I’m in a video!

Along with Chris Birch, we  chat with our host Josh about some of the cool stuff that makes the Infinity RPG tick.

Anselm’s ontological argument, which appears in his Proslogion, is frequently misunderstood. For reference, the argument basically breaks down like this:

• God is a being than which none greater can be imagined.
• A being that exists as an idea in the mind and in reality is, all other things being equal, greater than a being that exists only as an idea in the mind.
• Therefore, if God exists only in the mind, we can imagine something that is greater than God (i.e., a God who exists in reality).
• And, therefore, God physically exists in reality, not just as a concept in the mind.

This thing gets trotted out on a fairly frequent basis by Christians who smugly think they’ve made atheists look foolish by proving that God exists. And you’ll just as frequently see atheists respond to this by claiming that Anselm’s argument makes no sense because he’s presupposing the existence of God. He’s just begging the question!

In reality, everybody involved in that discussion is radically misinterpreting Anselm’s intent.

Anselm’s argument presupposes the existence of God because he was dealing with a very specific ontological question of whether or not God was possessed of a physical reality or if he existed only in the human mind.

He argues that God must exist physically and not just in the mind, because God must be greater than any alternative we can imagine (by definition). And if he existed just in our minds then we could imagine him doing that AND physically existing, and therefore he can’t exist only in our minds.

But the entire argument is based on the supposition that God (as defined as “thing which is greater than anything else we can imagine”) actually exists. As such, it can’t tell us anything about the actual existence or non-existence of God. Only that, if God is a thing which is greater than anything else we can imagine, then we can be absolutely certain he doesn’t just exist in our minds.

Similarly, one could say, “Let us accept that a Star Destroyer is the coolest ship that we could possibly imagine. Do Star Destroyers physically exist or are they only imaginary creations of our brains? Well, a Star Destroyer that actually existed would be much cooler than one which is only imaginary. And since we can imagine a Star Destroyer that actually exists, it therefore follows that Star Destroyers do physically exist, by definition, since Star Destroyers are the coolest ship that you can possibly imagine.”

If you already accept that God / Star Destroyers actually exist and you’re simply trying to put some boundaries on what that existence means, this argument is useful. But the minute you try to use this argument to “prove” that God and/or Star Destroyers actually exist, you’re left with a meaningless tautology.

Anselm’s Star Destroyer

First: Modiphius has released the Infinity Quickstart, which includes a streamlined version of the core mechanics, a general overview of the world, and six pregenerated characters so that you can pick it up and try the game out for yourself. The Quickstart is 100% free, so you really don’t have any excuse not to click the link and check it out.

Second: The Quickstart also includes an abridged version of the Paradiso Countdown, an introductory scenario that I wrote. The abridged version is nice, but the full version is even better. It’s going to be part of the Shadow Affairs campaign coming next year. But Modiphius is also offering access to the beta test version of the full adventure as an exclusive for backers of the Infinity kickstarter right now. So if you kick in just $1, you’ll be able to download the full adventure (which should provide 2-3 sessions of gaming). Check it out.

Third: There are now just 3 days left for the Infinity kickstarter! With the stretch goals we’ve been unlocking, the backers are getting some really fabulous deals. The PDF Master Level is currently delivering 13 books for £40 (approximately $60). The All the Books level at £300 is pricey, but you’ll get 22 books in both print and PDF plus a bunch of additional bonus material that’s already been unlocked.

Ash’s Guide to RPG Personality and Background is a fabulous template supported with rich random generators for creating rich RPG characters.

You start by defining Personality in four-ish steps:

• Primary Motivators
• Emotional Disposition
• Core Traits
• Secondary Traits (Sense or Humor, Favorite Conversation Topics, Group Affiliations, Religion/Spirituality, Quirks, Hobbies, Mental Disorders)

Then you get the Background generator:

• Birthplace
• Family
• Professions
• Significant Past Events
• Mysteries
• Existing Conflicts
• Adventuring Trigger
• Quests

Although some of the entries (particularly the Professions) are slanted towards a fantasy setting, most of the material is pretty universal in its applicability. And although the depth of detail created by the template is obviously most useful for player characters, it’s pretty easy to raid it selectively as a GM to fill out elements of your NPC roleplaying templates.

The Alexandrian was a little quiescent in September. I’m hoping to rectify that in October.

But although there weren’t a lot of posts in September, I hadn’t completely turned my attention away from the site. I’ve been making slow but somewhat-steady progress on improving the navigational features of the site so that people can find some of the cool stuff that’s nestled around in here. Since the site launched back in 2005, there have been 1,300 posts. (This is actually post 1,301.) That’s a lot of material for new readers to dig through. A few things I’ve been doing to make things easier:

First, from the very beginning of the site I’ve made it a point to have robust and accurate tagging. Unfortunately, most WordPress sites are terrible at doing this and people have generally been conditioned to just ignore tags. But if you’re reading this, now you know that if you’re interested in a particular article here at the Alexandrian, then the tags at the bottom of the posts should reliably deliver you to similar material.

Second, I’ve been slowly working to get a decent Recommended Posts feature working. I spent many more hours on this in September than I wanted, but I’ve at least got the formatting to work so that you can actually see the titles of the articles being linked. (My next goal is to get thumbnails to work so that they’re more visually appealing.)

Third, I’ve been slowly working on getting index pages back up and up to date: Gamemastery 101 and RPG Scenarios have been expanded. There is now a complete index of all my Reviews (over 200 of them!) and Shakespeare Sunday.