poly: the Ontological Argument: Aleph Null and Beyond

I once mused upon the ontological argument for the existence of a God and
concluded that it doesn't go nearly far enough. Not only does it prove the
existence of a Being greater than which no being can be conceived, but it
also proves the existence of a *transfinite number* of such Beings. This
is because when we consider deity, the principle of parsimony must yield to
a principle of transcendental plenitude where More is always Better. I
like to think of these divinities by reference to Cantorian dust, an
endless fractal array dancing, like angels, in the pinpoint of each Planck
spacetime interval. Anselm just didn't know enough higher mathematics to
take his argument far enough...

(I'm actually quite serious about this, as a reductio ad absurdum. I don't
think it's vitiated by claiming that all Gods are identical members of some
transfinite superordinate Set, which is a Member of Itself. But what would
I know?)

Damien Broderick
Received on Mon Sep 14 02:16:33 1998