Saturday, March 26, 2016

The God

An anselmian argument establishes the existence of an omnipotent being. A lockean argument establishes that there can be at most one omnipotent being. A kantian argument establishes the moral perfection of the omnipotent being.

The anselmian argument restricts "greatness" to "power". This allows for the argument to be sound, not merely valid. The first premise is the consistency premise: the concept of an omnipotent being is logically consistent. The second premise is the possibility premise: if a concept is logically consistent, it refers to, at least, a possible object. The third premise is the actualization premise: an actualizing thing is necessarily more powerful than a merely possible thing. The conclusion is that an omnipotent being exists.

The lockean argument is as follows. If there exists at least two omnipotent beings, then either their wills are always in agreement or they come into conflict. If they are always in agreement, there is no meaningful sense in which they are different wills; what defines as agent, as an individual, is what it wills. If they come into conflict, then one of them loses and is therefore non-omnipotent. Therefore, there can be at most one omnipotent being. Thus, combined with the anselmian argument, there exists one and only one omnipotent being.

The kantian argument begins with the existence of at least one person; a person is a being which either is an agent or must behave as if it were. Persons are all bound by the categorical imperative, consequently, universal respect for personhood forms the ground of ethics. Cosquently, all persons should be morally perfect. Obligation implies possibility, therefore, moral perfection for persons is possible. However, it is impossible given a finite lifespan; therefore the soul is immortal. For non-eternally morally perfect persons, there must exist a judge which is distinct from itself which judges whether or not it achieves perfection. Therefore, this being must be omniscient. Since ignorance is evil, omniscience implies omnibenevolence.