beyond that into the deepest matters of the human soul. In the preface of the book, he says he's looking for one single argument that has three goals to prove, one, that God truly is, two, that he is the supreme good needing nothing else in which all things need for their being and well-being, and three, whatever else we believe about the divine substance. So, you know, in other words, his purpose is way more. It's about the whole doctrine of God. and what the doctrine of God means for the human heart. That's really the whole goal of my book on this is to talk about that. And so that's why the first chapter of the proselyleon is the longest and most energized chapter where he's praying to see God. And then when you start in chapter two, the first sentence, he's basically praying.

He's asking God to grant as a gift of divine illumination that he could understand that God exists as we believe you are exist as you exist. So that's an adverbial phrase that's basically saying Anselm is not just interested in the bare fact that God exists, even here in Persologian 2. He's interested in the whole quality of God's existence. You see that in the adverb truly, that you truly exist, in the little qualifying phrase insofar as you know it is useful. So he's trying to catch something of who God is here. You see that the most in the next chapter, proselyon 3, the exact same argument is used to prove that God exists so truly that he cannot even be thought not to exist. Okay? That is just as much

a part of his argument as Chapter 2. And so this is why in the 1960s philosophers like Norman Malcolm and Charles Hartshorn revived the ontological argument by saying there's two separate arguments. In Persologian 2, Anselm proves God exists. In proselylegyon 3, he proves God necessarily exists. And they're saying a lot of the criticisms of the ontological argument only apply to the argument of chapter two, not to the necessary existence argument of chapter three. And I think that's a helpful thing to draw attention to. I would even go further than them. I would say even that still falls short of reading Anselm very carefully, because, number one, there's an organic continuity from proslogion two to proslogion three. The argument of chapter three is already entailed in the

very divine name. And the emphasis on chapter two on God's true, God existing truly. And then in chapter three, it's not a separate argument. It's actually two phases of one argument that continues on past chapter three, and chapter three actually doesn't talk about necessary existence. That would certainly be entailed by what it talks about, but Anselm talks there about that God cannot be thought not to exist. That's different. Necessary existence means something could not not exist. Did I say that right? could not not exist. Two negatives I'm going for. Again, I told you I'm tired. That's necessary existence. To be unable to be thought not to exist is something different. And that's what Anselm

says. That's the title of the chapter. That's what the logical conclusion of Perselogion 3. So honestly, so many treatments of this argument don't read the text carefully of Anselm. And when Anselm states what is the kind of existence he has in view here positively, he speaks of God's true existence, God's great existence, that God exists differently than all other things so that he possesses existence. So, and the point is this, I'm getting a little bit in the weeds already, but I'll wrap up this fourth point. The point is Anselm is concerned with way more than just that God exists in some generic sense. He's concerned with the whole quality and aroma of God's existence. He thinks his argument proves that and much else besides. So he has absolutely no interest in a God who just has generic existence along with everything

else. And that's going to be really important to evaluate whether the argument works. Okay, fifth point, just introducing things here. If we wanted to step back, maybe someone is watching this and you're thinking, okay, what in the world is going on here? What kind of weird argument is this? And if we just wanted to step back and try to articulate something of kind of what the ontological argument is trying to do and why it makes sense. My own way of putting it and summing up

sort of the import of it is this, that the uniqueness and necessity of God impresses itself upon us at the rational level, just as it does at every other level of our existence. So think of it like this, just as the moral argument is an attempt to articulate how the reality of God impresses itself upon us at the moral plane to our conscience. So the ontological argument is an attempt to articulate how the reality of God impresses itself upon us at the rational plane to our thinking. Matthew Levering, one of my favorite contemporary theologians, describes the practical implications of the ontological argument as that God is inscribed in our very rationality. This is a very Anselmian way to think. Reason for Anselm is a kind of spiritual pathway. God is the inaccessible light.

one avenue by which we can access and behold God is through contemplation, rational contemplation. Conscience is another. And so one of the texts on this argument that's summarizing certain subjective interpretations of the ontological argument that are arguing it reasons in a regressive manner from an activity to its inner ground says the ontological argument does not discover what is given to consciousness but what is at the foundation of consciousness. So in other words, think of it like this. The ontological argument does not prove God.

It's not going, okay, I'm working really hard with my brain, so now I know out there somewhere God exists. Rather, it's drawing attention to the presence of God in the very act of proving. The very active rational contemplation itself immediately reveals the existence of something that cannot even be thought not to exist. The reason I like the ontological argument

is such an argument is kind of fitting if there is a God. If God exists, then that there should be a proof like the ontological argument for his existence is fitting. It corresponds to his own uniqueness that you could know him in this sort of a priori basic way. And I think one value of the ontological argument is that it enhances the prior probability of God that you're going to bring to the table with the consideration of other. arguments. But let me say one last thing about why I think the argument is valuable and kind of the practical import of it is not only might it set you up with a little more sympathy to see theism as a live option when you're looking at other arguments, it really is not competitive with other arguments.

It fits well with them. It complements them nicely. You might say it lays some groundwork for other arguments to build off. So if you think of like the cosmological argument, the on some critics, these two kind of bump into each other. They have some contact points. They have some similarities. Some critics have even said that the cosmological argument is just the ontological argument in disguise. But think of it like this. They have a similar movement. The cosmological argument is saying like this, external reality is like a thread. External physical reality is like a thread, which if you pull on it long enough, eventually you get to God. the ontological argument is saying that internal mental reality is like a thread which pulled on long enough eventually you get to God. In both cases, you feel the need for this kind of qualitatively different kind of reality to make sense of things.

