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Now many people have tried to offer reverse ontological arguments (what we might call 'Bizarro' arguments after Superman’s Doppelgänger) in order to undercut one’s intuitive justification for believing that (1) [It is possible that a maximally great being (aka God) exists.] You can appeal to any sort of world in which God does not exist, whether it be a world with nothing in it, or a single particle...or a world with lots of particles...So long as someone stipulates that ONLY such things exist, one rules out God and, hence, maximal greatness. I think the problem with all such Bizarro ontological arguments is that the second premise 2) But there is a possible world in which God does not exist...begs the question by assuming that the concept of maximal greatness is incoherent. Just because we can imagine a world in which a single particle (or whatever) exists gives no reason for thinking that such a world is metaphysically possible... To do that, you have to know first that maximal greatness is impossible. Now you might think, 'But isn’t the theist in the same boat? For him to know that it is possible that a maximally great being exists, he must presuppose or know first that it is impossible that only a single particle exists.' Not at all! The theist’s confidence in (1) is based upon the intuitive coherence of maximal greatness, considered in and of itself. He then infers that a world with only a single particle or whatever is impossible. It is a conclusion from, not a presupposition of, the ontological argument. By contrast, the bizarro objection is based, not on the admittedly intuitive possibility of a particle (say, a quark or a boson), considered in and of itself, but rather on the world’s consisting wholly of such a particle. The possibility of that speculation is not given to you by the possibility of the particle itself but requires the incoherence of maximal greatness.
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