#827 A Muslim Confronts the Ontological Argument

Dr. craig’s response

Thank you for your question, Jafar! The ontological argument should resonate naturally with Muslims, I think, given their central affirmation of the greatness of God.

You are, of course, absolutely right that “if the property of existing in all possible worlds is akin to the property of being able to create a square circle - i.e. metaphysically impossible,” then the ontological argument fails. This is not due to the failure of the inference from premise (2) to premise (3), however, but rather because in that case premise (1) It is possible that a maximally great being exists is false.

You also rightly recognize that this is of no significance, since the question remains whether or not premise (1) is true. Not only does premise (1) accord with our modal intuitions, but there are even some reasons to think that it is true (see below). By contrast there seem to be no good reasons to think that maximal greatness is metaphysically impossible and that therefore premise (1) is false.

Now, to your credit, you go on to offer some argument to think that maximal greatness is metaphysically impossible: “it is impossible for a being to exist that has the property of existing in all possible words, precisely because there are other possible worlds in which separate beings occupy the different strands/types/aspects of maximal greatness.” I’m not at all persuaded by this argument. The fact that a maximally great being would have properties A-D does not preclude its coexisting with another being who has only property A or only property B or only . . . . The maximally great being would clearly be superior to any such being.

Now, in fact, I do think that certain properties of maximal greatness do preclude another being’s possessing that property in addition to the maximally great being. Maybe there could be two omniscient beings, but it’s really hard to see how there could be two omnipotent beings. For one of the beings would have to have the ability to create and annihilate the other, in which case one of the beings is not omnipotent, since he lies in the power of the other. So there could not be a possible world in which a maximally great being exists along with another being that possesses only the property of omnipotence. But that seems to me to be of little significance, since that provides no reason to think that maximal greatness is metaphysically impossible. It shows that it is metaphysically necessary that there be at most one omnipotent being, and that’s all.

In closing I want to share an argument in support of premise (1) that I encountered in writing my Excursus on Natural Theology for my forthcoming systematic philosophical theology. A number of theists have sought to sharpen our modal intuitions concerning the possibility of a maximally great being by arguing for the possibility of a perfect being, that is to say, a being possessing all perfections. A perfection is defined to be a property which is, necessarily, better to have than to lack. Omnipotence is obviously a perfection, since it is, necessarily, better to have it than not. To avoid confusion we can speak of perfections in this special sense as absolute perfections. We need not think that absolute perfections entail only absolute perfections, for perfections could entail neutral properties as well, which neither necessarily improve nor necessarily detract from a being’s greatness.[1]

It seems clear that all absolute perfections are compossible, for if any such perfection entailed the complement (or negation) of another absolute perfection, the being possessing that perfection would not be perfect but in some way imperfect. But then the perfections would not be absolute after all. Hence, for any perfections to be absolute they must be co-exemplifiable. Here is how C’Zar Bernstein puts it:

Suppose it is impossible that something has all perfections. Then there is some perfection that entails the complement of a perfection. But a property entails the complement of a perfection only if that property is sufficient for the imperfection of anything in which it inheres. Hence, there is some perfection that is sufficient for the imperfection of anything in which it inheres. But no perfection is sufficient for the imperfection of anything in which it inheres; this is a feature only of imperfections. Contradiction! So the assumption is false: it is possible that something has all perfections.[2]

Add to this the pretty obvious truth that necessary existence is an absolute perfection, and it follows that it is possible that a maximally great being exists. Pretty slick, eh?