Drew's Blog

A Fun Platitude

2011-10-23T19:03:00.000-04:00

When the going gets difficult, the difficult get going.

Customer Service

2011-09-30T14:49:00.002-04:00

At our organization, we give customers better than they deserve.

Anti-Poverty Social Programs

2011-09-15T17:26:00.001-04:00

In Ronald Nash's book Poverty and Wealth, he gives statistics on the per capita expense of United States anti-poverty programs.

In 1982, the total U.S. welfare bill at all levels of government (federal, state, and local) came to 403 billion dollars. If we take figures from the Bureau of the Census (August 1984) which state that the number of people living in poverty in the U.S. was 15.2 percent of the population, or 35.3 million people, an amazing fact emerges. Had we simply divided the 403 billion dollars this nation spent on poverty at every level of government among the estimated number of poor people, each poor person could have received $11,133. For a family of four, this would have totaled $44,532. Since the official poverty level per family for that year was $9,287, it is clear that America's fight against poverty involves enormous overhead costs. Most of the tax dollars collected to fight poverty end up, Thomas Sowell notes, "in the pockets of highly paid administrators, consultants, and staff as well as higher-income recipients of benefits from programs advertised as anti-poverty efforts." Clearly, the bucket used to carry money from the pockets of the taxpayer to the poor is leaking badly. Many think the real beneficiaries of liberal social programs are not the poor and disadvantaged but the members of the governmental bureaucracy who administer the program.

Today's statistics are not much different. $591 billion per year (on the Federal level alone) spent on 39.8 million impoverished equates to $14,849 per person, or $59,396 for a family of four. We spend a lot of money on anti-poverty programs, and it sure isn't helping.

Faith and Reason

2011-08-11T15:59:00.006-04:00

Basil Mitchell pictures traditional theology as a barge going down a river. On one side of the river are shoals representing the works of David Hume and Immanuel Kant, which enshrine some of the most serious intellectual barriers in modern times to religious belief. When confronted with the shoals, the captain of the barge seems to have three options:

1. Crash into the shoals (apostasy into skepticism).
2. Jettison much of the cargo (core doctrines such as supernatural divine intervention) to lighten the barge and sail safely over them
3. Swing sharply to the other side, facing the dangerous straits of fideism and fundamentalism. (In this latter swing)...you can retain the language but at the price of repudiating in various degrees the need to take into account knowledge from any other domain.

It has disturbed me when spiritual leaders ask: "How do I reconcile faith and reason?" The answer is not to compromise with Enlightenment-era naturalism the way Averroes compromised his Islamic beliefs with natural philosophy in the middle ages. Instead, I think that Al Ghazali had the right idea. He used reason and evidence to attack and destroy the philosophers' doctrines, such as the eternity of the past, which conflicted with the core doctrines of Islam.

The problem with ignoring the shoals and going into fundamentalism, even if that seems acceptable to your barge, is that many will not follow your course of action. They will either crash into apostasy or compromise with liberalism. Also, the fideist has no grounds for using polemics against the cults. For the sake of others, when faced with the shoals of Kant and Hume, the only acceptable course of action is:

4. Destroy the shoals.

Explaining the United States Debt Limit

2011-08-03T09:58:00.002-04:00

Our country is going through a crisis right now, going even deeper into debt. This video helps to explain just how we got into this situation, and how we might be able to get out.

A Fatal Flaw in the Keynesian Model

2011-07-21T16:47:00.000-04:00

When I took macroeconomics at Kent State University, I think the primary flaw in Keynes' economic system is its assumption that the price of labor exists only relative to the price of goods, and vice versa. In other words, take the price of a certain bundle of goods and ask "how many hours of work will it take the average laborer to earn this?" That is how Keynes defined price.

Because of this paradigm, Keynesians suggest altering the labor to goods price ratio to solve economic problems. Because labor costs do not change quickly, a rapid change in the cost of goods can temporarily alter the labor to goods price ratio in one direction or another, and hence ramp up or cool off the economy.