Whether you're looking through a telescope up at the stars or whether you're looking inward through contemplation at the mystery that sustains all our thinking, either way, you bump into this one kind of primal reality that is beyond all other realities and that is qualitatively different. Okay, that's one way of my best effort. You're going to notice throughout this video that I'm going to try to describe things that feel beyond language and you're going to feel my heart and why despite it's so, I know this is really kind of nerdy and stuff like that and already some people are just completely lost or all you're thinking about is like, wow, this is weird.

I get it. I totally get it. How do you describe how this argument can be so technical and dense and at the same time so emotional? And so emotional, not like, how do I describe that? Existentially relevant. Maybe that's a better way to put it. It touches on the deepest longings of the human heart. I hope you'll feel that.

I hope I'll try to articulate something of that along the way. So this is my best effort to articulate why, even though this argument's kind of odd, it's actually quite fitting given who God is. And I'm trying to situate its practical role in relation to the other arguments. Okay, let me say three things. This section will be briefer on just why it's worth everybody should think about this argument. Everybody should give it some thought. It's worth engaging.

Let me give three reasons why. Number one, it's an incredibly resilient argument. Once you get past the initial wave of skepticism, it's really hard to say what's wrong with it. It can be formulated as a valid argument, and the premises are not as easy to knock down as you might expect. I hear this over and over where people will say, oh, obviously that's dumb, but then they'll try to articulate why. It's very hard to do. Burgeoned Russell said it's easier to feel convinced that it must be fallacious than it is to find out precisely where the fallacy lies. That's so true. Here's a funny anecdote. Russell himself, he eventually rejected the argument quite decisively, but once he had an experience

where he says I'd gone out to buy a tin of tobacco and was going back with it along Trinity Lane, when I suddenly threw it up in the air and exclaimed, great God in boots, the ontological argument is sound. I find that so hilarious to think that if like that's what you would say, you are very British, if that's what you say when you discover the ontological argument is sound. But the very experiential nature of that, you know, lots of people, including myself, lots of people have had experiences where all of a sudden the power and force of it hits you. When you're thinking, well, obviously this is dumb, obviously this is dumb, obviously this can't work, and then all of a sudden it's like a light bulb goes off.

And you see there is this kind of experiential dimension to the argument. In fact, Anselm himself, what precipitated the argument was a profound experience during prayer. He was trying to sum up into one argument, the many different arguments of his previous work, the monologian, he was losing sleep, he can't eat, he's lost his, appetite, he's distressed, eventually he gives up, and then all of a sudden, boom, it just hit him while he was in prayer. Very interesting that the experiential component of it is standing in the background. You feel that as you read through the proslogia.

And I remember for me, the first time it hit me, I was a junior in high school sitting at the airport. I'll never forget that experience. That experience is what launched my entire theological career. That's when I knew I wanted to study theology with my life. I put it on Twitter yesterday. This is kind of a joke, but it's... like the Rocky Balboa of theistic proofs in that it's easy to underestimate, and it's harder to actually knock it down than you think it is. Now, lest you think I'm just weirdly obsessed with his argument,

it might surprise you to learn that a lot of philosophers take it seriously. Note this comment from Graham Appi. He says some of the great figures in Western philosophy, including Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Hagell, and for a brief period, Bertrand Russell, have been proponents of ontological arguments, and there has been significant support for ontological arguments in some quarters of the Western Academy since the middle of the 20th century. And you can see these 20th century modal versions of the argument like Kurt Godels, Plantingas, I mentioned Hartshorn and Norman Malcolm, people like that. Those are not lightweight arguments. They're not to be dismissed. You know, here's the thing. People love to just wave their hand at this argument, and that really isn't fitting.

because if you get into the literature, you see all the best opponents of it aren't using the common arguments. In fact, the other thing you see, and this is why you shouldn't dismiss the argument, is that there's no consensus as to why it's wrong. In this video, I'm going to go through the top two criticisms, and I hope to convince you, if the argument doesn't work, and I'll say how you can avoid it, but if the argument doesn't work, it's not for those two reasons. those two most common objections, if you just type in ontological argument to YouTube and watch clips, the common things you'll hear, the parody arguments and cons objection, they do not work, they're really bad, they're surprisingly weak. The best objections are other things that are less common. The other thing about that makes this argument so resilient is it multiple times has been

dead and buried and rejected by everybody and just everybody thinks it's done, but then it comes back to life. So during and soon after Anselm's life, the proselyon was used in monasteries and in cathedral schools for devotional purposes for education, along with his prayers and meditations. And this argument was much discussed, but then Aquinas rejected it, which was hugely influential. Although Aquinas was not working with the text of the proslogion itself, it seems, but rather with Anselm's argument as it had come to be used in association with the whole family of other arguments having to do with how God's existence is self-evident. and some of the passages in Thomas are kind of strange about this, but without getting into that, the influence of that was the argument was basically dormant for a while, then something like it, it's still called the ontological argument, as we'll see, it's very different from Anselm, but an ontological argument is revived in the modern era with René Descartes and many others,

Baruch Spinoza, but then it seems to die again in the wake of Emmanuel Kant's criticism, which we're going to discuss. But again, Kant was not dealing with Anselm. He was dealing with a Cartesian version of the argument articulated by Christian Wolf. So you have twice now where the ontological argument is widely considered refuted, even though it was not Anselm's version directly. First with Aquinas, then with Kant. And that is still true today.

