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Saturday, October 21, 2006

A perfectly stupid argument

The least satisfying part of this book is Dawkins's treatment of the traditional arguments for the existence of God. The "ontological argument" says that God must exist by his very nature, since he possesses all perfections, and it is more perfect to exist than not to exist . . . . - New York Times Book Review, October 22, 2006 (reviewing The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins)
That's a ludicrous argument. It begs the question as surely as a statement that I must be drinking hot coffee right now because coffee is, after all, served hot. And who says that God "possesses all perfections"? Do you really get to ascribe details to things in arguments about whether they exist in the first place? (And who says coffee is served hot?) Then, of course, there are no degrees of perfection, so what this really must be saying is that it is perfect to exist and imperfect not to exist. How does something that does not exist have any qualities? All this points to how meaningless a concept of perfection is in such a context.


posted at 3:12 PM

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