From: (Anonymous)	Date: March 18th, 2005 08:00 pm (UTC)		(Link)
Convolution of Descartes' Ontological and Teleological Arguments for the Existence of God

I just wanted to point out that on your webpage analyzing Descartes's arguments for the existence of God, that you've mistakenly combined the ontological and teleological arguments into one argument. The ontological argument for the existence of God relies on the claim that existence is a property of perfection. The teleological argument warrants God's existence by claiming that Descartes' conception of a perfect being - as imperfect as Descartes was - could only have been caused by a prefect being, God. On your website steps (2), (3) and (4) relate to the teleological argument, while steps (5) and (6) relate to the ontological argument. Step (1) has very little relevence to both arguments. Any ways, I hope this helps improve you page, and thanks for trying to help bring philosophy more into mainstream pop-culture.

From: (Anonymous)	Date: September 26th, 2005 04:56 am (UTC)		(Link)
descartes

this is the best website ever. thanks i got so many concepts off of here for my philosophy paper( i gave credit to the site ofcours), but all this def proves descartes was wrong. there is no god.

From: (Anonymous)	Date: October 24th, 2005 01:33 pm (UTC)		(Link)
Re: descartes

hi, im not so sure that your argument does prove that descartes is wrong and therefore there is no god. my grasp of language is by no means superior so i am going to try my best to explain myself without too much confusion. i think too much emphasis is being taken here on peoples opinion of perfection, eg. my perfect ice cream would be chocolate but someone elses might be strawberry. people obviously have different tastes, we are all different, descartes is saying that there is an idea of perfection, something which is perfect for everyone,as if it wasnt perfect for EVERYONE it would not be perfect, and we as imperfect beings could not come up with this idea of perfection... im digressing as this is not the ontological argument. also you say descartes theory does no support monotheism, well im not so sure thats what he was proving. descartes was christian but by god all he means is a perfect eternal being, regardless of any religion's view of god they all have these two qualities in common- infintite and onmipotent.

where the real trouble lies is here, the ontological argument seems nothing more than a clever play on words, could you please post some arguments for this as all though it doesnt seem convincing at first glance it is very difficult to completely disregard. existence is a property of god like degrees adding up to 180 is a property of a triangle. now whether or not a triangle exists in the 'real' world our idea of it has to have 180 degrees at least. howver because existence is a property of god that mere fact that we are even compelled to think of this idea means that he does exist in the 'real' world... now that was poorly worded but i think you can get what i am saying, so please could you post some criticisms for this argument.

From: (Anonymous)	Date: January 25th, 2006 12:19 am (UTC)		(Link)
Re: descartes

Hi,
just wanted to comment on the article about descartes.
Can any human being say with full authority that God
does not exist just because they believe so, anymore than
someone who believes in God? It seems obvious that there is
a great intelligence behind creation. Nature itself,
procreation, humanity, the planetery systems all are just
some examples of life that behold great design and intell
-igence. We can go round the houses and use very academic
means and terms to debate for or against. Just because
the subjective belief of a creator is so does not make it
delusional. We cannot speak for the rest of humanity
in their personal relationship with the force within them.
Unless your mind is open to there being a creator, then
you will not have what I would term an intuitonal relationship
with the creator within and how life is directed by that
force. Having an intiuitional relationship with the creator
reveals that there are no such things as coincedeces, that
there is a plan unfolding that we are intricately conect-
ed to and governed by and that destiny is something that is
often beyond our control. Timing of events in our lives,
the patterns of our lives, the people we meet, crisis,
learning curves all have meaning and purpose and we are on
a journey of self discovery. The creator is both personal
and impersonal and expresses itself through us, through all
existence in infinate ways and means all at the same time.
In this way we can look at a creator from many different
angles as many people do, religiously, scientifically,
philosophically and so on. My conviction in this of course
is my personal experience and understanding of an infinate
creator as a whole is obviousloy beyond the limits of my human understanding.
However, how I experience a personal relationship with the
creator is in my everday life. The uncanny timing of events
lessons that come along at exactly the right time I need
to learn them. People that come along at exactly the right time. People that teach me a little bit of wisdom
everyday be it strangers in passing or friends, associates.
Mystical experiences that you just can't talk about with
people that are overly logical, overly rational to the
point of over riding cynisim (rather than plain old, reosonable skeptisim). Their minds are closed! Also, people out
there tend to take existence for granted. They don't contemplate
the grandness of it all, or just how magical life really is.
They don't percieve the creator speaking to them, they don't
grasp that intricate, riddle-like language, nor the ironic
sense of humour the creator can express to us, or the events that come along to teach if we can grasp the lessons.
Ultamitely, our relationship with the creator, God is personal
Going to great lenghs and debates to say God does not exist
to me is a very short sided view and just as subjective as those
beliefs or perceptions the author argues against in objecting to there being a God.
Using academic terms in such debate does not nesseserily
clear the matter up or make it more
approachable, convilluted terms serve only to make the already
abstract even more abstract. sorry this reply comes to you
it was meant to appear along with the other letters and comments
in responce to the author's article
jacqueline...email:jaqinthebox68@hotmail.com