A lot of people aren't really reading Anselm. They're dealing with some other argument. But basically then, so you get to the 20th, century and you have Bertrand Russell, who's in his history of Western philosophy, able to say, basically, this argument has been decisively proved invalid. But this is what always happens. The argument is resilient, because whenever somebody wants to bury it, it comes back to life. And so you have another atheist philosopher, Anthony Kenney, in his own history of philosophy, who uses Bertrand Russell's comment as an example of the danger of making a definitive pronouncement like

that because this was overturned, largely thanks to the wonderful work of Alvin Plantinga, who's a wonderful philosopher, and the Hartshorn and Malcolm and a few others too. And then you have Kurt Gertl's really technical modal version, and I'm not going to get into that one here. If you want to see an interesting Gerdelian ontological argument, I'll link to this article by Josh Rasmussen. Josh does a lot of great philosophical work, and I think you'll find that a great. great kind of introduction to that issue, but I'm not going to get into that for now.

I'm going to stick with Anselm's version for this. So the only point I'm trying to make right now is this. It's wise to not just dismiss this argument as a charming joke. There's more to it. Okay? It wouldn't stick around this long and have these different kind of proponents if there wasn't a little more going on here. Plantiga in the 1970s went so far as to say, I do not believe that any philosopher has ever given a cogent and conclusive refutation of the ontological argument in its various forms. I think he was right. The typical objections that we're going to go through are shockingly weak. But since Plantica wrote that, you have Opi in the 1990s who took up the challenge of his book, he says in the preface, partly to respond to Plantica, and then you have a

really strong critique from Jordan Sobel, and there's others out there now, so we have to review the more recent history. We'll get into that a bit. So my only point for now is don't just wave the argument away. Take it seriously. It's more resilient than you think. Okay, second reason to study the the argument is that it really clarifies the concept of God. For me, the main value of this argument is not to convince someone who's set against God that they have to believe in God. That's not probably going to happen. More of the value is in elucidating the nature of God. That's why I love it. That's my motivation in making this video. And so you might say, well, this isn't the most practical argument for God, fair enough. But in other ways, you might say it's the most sort of

primal and basic. And also, it's the most ambitious. It's the one that is least likely to mislead you on who and what God is. Because the principle, basically, the ontological argument isn't just a philosophical argument or a scientific argument. It's a theological principle. If you have, like, the cosmological argument or the teleological argument, argument for God as first cause, argument for God from design, you're going to get a fairly generic conception of God. It's not obvious that they're even proving theism specifically, as opposed to like deism. But if you get the ontological argument, if it works, it's going to go a lot farther. It's going to tell you a lot about who God is, about how God exists. It can be extended to encompass the entire

package of divine attributes. That's what the persologian is all about. He's saying, you know, this argument, this one argument proves whatever else we believe about the divine essence to. And that's why after proselyan 2 through 4, he picks up with the exact same argument in proslogian 5. And then he goes forward asking, what therefore are you, Lord God, then whom nothing greater can be thought? So you see the flow of thought. It's like he's used this argument to show God exists. And now he's saying, okay, now what are you because you're that than which nothing greater can be thought? And he uses that same argument to harmonize different divine attributes, to establish God's nature, and ultimately to identify God as the object of all human desire.

All that comes out of the formula than which nothing greater can be thought. So the point is, it's worth thinking about this because if the argument is successful, it has a lot more implications. You might even say that if the argument is successful, it's the potential solution to the greatest question of all, namely, why does anything exist at all? Because if it's successful, the ontological argument proves the existence of a being who cannot even be thought not to exist, but who must exist necessarily. So the ontological argument isn't just about God. It's kind of a vision of everything.

And again, I'm not saying it works right now. I'm just trying to show the stakes here of what's involved. And it has to do with human happiness as well. There's a kind of existential implication for human beings. This is why a lot of people experience the ontological argument at an emotional level, at a spiritual level. This is the great focus of the whole proslogion. I have so much I could say about this, but to cut to the chase, I'll just say, when I was doing my research on this, there's one of the French works in the French scholarship on the proslogion

that has this little phrase, and he talks about how the proslogion has to do with the secret, silent desire of humanity. I always think of that. That really sums it up really well. where basically we're saying this argument is getting into what's going on in the human heart that we can't fully articulate. And if you want to know why it's so relevant to human desire, I don't want to say read my book, but that's what it's all about. Anyway, but it's too expensive, so sorry about that.

Anyway, third reason why it's worthwhile to engage this argument, whether you think it's successful or not, engaging the ontological argument is a great crash course into philosophy. Your stance for this argument is often going to be, it's often going to influence your view of abstract thought in general. Because there's no way to engage this argument without getting basically a kind of a good education about speculative thought along the way. Tyrone Goldschmidt, even though he doesn't think the argument ultimately works, says ontological arguments should not persuade nonetheless, nevertheless, else, ontological arguments are wonderful. They get us entangled in so many other philosophical puzzles, from philosophy of religion to philosophy of language, from metaphysics to ethics and beyond,

more so, I think, than any other argument does. Isn't that interesting? What a statement that basically saying this argument can get you into philosophy more than any other. Plantica puts it like this, many of the most naughty and difficult problems in philosophy meet in this argument. So to be specific, the ontological argument will get you into questions like, what's the nature of existence? What does it mean to exist? Does Narnia exist in a kind of shadowy realm? You know, we mentioned my Nongianism. What's the relationship between possibility and conceivability? If you can think of something, does that make it possible? Now, my argument does not depend upon that, but many ontological arguments do if you want a good in-depth treatment of that, of this idea that conceivability does entail possibility, see this article from David Chalmers. It's kind of an influential treatment of that.

