# What do you think of this argument for the existence of God?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-of-this-argument-for-the-existence-of-god/968414
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [July 23, 2022, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-of-this-argument-for-the-existence-of-god/968414 "2022-07-23T06:56:45Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2022, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-of-this-argument-for-the-existence-of-god/968414/41 "2022-07-23T16:26:28Z")
Didn’t we go through this for years with Libertarian/Liberal and the ontological principle? Maybe the OP can go back and read those for a series of discussions and objections.
My recollection is that the dissenters always came back to the point that the proof was circular and semantic. Having conceived of your notion of a god, you work back to a set of statements that prove your notion without ever defining it to anyone else’s satisfaction.
And of course if a god doesn’t exist, then no proof is possible, only that a postulate is false. Remember, in formal logic, the result of a false premise is that any conclusion can be proved, whether is it true, false, or semantically meaningless.
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### Author:  [@dirtball](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dirtball)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2022, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-of-this-argument-for-the-existence-of-god/968414/42 "2022-07-23T16:30:42Z")
Thanks for the recommendations. I’ve checked out the video. I remember being aware of _Brief History_ when it came out. There was some publicity around it, as there would have been with a Hawking book. But for whatever reason it didn’t rise to the level of a purchase for me. I snagged it today, though.
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### Author:  [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2022, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-of-this-argument-for-the-existence-of-god/968414/43 "2022-07-23T21:16:24Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#):
>
> If your idea is that god=omnipotence, surely omnipotence can be broken down? E.g., omnipotence requires an objective universe on which to act, and the law of cause-and-effect such that a God’s action can achieve a result, and the idea of power to cause change, and so on.
Plus typically we get around the “can God make a stone too big for him to lift” argument by defining omnipotence as the ability to do all logically possible things. But we can break down omnipotence into this definition and the one allowing the paradox, which doesn’t seem excluded in the OP’s presentation.
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### Author:  [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2022, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-of-this-argument-for-the-existence-of-god/968414/44 "2022-07-23T23:30:52Z")
Omnipotence is the ability to do anything. It can be broken down into a list of things it allows you to do, which is infinite. Therefore it is a fictional construct made of fundamental truths (individual capabilities
that omnipotence allows).
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### Author:  [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2022, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-of-this-argument-for-the-existence-of-god/968414/45 "2022-07-23T23:33:10Z")
Plaid exists.
kangaroos exist.
Plaid kangaroos do not exist.
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### Author:  [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)
#### Post date: [July 24, 2022, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-of-this-argument-for-the-existence-of-god/968414/46 "2022-07-24T13:35:21Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#):
>
> Plaid kangaroos do not exist.
And yet it may one day be possible to create a forced chimera that would be plaid.
[Chimerism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_(genetics)).
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### Author:  [@Taber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Taber)
#### Post date: [July 27, 2022, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-of-this-argument-for-the-existence-of-god/968414/47 "2022-07-27T20:17:35Z")
I think his proof would be that you can split the fictional plaid kangaroos into the fundamental truths of plaid and kangaroos, just like you can split the fictional vampires into the fundamental truths of murderers, cannibals, and immortal people.
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