It was originally called fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding). ‘For I do not seek to understand that I believe, but I believe in order to understand’ – Proslogion 1. Anselm defined god as ‘that than which no greater can be conceived’. This is a priori accepted (no evidence). He then goes on to say that it is always greater to exist in reality (in re) than just in the mind (in intellectu).
Explain Anselms ontological argument Part A The ontological argument is used as a rational explanation to support the existence of God. Anselms ontological argument is known as a “classic “explanation of the ontological argument and is used widely to support the existence of God. The ontological argument is a priori argument meaning that theories are developed to prove the existence of God using nothing but intellectual insight and reason: it does not depend upon our experience of the world to be verified. Anselm defines God by saying God is that “which nothing greater can be conceived.” A way to simplify this explanation is thinking of God as being the greatest thing there can be, i.e. defining God as maximal perfection, there literally cannot be anything greater than God as God is the greatest thing that can possibly exist.
Although, these three arguments all agree in the way that they use unfound assumptions to prove what has yet to be proven; they do disagree on the studies of how to prove what really is God. The ontological argument believes that God is a “being”. The cosmological argument believes that God is “the universe”. Then there is the design argument which needs evidence to prove that there is a God. The Ontological argument seeks to prove that God does exist by proving, that He cannot not exist.
Copleston put forward a defines with was based on some ideas of the third way of Aquinas’ ways. Russell disagreed with Copleston’s argument and suggested that the universe was not explainable in the way Copleston described. In their debate was the issue of contingency and necessity and a reason to explain why anything exists. Copleston explained Leibniz’s “Principle of Sufficient Reason”, which is the claim that there has to be a full explanation for everything. There are things in the world that do not have the reason or cause of their existence, this mean that some things in the world are contingent - they might have no existed.
Explain Anselm’s Ontological arguments and Gaunilos’ challenges The ontological argument claims to demonstrate the statement ‘god exists’ as analytically true meaning that it would be ridiculous or incoherent to think that it was false. Another way of defining it is that once you have an understanding of the meaning of ‘God’ you must recognise that God exists. Anselm puts forward two ontological arguments. His first argument is as follows: This argument is reply to a fool who states that there is no God; this thus gives Anselm his starting point. He states that for the fool to say that there ‘is no God’ the fool has to have an idea of what God is in their minds.
Rowe begins his argument by first stating that the cosmological argument is a posteriori argument which means the “argument depends on a principle or premise that can be known only by means of our experience of the world” (38). He then goes on to explain that the deductive validity of an argument is insufficient to prove the truth of its conclusion; there must also be rational grounds for believing that the premises are true. He further explains that the first part of the PSR is simply a restatement of premise one, therefore if PSR is true then there is a clear justification that the first premise is true. However, there are many objections about the justification of the second premise. The second premise states that “not every being that exists can be a dependent being, that is, can have the explanation of its existence in some other being or beings” (40).
Central to Anselm’s argument is the belief that it is greater to exist than not exist, and if God is the greatest-possible being, then by definition, God must exist. If God, only existed as an idea, then that God would not be the greatest possible being because we could think of something greater, namely something that exists in reality. Anselm also points out that even if we don’t know rationally or logically that God exists, there are no logical contradictions in talking about God existing. It is not a contradiction of terms, as,
From this he asserts that 2): the explanation for the existence of the Universe cannot come from a contingent thing because contingent things are part of the Universe. One cannot use a part of something to explain the
He also says there are a chain of causes and effects leading back to the beginning of the Universe. He did not believe in infinite regress, and so, for him, there had to be a first cause, and that first cause has to be God. Aquinas’ Cosmological argument has many positive points which could be used to prove the existence of God, and his argument is both logical and convincing. However, I believe there are some major flaws within it, and I hope to use these flaws to show that Aquinas’ Cosmological argument does not prove the existence of a God. The first point to Thomas Aquinas’ Cosmological argument is about Motion.
Samuel Clarke's Modern Formulation of the Cosmological Argument offers a concise, seemingly logical, argument favoring the existence of what is, for all intents and purposes, a God; that is, an “unchangeable and independent being” (37) who (which) is the originator of all subsequent, dependent beings. The word “seemingly” is used here because, while Clarke's arguments appear sound on the surface, the reality is that they make certain “leaps of faith” which are incongruent with the true application of logic; that is to say, he does not actually use logic effectively to prove his assertion that there exists such an independent, unchanging being (God) and therefore, his argument falls flat. This paper will present his argument and then note the areas in which weaknesses exist. In doing so, the concept of Brute Facts, as well as the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) will be utilized. Clarke's Cosmological Argument begins with an interesting assertion; interesting for several reasons, not least of which is the fact that merely asserting something is by no means equivalent to proving it via logical reasoning.