It brings up the question of what does it mean to beg the question? Because a lot of people, one of the big concerns will talk about is that this argument begs the question. And one of the things that comes up is, well, what does it even mean to beg the question? You'll have people who will say, okay, yeah, it begs the question, which means to assume the conclusion, but it only softly begs the question rather than egregiously begs the question. And so it still has some evidential value. So that's kind of interesting because now you're getting into the very nature of arguments itself. Maybe the biggest thing that just comes up is the nature of logic itself. Basically, how powerful is logic? Is it possible to establish the real existence of something by purely

a priori reasoning just by working with the idea of it? Fascinating question. All right, let's dive in and let's take a look at the two most common objections. There's others as well, but these the ones you hear the most. I think based upon looking at the literature, I think I'm in good, I have good reason to focus on these two. Because even at the popular and the technical level, these are the big ones. Okay, the first is Guinello's parody objection. So a lot of people initially want to just say like, oh, you can't just define God into existence. And that's not fair. That's not what the ontological argument is doing. But people still have this sneaky feeling something is going on here like that, even if they can't put their finger on what is so sneaky.

And so they come up with these parody arguments to show that the same reasoning could lead to all these absurd conclusions like the greatest possible pizza or the greatest imaginable island or whatever it might be. According to Josh Rasmussen, the most serious and significant objection to Plantanga's ontological argument is that it is plagued by the problem of parallel arguments which have an opposite conclusion. This came up in Anselm's life, or something kind of similar to that. The parody of the Lost Island, another monk named Guanillo, posited an island than which nothing greater can be thought.

I'll share an example of someone talking about this on YouTube. So there was this guy called Guanelow, and Guanelow existed at the same time as Ansel. He was a contemporary of Ansel. And what he did is he went, look, bro, we can just replace the word the greatest possible being the term the greatest possible being with the greatest possible island and then we're going to have the greatest possible island if you now think of an island and it's perfect for you you're thinking it's got cookies it's got Seth Andrews narrating your life whatever it might be but you don't have existence as part of the

island's definition then well I can think of a greater island namely the one that you've just described but with the addition of existence it's better to exist than not exist that's the general thrust of course and it works just as much for Ireland. It also works for an evil being. The greatest possible evil being would be one that necessarily exists. And if you read the Bible, I actually think that evil being is better description of God than a good being. Or this is my favourite one. We can say that we can conceive of the worst possible argument and quite frankly the ontological argument competes for that. May even be it. We can if we like instead take a page out of Kant's book and point out that existence

is not a predica, existence is not an attribute, but rather that which attributes apply to. And in doing so, we can reject premise two. Sometimes I just pause so I can catch my breath and you can hear it from somebody else so you don't get tired of me talking the whole time. By the way, I'll address the Emanuel Kant objection next. Let's just briefly directly address the parity objection here. I actually think this response can be pretty decisively put to rest. Here's the response.

It's really simple. There is no such thing as an island than which nothing greater can be thought, nor is there any finite object to which you can apply the language than which nothing greater can be thought. Such ideas are logically incoherent. These objections simply fail to grasp. They haven't had that light bulb moment. They fail to grasp the absolute uniqueness of God as the purview of this argument. Here's how Plantica puts it. The idea of an island than which it's not possible that there be a greater is like the idea of a natural number than which is not possible that there be a greater than which none more crooked is possible. There neither is nor could be a greatest possible natural number. And the same goes for islands. No matter how great an island is, there could always be a greater. The qualities that make for greatness in islands, number of palm trees, a mountain quality of coconuts, for example, most of the

these qualities have no intrinsic maximum. That is, there is no degree of productivity or a number of palm trees or of dancing girls such that it is impossible that an island display more of that quality. And then Plantico goes on to note that the qualities that make an infinite being great, by contrast, do have an intrinsic maximum. For example, knowledge is a great-making power, and you can have all knowledge and be omniscient. Or power is a great-making attribute. You can have all power and be omnipotent and so forth. Again, I'm tired. I might have said the wrong thing. Knowledge, omniscient, power, omnipotent. Hopefully I got it right. If I say something else wrong, I'll ask for some grace here. So the point is, a being then which nothing greater can be thought

is just a completely different thing from an island or any other finite thing. You can't just take this logic and slap it on to finite objects. It makes them incoherent. Those things don't have an intrinsic maximum for their great making qualities, God does. One way to show that is to just try to conceptualize the island than which nothing greater can be thought or substitute any finite object and just start conceptualizing it. Try to imagine it in your mind. Think of the island, then which nothing greater can be thought. And I might just substitute the greatest conceivable island here as a shorthand. It's a little less clunky than saying then which, nothing over and over. Okay, so you conceptualize the island, and you realize that basically you just can keep on adding

more and more and more and more and more and more until it becomes God. So think of the island and you think, well, you know what, this island would be greater if it could accommodate my requests and my desires more greatly. Wouldn't it be greater if the island, if I could be sitting here on the sand of the island, and it was like the ship in Star Trek where, you know, they'll say, computer, do this, and it will materialize and you could just say, island, bring me a lemonade, and it would just materialize for you. That would be a greater island that could do that than one in which you just have to go get your own lemonade. And then you realize, well, if the island could do that,

wouldn't it be greater if it did that in a personal way, what actually cares about you, rather than just in a cold and calculating way? And then you say, well, wouldn't the island be greater if it could actually answer all of your prayers? Wouldn't the island be greater if it was actually omnipotent in the answering of your requests? That would be a greater island. And then you think, well,

