Alvin Plantinger- ontological argument

Can anyone explain it??? i dont get the maximal greatness and maximal excellence relating to the ontological argumernt.

In really simple terms! Thanks!

Reply 1

thekingofsummat

Before reading this post i am writing on the presumption that you have read up somewhat on plantinga's possible worlds theory for the existance of god and will attempt to simplify this as such not purely explain it. Any troubles just let me know and i'm sorry if this is a little confusing i'm not the greatest linguist but be thankfull as i only became a member of this site to place this post lol. (i'm supposed to be revising for ma retake of philosophy of religion AS exam tomorrow and got so very bored as to pretend to maself to be revising by answering someone elses question about the subject online. and because at the time i had just read that section of a philosophy book and spotted that your question had only been posted about 5 mins before) oh my god look how much i've wrote all ready.... i'm sure i must have something wrong with my brain i mean look at me i'm going off topic on a conversation with myself?!? wow... slow down ... deep breaths... right on to philosophy... my god i hope you actually read this now lol.

I believe but am not sure that plantinga is concerned with the whole infinite business of the possible words, if there are infinite number of possibilities then logically somewhere along the way there must be a possible world with a being of maximal greatness that is a being who will exist in every possible world because they are the greatest great great of all greats.

Therefore as this being exists in one possible world he/she must exist in all of them but to have maximal greatness, but there are also certain characteristics that go along with this - omnipotence omniscience and moral perfection (which plantinga calls maximal excellence). So to have maximal greatness is to exist in all possible worlds and to have maximal excellence is to have omnipotence omniscience and moral perfection and simplisticly having these qualities makes you God, therefore God exists

This is basically a bit poo in my opinion as there is a possibility that a being will exist in a possible world with maximal greatness etc and if that being were to exist then the argument would succeed but it is not a certainty as infinite possibilities means anything can happen not every possiblity will happen because there is enough time for it to happen. - easily put - the possibilities are infinite in number but not infinite in the sense that every possiblity will eventually happen.

I really hope this helps but i've probably gone wrong and killed half an hour of my life but either way at least i tried :-) (the only thing scaring me is how much revision i could have got done lol.

Reply 2

XtrepT

I see it as

Maximal Greatness - think of in in terms of size
The greatest god will be the Biggest and span over all worlds
Doesnt matter if you live in one country or another or if you take different paths in your life...The fact of maximal greatness is that the greatest god anyone could ever think of would lead to this maximally great god because this is the greatest for everyone anywhere no matter what circumstances.

Maximal Excellence - think of it in terms of skill/power or how good of a god
There may be a maximally great god that spans all worlds but is this god the best at everything?
One group of people might say there god is quite Powerful, another group may say thier god is even more powerful and so on
The Maimally Excellent god will the the MOST powerful and loving and knowing etc...to the point where NO one could ever top, These features would be Omnipotence, omnibenevolence, omniscience as they are infinate and you cant top infinity

Hope that helps

Reply 3

Pickles88

Thank you so much! It was really helpful and enertaining lol!