** Excellent, I’m very pleased for him (or her or it or whatever). But that’s beside the point. I’m suggesting that the same argument can be used to prove the existence of a being that is not “God” (as per your definition) but is “just like God except that it lacks one of God’s attributes.”
So far, your response has been “but that wouldn’t be God!” Yes, fine, I agree. But can this argument be used to prove the existence of such a being? If not, why not?
I also point out (though I hesitate as it is, at this point, a distraction from the more basic point above) that “God is the convergence of all greatest possible attributes.” raises my orthogonality problem again, e.g. “Perfect mercy is incompatible with perfect justice. No being can be as just as possible while being as merciful as possible. Therefore, neither mercy nor justice are attributes of God.”
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BTW, I don’t have a general disdain for ontological arguments. I merely observe that they are often proposed by people setting out to prove a particular point. [NB - I certainly am not suggesting that Lib falls into this category.] Anselm wasn’t engaging in an open-minded enquiry into the nature of deity, he was setting out to prove the existence of his conception of God. If it could be shown that his reasoning also validated, say, Hinduism, he would have been the first to reject it.
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