Anselm's Ontological Argument for the
Existence of God.
Anselm's argument started with the assumption that
the concept of 'God' could be simply reduced to the statement that God
is, "Something than which nothing greater can be conceived."
This statement is often considered to mean that God is perfect, and that
anything improving upon God, is itself a property of God, as he may not be
'bested'.
Anselm then proceeds to argue the equivalent to;
Axioms;
- 1) God is a perfect being.
- 2) God may be conceived to exist in the imagination.
- Conjecture) it is logically true that God exists in reality, not just the
understanding of the individual.
Assuming the opposite of our conjecture in order to prove it by
contradiction, we obtain:
"God only exists as an idea, and not in reality."
We may then reason as Anselm, that if we understood God to exist as merely
our 'idea', we would have to admit that God would be a greater concept
if he actually existed, as opposed to an idea. Thus since God is perfect
and it is greater for him to exist than not, He must exist. We have
arrived at Anselm's conclusion to his argument, put:
"God cannot reasonably be thought not to exist."
There are many problems with how this argument is
presented. There are numerous examples of fallacies of equivocation
concerning the concept of 'perfections', as whether to exist is an
improvement (and a 'perfection') over not to. The idea of "that which
is perfect" itself being necessarily existent, (as our perfect being
'God' above) is misconstrued to include 'perfect apples',
'perfect islands' all being necessarily existent. The fallacy is in
the divorce of the terms 'perfect', and 'being'.
If an apple were
a perfect being, I would assume it not only omnipotent, and able to be communicative
but also not so stupid as to remain an apple for long in my presence,
especially around 11am. A perfect apple would only have to qualify to be
an apple. A perfect island must be surrounded by water. One cannot ask
more of an island. Though as we shall find, there are many arguments
deserving examination that would justify the non-existence of God.
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