wouldn't the island be greater if it could answer my prayers with perfect wisdom than if the island could answer my prayers but didn't have perfect wisdom? And you can see where this is going. You keep on adding great making qualities. Suddenly, you've got an island,

then you say, well, what if the island, what if its presence wasn't even restricted to itself? What if it also possessed existence beyond itself? So you keep on going like this. Now, if you're saying, wait a second, you're not even talking about an island anymore. That's the point. Because there is no such thing as an island than which nothing greater can be thought. The language, no greater can be thought, cannot be coherently applied to finite objects

because the qualities that make them great have no intrinsic maximum. You can just keep on ratcheting them up for eternity until they become God in your mind. This is why all parody arguments fail. They don't grasp the uniqueness of the formula, that in which nothing greater can be thought. An additional point to make in this connection is that a lot of these parity arguments don't have anything to do with greatness at all, and thus they're not even sufficiently similar to the ontological argument to function as a parody. Since the whole point of a parody, it has to use the same reasoning toward an absurd conclusion. But if it uses a completely different kind of reasoning than it's not even a parody. So let me, to express this concern,

let me show a little clip here about a realicorn. And a few years ago when I was in college and I was trying to come up with a simple way to explain this objection to people, I came up with something I call the realicorn. Now the realicorn, as I define it, is exactly the same thing as a unicorn, except it really exists. It exists by definition. Now, if you have a full and accurate understanding of what a realicorn is, you must believe in it. Because if you think that you, if you think that you thinking about a realicorn, but you're actually thinking of it as something that does not exist. You're not really thinking of a realicorn. You're just thinking of a unicorn. To think of the very concept of the realicorn is to believe that it exists. To accurately hold the concept

of the realicorn in your consciousness, you must think of it as existing. If you were to say something like, the realicorn does not exist, that statement could not possibly be true. It would be a contradiction in terms because the realicorn, by definition, exists. And after hearing this explanation of what a realicorn is, is anybody out there convinced that a realicorn actually does exist? This is the essence of the ontological argument. It doesn't work because simply adding existence to the definition of a thing does not conjure it into existence. Using the ontological argument to prove the existence of God and using the argument I just used to prove the existence of the realicorn are equally stupid. Now I'm not, whenever I show a clip,

I'm not trying to, you know, have a gotcha moment on someone. That's a common appeal in the literature as well. You can see Paul Henley talking about a being he calls Neck, which basically a being that has necessary existence, but he doesn't have perfect knowledge and perfect power and that kind of thing. And he talks about other beings who are the brothers of Neck, who have necessary existence, but then they have other deficiencies. But what you notice right away is that Neck is in no way defined in any way that has to do

with greatness. There's no reference to the language greater than which nothing. can be thought. And so this doesn't even come close enough to the ontological argument to work as an actual parody. It's just a different argument altogether. Maybe it could work towards some, like Cartesian ontological arguments, but it doesn't work with Anselm's argument. Same with a realicorn. Others have made similar arguments. Jordan Sobel's book has a discussion of magicians, which are existing magicians, unicrons, which are existing unicorns, so on and so forth. I think he has one for dragons. And all of this is to push against the notion that conceivability entails possibility.

He's arguing against that. Now, I'm not sure about that. I think David Hume was probably right when David Hume said, whatever the mind clearly conceives includes the idea of possible existence. But let's suppose that Hume is wrong and Sobel is right in the point he's making. My point just now is all that's targeted at a different form of the ontological argument than Anselms. You have to have the actual argument because the specific argument is working from that than which nothing greater can be thought. If you don't have that thing which nothing greater can be thought, you're not having a parody. You just have a completely different argument altogether. Things like magicans and unacrons and so forth, they have to have unsurpassable greatness for it to be a relevant parody of the

argument. Okay. This is the second point. All right. Let's, so the, so the parity arguments just don't work at all. But let's talk about cons. This is the big one. This is the biggest objection. I mean, what's amazing is we're going to see how confused and problematic it is. And yet, it was hugely influential. And it's not just my opinion. And most people say that now. But it was hugely influential in the history of philosophy. It's a great case study in how something can be really, really incoherent, border, I don't want to be too insulting, really problematic, really ambiguous, and yet really influential at the same time, which you wouldn't expect, but it happens in the history of philosophy. In 1781, Kant published Critique of Pure Reason. And basically, among other

things, he had critiques of what he called arguments employed by speculative reason in proof of the existence of a supreme being. The first one he addresses is the ontological argument. And again, he's not talking about Ans. He's not addressing Ansel. He's addressing a version of a Cartesian version, which is really important. But he's, the summary of his critique is often this line, existence is not a predicate. Now, what does that mean exactly? Lest anybody think I'm just being obtuse, everybody says,

this is weird, this is confused, this is obscure. Graham Opie in his wonderful book, ontological arguments and belief in God, cites several significant works on the ontological argument, and then he concludes, no one has ever produced a defensible elucidation of the claim that existence is not a predicate. And that's true. You get into the literature on this argument over and over and over.

The first thing these top-level philosophers will say is this is very obscure. Like what the heck did Kant mean? The chapter on Emmanuel Kant in this book that'll put up on the screen because I had to put all the books on my shelf, it's a Cambridge University book called Onological Arguments. there's a chapter on Kant, and he basically says there's very little consensus on what Kant even meant, and there may have been wildly different, and there's been all different constructions put on it. Later, he concludes the whole essay by noting that even among Kant scholars, there's increasing division about this claim, and that there is and will be no definitive argument as to

whether or not existence is a predicate. So this is not, you know, in other words, this whole idea existence is not a predicate what people do they just cite that as though that refutes the argument as though it were this kind of untouchable established axiom of truth the reality is it's both controversial and ambiguous so i'm not trying to say just yet that kant must be wrong i'm just trying to say the one thing we cannot do is just repeat the phrase existence is not a predicate and then move on thinking you've done something unless you clarify what you mean by that So let's try to clarify it here. What might this mean? Kant says being is evidently not a real predicate that is a conception of something which can be added to the conception of some other thing.