From: xenoaroe	Date: November 11th, 2005 05:04 pm (UTC)		(Link)

very wonderfully put together. perhaps add Kant's criticisms? Well they are already sort of in there, but drop his name in, he has the best criticism of the arguement. great page tho! : )

From: (Anonymous)	Date: February 9th, 2006 09:55 pm (UTC)		(Link)

Well for one, your post is well written, although not on the right subject. I agree with the commenter who wrote that you have combined two arguements here, the teleological ontological arguments. If you really wish to refute the ontological argument, I suggest Anselm's argument in its simplest form, then we won't get into language problems and the such. The argument goes as follows in plain English.
(1) God (df) is that thing than which no other thing can be concieved of as 'greater'
(2) A thing that exists is greater than a thing that does not.
(3) Therefore God exist.

Tips for refuting the argument... Focus on number two. One is correct, don't waste your time there, because it's a theoretical definition, it does not define God as existing. Think of a Sasquatch (bigfoot) define it, although existence is unknown for sure, you can still define it.

Norman Malcolm argued in favour of the argument, but only that it shows the existence of God in the human mind. The strength here is that the by showing the existence in the human mind, it shows atheism to be contradictory, which you can use to show that God exist in reality.

Now before I get comments attacking me personally (it's the internet, it will happen) I would much rather get comments attack the argument. I've studied it for a long time, as well as the criticisms that it faces, and I have to say it is sound. I have no idea whether there is a God or not, I'd like to think of myself as agonistic, and I will be the first to admit that this argument hasn't persuaded me to become a devout Christian. That being said though, as far as a philosophical argument goes, this one is pretty sound.

Lastly I will recognize that it relies on some pretty heavy asumptions about God, being Omnipotence and Omniscience, and some arguments with-in those concepts are definately contradictory to the Judeo/Islamic/Christian God. However I believe this argument works very well when thinking of God from an Agonistic viewpoint. Religion is seperate from God. It is the story of God and I think some of your criticism of God in some of your articles weight too heavily on the contradictions within scripture. I like your writing and your site, I really do, these are just some thoughts I had. If you have any criticisms for me, I'd love to hear them

From: unpropitious	Date: February 25th, 2006 05:48 pm (UTC)		(Link)

calling yourself a Satanist ruins any amount of intelligence i have built up for you.

	From: vexen	Date: February 25th, 2006 06:19 pm (UTC)		(Link)

I get that sometimes.

From: (Anonymous)	Date: March 1st, 2006 03:16 am (UTC)		(Link)

Your critisism shows a lack of understanding of basic philosophy. The first thing you need to do is grab one of Plato's works and read about the "forms." In this case perfection is NOT what each particular person thinks is perfection but rather that their is something that is perfection itself. Likewise for "virtue", "justice", "the color red", etc.

The proof may be lacking but you should apply equal scrutiny to your own belief system. The main flaw that I initially notice is that if you are a God than you must have created yourself or always existed. If that is the case than why did you not create yourself as perfect instead of flawed? Why not with complete knowledge instead of only partial knowledge?

	From: vexen	Date: March 1st, 2006 06:40 am (UTC)		(Link)

1. I am aware of and understand Plato's idea of perfect "forms": I think of them in term of computer programming objects that you get from an object library. You create "instances" of objects (and mixtures): The original "library" is Plato's perfect forms; any Earthly instance of them is, however, imperfect.

2. The Godhood you are talking about is called solipsism. http://www.vexen.co.uk/3/solipsism.html is my page on that; I do not believe in it. But if I did, then, I haven't "created myself" as imperfect. But, for want of something to do, I've created a conscious part of myself (me) that is limited. For fun. Or something.

In Satanism the self is viewed as god (http://www.dpjs.co.uk/worship.html ) for epistemological reasons, not cosmic ones. We create a mental picture of the world around us (psychology 101), and it is our own character and will that forms how we experience the world. Basic psychology; but with the symbolism taken to an extreme.

From: (Anonymous)	Date: December 12th, 2007 02:45 am (UTC)		(Link)

Actually, it is not "our own character and will that forms how we experience the world." If you learned that in Psych101 then you should probably take an upper level course. It is by and large the other way around in that our experience of the world forms our character and will. In addition, we have pretty much no free will when it comes to our sensation, perception and cognition of the world around us. You learn these things in upper level Psych courses.

