Anselm's Ontological Argument

730012506 PHIL 134H Paper # 1 Anselm’s Ontological Argument Eleventh century French monk, Anslem of Catenbury, offered a deductive argument proving the existence of God. In order to truly grasp the argument, we must first attempt to understand the philosopher and his own ideologies. Anslem preludes his proof by stating his profound faith in God, consequently affirming that it is only through God’s enlightening that his understanding can reach as high as God. He also adds that he who says in his heart that there is no God is a fool, per the Bible.

The existence of God is a question everyone asks himself or herself at one point or another. It is always being questioned. In many ways God can be proven to exist by logical arguments and many of these arguments can be disproved by a similar logic. The most compelling of the proofs that I have read is Anselm’s Ontological Argument. This argument in many ways has goods points about the conceptuality of truth, ideas, thought and how that translates to reality, but is written by someone who already believes in God. It can clearly be seen that Anselm is working from an already established belief and needs support of Aquinas’s five ways to strengthen his argument.

Does God exist? According to Anselm of Canterbury of course God exists, and he is able to explain how that is to be. Anselm uses the ontological argument to essentially state that the only way for a perfect creator, God, to be even greater would to exist in reality as opposed to thought, and thus, God exists. This logic is argued against by many philosophers throughout time, most notably by a fellow Benedictine monk, Gaunilo.

According to Saint Anselm, the ontological argument is an argument that does not appeal to anything known through experience and states that God must exist since there is nothing greater that can be thought of (God I,10). Saint Anselm’s argument has been strongly criticized throughout the years, but the strongest criticism has come from Guanilo. Guanilo states that if Anselm’s argument is true than his argument could be used to prove things to be true that have no reason to be thought of as such. In order to prove his point, Guanilo uses an example of a lost island. This lost island is the most excellent of islands and no island is more excellent than this one, so according to Anselm’s argument since no greater island can be thought of, the

The Ontological Argument was first thought up by St. Anselm of Canterbury stating that God is an existing being and no other existing being is greater, proving that God does existed. There is no physical proof, you just have to ask yourself and think about it, however, just because some things are possible does not make it true. This lead questioning to Anselm’s reasoning, if a pink gorilla is possible but does not truly exist in reality, how can God be possible and exist in reality? Lemma, smaller proof conducted in a larger proof, is a type of proof in Reductio ad Absurdum, proving that the conclusion of something is true due to proving the opposite is not. Stating that, to be God in all reality, and certain being must exist and be perfect

Phil 3600 25 September 2016 A: Argument for the existence of god. In the first argument for the existence of God developed by Anselm, he explains the existence of God as “a being than which nothing greater can be conceived” [page 15], from which I infer that Anselm is talking about a being that is unimaginably perfect, who does exist as anything without its actual properties cannot exist, for example a square circle hence there is a God in the mind of the people which validates his existence.

This definition does not assume that any mythical being exists, in this case God, but rather gives insight that if God were to exists, God has these properties we make of him, assuming that the definition of God is what we all agree upon. For example, we created the image of Pegasus as a winged horse, however there’s no evidence that Pegasus exists, just that if Pegasus exists, then Pegasus is a winged horse. With Anselm’s definition, the Ontological Argument can be plausible. The Ontological Argument is an a priori, meaning based on the properties we make of God, we deduce that God exists with no evidence. This argument isn’t basing itself in the idea that yes, God does in fact exists, but rather due to our reasoning of a divine being, based on that reasoning, we created one word to describe our concept,

The second argument is for the notion that the existence of God can be demonstrated. It states that everything has a cause. He claims that by using the theory of cause and effect we can demonstrate the existence of God. If we say that every effect has a cause, we can go further and further to infinity. But because of our own logic, we know that this is not true. We know that it must end somewhere. That somewhere is a first cause, and that cause is God. This is very similar to the idea of the unmoved mover. He goes on to say that through the effects, we can demonstrate that God does exist, but we cannot know what God is like.

First let's look at some of these traditional philosophical texts to which I speak. St. Anselm in his essay: The Ontological Argument wants to demonstrate that god exists and that only a supreme good is required and that all other beings require as well for their existence. Why is it so simple? God is simply good and existence is required? Maybe god is thought, maybe god is not a being, maybe god is an idea, an energy, an intention, a collective of humanity.

The ontological argument argues that if you understand what it means to talk about God, you will see His existence is necessarily true. Anselm defined God as 'that than which nothing greater can be conceived', hence God must exist. Anselm also believed that even

The ontological argument is one of the most prominent arguments with in philosophy. Ontological comes from the Greek word “ontos” meaning “being” or “what there is”. Ontology credits the existence of God to overall essence of God. The ontology argument questions the nature of being which includes questioning the existence of God. As made apparent in “Introduction to Philosophy: Classical and Contemporary Readings” many philosophers have different views and theories on the existence of God. Anslem and Aquinas provide arguments that support the existence of God but still offer some differences.

What are the key points of Anselm’s ontological argument (you’ll be reading about it in your textbook as well)? Gods existence is implicit on the thought itself. Who asserts that God does not exist has said something logically contradictory. This is the ontological argument.

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, ontology is a particular theory about the nature of being or the kinds of things that have existence. Anselm makes an ontological argument for the existence of God. This is the belief that existence itself is perfect and existing

Religion is the shared collections of transcendental beliefs that have been passed on from believers to converts, that are held by adherents to be actively meaningful and serious and either based on: formally documents doctrine, or established cultural practises [1]. Religion in philosophy presents many quandaries and theories surrounding the existence of the “supreme being” God with arguments concerning the universe’s existence, and humans’ ability to understand the nature, intentions and involvement of God. The main argument focused on throughout this essay is the ontological argument, claiming that once humans understand the concept and idea of God, humans should therefore see that God must exists. Ontology focuses on a Priori; knowledge that is independent of all experiences. The ontological

The ontological argument for God’s existence is a work of art resulting from philosophical argumentation. An ontological argument for the existence of God is one that attempts the method of a priori proof, which utilizes intuition and reason alone. The term a priori refers to deductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning is the type of reasoning that proceeds from general principles or premises to derive particular information. The argument works by examining the concept of God, and arguing that it implies the actual existence of God; that is, if we can conceive of God then God exists. However, this type of argument is often criticized as committing a bare assertion fallacy. The bare assertion fallacy is fallacy in formal logic where a premise