[ozy]

Now do the same for the devil:

"The devil, by definition, is that for which no greater evil can be conceived. The devil exists in the understanding. If the devil exists in the understanding, we could imagine him to be greater by existing in reality. Therefore, the devil must exist."

From which it also follows that:

"If the devil doesn't destroy god, we could imagine him to be a greater evil by destroying god. Therefore, the devil must have destroyed god."

At which point we must conclude that it is a shame that theology has captured the minds of so many brilliant people.

[throw0101a]

> At which point we must conclude that it is a shame that theology has captured the minds of so many brilliant people.

Or that the brilliant people whom it captured were more brilliant than arm chair philosophers of the modern age. Even Aquinas didn't like Godel/Anselm's argument:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontological_argument#Thomas_Aq...

And this is not specifically theology, but philosophy generally. Aristotle espoused these views in 300 BC:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle#Metaphysics

And I think you'd be hard pressed to call Aristotle "religious", and yet the (Catholic) Church took up worldview with few qualms:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ways_(Aquinas)

When universities were established in the middle ages, they certainly had theology as a specific course of study, but a good portion of the curriculum was about Aristotle's view of the natural world:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_Aristotelicum

[coldtea]

>If the devil exists in the understanding, we could imagine him to be greater by existing in reality.

That, like with God, is a logical jump. Who said reality > understanding? Reality could be == understanding (e.g. all, including what we conceive as matter, is just thought), or understanding could be discreet but greater than reality (and e.g. reality being a fossilized, realized, and constrained version of one path in the realm of understanding).

>At which point we must conclude that it is a shame that theology has captured the minds of so many brilliant people.

What you cited is based philosophy and logical argumentation, one of the cornerstones of civilization. And theology had quite a role in shaping it, along with the rest of civilization. Just because the starting points and assumptions are bad, it doesn't make the mechanism bad. For that matter, just because a mechanism is bad, it doesn't make it less useful (e.g. a population could be more agreeable, civilized, and moral when believing in a higher power, even if that higher power is BS, not to mention other benefits at the civic and personal level. See [1] for an example of such thinking).

[1] https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129528...

[Conjoiner]

I am not aware of any claim that the devil is the largest evil that could be imagined. Further, such a definition would not make sense in for example traditional Christianity where evil is defined as a privation on good, not something that exists in itself.

Having God and the devil as evenly matched but opposite powers is not something you would find in theology. Learn the basics of it before thinking you have created a proper critique.

[goto11]

> I am not aware of any claim that the devil is the largest evil that could be imagined.

That is completely irrelevant. The ontological proof claims to deduce the existence of an entity from a definition of that entity. It does not matter whether this definition happen to match some current religious dogma or not.

[vinceguidry]

Anselm defined God as "that which nothing greater can be thought." Introducing a devil into this mix doesn't change this reasoning, and basically boils down to "is evil greater than good?", which I don't think anyone can reasonably argue.

It's not the most interesting argument for God I've encountered, but it's not trivially invalidated by elevating evil to the same status as good. That hasn't been a serious element of any real theology since long before the ancient Hebrews.

Theology is the art of imagination, the same way that politics is the art of the possible. Imagining absolute evil is only interesting when you want to attack the idea of absolute good. Absolute good remains interesting without a foil. So therefore people will be willing to believe in it.

[goto11]

The point is that if the ontological argument is valid then you can define all kinds of things into existence also. The devil is just an example, it could also be The Most Perfect Island, The Real Santa Claus and so on. So it is a reductio ad absurdum.

[vinceguidry]

I'm not saying the ontological argument is correct, just that your reasoning doesn't sufficiently refute it.

[goto11]

It doesn't refute it per se. It just shows that The Real Santa Claus also exists by the same token. Which is not really a logical contradiction so if you want to believe that, more power to you.

[maze-le]

That sounds as if it were a fact that can be measured. Everything can be conjured into existence by false assumptions.

"The spaghetti monster, by definition, is that for which no more delicious thing can be conceived. The spaghetti monster exists in the understanding. If the spaghetti monster exists in the understanding, we could imagine it to be even more delicious by existing in reality. Therefore, the spaghetti monster must exist."

[Conjoiner]

Your first premise is false. Hooking up your sensory system to a device that generates the maximum signal would give a larger signal since it would bypass degradation in your mouth.

Think your argument through first. Are your premises actually true?

[maze-le]

Likewise with god...

[antonvs]

You could just as easily adjust the axioms to require that both a god and devil must exist in perfect balance.

In any case, your argument is an informal one - turn it into a formal refutation of Goedel's modal logic proof, and it'd be more relevant to this post.

[nurettin]

He doesn't have to. He can use the same argument to prove that a formal logical proof exists.