For example, an economy in recession, according to the Keynesian, has a high labor to goods ratio, which means higher unemployment and a weaker economy. The way a Keynesian would fix this is to increase government spending while cutting taxes (this is called fiscal policy) in order to increase the money supply. The increase in the money supply will drive up the cost of goods, but it will take time for labor costs (such as labor contracts) to adjust to this. Hence, we get a temporary decrease in the labor to goods price ratio, and a stronger economy. For those of you wondering why the government is increasing spending while we are already in debt, this is the reason.

Such a system cannot account for situations where the economy as a whole becomes stronger (e.g. technological improvement). If some rapid advance in technology came overnight, and everyone was able to produce twice the amount of goods that they produce today, the price of labor would then double relative to the price of goods.

Fair enough, but what if instead of technological advancement, something changed overnight in human biology or our social situation that would cut our hours available for work in half. The price of labor would again double relative to the price of goods.

Clearly, the former situation would lead to increased prosperity and reduced poverty, as it would double our resources for providing food, clothing, shelter, and transportation. The latter would reduce the availability of essential services such as firefighting, police services, and medical care. Yet the Keynesian model cannot distinguish between the two!

Jon Stewart: One of the Most Biased Talk Show Hosts

2011-06-14T14:55:00.001-04:00

What really bothers me about comedians like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert is not that they are left-wing ideologues, but that they pretend to be politically neutral outsiders.

Necessity

2011-06-10T11:40:00.000-04:00

If a state of affairs is necessary, then the proposition which states that the state of affairs holds will be necessary; and conversely, if a proposition is necessary, then the state of affairs which it states to be the case is necessary. Necessity de re entails necessity de dicto, and conversely.

-Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, p. 235

Bradley Monton on Methodological Naturalism

2011-02-20T18:44:00.001-05:00

"If science really is permanently committed to methodological naturalism – the philosophical position that restricts all explanations in science to naturalistic explanations - it follows that the aim of science is not generating true theories. Instead, the aim of science would be something like: generating the best theories that can be formulated subject to the restriction that the theories are naturalistic. More and more evidence could come in suggesting that a supernatural being exists, but scientific theories wouldn’t be allowed to acknowledge that possibility."

- Philosopher of science and atheist Bradley Monton

The Fallacy of Income Redistribution

2011-01-12T21:41:00.003-05:00

Income redistribution is taking income from one group and giving it to another group. From economic liberals, there is a strong belief that the rich are too rich and some of that money needs to go to the poor. Perhaps this is true, but the suggestion that comes out of this is that we should tax the rich to subsidize the poor.

My opinion on the issue can be summarized in two graphs:

Here is the absolutely insane increase in antipoverty spending over the past 50 years. Remember that the bottom graph is not in dollars, but percentage of GDP. The GDP in 1962 was around $500 billion. It is now around $14 trillion.

The spending on antipoverty programs was around $2.5 billion in 1962. Today, it is around $616 billion. That's an increase of 24,640% in anti-poverty spending. Let's hope that this makes a dent in the poverty rate:

Wow. We made a slight dent in the poverty rate for the first few years of this antipoverty spending. Since then, we increased antipoverty spending about 12,000% (that's twelve thousand percent) with no decrease in the poverty rate.

I do not know what the solution is, but I am pretty sure it is not raising taxes to fund more social programs.

Dictionary Highlights: Day 65

2010-11-01T21:56:00.000-04:00

Hitting the dic- section has brought out my inner Beavis and Butthead. Unforseen circumstances of research

dianoia - the mental faculty used in discursive reasoning.

diaphoretic - producing perspiration.

diatreme - a volcanic vent produced in a solid rock structure by the explosive energy of gases in magmas.

Or from a diet of refried beans

dick - detective

Tracy

Dick test - a test for determining immunity or susceptibility to scarlet fever in which scarlet fever toxin is injected into the skin, susceptibility being characterized by redness at the injection area.

I think I'll put this definition on Urban Dictionary

digitalism - the abnormal condition resulting from an overconsumption of digitalis.

Symptoms include the inability to read analog clocks

Dictionary Highlights: Day 64

2010-10-31T00:21:00.000-04:00

desorb - to remove an absorbate or adsorbate from (an absorbent or adsorbent).

despiteful - spiteful

Spiteful and despiteful mean the same thing?

destool - to remove (a West African ruler) from office.

