In this blogpost I will compare and contrast my argument for the nature of Existence being omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, infinite and eternal with Descartes’ cosmological and ontological argument for the existence of God. I will then argue that Existence is perfect.

In a nutshell, Descartes’ cosmological argument for the existence of God stated that he had an idea of a supremely perfect being. Since he himself was not a supremely perfect being, he could not have been the cause of the idea of a supremely perfect being. Therefore, the existence of a supremely perfect being was necessary to make the idea at all possible.

Much of the argument I have presented in my first two blog posts were directly inspired by Descartes’ cosmological argument for the existence of God. Descartes’ argument that we cannot have an idea of a supremely perfect being without there actually being a supremely perfect being to make that a possibility was spot on. The paradox of something coming from nothing makes it so that we cannot rationally deny a supremely perfect being.

So how can his argument be countered? Some might argue that the idea of God is just a product of one’s imagination. It’s a combination of concepts that are expanded to maximums to generate the idea of a supremely perfect being. The problem with this kind of argument is that it does not metaphysically account for how the mind is able to do something like this.

If I’m not mistaken, the default position that most people seem to accept is that the mind is able to conjure up an infinite amount of ideas or semantical gaps as I’d like to call them independent of whether these semantical gaps could ever exist or not. However, when the mind takes up the challenge that I proposed in my previous blog post (can the mind think of something that has meaning but can never exist?), it will come to recognise the absurdities in such a belief.

In my previous blog post, I argued that omnipotence has meaning and that omnipotence is impossible without omnipresence, and given that nothing can become omnipresent from a non-omnipresent state (see my second blog post for a detailed defence) it follows that the only way that existence could accommodate an omnipotent being, is if existence has always been and will always be omnipotent. The same applies to all other traits that are necessary to the perfect being (omnipotence, omniscience, infinite, eternal, omnipresence and so on). See my first and second blog post for a more detailed defence on why existence needs to accommodate all meaningful concepts and why existence is necessarily omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, infinite and eternal.

We cannot say that it’s possible for something to become omnipotent just as we cannot say that it’s possible for something to become Existence/omnipresent. Existence has always existed and will always exist and nothing else can take its place. Similarly, the perfect being has always existed and will always exist and nothing else can take its place.

Mackie suggests that even if the Causal Principle applies to events in the world, we cannot extrapolate from the way the world works to the world as a whole (Mackie 1982: 85). On the contrary, that is exactly what we should be doing. Reason clearly dictates that there is nothing beyond existence (non-existence/absurdity). There is only one existence and everything that exists does so in existence. We couldn’t extrapolate and apply reason to another existence even if we wanted to. That would be absurd. Reason dictates that there is nothing beyond existence so it does not allow us the ability to apply reason to another existence. Again, you can have multiple worlds, realities, universes and beings within existence, but you cannot have more than one existence and you cannot have anything outside of it. Reason and language applies to all that exists.

Another objection that various philosophers have made is that we do not have a clear objective idea of the supremely perfect being or that we have different ideas about what constitutes the supremely perfect being. Whist I acknowledge that some attributes of the supremely perfect being may be unknown to us, the outline is objective to all of us and sufficiently clear to warrant the move of labelling a being as perfect. To further make my point clear, can anyone rationally argue for something being better than an omnipotent, omniscient, infinite, eternal entity whilst omitting these core traits? This part of the supremely perfect being is without controversy, it’s objective and it’s clear. Where it might get controversial is when we start to focus on other traits which only an omnipotent, omniscient being is able to have such as being perfect at measuring, punishing, rewarding, designing, planning, creating, designing and so on.

Essentially, the perfect being is perfect and does perfectly. How it is perfect is sufficiently clear. By this I mean, it suffices for us to say that an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, infinite, eternal being is perfect even though there may be additional things about it that we may be unaware of. For example, we believe existence is all existing. It may have more dimensions than we think, but whether it does or not won’t change the core of our definition that existence is all existing. That existence is omnipresent or all existing is core to the definition of existence just as omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, infiniteness and eternalness are core to the definition of the perfect being.

Some philosophers such as Anthony Kenny suggested that perfection is just the negation of imperfection. If my understanding of this argument is correct, it implies that by negating our own imperfections, we reach the perfect being. This is absurd. Per the dictates of reason, when you negate something, you get the negation of that thing. Not some other thing. For example if you negate existence, you get non-existence (although this is impossible and absurd) If existence was a triangle, and you were to negate it, you’d would be left with…non-existence.

If you negated all finite things within an infinite existence, you’d be left with the infinite existence. The infinite existence is there regardless of whether or not we negate finite things. On the other hand, If existence was finite and you negated all finite existing things, you’d be left with non-existence.

The idea of negating finite to get infinity is absurd. It’s actually more like a shift in semantical focus. You negate your focus on all finites so the only thing left to focus on is the infinite. Essentially, the infinite existence is there and negating finite things within it does nothing to its infiniteness.

In the exact same way, the same acknowledgement is demanded by reason with regards to the perfect being. If existence was not perfect and it only contained imperfect beings, negating all imperfect beings would result in non-existence. It’s not a matter of negating imperfect beings to reach the perfect being, it’s a matter of negating our semantical focus from imperfect beings wherein which the only thing left to focus on is the perfect being.

