How the Mere Possibility of God Proves He’s Real

by David De Paz

One might think that belief in an all powerful and all good God is just an idea that humans have invented based on their scriptures. However, this concept of a god with those attributes is actually one that can be derived through pure reason. Philosophers like Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas have done so throughout history, using classical logic to determine that there must be a Prime Mover which is perfect in every sense. However, with the emergence of modern analytical philosophy, a new kind of argument for the existence of God has developed which is based on this concept of perfection: The Modal Ontological Argument. 

In order to introduce the argument, the idea of “God” must be defined. God is defined as a maximally great being (MGB), meaning He is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent, essentially being maximally great in every single possible aspect. However, maximal greatness also entails something known as necessary existence. Necessary existence means that the explanation for something’s existence is found within itself, meaning it is not dependent on anything else to exist and could not be different, and therefore could not fail to exist. A necessary being is greater than a contingent being, therefore, a maximally great being would have to be a necessary being. 

Now, the first premise of the argument is that it is possible for God to exist, meaning that the idea of God is logically coherent. The second premise is that if it is possible that a MGB exists, then it must exist in some “possible world.” This concept comes from the idea in modal logic that if something is logically coherent, there must be some version out of the infinite versions of reality where it exists. The third premise is that if a MGB exists in one possible world, it must exist in every possible world, because necessary existence means it could not fail to exist in any reality. The fourth and final premise is that if a maximally great being exists in every possible world, then this includes the actual world. In conclusion, God exists in the actual world.

This argument was formulated by Alvin Plantinga, a Christian philosopher and theologian, in the 20th century. It is a modern and improved version of the ontological argument created by Saint Anselm of Canterbury. While it may seem confusing at first, it is pretty simple: If it’s possible that God can exist, then He must exist. Of course there are some common objections to the argument, but they all stem from a misunderstanding of it. 

There are 3 main objections to the modal ontological argument. The first and most common objection is that maximal greatness does not equate to existence. This objection stems from a counter to the original ontological argument, which stated that a maximally great being would have to exist because existence is “greater” than nonexistence. This was countered by Imannuel Kant, who argued that existence is not a property or “predicate” of greatness, meaning a maximally great being doesn’t exist simply because it is maximally great. Atheists will typically use an analogy similar to a “maximally great pizza.” You can imagine this pizza in your head as being maximally great tasting with the best possible cheese and sauce and being infinitely the greatest pizza, but that doesn’t mean it actually exists.

However, there are two problems with this that make it a false analogy. First, any analogy made with an object of matter cannot work, because matter is contingent on its own creation, meaning there is a possible reality where the universe never existed or matter never formed, and therefore this pizza couldn’t exist. Secondly, the modal ontological argument doesn’t argue that the MGB must exist because “existence is greater than non existence.” Instead of existence itself being a predicate, the mode of existence is a predicate. In other words, a maximally great being is fully perfect with no imperfections. Dependence is a limitation, and limitations are imperfections. Therefore, a MGB cannot be dependent, and must be necessary by definition. 

The second and third main objections to the argument go hand in hand. First, the argument is perceived as being subject to parody. This means that atheists will say that we can use the same logic of the argument to say that any kind of god exists, like a maximally evil god or a maximally neutral god. This would cause the argument to collapse on itself, because a MGB cannot coexist with other deities. On the contrary, the truth is that these beings could not coexist with the MGB, not the other way around. This is because evil and neutrality imply the existence of good, meaning those beings would not be maximally great in any real sense because they are not omnibenevolent, and are contingent on the concept of goodness. 

The only deity that can work with this argument is the God of Christianity (although some other monotheistic religions have a deity that has these same attributes). This is because any being which is not maximally great and has a limiter on its greatness must have some reason why it is not “greater” if it exists at all. As I mentioned before, limitations are imperfections. Not possessing maximal greatness would imply some sort of contingency, meaning the being would not be necessarily existing and therefore is not guaranteed to exist in reality. 

This would lead to the third last resort objection, which is the only one that is logically valid but doesn’t accomplish anything when it comes to refuting the argument. The objection shifts the burden of proof, saying that in order for theists to say that the MGB exists, they would have to both disprove the possibility of any other being that would align with the modal ontological argument or “prove” the possibility of the MGB. However, theists can respond to this in several ways. First, they can shift the burden of proof back, saying that in order to refute the argument, atheists must first prove the logical incoherence of the MGB, or prove the logical coherence of any other deity. This doesn’t really prove a point, but defends the argument as logically sound. Secondly, theists can argue that the MGB is the most likely deity as opposed to other deities because it aligns with classical theology and appeals to Occam’s Razor, which is a widely accepted principle that asserts that the most simple explanation is the most likely to be true. This would go with the classical theist idea of divine simplicity, which other parody deities do not have. 

However, some still argue that the argument faces a problem if we technically cannot fully “prove” if it is possible that a maximally great being is a logically coherent concept, and some philosophers in history have criticized the idea of a necessary being. However, these philosophers often depend on unjustified skepticism and have been refuted time and time again by philosophers who use metaphysics to defend the MGB. There has been no formal logical incoherence found in the idea of this being.

Additionally, some people might have a problem with accepting an abstract logical proof like the modal ontological argument without empirical evidence. However, this is a somewhat weak position because people assume plenty of things that are necessarily true without ever being empirically proven. For example, we know that 2+2=4, and this statement is true even if the universe were nonexistent with nothing to add, making it a necessary statement. The Pythagorean Theorem is another example: we believe that right triangles are real because they can accurately describe reality, and we even create complex calculations with them in order to determine things about the material world, but right triangles themselves cannot be found in the material world. In the same way, the modal ontological argument provides a logical proof for God’s existence which we can rationally assume without seeing material evidence.

Theism is quite clearly a rationally justified belief as it only relies on the possibility of God, and it’s arguable that atheism is a much larger “leap of faith.”