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.
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
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.
The concept of God as omnipotent means God has the unlimited power to accomplish anything that can be accomplished. The things God does are neither difficult nor easy for God; they are only either done or not done. ...read more. Middle Omnipresence; this theological term means âalways present.â Since God is infinite, His being knows no boundaries. So, clearly He is everywhere.
He believes there truly is no comparison. In fact, he believes that there is nothing we can compare this world to because, as far as we know, there is not another world even similar to us. We have no standard in which we can judge our world because our world is all we know. According to Hume, we cannot assume a Christian God as the creator. He was not sure we could even assume a creator, let alone choose one religions God to be the true one.
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.
The two definitions of omniscient each raise different problems, the former raises questions about God’s omnipotence, as one needs to assess if the laws of nature can limit an omnipotent God. The latter raises problems as, if He exists outside of time as an eternal creator and knows the past, present and future simultaneously, do we still have free will? Problems to God’s omniscience highlighted in Book 5 is Molina who states that God does not interfere with humans choices or decisions, but merely observes all possible outcomes and thus sees the past, present and future simultaneously, fitting with an eternal God. Aquinas gives the image of a man standing on a mountain and witnessing the whole road and everything that happens on it and the various paths we may take. However, it is important to note how the man on the mountain does not influence any choices and so just because one sees what is happening, this does not mean that it in any way influences the decisions made.
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
Descartes ontological argument is trying to aims to explain the existence of God in itself. Descartes argument begins with his own definition of God being a ‘supremely perfect being’. He then continues to question and bring out the concept that if something is perfect then in order to fulfil its attributes it must have the attribute and full ability to exist and if God is perfect then he too must have this attributes and therefore concludes, that God must exits. In addition, Descartes extended his argument by stating that “God is the most perfect being possible, so he has all perfections.” It is understood and known that the idea of perfection links into attaining the concept of existence. As the most perfect being, God must exist.
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.