Randal: “Thanks for joining us again. Today we are delighted to have a famous argument with us. It first gained fame in the twelfth century when it was proposed by Anselm. It has since occupied some of the great philosophical minds of history from Descartes in the seventeenth century to Norman Malcolm and Alvin Plantinga in the twentieth. Would you give a warm welcome to The Ontological Argument!”
[Applause]
Ontological Argument (nervously): “Thanks. Good to be with you.”
Randal: “Now I should say we invited you on the program because there was some controversy at my website regarding your credibility. A number of my readers were, hmm, how should I put this, incredulous?”
Ontological Argument (nodding): “Well that’s nothing new. Immanuel Kant thought I was an elementary mistake.” (His visage darkens.) “And Schopenhauer treated me like a joke. I’m not a joke you know.”
Randal (sympathetically): “It must be especially hard for you to establish yourself these days in the age of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.”
Ontological Argument (rolls his eyes): “Tell me about it.”
Randal: “Like Rodney Dangerfield, eh? You don’t get no respect.”
Ontological Argument (confused): “Rodney what?”
Randal: “Uh, never mind. What’s the one thing you’d like my readers to know?”
Ontological Argument (thumping his fist into his palm with conviction): “That if God can possibly exist then he must exist.”
Randal: “But is it possible that God exist?”
Ontological Argument: “Our threshold for possibility is very low. In other words, unless something is obviously contradictory we recognize that it is possible. The concept of God as a most perfect being is not obviously contradictory. So I don’t know why we wouldn’t assume that God possibly exists. And if he possibly exists then he must exist.”
Randal (turning to the camera): “Thanks for joining us today. Tune in next week when our guests will be Pascal’s Wager and the argument from abstract objects.”