I just thought it meant to take a laxative

destrier - a war-horse; charger.

detritivore - an organism that uses organic waste as a food source, as certain insects.

diabolo - a game in which a toplike object is spun, thrown, and caught by or balanced on and whirled along a string the ends of which are fastened to the ends of two sticks that are manipulated by hand.

Dictionary Highlights: Day 63

2010-10-25T22:02:00.000-04:00

dendrophagous - feeding on the wood of trees, as certain insects.

dent corn - a variety of field corn, Zea mays indentata, having yellow or white kernels that become indented as they ripen.

depth psychology - any approach to psychology that postulates and studies personality from the standpoint of dynamic and unconscious motivation.

deratization - extermination of rats, esp. aboard a merchant vessel.

derma - beef or fowl intestine used as a casing in preparing certain savory dishes, esp. kishke.

Now they spoiled kishke for me. And I thought that was such good stuff

desmid - any single-celled freshwater algae of the family Desmidiaceae, characterized by a division of the body into mirror-image halves joined by a bridge containing the nucleus, and having a spiny or bristly exterior: sometimes forming into colonies or branching filaments.

Dictionary Highlights: Day 62

2010-10-24T23:48:00.000-04:00

deformed bar - a rod for reinforcing concrete, having surface irregularities, as transverse ridges, to improve the bond

Using a deformed bar to keep concrete from becoming deformed

dehisce - to burst open, as capsules of plants; gape.

dekko - (British slang) a look or glance

Take a dekko at Mr. Gekko.

Delhi belly - diarrhea experienced by travelers in a foreign country, who are not accustomed to the local food and water.

Not to be confused with Deli belly

demimetope - the space between the end of a Doric frieze and the first triglyph.

I feel like this is from some weird sci-fi geek site

demisemiquaver - a thirty-second note.

Only you musicians out there would know the obscure names for these notes.

de Moivre's theorem - the theorem that a complex number raised to a given positive integral power is equal to the modulus of the number raised to the power and multiplied by the amplitude times the given power.

Well, DUH!

dendrology - the branch of botany dealing with trees and shrubs.

For this experiment, I'll need. . .another shrubbery!

Dictionary Highlights: Day 61

2010-10-19T00:32:00.000-04:00

decollate snail - a cone-shaped, burrowing snail, Rumina decollata, that feeds on common brown garden snails.

I wonder if it has a taste for escargot?

deconstruction - a philosophical and critical movement, starting in the 1960s and esp. applied to the study of literature, that questions all traditional assumptions about the ability of language to represent reality and emphasizes that a text has no stable reference or identification because words essentially only refer to other words and therefore a reader must approach a text by eliminating any metaphysical or ethnocentric assumptions through an active role of defining meaning, sometimes by a reliance on new word construction, etymology, puns, and other word play.

Not quite the same meaning as disassembly

deep fat - hot fat used for deep-frying food.

As opposed to shallow fat?

defender of the bond - an official appointed in each diocese to uphold marriages of disputed validity.

defensive medicine - the practice by a physician of ordering many tests or consultations as a means of self-protection against charges of malpractice in the event of an unfavorable outcome of treatment.

definitive host - the host in or on which a parasite spends the sexual stage of its life cycle.

Normal parties have a host. Frat parties have a definitive host

Dictionary Highlights: Day 60

2010-10-16T22:51:00.002-04:00

Dawson Creek - a village in NE British Columbia, Canada, at the SE terminus of the Alaska Highway.

A little cold of a climate for James Van Der Beek

dayan - a judge in a Jewish religious court or a person knowledgeable in Talmudic law whose advice on religious questions is often sought by rabbis.

Biblical Judges usurped by Rabbinic overlords

daymare - a distressing experience, similar to a bad dream, occurring while one is awake.

dead-man's float - a prone floating position, used esp. by beginning swimmers, with face downward, legs extended backward, and arms stretched forward.