It is merely the positing of a thing or of certain determinations in it. Now, let's try to break this down. The word predicate is simply a grammatical term for what you designate concerning a subject. If I say the sentence, that car is red, then redness is the predicate. So we say, what does it mean to say existence is not a predicate? There's at least a couple of things involved. William Rowe basically says there's two different things that he means. J.L. Mackey and his older book says there are four distinct claims. Opie, Graham Appie, sees three distinct claims in this, and he notes that there have been

detected as many as eight. And what's so tricky is there's different kinds of predicates. So let me just give the three common options to work through them. Kant could be saying existence is not a grammatical predicate. He could be saying existence is not a real or defining predicate, that is a predicate that enhances our conception of a thing. Or thirdly, he could be saying it's not a great-making predicate, i.e., a predicate which affects a thing's greatness.

Now, it obviously can't just be the first of those. In the most basic and grammatical sense, we use existence as a predicate. all the time. You could say, Santa Claus does not exist, or a round triangle does not exist. In that sentence, existence is a predicate. Or you could say it belongs to the very idea of George Washington that he existed. So maybe Kant means the second of those things that is not a defining predicate. You saw him use that adjective real in the passage I cited. This is how some read him. Peter Milliken says, Kant can naturally be read here as intending to say that existence is to be understood, not as a characterizing property of a concept, that is one that defines it or determines its content,

but rather as an external property which applies if the concept is instantiated, that is if some real object stands in relation to it. But once again, this seems really problematic to deny that existence is not a real or defining property. clearly for some things like I just mentioned George Washington for historical figures existence is a real defining predicate that can be stated of them Jordan Sobel says is it not part of the idea of a historical person that such a person once existed the hard line that would ban existence from definitions of kinds of things whatever the merits of the ban per se is inspired by an error you might say this you might say well it's it's true that existence is a different kind of predicate but that doesn't mean it's not a predicate at all. It adds on to something differently, but it still adds on. You might say it doesn't add on constitutionally, as though it's just adding on one part among other parts, but it's still adding on in this more wholesale way, affecting the entire quality of a thing.

So, for example, you might say, I have a dog, the dog has four paws, it has long fur, it has brown eyes, and it exists. Now the fourth of those predicates is enhancing your conception of this dog differently than the first three, but it's still enhancing it, right? So it's really hard to say, oh, existence isn't a defining predicate.

Of course it can be. It just seems sort of common sense. Apie puts it like this. He says, it is, I think, hard to accept the contention that existence cannot be a defining property. Suppose, following Mackey, I define remartian to mean existence intelligent creature native to the planet Mars, then surely it is quite clear what is required

for a being to satisfy the definition. It must be an intelligent creature native to the planet Mars, and it must actually exist. An intelligent creature native to the planet Mars in another possible world is not a remartian. Now, Apie does not defend ontological arguments. He calls them completely worthless in the last sentence of his book, which made me smile. But he acknowledges that this the Kantian dictum that existence is not a real predicate is not adequately defended by the arguments that Kant provides. Tyrone Goldschmidt says the same thing, even though he doesn't defend the ontological argument either. Over and over, you see this in the literature, that this critique by Kant is kind of confused. So maybe what Kant meant is that the third option, it's, maybe he didn't

have in mind a real or defining predicate, or maybe what he really meant is it's not a great-making quality, because this would be relevant to Anselm's argument. And it seems like this is at least part of what he means from this passage and critique of pure reason, where he says the real contains no more than the possible. A hundred real dollars contains no more than a hundred possible dollars. By whatever and by whatever number of predicates, even to the complete determination of it, I may cogitate a thing. I do not in the least augment the object of my conception by the addition of the statement the thing exists. But is it true that existence doesn't add on to the greatness of a thing? We might distinguish between qualitative greatness and quantitative greatness. And it's true that 100 real dollars

is not greater than 100 possible dollars in the same way that 101 is greater than 100 dollars, that is quantitatively greater, but it's still qualitatively greater. You can still buy something with a hundred real dollars. And for a being to be maximally great, it must possess maximal greatness in every sense of the word greatness, qualitative and quantitative. Otherwise, a being that did that would be greater. So here's how one philosopher puts this. Asking whether existence is a perfection is like asking what makes movies in full color better than movies in black and white, given that the movies in black and white are just as detailed as the color films. One could only answer that the color makes everything richer more brilliant.