	From: vexen	Date: December 12th, 2007 07:12 am (UTC)		(Link)

OK, try these, none of which are from Psych 101 material, and all of which are from properly cited professional psychology books:

“Experiments confirm that people easily misperceive random events as confirming their beliefs. (Crocker, 1981; Jennings & others, 1982; Trolier & Hamilton, 1986). If we believe a correlation exists, we notice and remember confirming instances. If we believe that premonitions correlate with events, we notice and remember the joint occurance of the premonition and the event's later occurance. We seldom notice or remember all the times unusual events do not coincide. [...] People see not only what they expect, but correlations they want to see.”
"Social Psychology" by David Myers, p114

(Bold formating is mine). The phenomenon of people forming internal beliefs and hypothesis based on their own expectations and character is frequently called the "top-down processing" of perception. Another two well-known and respected psychologists, Eysenck and Keane, explain this explicitly:

“Towards the end of the 1970s, theorists argued that virtually all cognitive activity consists of interactive bottom-up and top-down processes occurring at the same time. Perception and remembering might seem to be exceptions, because perception obviously depends heavily on the precise stimuli presented (and thus on bottom-up processing), and remembering depends crucially on stored information (and thus on top-down processing). However perception is also much affected by the perceiver's expectations about to-be-presented stimuli.”
"Cognitive Psychology" by Eysenck & Keane, p2

It's not just immediate perception that is influenced by our character, though, but the full spectrum of our cognitions. Here is Richard Gross on memory recall:

“Bartlett concluded that interpretation plays a large and largely unrecognized role in the remembering of stories and past events. [...] Rather than human memory being computer-like, with the output matching the input, Bartlett and Hunter believe that we process information in an active attempt to understand it. Memory is an 'imaginative reconstruction' of experience.”
"Psychology: The Science of Mind and Behaviour" by Richard Gross, p303

This mixture of expectation, assumption (both coloured by character) can affect an entire cultures' interpretation of certain types of event. The psychologist William James noted that different personality types have a tendancy to take up different religions. An author on comparative religion, Moojan Momen, writes:

“Religious experiences tend to conform closely to cultural and religious expectations. Village girls in Portugal have visions of the Virgin Mary - not of the Indian goddess Kali. Native Americans on their vision quest see visions of North American animals not of African ones. Thus it would seem that religious experiences, no matter how intense and all-consuming, are subject to constraint by the cultural and religious norms of the person to whom they occur. Another way of looking at this is to say that there can be no such thing as a pure experience. An experience always happens to a person, and that person already has an interpretive framework through which he or she views the world. Thus, experience and interpretation always combine and interpenetrate.”
"The Phenomenon Of Religion: A Thematic Approach" by Moojan Momen, p114

Quotes are taken from "The False and Conflicting Experiences of Mankind" by Vexen Crabtree (2002), which contains full references for the books cited.

	From: vexen	Date: December 12th, 2007 07:28 am (UTC)		(Link)
	Other points

1. You will find that only 50% of our personality is developed due to our environment; I list some of the major personality traits and cite examples of studies on "Evolution: Evidence, Unintelligent Design, Inherited Traits and Artificial Life" by Vexen Crabtree (2007).

2. I agree that we have no free will in our subjective interpretations of the world.

3. I have no real idea what you're talking about when you say "Psych101" or "upper level Psych courses". I base my information on scientific publications and professional books that do not classify themselves into "levels".

From: (Anonymous)	Date: May 3rd, 2006 08:37 am (UTC)		(Link)

yeah what he said.. i guess he got there first...

From: (Anonymous)	Date: November 19th, 2006 07:44 am (UTC)		(Link)
omg wrong wrong wrong

"As a Satanist I have a strong counter argument resulting from taking Descartes' argument to the next logical level:

7. As this being exists on account of my rendition of it, then without me this perfect being would not exist. Therefore I am more powerful than the perfect being and I am the true God. If I die, the God created to suit me dies"

your 7th level is so full of errors i dont even need to list them. but for the readers sake here goes:

I will use your translation of what was the Ontological Proof of Rene Descartes:

1.I exist

2.I have in my mind the notion of a perfect being

3.An imperfect being, like myself, cannot think up the notion of a perfect being

4.Therefore the notion of a perfect being must have originated from the perfect being himself

5.A perfect being would not be perfect if it did not exist

6.Therefore a perfect being must exist

then yours:

7. As this being exists on account of my rendition of it [you only have a notion that a perfect being might exist, as level 3 says you cannot even RENDER it or think up it because it is perfect and you are not], then without me this perfect being would not exist [level 5 says that it would not be perfect if it did not exist and related to level 3, it is not corollary that if an imperfect being dies so does the perfect being which his notion]. Therefore I am more powerful than the perfect being and I am the true God. If I die, the God created to suit me dies [level 2,3,4 never said it suited "I" it wasa a mere notion of a perfect being, "I" was not even able to think or render it in his mind because, level 3 states, he is imperfect.]

Thats just a few so many more better logical arguments are available to disupte level 7 of the author.