Here's a quote by Alvin Plantinga explaining the idea of necessary
existence.
"A
necessary being is one that can't fail to exist, no matter how things have
been. Or we can say that a necessary
being is one that exists in every possible world, where a possible world is a
way things could have been. Sort of a
"total" way things could have been; it says something about
everything. One of these possible worlds
is actual, the rest of them aren't... A
necessary being is one such that for any world at all, if it had been actual,
it would have existed."
Before I respond to this claim, I think it’s worth
pointing out that this is something Alvin Plantinga genuinely believes in. The guy has written multiple books on this exact
subject and even publicly defends them at every opportunity.
Popular Christian apologists like William Lane Craig have likewise
appealed to this same idea whenever they argue for God’s existence. Christian fanboys on YouTube will even
publish multi-part video series wherein they explain and defend this principle in elaborate detail. So I just want to
be clear that this is not a fringe, philosophical claim, but a standard go-to principle
within mainstream Christianity. The word "God" is defined to mean a
"maximally great being," wherein maximal greatness is defined in such a way that includes the property of
necessary existence in all possible worlds. Therefore, God
exists in all possible worlds.
Now let’s unpack what exactly is
going on here. Whenever we talk about possible worlds, it’s important to understand that we're simply
talking about ways our reality might have been.
For example, maybe you can imagine some possible world just like ours,
only where George Clooney is the president of the United States rather than
Barack Obama. That’s perfectly all
right, and a lot of good philosophy is built on imagining all sorts of wacky what-if
scenarios.
But what is a world, really? Because when we talk about possible worlds, we don’t mean to imply literal, alternative realities just floating around “out there” in some cosmic multiverse ensemble. Rather, when you really get down to the nuts and bolts of it, a possible world is nothing more than a formal collection of propositions and truth values. It’s like a giant book where someone has painstakingly written down every coherent proposition there is to make about our reality, followed by a simple check mark indicating true or false next to each one. That book, if one were to be constructed, would represent one possible world, and there are an infinite number of such books, or worlds, we could conceivably create. And if, by some fluke, we should ever happen to write a book that perfectly describes our present objective reality as it really is, then that book would be called the actual world.
But what is a world, really? Because when we talk about possible worlds, we don’t mean to imply literal, alternative realities just floating around “out there” in some cosmic multiverse ensemble. Rather, when you really get down to the nuts and bolts of it, a possible world is nothing more than a formal collection of propositions and truth values. It’s like a giant book where someone has painstakingly written down every coherent proposition there is to make about our reality, followed by a simple check mark indicating true or false next to each one. That book, if one were to be constructed, would represent one possible world, and there are an infinite number of such books, or worlds, we could conceivably create. And if, by some fluke, we should ever happen to write a book that perfectly describes our present objective reality as it really is, then that book would be called the actual world.
Notice, however, that if we're going to describe our world using propositions, then we can’t
just randomly assign truth values willy-nilly. No matter what collection of propositions we use to describe some potential state of affairs, those propositions still have
to obey the basic laws of logic. For
example, consider the proposition George Clooney is the president of the
United States and George Clooney is not the president of the
United States. What if, for some
reason, my world just so happens to assign a value of TRUE to this proposition? Obviously, my world now contains a logical contradiction and thus, by the principle of explosion, cannot coherently
describe anything whatsoever. All such
worlds that violate the laws of logic are therefore said to be impossible because
they are not formally allowed within our hypothetical set of what-if scenarios.
In contrast, consider what happens
when you encounter a proposition like Either George Clooney is the president or
George Clooney is not the president. Obviously, this proposition is a
logical tautology and therefore must be true under every possible
interpretation. Any proposition in this
category is therefore said to be necessary because it must always be assigned
a value of TRUE in every logically consistent world. The very rules of logic don't allow for anything else.