Moving onto the ontological argument; in the fifth meditations, Descartes wrote: But if the mere fact that I can produce from my thought the idea of something entails that everything which I clearly and distinctly perceive to belong to that thing really does belong to it, is not this a possible basis for another argument to prove the existence of God? Certainly, the idea of God, or a supremely perfect being, is one that I find within me just as surely as the idea of any shape or number. And my understanding that it belongs to his nature that he always exists is no less clear and distinct than is the case when I prove of any shape or number that some property belongs to its nature.

Omnipresence/existence is necessary to the idea of God/the Supremely perfect being just as three sides are necessary to the idea of a triangle. Descartes’ intuitions and conclusion was sound, but perhaps he failed to adequately explain why omnipresence is necessary to the perfect being.

Kant argued that existence is not a predicate and therefore irrelevant to the idea of a supremely perfect being. The idea that existing doesn’t make something better or worse has no bearing on the fact that being perfect demands omnipotence, and omnipotence demands omnipresence. So Kant’s argument fails because omnipresence is in fact necessary for omnipotence and omniscience which are necessary to fulfil the semantics of the perfect being. (see my second blog post for a more detailed defence).

Also, we can say that Kant is wrong by arguing that the quality of existing does potentially make something better or worse. A 3d world has the the potential to be better than a 2d world because it’s existence is such that there are more dimensions to it. It is therefore potentially better. Of course, a 2d heaven is better than a 3d hell, but a 3d heaven is better than a 2d heaven. The quality of existing is relevant to making something better in the way that if God simply existed in the confines of the imagination, rather than being omnipresent, if wouldn’t be as good and therefore not perfect.

Existence is perfect. Some may point to imperfections they see within existence to be in opposition to this, and some may simply say that existence would be better if it had more dimensions or aspects to it. The latter absurdly refers to unknowns whilst the former is just plain absurd. The absurdity in the latter could be removed if it was stated as, Existence/perfection may be better than what we can fathom in our current state. This is simply unknown without being absurd. We acknowledge that existence cannot be more perfect whilst also acknowledging that existence may be better than what we can fathom. Our lack of awareness or inability to fully fathom does not alter the actual truth of existence having always been perfect and always being perfect.

Just as our understanding of existence/omnipresence is sufficient but perhaps incomplete (there may be more dimensions in existence that we can’t fathom in our current state), our understanding of perfection is also sufficient (we are aware of core/outline of the definition) whether it’s complete or not is unknown to us.

The known is that so long as omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience, infiniteness and eternalness are semantically sound (meaningful therefore neither absurd or unknown), existence is necessarily perfect because as discussed in my previous blog posts, it’s not a potential/hypothetical possibility, which just leaves having always necessarily existed and necessarily always existing.

As previously stated, the phrase “more perfect” is absurd. So comments such as existence would be more perfect if our universe contained less evil is absurd. This is just like saying existence would be more omnipresent or all existing if it contained more finite beings, dimensions or semantical gaps. The phrase “more omnipresent” is absurd. If there are more dimensions, beings or semantical gaps in existence that are unknown to us, that does not alter existence being all existing or omnipresent in any way. Them being unknown to us is not the same as them being non-existent/absurd. On the other hand, if there aren’t more dimensions, beings or semantical gaps in existence, then that also doesn’t alter existence being omnipresent. Existence’s omnipresence is the same whether we have awareness of additional dimensions or not.

Moving onto things like evil and injustice and their relation to existence; I can think of so many hypothetical ways wherein which a given observation that may appear unjust is in fact actually fully justified in the grand scheme of things. For example, I observe a child starving in a third world country. I have the belief that the world has enough resources to meet everyone’s needs. I also have the belief that the child is innocent and therefore should not be suffering. I then conclude injustice; full stop.

Per the dictates of reason, I would be misguided to think that that is all there is to that observation. It may appear to be injustice, but, it is not injustice full stop. That same child may starve for years but then be on the receiving end of something that counters the starvation experienced in such a way as to make things fully justified. So maybe the quality of that child’s happiness post starvation is such that even the child itself would conclude that the starvation was justified/well balanced/fair all things considered. Even if you change the parameters of the example to the child starving to death, there are still so many hypothetical ways in which that same child could be on the receiving end of something sufficiently good to counter the starvation it experienced. The semantics of the word heaven should give you plenty of food for thought with regards to available potential/hypothetical possibilities. The nature of existence is such that I can think of so many hypothetical ways in which what may appear unjust can be fully justified in the end.

In any case, to conclude, you’re not using reason right if you commit to absurdities or unknowns. For example, you cannot say I can conceive of a better existence that has more dimensions where the phrase “more dimensions” isn’t actually meaningful to you and is therefore something that you lack knowledge of. Nor can you say I can conceive of a better existence that designs and plans better because you’d have to be omniscient to be in a suitable position to make that statement, so again, something that you lack, a lack of knowledge. In both cases, the suggestion that one can conceive of “a better existence” is absurd. It implies the possibility of another existence. It also implies that existence is not perfect, which again, is absurd. A better reality is meaningful; a better existence has always been and will always be absurd/non-existent.