Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig, today, and excurses

on Natural Theology, Part 26.

For more resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonable faith.org.

For today's lesson, we want to attempt to conclude our discussion of the ontological argument

for God's existence.

And we saw that the crucial premise in this argument is the first one, that it's possible

that God or a maximally great being exists.

If it's possible that a maximally great being exists, then it follows

that a maximally great being where God actually does exist. So the key premise is that

first one. What warrant or justification is there for thinking that it's possible that God exists?

And we had looked at a priori arguments or evidence or warrant for that first premise.

As I said, the word a priori, if it's not part of your vocabulary, you can remember what it means by the word prior in it.

It means prior to experience.

This is not based upon empirical studies of the world.

It's not based upon your experience through the senses.

This is prior to experience. And we saw that when we reflect

upon the idea of a being which has omnipotence, omniscience, and moral perfection

in every possible world, this seems to be a coherent idea. It seems to be perfectly coherent,

and that gives good reason for thinking that it is possible that such a being exists.

And then we looked at objections to those a priori considerations and found them to be inconclusive.

But that's not the end of the story.

For although the ontological argument is usually presented as the paradigm example of an a priori argument,

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