Mr Alvin Plantinga - has he found the maximally great Ontological Argument?

When first hearing about this argument, and the way in which Plantinga approaches it, I got rather nostalgic about last year and studying AS, as this possible worlds idea that he comes up with, made all of the quantum stuff come rushing back to me. Mainly due to the spacey kind of idea it put into my head, about alternate worlds or parallel universes. But, after reading through his argument for the first time, I decided that I'd rather deal with quantum any day of the week, as at first glance it seems to be quite a confusing argument... However, since reading it through several more times, I found that Plantinga's clever alternative version, and criticism of Norman Malcolm's argument, incorporates his mathematical background well to put across his own ontological argument.

The first thing that seems to be key to understanding his argument, is by firstly grasping his concept of what the possible worlds are. To Plantinga a possible world isn't just another world somewhere else in the universe, it is another parallel world in an entirely separate universe in which a completely different chain of events unfolds every second. A world that is different for all different possibilities that could happen. So for instance, in one of the possible worlds I may have not just happened to look out the window and instead, I would have continued to write on this blog, describing a completely different chain of events, that you would now be reading as something different to this. (Messes with your head doesn't it?!) And so due to this rule of the possible worlds theory, it pretty much indicates the existence of an infinite number of worlds, as there are so many alternate things that can happen in even a second.

He then starts by stating that the greatest possible being must have maximal excellence and greatness in every possible world. This ensures he corrects what he sees to be incorrect about Malcolm's argument, as to Plantinga, Malcolm doesn't overtly state that the God he is proving to exist, has the maximal greatness within our world.

So, on to the argument itself, he starts by saying that firstly there is the possibility of a being of maximal greatness, which is of course his definition of God. And that secondly such a being would exist necessarily, not contingently. This is because contingent beings depend upon other factors for their existence and so are not maximally great. Now, moving on to his third point which is a maximally great being's existence in a possible world is either necessary or impossible, and fourthly, in addition to this a maximally great being's existence is only impossible if it is self-contradictory. These last two points imply that if there is something about the concept of a maximally great being that makes it illogical and incoherent then it is impossible. For example if we took an example like that of Descartes', which is of a mountain without a valley, which is an example of a self contradictory statement. Then we can see how it applies to Plantinga's argument and to a maximally great being, as it would not be incoherent or contradictory to say that 'a maximally great being exists in a possible world'. He then goes on to his fifth point, which states that a maximally great being's existence is not impossible in an infinite number of possible worlds. And then finally his sixth, which concludes by saying therefore, it is necessary in all possible worlds, including ours. So overall, if something is not inherently contradictory (e.g. it is possibly true), then it is necessarily true in all worlds (including the actual world in which we live).