Things that are real matter. Whatever goodness they possess is made worthwhile important, not to be neglected because they exist. Things are better when they exist. It's like, in other words, it's like, yeah, in some respects, color movies and black and white movies are the same, like their level of detail. But in other respects, color movies are obviously better. color affects the whole quality of everything else. It's a part of the whole atmosphere, and so with existence. One way sometimes people put this is they say things that exist in reality have ontological

completeness, and therefore they are greater than those things that exist only in the mind, or in a modal argument you could say in a possible world. So you might even say, and this is my own way of putting it, not only is existence a great-making quality, but it's actually perhaps the most fundamental great-making quality of all, because it's the instantiation of every other great-making quality. Of course, things that exist are greater. It's, you know, so the cons objection seems very problematic here. Existence is a predicate in the way that is relevant to Anselm's argument. Now, there's a second problem with concern, and that's just like the parody arguments, it fails to appreciate the uniqueness of the divine essence from all other things. For example,

one point in critique of pure reason, Kant writes, if in an identical judgment I annihilate the predicate and thought and retain the subject, a contradiction is the result. And hence I say, the former belongs to the latter. But if I suppress both subject and predicate and thought, no contradiction arises, for there is nothing at all, and therefore no means of forming a contradiction. To suppose the existence of a triangle, and not that of its three angles, is self-contradictory, but to suppose the non-existence of both triangle and angles is perfectly admissible. Now, this is one of those points where you can understand Plantinga's question. Couldn't Anselm thank Kant for this interesting point and proceed merrily on his way?

It's hard to see how this would apply to Anselm's argument because there's a huge difference, and Norman Malcolm points this out between the triangle analogy and the ontological argument. In the triangle, the two inseparable components are the triangle and its angles. There's no existence involved at all. But in the way, in the question of God, in the ontological argument, the two inseparable components are the being and his existence. So existence is one of those things that is itself inseparable. Descartes, when he responded to Pierre Gassendi, though he was using a different analogy, that of a mountain and a valley, actually addressed this very well, I think. He said, because I cannot conceive a mountain without a valley,

it does not follow that there is any mountain or valley in existence, but simply that the mountain or valley, whether they do or do not exist, are inseparable from each other. Whereas, on the other hand, because I cannot conceive God unless is existing, it follows that existence is inseparable from him, and therefore that he really exists. Not that this is brought about by my thought, or that it imposes any necessity on things, but on the contrary, the necessity which lies in the thing itself. That is, the necessity of the existence of God determines me to think this way. Another problem with consubjection is that it's focusing only on the modern Cartesian ontological arguments. It doesn't deal with Anselm's argument for necessary existence. The argument of

proselygian three is a part of Anselm's one argument. And necessary existence is a great-making quality of a different kind. It enhances a thing differently than other great-making qualities. Josh Rasmussen says, necessary existence makes a thing greater with respect to being a being, not with respect to being some specific sort of being. So, for example, if there's an island that exists in all possible worlds, is that island really greater than an island that only exists in some possible worlds? That's not at all clear. Either way, it's still just an island.

So the point is, Kant's criticism really fails to touch Anselm's argument. Anselm's argument is much subtler and richer than is often realized, because it has to do with the whole quality of God's existence, not just existence simpliciter. So, for those two reasons, cons objection does not work at all. It really does not touch the argument. I hope it's not too much for me to summarize and say the main two arguments that you will hear against the ontological argument are surprisingly weak. But I don't think it's wrong for me to focus on those two because those really are the main two. However, there are, are other challenges that can be made to an Anselmian ontological argument. And this video won't be

comprehensive in tracing, responding to every possible response. But let me at least flag a couple of other possible responses. One can say, well, the very concept of that than which nothing greater can be thought is itself incoherent. That's one possible way to respond. Now, I think Anselm himself gives some good reasons pushing against that. And pro slogion six. through eight, and I think the ontological argument itself has as one of its goals to harmonize divine attributes. But I grant that that can be challenged, and I haven't really addressed that here, so that's something that would need to be worked through if someone does challenge that. Another objection that can be raised is, this is a good one, this is a tough one. This is the one that

really gives me some anxiety about Anselm's version is, can the same thing really exist in the mind and in reality. This is one of Jordan Sobel's concerns. If we reject minogianism, according to which there's different kinds of existence, is there a danger of equivocation when any one particular thing is thought of as existing in the understanding versus in reality? Or in that distinction, are we now talking about two different things? So I think that concern is why a lot of people move to the modal arguments. I think there are responses that can be given to that, but that's a good concern, and I'm just acknowledging I haven't really worked through that as much in this video. I'm trying to hit the main points, and I'm already,

this video is a little longer than I thought already. But I'd be happy to talk about that one again sometime. Another one of the big concerns is when people say, well, you can't just define God into existence. You hear this a lot as well. That is simply not fair to the ontological argument, though. That is not what it's doing. It's not doing that.

It's starting with the idea of God in the mind and then making logical inferences from that fact about the existence of God out there. So, but still, people have this intuition that you can't do that. You can't go from the mind to reality. You can't use logic to get from the abstract to the concrete. One critic says it is not thought possible to build bridges between mere abstractions and concrete existence.

This is J.L. Mackey, too, in his older book. He said he spoke of the crucial weakness of any ontological proof, the impossibility of establishing some concrete reality on the basis of a mere definition or concept. Now, my response to that, though, is just, why not? If the bridge from the abstract to the concrete is a logically warranted bridge, what's the problem? This is where we get into the very nature of logic itself. And I don't like thinking of it like that. That's problematic to go abstract to concrete.

But the point is, why can't one derive the existence of God in this a priori manner if the logic warrant? if the logic warrants. What's happening with the Findlay quote and J.L. Mackey, there is a particular philosophy of existence is simply being asserted rather than established. Why not allow our philosophy of existence to be changed if the ontological argument logically requires it? Another concern that comes up is begging the question. And this is one reason why I prefer Anselm's formulation over the contemporary modal versions, I think dealing with existence in the mind, rather than possible existence can more easily escape the concern of begging the question, which means assuming the conclusion.