This is all pretty straightforward material so far, and you can probably see why philosophers
might get a lot of productive mileage out of conversing within this framework. We like imagining how the world might have
turned out differently, and we like having a formal set of rules for discussing
any scenarios. That’s why modal logic is
such a popular system for guiding philosophical conversations. However, modal logic is still a really flimsy
system, and it doesn’t take much effort to trick yourself into deriving total nonsense. For example, imagine a possible world where all
bachelors have three wives. Sounds like
a contradiction, right? After all, by
definition, a bachelor is an unmarried man, while marriage, by definition, implies a man with at least one wife. So to say that you are imagining
a bachelor with three wives is the logical equivalent to imagining a man with
no wives that has wives. You can’t do
it. The words are literally put together
wrongly, which is why any attempt to imagine such a world is said to be necessarily
impossible.
Now watch what happens if I
arbitrarily decide to redefine the word bachelor. Instead of being an unmarried man, I want the
word bachelor to mean a married man with three wives. After all, it’s just a word, right? I’m free to define my terms however I please,
am I not? Maybe I can even convince the
staff at Webster’s dictionary to go along with my definition, thus rendering it
totally official within the English language.
Now it’s not only logically possible for bachelors to have three wives
but also logically necessary! They can’t
NOT have three wives, because the basic definition of the word doesn’t allow
for anything else. Thus, by claiming
that all bachelors have three wives, I have just stated the logical equivalent
to all men with three wives are men with three wives – a necessary logical tautology.
Hopefully you can see why this
might be a problem in that I can now derive any necessary truth I want,
simply by playing with my definitions. I could define Santa Claus as a being
that exists, and that fact would necessarily be true in all possible worlds because
any being that exists is, tautologically, a being that exists. Any attempt to imagine a possible world
without Santa Claus is now logically impossible because the very phrase Santa
Claus does not exist is now the logical equivalent to saying A being that
exists does not exist. It cannot possibly be
true!
Notice how this is exactly what Christian
apologists are trying to do whenever they describe God as a necessary
being. God is, by definition, a
maximally great being; and maximal greatness, by definition, includes the
property of existing in all possible worlds.
Therefore, by definition, God is necessarily a being that exists in all
possible words. God cannot fail to
exist, because again, the very phrase God does not exist is the logical
equivalent to saying A being that exists does not exist.
Obviously, something is terribly
wrong here in that you can’t just go around defining things into
existence! After all, if you get to
define God as a being that exists, then I get to define God as a being that
does not exist. Not only is
God’s existence now false, but also necessarily false in all possible worlds. Now what, Christians? My definition is just as valid as yours. Who wins?
This is a really interesting dilemma to me because it forces us to address two fundamental philosophical questions:
With that in mind, consider what happens when we formulate our language definitions in the form of a conditional, empirical proposition:
This is a really interesting dilemma to me because it forces us to address two fundamental philosophical questions:
- How do language definitions work? That is to say, what's the point of defining things in the first place?
- What does it mean to say that a thing exists? Why is existence different from other ideas in language definition?
With that in mind, consider what happens when we formulate our language definitions in the form of a conditional, empirical proposition:
IF on some rare occasion I should happen to encounter the empirical manifestation of an entity that is apparently both a man and
unmarried, THEN I will formally choose to call such a thing a “bachelor.”
Now we have a definition with real, functional merit. Rather than mindlessly swap words for other words, we instead use language to place labels on distinct sensory experiences. It's a little thing called the verifiability criterion of meaning, and it represents the ultimate foundation for all human language itself. Any time I state some language definition, then in principle I have to be able to use that definition to identify distinct elements within my immediate sensory environment. Without this empirical foundation, all human language immediately collapses back into a meaningless, tautological void.
Now that we have a working conception of what definitions are supposed to accomplish, we can finally consider what happens whenever I try to lump existence into the definition of some word:
Now that we have a working conception of what definitions are supposed to accomplish, we can finally consider what happens whenever I try to lump existence into the definition of some word:
IF on some rare occasion I should happen to encounter the empirical manifestation of an entity that is apparently a man, unmarried, and existing, THEN I will formally choose to call such a thing a “bachelor.”
You may not notice it right away, but there’s really something strangely off about this statement. Because if I should ever just so happen to encounter the empirical manifestation of anything, then it seems pretty safe to conclude that this is also apparently a thing that exists. Likewise, if I should ever happen to imagine a world that contains no bachelors for me to ever empirically identify, even in principle, then it should go without saying that bachelors don’t exist in such a world.