Why is it the early survival swimming techniques are the ones with your face underwater

Dictionary Highlights: Day 59

2010-10-15T23:09:00.003-04:00

dactyl - Prosody . a foot of three syllables, one long followed by two short in quantitative meter, or one stressed followed by two unstressed in accentual meter, as in gently and humanly.

Dago - a person of Italian or sometimes spanish origin or descent.

. . . as the Dagoes buy

dagoba - a dome-shaped memorial alleged to contain relics of Buddha or a Buddhist saint; stupa; chaitya.

and you thought the Star Wars names were picked arbitrarily

Dam - ( Carl Peter ) Henrik (ˈhɛnrəɡ). 1895--1976, Danish biochemist who discovered vitamin K (1934): Nobel prize for physiology or medicine 1943

and a Dam fine job he did

D and C - a surgical method for the removal of diseased tissue or an early embryo from the lining of the uterus by means of scraping.

D&D - Dungeons and Dragons

The uncaring Goth kid played some D&D while his mom was having a D and C

dangleberry - blueberry

not to be confused with dingleberry

darn - to mend, as torn clothing, with rows of stitches, sometimes by crossing and interweaving rows to span a gap.

darn this torn coat!

Stephen Jay Gould and NOMA

2010-10-03T09:23:00.000-04:00

Stephen Jay Gould is famous for his concept of NOMA, stating that religion and science cover non-overlapping subjects. While this may sound appealing, the devil is in the details. To quote Gould:

The first commandment for all version of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magestiria by claiming that God driectly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science."

In other words, science gets to impose metaphysical naturalim on all matters of fact, while religion gets dominion over only matters of feeling.

This is "separate but equal" of the Apartheid variety.

Dictionary Highlights: Day 58

2010-08-30T00:39:00.001-04:00

currency principle - the principle that banks should be permitted to issue notes only against bullion or coin.

Becuase if it read "booty, coin, or plunder" it would have been the pirate currency principle.

curtate - shortened; reduced; abbreviated.

curule chair - (in ancient Rome) a folding seat with curved legs and no back, often ornamented with ivory, used only by certain high officials.

That's right. The uncomfortable folding chair with no back is for the high officials. I'll bet they had bad backs.

curvaceous - (of a woman) having a well-shaped figure with voluptuous curves.

I am going to start telling women that they are looking rather curvaceous today. I cannot imagine how this could lead to trouble.

cush-cush - yampee

Lotta help there, Mr. Dictionary

cyclopedia - an encyclopedia

Which I will tackle after I finish the dictionary

cywydd - a form of meter in Welsh poetry consisting of rhyming couplets, each line having seven syllables: first used in the 14th century.

And the C-section is complete. It will take some time to recover. I hope I don't die of an infection in the process.

Dictionary Highlights Update

2010-08-27T18:24:00.000-04:00

The original purpose of Dictionary Highlights was to help me get through my goal of reading the entire dictionary in one year. After realizing that's not feasible given all the other things I have going on, I'm going to take this at a slower pace.

Basically, I'll post updates on days that I have the time to read the daily prescription of 8 pages. Not sure when I'll be done, so let's just enjoy the ride.

Dictionary Highlights: Day 57

2010-08-27T17:19:00.002-04:00

crowdy - a dish of meal, esp. oatmeal and water, or sometimes milk, stirred together; gruel; brose; porridge.

cruller - Also called French cruller. a rich, light, raised doughnut, often with a ridged surface and sometimes topped with white icing.

Why is it whenever I see the word French in front of something, my mind immediately dives into the gutter?

cruor - coagulated blood, or the portion of the blood that forms the clot.

I thought Japan had laws against cruor and unusuor punishment

cryohydrate - a mixture of ice and another substance in definite proportions such that a minimum melting or freezing point is attained.

Does your diet have the right balance of cryohydrates?

cryotron - a cryogenic device that uses the principle that a varying magnetic field can cause the resistance of a superconducting element to change rapidly between its high normal and low superconductive values: used as a switch and as a computer-memory element.

Also a potential villain for the next Transformers movie

crypotozoology - the study of evidence tending to substantiate the existence of, or the search for, creatures whose reported existence is unproved, as the Abominable Snowman or the Loch Ness monster.

