Anselm stated that God was the greatest conceivable being - being Omnipotent nothing could best him. No other thing in existence has the attributes of God that prove his power: he is Omnipotent, Omniscience and Omnibenevolent. If something possess all of these attributes, then it is far greater than anything else that can be conceived. In effect, God is all powerful because if he wasn’t he wouldn’t be God. If God is all powerful, then he would assume the most powerful state.
However, this would be absurd, seeing as that nothing greater than God can be conceived in anyway. So a being, which nothing greater can be conceived, God, does in fact exist. According to Joel Fienberg’s text, Reason and Responsibility, an Ontological argument is defined as “an argument for the existence of God stating that the very concept or definition of God automatically entails that God exists; because the special nature of the concept, there is no way that God could fail to exist” (pg. 722). This argument is formulated around the idea that God is a being, which no greater being can be conceived.
St. Anselm’s, Ontological Argument defends the conception of God being a great being. There can be no other being greater than God. This theory implies that only God exists or if not there could be another greater existent being. The greatest is God though. I do believe this.
Kant then argued that God’s existence in the ontological argument is based on a synthetic statements (‘God is that which than greater cannot be imagined’ and ‘existing is greater than not existing’) therefore more evidence and proof is required in addition to the ontological argument in order to verify the existence of God. The ontological argument also features the idea that God has necessary existence – because his definition is that he is perfect and existing is more perfect than not existing, God must have necessary existence. However Kant opposed this idea and said that if we reject the whole idea of God that his definition is no longer important and thus he
Success of Aquinas’s Cosmological Argument Thomas Aquinas’s cosmological argument is a posteriori argument that Aquinas uses to prove the existence of God. Aquinas argues that, “Nothing can move itself, so whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another, and that by another again. But this causal loop cannot go on to infinity, so if every object in motion had a mover, there must be a first mover which is the unmoved mover, called God.” (Aquinas, Question 2, Article 3). I do agree with Aquinas’s cosmological argument in proving the existence of God with several reasons. According to the cosmological argument, first of all, Aquinas claims that, “it is impossible that a thing should be both mover and moved, namely it should not move itself.” (Aquinas, Question 2, Article 3) This part of the argument is obviously correct.
If God does not exist, though, then something can be imagined that is greater that God, namely a God that does exist. “The hypothesis that God does not exist thus seems to give rise to a logical absurdity: that there both is and is not something that can be imagined that is greater than God. There is, because it’s possible to imagine a God that does exist. There isn’t, because it’s impossible to imagine something greater than the greatest thing imaginable.” Anselm’s second premise embarks on the fact that ‘that thing, like all things, exists in the mind or in the external world, or in both’. Just because something exists in the understanding does not mean that it also exists in reality.
The ontological argument is further defined as analytic, which means when you look at the word (which in this case is God) and you already know what it means. In Proslogion, St Anselm uses a phrase to define God. This phrase is “that than which a greater cannot be thought”. He uses this phrase because he believes God to be the greatest being ever, and the being which the best at absolutely everything. Also he believes that if you asked someone who doesn’t believe in God what their definition of God was, then it would also be something along the lines of this.
This leads to the famous objection that he uses the existence of God to establish his doctrine of clear and distinct ideas, and that he uses his doctrine of clear and distinct ideas to establish the existence of God: his argument is circular. It seems that Descartes says that firstly “I am certain that God exists only because I am certain of whatever I clearly and distinctly perceive” but secondly
Anselm displays his argument in two parts, the first part being based on a deductive argument; if the premise is true then the conclusion is also true, it claims that existence is greater than non-existence. The second part of the argument claims that necessity is greater than contingency. From this Anselm came to the conclusion that God must exist In Proslogion 2, Anselm claims that existence is greater than non-existence. According to Anselm “God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived” God is greater than any being a human can imagine, there is nothing that can be greater than God. Following that, Anselm gave an example of a painter and his painting, this example went on to prove that existence in reality is greater than existence in the mind, if the painter imagines the painting in his mind, it will not be as great as the painting that will exist in reality when he paints it.
I believe that God is the creator and sustainer of all things, and that we would not even be self aware, let alone aware of right and wrong, if God had not created within us his image, and therefore the ability to make moral distinctions. Without God, I believe that this world cannot explain what morality