>>11627251so i'm not a theist but i think there is a real intuitive idea expressed by this argument that makes sense in the right perspective. the story goes like, say you don't know if god exists or what he's like, but you have some guiding principles for speculating on what god might be like. mainly you don't want to worship just any random supernatural being, you're a picky worshiper not some slut pagan giving worship to anyone. your soul deserves the very best, any being lesser than the greatest possible being is not worthy of worship. you play this game of your imagination vs supernatural beings and keep increasing the limits of greatness until you run out of ideas or you've built up some concept in your mind that's so great that it becomes some absolute image of greatness that overwhelms your imagination and you can't think of anything better. then you keep pushing it because you're a fanatic and try to come up with mind boggling lovecraftian absurdities that transcend your mortal understanding of greatness, greatness that can't even be contained in reality.
the idea in doing this is not that you believe that the real god up there is updating in real time as your personal concept evolves, because you don't know if god exists, this is just your definition of god. if it turns out that it doesn't exist, that just means god doesn't exist. compared to this god everything else is mundane and not worthy of worship.
when i try to do this to myself and brainwash myself with fanaticism and build up some overwhelmingly maximal idea, i become a lot more open minded to weirdness, and the ontological argument looks more sympathetic.
i'm also very pessimistic about this idea of being rational in general. i think most of my beliefs are irrational facts of life, and my freedom to rationally consider my worldview begins only after the absurd bullshit in my personality is done bullying me.
