Structural Limits of Modal Necessity and the Failure of Necessary Existence

Standard critiques of ontological, cosmological, and related theistic arguments typically operate within the same modal or metaphysical framework they assess. They ask whether the premises are plausible, whether modal principles such as S5 are justified, or whether particular inferential steps are valid (Oppy, 1996; Sobel, 2004). By contrast, the present analysis questions whether formal modal systems are the appropriate instruments for establishing existential conclusions at all.