But I would just say, but this is a common charge. I think this is one of Oppie's concerns. He's basically saying, look, if the entailment of existence is packed into the premise, then no atheist is going to grant that. But I would say that's an indicative statement about what an atheist might do, not what they should do. So the proper response is, so what? More work would need to be done to show why the premise should be rejected?

just because it entails that conclusion. It's not begging the question because the actual existence of God is not a premise. The argument merely postulates the existence of God in the mind, and then it moves by means of logical inference to the actual existence of God. So begging the question would have, that actually isn't begging the question. Furthermore, unless it is the conclusion of the argument itself that necessitates the premises, then there's no begging of the question at all. you might accept the premises on other grounds. Plantington puts it like this, he says, it is by no means obvious that anyone who accepts its main premise does so

only because he infers it from the conclusion. Or I've been reading this, this is a good essay in the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology by Robert Maydoll. He says, even if the proposition that a greatest possible being possibly exists in reality did imply the proposition that it actually exists in reality, the argument would beg the question, only if the latter were given as a reason for believing the former. In some way or another, all arguments, including very celebrated mathematical proofs, have the conclusion as implicit in the premises in some way. That's what makes them a valid

argument, but it's only question begging if the truth of the conclusion is assumed in one of the premises rather than derived by means of valid inference. So I actually don't think that, I actually don't think begging the question is a valid concern. However, to conclude, let me tell you one way you can avoid the argument, one way you can rationally evade it. And because I say the argument is it works within the context of certain assumptions, but those assumptions can be challenged. And I think the biggest one and the easiest target is that the ontological argument, at least certainly my version of it, this wouldn't really apply as much to like a Gerdelian

one or something, but my Anselmian version assumes a hierarchical conception of greatness. But if you're a value nihilist, then you could just deny that there is any such hierarchy. So a lot of people have pointed out that Anselm was working with a kind of platonic ontology in which there are different degrees of greatness. So, you know, and you have to have that because you have to have some things being greater than others. But what if you don't already believe in God, why should you accept that, that there is any such hierarchy? You could just say the notion of such a hierarchy is incoherent. You could say the idea of a being than which nothing greater can be thought is pure gibberish. And as I see things, you could say that. And then the

discussion, then that would be the discussion. Then you'd have to try to provide a defense for a hierarchy of greatness. And that itself takes you outside the argument. It's a separate discussion that's not resolved by the argument. So that's one way you can avoid the argument. But there's a price to that. Because becoming a value, nihilist is quite drab. And so my conclusion of all things I hear at the finally at the end is to say that part of the value of the ontological argument is to invite people to consider a more enchanting metaphysics. It is truly wonderful to consider that some things are greater than others and in fact there might be something, some one thing that is the pinnacle of supreme greatness.

So beyond the value that the ontological argument has in increasing the prior probability of theism, in elucidating the nature of God, and so on and so forth, I'll make one final statement, and this is a purely emotional statement. This is how it affects me. Imagine you live in a cramped apartment in the middle of the city that is without style. It has nothing in the cabinets. It's gray. It's mechanical. And it's just like every other apartment for miles down the street. in the crowded city that you live in. And then imagine you move into a rich, huge, historic mansion in the countryside. It's like the mansion in the line the witch and the wardrobe that the children go to. Every room has intrigue and history. You're constantly finding a new closet over here. There's a garden outside. There's rolling hills around. There's a library filled with old books, all kinds of books that smell good the way old books smell. Imagine the emotional contrast from moving from this apartment, this drab apartment,

to this rich mansion in the countryside. That is how I feel in contemplating the notion that there's a hierarchy of greatness, that there's one supremely great being. The stakes could not possibly be higher. It has that emotional implication because the ultimate consequence is there is a supreme object of human desire. that you and I were actually created for a pinnacle experience. And all our lives are working toward that.

It's really an enchanting and beautiful way to consider not just the question of God, not just the question of reality, but the question of the human heart. Because if that then which nothing greater can be thought exists, it means infinite joy for you. And for me, I would say as a Christian, if we trust in Jesus. So that boy, what a nerdy, nerdy, technical at times. I know a lot of, I can just imagine.

There were points where I was going through this. I'm just imagine. I know a lot of my viewers, people might be thinking, why is he doing a video on this? Why did he work so hard to make this, you know, I think there's value in the ontological argument. I think it's interesting. I think there's value at an existential level as well as an intellectual. Maybe I'm way off.

Let me know what you think. but there it is. I probably won't do much more on the ontological argument. I just wanted to get that done. Put it out there into the world of YouTube and let her rumble on. Maybe somebody one day will watch this and resonate and see what's animating me here and understand where I'm coming from. If you'd like to support Truth Unites, I really appreciate when people are willing to support my ministry, only if it would be a source of joy for you. I'll show you on the screen how you can do that on the website, TruthUnites.org. And then I'm going to have some other devotional videos coming out. I'm filming this in late February of 2024. And then in March, I'm going to launch into my study on slavery in the Bible, trying to give a defense of Christianity in relation to atheist criticism of that topic. That'll probably result in a video that'll be more out in the time of like April-ish or even early May. But that's going to be my next big study project. Over the summer, I'm going to do more work on other arguments for the existence of God. May I've set aside to study apostolic succession.

But I've got lots of other videos, a video on Adam and Eve as historical figures, responding to secular critique of Genesis 2 and 3. That'll come out. A few other devotional videos. And then a lot I'm still just trying to figure out what I should do next. So let me know if you have suggestions. But that's a little bit about what's coming up on the pipeline. All right, long video.

If you stayed with me toward the end, let me know and I'll heart your comment. Thanks for watching. I hope this video would encourage, bless, or at least be interesting to people out there. All right, we'll see you next time, everybody.