This is science?

Cubba - a female day name for Wednesday

cuckoo spit - Also called frog spit. a frothy secretion found on plants, exuded by the young of certain insects, as the froghoppers, and serving as a protective covering.

cuittle - to wheedle, cajole, or coax.

That's three more words to look up. Big help there, dictionary!

culex - any of numerous mosquitoes constituting the widespread genus Culex, distinguished by the habit in the adult of holding the body parallel to the feeding or resting surface, as the common house mosquito, C. pipiens.

From Nickelodeon's The Tomorrow People.

cummingtonite - an amphibole mineral, magnesium-iron silicate, similar in composition to anthophyllite but richer in iron.

That shipment of minerals I ordered a week ago, is it cummingtonite?

The Broken Window Fallacy

2010-08-13T00:55:00.000-04:00

One of the most annoying fallacies people spread around. You hear this nonsense all over the news, claiming how these public works projects will create wealth and give people jobs. But in the end, government can only spend money that it takes from the people either through taxation, interest rates, or inflating the currency. In any case, it is like trying to gain nutrition by drinking your own blood.

Try Harder

2010-08-03T22:24:00.000-04:00

The Ontological Argument

2010-07-06T14:00:00.007-04:00

Disclaimer: There is very little that can be known with absolute certainty. Logical and mathematical proofs might be among them, but almost any proposition can be shot down with enough hyperskepticism. I could deny many propositions that virtually everyone else would agree are true; that other minds exist, that the outside world is real, that George Washington was the first US President. While there is no absolute proof that these things I might be trying to deny are true, there is good reason to believe them, because the evidence better supports them than it supports their negations.

Deductive logic operates on deriving a conclusion from premises. If each premise is more plausible than its negation, and the connection between the premises and the conclusion is valid, then the conclusion follows logically and inescapably.

Here are the Big Four arguments in natural theology and what they attempt to demonstrate:

Kalam Cosmological Argument: There cannot be an actually infinite number of past events, therefore, matter cannot be eternal. There was a first event. The first event had to be caused. The cause for the first event had to be uncaused, nonphysical and had to have the properties of volition and causal potency.

Teleological Argument: That from which reality came had to possess intelligence, volition, and causal potency

Ontological Argument: The greatest possible being actually exists in all possible worlds

Moral Argument: Objective morality exists, and that from which objective morality came had to possess the property of morality

The Set-Up
The Ontological Argument is a very brainy argument that at first seems like a philosophical trick. Yet, to those that understand it, this is the most powerful argument in all of natural theology. Unfortunately, without some background in modal logic, this argument is unintelligible, so I am going to give a crash course in modal logic before presenting this argument.

Possible Worlds
A possible world is basically a hypothetical situation. Calling it a possible world is not to say that such a world actually exists. It's just a description of what reality might be; a way for philosophers to see what ideas are coherent and what ideas are not. If something is possible, then we say that it exists in some possible world.

Possibility, Necessity, and Contingency
In metaphysics, the term "possible" has an entirely different meaning than in epistemology. In epistemology, you could look at a difficult math problem and say "it's possible that there is a solution for it" which is like saying "for all I know, there is a solution to this problem." In metaphysics, something is possible if it is logically coherent. For example, my wearing a red shirt is possible, but the existence of square circles is not possible.

Possible - If something is possible, it exists in some possible world.
Necessary - If something is necessary, it cannot not exist, so it exists in all possible worlds. Logical and mathematical truths exist necessarily.
Contingent - If something is contingent, it exists in some possible worlds but not in others. This is to say that it is possible but not necessary.
Impossible - If something is impossible, it exists in no possible worlds. Logically contradictory things like married bachelors are impossible.

For this argument, we are using the metaphysical definition of "possible" so if I say "it's possible that 1+1=2" this doesn't imply "it's possible that 1+1 does not equal 2" Something can be both possible and necessary.

Entailment
To say that A entails B is to say that if A is true, then B has to be true.

Perfection
Perfection - A property that it is better to have than to lack
Imperfection - A property that it is better to lack than to have
Neutral - A property that is neither a perfection nor an imperfection

Maximal Greatness
Maximal Greatness - The state of having all perfections. A maximally great being would have properties such as omnipotence, omniscience, moral perfection, and necessary existence, to name a few. Nothing that exists contingently can be Maximally Great. This is not to say that something has to exist to be Maximally Great. Instead, if something that is Maximally Great exists, then it exists necessarily.

The Ontological Argument
This argument is a deductive argument with 5 premises, that if true, entail the conclusion.

Premise 1: It is possible that a Maximally Great Being (MGB) exists
Premise 2: If it is possible that a MGB exists, then a MGB exists in some possible world
Premise 3: If a MGB exists in some possible world, then a MGB exists in all possible worlds
Premise 4: If a MGB exists in all possible worlds, then a MGB exists in the actual world
Premise 5: If a MGB exists in the actual world, then a MGB exists
Conclusion: A MGB exists.

Interestingly enough, premises 2 through 5 are pretty uncontroversial. They are more or less restatements of the laws of modal logic, and are accepted by theist and atheist philosophers alike.
Premise 2 is just a restatement of what it means for something to possibly exist.
Premise 3 restates the definition of what Maximal Greatness is. If something exists contingently, then it cannot be Maximally Great. Therefore, its existence is either necessary or impossible.

So the question remains: is it possible that a Maximally Great Being exists? Generally, the atheist position has been: "no", but recently the logician Robert Maydole slammed the door on that position by showing that such a response leads to a contradiction.

Why it is Possible that a Maximally Great Being Exists
(A) If a property (P) is a perfection, its negation (~P) is an imperfection
(B) If a property P is a perfection and P entails Q, Q is not an imperfection
(C) Maximal Greatness (we'll call it M) is a perfection
Conclusion 1: M cannot entail ~M

Here's the reason: If a property is a perfection, anything it entails not an imperfection. But since a perfection's negation is an imperfection, no perfection can entail its own negation.

Here is why this is relevant:

It is perfectly within the laws of modal logic for a property (which is not a perfection) to entail its negation. If a property is an incoherent (or impossible) property (square-circleness is an example, so we'll call this S), then it's necessary that everything has the negation of S (we'll call this ~S) as a property. That's what it means for a property to be impossible. But if everything has ~S, that means that every property entails ~S. If it didn't, then something could have some other property and not have ~S, which means it would have S, which means S would be a possible property. But if every property entails ~S, then S also entails ~S. This is consistent with the Principle of Explosion, which states that if you assert a contradiction, you can logically infer anything from it.

So if Premise 1 of the Ontological Argument is false, then
(X) It is not possible that something with M exists; which is the same as saying
(Y) Necessarily, all things have ~M; and if that's the case, then
(Z) All properties entail ~M; and since M is a property, then
Conclusion 2: M entails ~M
But we just established that M cannot entail ~M
So Premise 1 of the Ontological Argument cannot be false.

For the minority of philosophers who do not believe in the Principle of Explosion, here is another way to think of it:

If M is an impossible property, then everything necessarily has ~M. This means that every property entails ~M. ~M is an imperfection, and perfections cannot entail imperfections. This means that if M is impossible, then no property is a perfection. This means that there are no good properties, only bad ones. But this is ridiculous. Aren't some properties, like goodness, intelligence, and wisdom better to have than to lack?
So again, Premise 1 of the Ontological Argument cannot be false.

The Consequences
But if that is the case, then it is possible that a being with Maximal Greatness exists. But then that entails that this Maximally Great Being exist in some possible world, which means that it exists in all possible world, which means that it exists in this world.

Which means that a Maximally Great Being exists. And since this being must exist in all possible worlds, including ones with odd space/time curvatures and worlds that lack space itself, this being transcends physical limitations, and therefore cannot be physical. And since some of these properties such as omnipotence, omniscience, and moral perfection entail personality, then it follows that this Maximally Great Being must be personal. But that's the definition of a personal God.

