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God exists in the mind. That is, God is something that can be thought of. (He is or else we would not even discussing him.)
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You know, the argument from ontology is pretty lame. Even Aquinas (of the Five Proofs of God) thought that argument from ontology was false.
Let's see why:
P1 -- The Death Star is the greatest space station ever.
P2 -- A space station that exists in reality is greater than one which merely exists in the mind.
Conclusion -- Therefore the Death Star exists in reality.
The point is that by defining something as "greatest", then assuming that it must exist because things that are real are greater than things that only exist in the mind allows you to come up with anything.
All it really means is that you can invent definitions for things that don't exist. Buggs Bunny, Darth Vadar, Harry Potter, etc. Either that, or your definition is wrong.
For a more through discussion of why this is a throughly debunked idea: this page on the Ontological Argument and why it crashed and burned the instant it was formed.
Don't you have anything better to do than put up old, debunked bits of pseudo-logic? Come up with something original, or at least repost something that hasn't been throughly disproven hundreds of years ago.
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I can concieve of the word 'God' and pair it with various qualifiers and quantifiers like 'loving', 'infinite'..etc but this does not establish that I can think about 'God'. The conception is not a 'thing'.
Using the logic in the premise, I can think of an all-powerful unicorn that's greater than any conception of God held by anyone or anything within the universe, ergo, such an Unicorn exists in my mind, and analogously, hence exists in reality.
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I think you need to be careful about "exists". Do unicorns "exist in the mind"? Is that the same sort of existence as if they were walking around eating grass? Can a unicorn that exists in my mind breed with (or even communicate with) a real unicorn?
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1) Your use of the verb "exists" is too broad in that you apply it to "the" mind, as if there were only one. God exists your mind. In my particular mind the concept you refer to as "God" exists only as one possible explanation for the facts of the universe as I have experienced them. In my mind God has no existence beyond the conditional or probabilistic: that is, one of the fundamental qualities of the God-concept in my mind is that of only possible existence.
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5
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2) FROM 1 IT FOLLOWS THAT:   
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God means "that which nothing greater can be thought."
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There is nothing in 1 that implies 2. This is a separate premise. Make it as such, and support it.
Specifically, support why God means "that which nothing greater can be thought" as opposed to "that which nothing greater can exist."
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Critique (Rebuttal) history: c1, c2
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This is very pedantic of me so I apologise, but I think you'll find people have very different ideas about what "God" means. At the least, by way of example, I would say that the (hypothetical) greatest thing I can think of in my mind is probably not what I would characterise as a God.
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This is a definition: {a} means {b}. This should be part of premise 1, not following from it. So 'God' is a thought and you want to clarify that it is a thought that encompasses everything. I would prefer to use the term 'Everything' but let's go with 'God'...
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Neither the definition nor the words that translate into the modern word "God" match this conclusion.
God has always been equal to "Ultimate Scientific Force" that acts outside the laws of science due to His (or its) tremendous power, to put it in the language of Atheists.
Statement two is weak.
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4
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It is greater for a thing to exist in the mind and in reality than in the mind alone.
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Critique (Rebuttal) history: c1 (r1), c2
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"A thing" cannot exist both in the mind and in reality. If it is in reality, then the thing in the mind is merely a concept of the thing. For instance, trees. Trees do not exist in my mind--the idea of trees exists in my mind.
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This assumes a series of definitions for “great”, “mind” and “reality”, and in particular assumes that the mind is somehow not a part of reality. This dualistic premise is not obvious or, in my view, correct.
Also, the idea that existing “in reality” is better than existing in the mind is suspect. Which is superior, the idea of Pi or its aproximation in a physical object, for example a piece of paper with Pi expanded to 10.000 digits?
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Critique (Rebuttal) history: c1, c2
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There is absolutely no reason one should accept this premise. In fact, it seems almost absurd.
To say that one thing is greater than another, you must compare the two. It is not clear to me how you can compare two things without assuming that they both exist.
The premise presumes it's sensible to ask a question like "Would you rather have a car that doesn't exist or one that does?"
Or that it's sensible to answer a question like "who would win in a fight, me or Santa Claus?" with "Me, because I exist and Santa doesn't." Clearly such a question assumes that both entities exist, at least for the purpose of the comparison.
I submit that one cannot compare a non-existent thing without presuming that it exists. So one cannot find something lacking due to its non-existence.
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This is a strange philosophical statement. Both 'greatness' and the dynamics of reality and thought depend on definition and circumstance.
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5
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If God only exists in the mind but not in reality, then something greater than God could exist (i.e., something that has all the qualities of our thought of God, as well as real existence). This cannot be true since this would violate our definition of God.
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It is possible to imagine an entity with attributes that are nonsensical, paradoxical or impossibile to exist in reality. If the nature of God as "that which nothing greater can be thought" is nonsensical, paradoxical or impossible to exist in reality, then God can exist in the mind but not reality.
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A. Your argument here is that if God exists, then God must exist in reality and not just in the mind. If God exists, then God exists. In order to believe that the premise is true, we must believe that the conclusion is true: you are begging the question.
B. 2, as you have chosen to phrase it, only deals with the greatness of God in the mind. 3 is not relevant to your assertion in 2. The existence or non-existence of God outside of the mind does not alter the greatness of God as imagined in the mind.
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Critique (Rebuttal) history: c1, c2
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First you say god is that "than which nothing greater can be thought". Then you say that if "something greater than god could *exist*" that violates our definition. But it does not.
Your definition of "god" was not "that than which nothing greater can *exist*", it was "that than which nothing greater can be *thought*".
To show that something conflicts with your definition of god, you must show that we can think of something greater than it, not just that something greater than it could exist.
For example, there might be many things greater than god that we cannot think of. God is just that than which nothing greater can be thought, according to you.
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Which cannot be true? Your statement? Did you just disagree with yourself?
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4
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5) FROM 4 IT FOLLOWS THAT:
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God exists in the mind and reality.
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So, what is the big deal? 'God' as we defined about exists. 'God' is 'Everything'. 'Everything' is everything. I don't get it, especially the part where God suddenly becomes interested in what I'm doing in my bedroom...
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1) A 'sneed' is a unicorn that also has the property of existing.
2) Now, 'sneed's certainly exist in the mind, that is, we can conceive of them.
3) If this 'sneed' in the mind did not have the property of existing, it would not be a 'sneed', therefore the 'sneed' exists and therefore there is at least one existent unicorn.
There are many ways to state what the flaw is in this argument and your argument. One way is simply to point out that just because we can think about an existent unicorn and we can imagine it's called a sneed, it does not follow that it actually *is* a sneed.
Analogously, the thing you call "god" that you think of may or may not actually meet the definition of god. Simply calling it a "god" can't make it somehow comply with the definition in actual reality.
For example, suppose the definition of "car" includes having four wheels. You see something, but can't see all its wheels, and pronounce it a car. This does not somehow force the thing to sprout a fourth wheel if it didn't have one. You can conceive of a car and still the object of your conception can fail to meet the definitional requirements of a car.
You cannot say, "because I call it a car and think of it as a car, it *must* have four wheels" and expect that this means it is impossible for a wheel to ever be missing from something you call a car.
But this is precisely what you do. You argue that because you call that think you think of a "god", it must have the all the definitional properties of god. This is simply not so.
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Reality has not been cooperating so far. Can you distinguish "God does not exist" from "God exists and does not in any meaningful way participate in the reality that humans experience" ? If so, how ? If not, why support "God exists" ?
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