You may not notice it right away, but there’s really something strangely off about this statement. Because if I should ever just so happen to encounter the empirical manifestation of anything, then it seems pretty safe to conclude that this is also apparently a thing that exists. Likewise, if I should ever happen to imagine a world that contains no bachelors for me to ever empirically identify, even in principle, then it should go without saying that bachelors don’t exist in such a world.
This is an important observation
to make because it means that existence is inherently meaningless and redundant
when stated as a formal property of bachelors. The set of all things I can empirically identify as bachelors must, by definition, also be things that exist. It therefore makes
no difference whether or not I define bachelors as existing because the set of
all things that qualify for such a label is logically identical either way. However, since we can readily imagine a logically possible world that contains no bachelors, it immediately follows that we can likewise imagine a possible world that contains no bachelors that "exist." Again, this has to be the case because the two sets are still logically identical. Yet the very idea of a world without bachelors is quite literally the textbook definition of a world where bachelors don't exist in the first place. We therefore must conclude that things which exist as a matter of definition can, apparently, not exist!
Bear in mind now that all this practically boils down at the end of the day is the rather obvious principle that reality doesn't care how you define words. I could define myself as the undisputed King of America, but that does not mean I can just waltz up to the White House and expect everyone to start treating me like royalty. Christians can likewise define God as a thing that exists, but that does not magically require objective reality itself to contain anything worthy of that label. Yet that’s exactly what Christian philosophers like Alvin Plantinga are trying to do whenever they describe God through this nonsensical property of necessary existence! So let’s just cut through the bullshit for one second and state the obvious out loud:
This is where we get the famous
philosophical principle that existence is not a predicate. It means that whenever we say a thing exists,
we cannot possibly refer to some essential property of the thing itself. Rather, what we’re really describing is a
property of the objective reality in which this thing is allegedly contained. In fact, if you really want to get technical about things, the
very phrase Bachelors are things that exist is not even a valid
proposition to make in the first place. Rather, the correct phrasing
is more like There exist bachelors, or The set of all
bachelors is nonempty. That is how existence
functions as a proper, logical operation, because that is how it is implicitly defined within first-order logic. There is no such thing as a set of "things that exist" but rather only sets of things that are either occupied or empty. Necessary existence is therefore not logically
possible because it is logically incoherent to even talk about it in the
first place.
Bear in mind now that all this practically boils down at the end of the day is the rather obvious principle that reality doesn't care how you define words. I could define myself as the undisputed King of America, but that does not mean I can just waltz up to the White House and expect everyone to start treating me like royalty. Christians can likewise define God as a thing that exists, but that does not magically require objective reality itself to contain anything worthy of that label. Yet that’s exactly what Christian philosophers like Alvin Plantinga are trying to do whenever they describe God through this nonsensical property of necessary existence! So let’s just cut through the bullshit for one second and state the obvious out loud:
Imagine a possible world where
God does not exist.
Now ask yourself, was that
sentence somehow utterly incomprehensible to you? Is there some formal contradiction buried in
that claim we somehow missed? Does
the very idea of objective reality itself get violated simply by our failure to
insert a thing worthy of the label “God?”
No! Of course not! There is nothing incoherent about the
proposition that God does not exist. Any attempt to force the issue as a matter
of definition is, in and of itself, a logical impossibility. The very definition of objective reality itself is arguably just the collection of all
things that persist independently of human say-so. And what are
language definitions, if not the epitome of subjective mental
constructs, asserted into being by literal human say-so? So when Christians go out of
their way to inherently define God as a thing that necessarily exists, they’re
ironically forcing the concept of God directly into the realm of necessary
NON-existence! Nothing exists
necessarily because the very idea itself literally means “existence by
definition."
On personal note, this is once
again why I just have no respect for religious philosophers and apologists. I should seriously not
have to explain to these people that you cannot just define things into existence. Yet here is Alvin Plantinga himself, the very
cream of academic Christian philosophy, apparently failing to wrap his brain
around this simple little concept. It’s just inexcusable how grossly incompetent these
people are. Their very best effort to prove God's existence is nothing but an inadvertent proof that God cannot logically exist at all! So until Christian apologists
finally learn the difference between words and reality, I’m just going to keep
treating them like the philosophical children that they are.
Thanks for listening.