Conclusion
The greatest possible being actually exists in all possible worlds, which means that a personal God exists in this world. His existence is as necessary and certain as the laws of logic themselves, and atheism is a logical impossibility.

Objections
Most objections to the Ontological Argument try to parody the argument to show that it proves too much. Let's see if any of them are sound.

Dawkins' Delusion
In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins attempts to use this argument to disprove the existence of God. He says that if God is the greatest possible being, then wouldn't it be greater for God to not exist and still bring the universe into being? But far from undermining the Ontological Argument, it shows its coherence.

To answer Dawkins: Greater? Maybe. Possible? No. For in what possible world does a non-existent being exist?

A Maximally Great Island
What if I state that a Maximally Great Island (MGI) exists by its definition? Wouldn't its Maximal Greatness entail its existence?

First, we have already established that anything which is Maximally Great cannot be physical, due to the problem of space. But this concept also fails because a MGI is incoherent. While the properties that make up a Maximally Greatness have maximum values (knowledge tops out at omniscience), the properties that make an island great do not. You could always add more good things (beverages, dancing, etc.) to any given island to make it greater.

A Quasi-Maximally Great Being
What if a being has all the other perfections but did not exist in every possible world? Or what if this necessary being had all the perfections except one, such as omniscience? Neither one is possible. Here's why:

Some of the properties possessed by a Maximally Great Being cannot exist in more than one being in any possible world. Omnipotence is one example. If multiple beings are omnipotent, then a logical contradiction follows if their wills come into conflict. If one omnipotent being chooses to bring about a state of affairs where a green elephant exists, then such a state of affairs will be actualized. But if another omnipotent being in the same world wants to bring about a state of affairs where a green elephant does not exist, then that state of affairs will be actualized. So in this world, a green elephant would both exist and not exist, but no possible world can contain such a contradictory state of affairs. So no possible world can have multiple omnipotent beings.

But what if it was metaphysically impossible that their wills could come into conflict? If it is not even possible that the wills of these two omnipotent beings could come into conflict, then we are not talking about two different wills, but one will being described two ways. And if there is only one will, then that collapses the two beings into one.

And if the Quasi Maximally Great being was not omnipotent, then that being cannot exist necessarily. If an omnipotent being exists, then nothing else can exist except by the will of the omnipotent being. Since the Maximally Great being is by definition omnipotent and personal, it would be able to refrain from allowing anything else to exist, so there would be possible worlds where only the Maximally Great Being exists.

So no Quasi Maximally Great being can exist necessarily.

This has the side effect of eliminating polytheism. If God exists, then other gods (who by definition have to exist necessarily in order to be gods) cannot exist. So when an atheist tells you "You don't believe in Thor or Wotan. So when you understand why you reject those gods, you'll understand why I reject yours" you will know how to respond.

For further reading on this subject, the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology is now available.

My Contribution to the Kalam Argument

2010-07-05T19:44:00.000-04:00

Dr. Craig's main argument for the existence of God has been the Kalam Argument. He worked on it for his Ph.D. in philosophy.

It goes like this.

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause
2. The Universe began to exist
Conclusion: The Universe had a cause

He explains that Premise 1 is well accepted by philosophers as not only true, but necessarily true (meaning that it cannot be false)
He gives two arguments from science and two arguments from mathematics that the physical world cannot be eternal in the past but must have had a beginning. He says that the conclusion of this argument lets you draw a lot of conclusions about the Creator: that He is spaceless, timeless, extraordinarily powerful, and personal.

However, he said that it does not prove that God exists necessarily (that He cannot not exist)

So I asked him: "Why not? If the mathematical arguments are sound, then it is impossible for any physical world to be eternal in the past. If so, then both premises are not just true, but necessarily true. Which means the conclusion is necessarily true."
Or more specifically: Any possible world in which anything physical exists must have a transcendent personal creator.

A smile crept on Dr. Craig's face as he told me: "That's...true. Did you think of that yourself or did someone tell you this?"
I told him that I thought of this myself.
He then said: "I never thought of that before, and no one told me it, either. I'm going to add that to my presentations on the Kalam Argument"

It's really awesome being able to make a contribution to the philosophy of religion field.