Not as long as you'd think, it's an old one. It originated here: "God, by definition, is that for which no greater can be conceived. God exists in the understanding. If God exists in the understanding, we could imagine Him to be greater by existing in reality. Therefore, God must exist."
I don't get the final "therefore..." I can conceive of fabulous things but nature is under no obligation to create them to satisfy a dubious logical progression. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <s3raphita@...> wrote: Logician Kurt Gödel's ontological proof for the existence of God. (This should keep salyavin808 busy for a while.) Definition 1: x is God-like if and only if x has as essential properties those and only those properties which are positive Definition 2: A is an essence of x if and only if for every property B, x has B necessarily if and only if A entails http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_consequence B Definition 3: x necessarily exists if and only if every essence of x is necessarily exemplified Axiom 1: Any property entailed by—i.e., strictly implied by—a positive property is positive Axiom 2: If a property is positive, then its negation is not positive Axiom 3: The property of being God-like is positive Axiom 4: If a property is positive, then it is necessarily positive Axiom 5: Necessary existence is a positive property From these axioms and definitions and a few other axioms from modal logic, the following theorems can be proved: Theorem 1: If a property is positive, then it is consistent, i.e., possibly exemplified. Corollary 1: The property of being God-like is consistent. Theorem 2: If something is God-like, then the property of being God-like is an essence of that thing. Theorem 3: Necessarily, the property of being God-like is exemplified. Symbolically:
