Hey. I guess... It might depend... On what is meant by debate?

It is interesting to me because when surveys of philosophers were conducted they found that roughly half believed in god and roughly half didn't. What to conclude from this?

- If god made logic and reason then surely using gods gifts to contemplate his nature is appropriate. surely composing an argument for his existence is every bit as much a tribute to him as composing a poem or song! Most of the arguments that were made for his existence were made by believers.
- Learning about the arguments can help one grasp the limits of reason and argument and hence
- The nature and role of faith

I'm not really interested in debate in the traditional sense... This is the way in which I contemplate the nature of the 'greatest possible being' where learning about the limits of possibility is instructive as to what kind of a nature god might have...

> ontological arguments are not terribly popular in most Christian circles these days.

Interesting... Ontological arguments (a-priori arguments) start with god as omnigod (I'll say more about this in a minute). The other option is a-posteriori arguments (arguments from experience) from which it is hard to recover omni-god even if one does accept the conclusion (to the effect that there is something super-natural)

> First, they seem to beg the question as to what God is like.

They start with a definition of God and proceed to say that his existence is logically entailed by (is logically necessary because of) the definition of god.
I haven't done terribly much philosophy of religion... Everything I have done has been about the conception of omni-god. Omni-god (or god for short) is supposed to capture the attributes of god that are common to the god of judaism, christianity, and islam. the attributes are things like:

1) omniscient (knows everything)
2) omnibenevolent (completely loving / kind)
3) omnipresent (can do anything)

then there are other properties that crop up like the property of being eternal (existing forever) and stuff like that... There are loads of other properties that are more controversial too...

If you believe in omni-god then that is what i'm abbreviating to 'god' in the arguments. if you believe god is love then i believe god exists because i believe love exists. you could define god as 'the computer in front of me' and conclude god exists! if you like. that is fairly uninteresting though... the ontological arguments *start* with the conception of omnigod and attempt to show that god exists in virtue of our having the concept of him.

Here is Descarted version:

P1) There must be more reality / power / potency in the cause than the effect
P2) I have the idea of god
_________________________________
God must be even greater than my idea of him!

(Problem here is premise 1 which appeals to Aristotles physics. Isn't so compelling to a bunch of people who have seen such things as the 'Butterfly effect')

Bertrand Russell (a very brilliant philosopher) wrote something about how he was walking down the street one day and then.... It suddenly occurred to him... "The ontological argument is valid!!!" He said he was amazed... he finally got it!!! I have moments like that too... Then... You lose it and go back to atheism ;-)

But these arguments are still with us because they are (if you are into the aesthetics of argument) BEAUTIFUL arguments. A tribute to him (if he exists) indeed!

Ideas exist by definition.
Abstract objects too.

Watch me as I bring a new abstract object into existence:

I call it:

Alex's lost sock centre.

I define it thus:

The centre point of the smallest circumfrence that can be drawn around all the socks that I have lost in my life.

(Thanks to Dan Dennett for the e.g.)

The problem is...
Existence as an idea is one thing...
Existence as an abstract object is one thing...

Existence as a concrete / material object is quite another...

But then...

Who thought god was a physical / concrete / material being within the natural world at any rate?

Whats wrong with god as an abstract eternal object

(Rather like... The number 7)

;-)

I'd like to talk some more...

I guess the way things are going to go here depends on people here. If people say 'wah! you breaking the rules!' then peoples voices will be curbed... if people avoid the threads that don't interest them and continue to respond to and post to threads that do then over time things will sort themselves out...

So long as people are being respectful...

Whats the problem?