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The Missing Premise in the Ontological Argument

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Norman L. Geisler
Norman L. Geisler
Affiliation:
Professor of Philosophy of Religion, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
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Extract

It appears to me that most traditional criticism of the Ontological argument misses the mark because the proponents imply a premise which, if true, would validate their argument on precisely the point attacked by the opponents. In view of this possibility, I propose the following analysis:

(1) state the traditional ontological argument without the implied premise;

(2) state the traditional criticisms, showing how they miss the mark;

(3) restate the ontological argument with the implied premise made clear;

(4) offer a defence of the implied premise;

(5) show how the ontological argument is still invalidated by another criticism;

(6) argue that the only way to avoid this other criticism is to borrow another premise from the cosmological argument, and

(7) that when these premises are borrowed the result is a valid form of the cosmological argument for the existence of a necessary being.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , September 1973 , pp. 289 - 296
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

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References

page 289 note 1 The sources behind the discussion here are compiled in Plantinga, Alvin (ed.), The Ontological Argument (New York, Doubleday & Company Inc., 1965).Google Scholar

page 289 note 2 ibid. pp. 3–5.

page 290 note 1 The Ontological Argument, pp. 57–64.

page 290 note 2 Not everyone grants the validity of Kant's criticism. See Hartshorne in Plantinga, , op. cit. p. 129.Google Scholar

page 290 note 3 See ibid pp. 11–12; 37.

page 290 note 4 ibid. pp. 7–8; 39, 127, 148–9.

page 291 note 1 Hartshorne is clearly committed to this premise when he writes, ‘But in the case of God… we have only to exclude impossibility or meaningless to establish actuality,’ ibid. p. 134.

page 292 note 1 See Parker, Francis, ‘The Realistic Position in Religion,’ Religion in Philosophical and Cultural Perspective (New Jersey: D. Van Nostrand Co. Inc.), pp. 88–9.Google Scholar

page 292 note 2 By ‘logic’ here is meant the law of non-contradiction which is at the basis of all logic and thought.

page 293 note 1 A meaningless statement could be true by accident but not by intent.

page 293 note 2 By ‘reality’ here is meant something beyond the mere mind and idea thought by that mind, such as a material object or another mind.

page 293 note 3 Plantinga, , op. cit. p. 186.Google Scholar

page 296 note 1 For a recent and good defence of the argument, see Reichenbach, Bruce, The Cosmological Argument (Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas, 1972).Google Scholar