Hello folks, I thought I would dedicate 500 words (and not more) to the explaining ontological argument for the existence of God. The argument was set down by Saint Anselm of Canterbury in 1078. It runs something like this:
1) God is perfect. This is true by definition. If the being is not perfect then it cannot be God.
2) God exists in the mind as an idea.
3) A being that exists in the mind is inferior to one that, should all other properties be the same, also exists in reality. For example, think of a spade. If I have a real spade which is exactly like the one you are imagining my real spade will be superior as I can dig a hole with it.
4) Therefore, if God exits in the mind he is not perfect as we can imagine a better God; one that actually exists.
5) But wait! There cannot be a being more perfect than God, therefore amongst God’s qualities is existence. Quod erat demonstrandum: God exists.
There are a number of problems with this as I’m sure you can imagine. First, it draws existence from a physiological phenomenon. If I say “I am imagining the perfect being” and then you say “no you’re not because I can imagine a better one, one which exists” then all that proves is that I wasn’t imagining the perfect being. To confer from this that the being exists is to take unquestioned the premise in point 1, that God is perfect. To say that God exists because he is perfect and that his perfection he exists is entirely circular.
Secondly, The argument, as Gaunilo pointed out, would exists equally well if you replace the word God with a perfect island. Yet no one would claim that if you imagine a perfect island, a more prefect one would be one that was real, therefore the perfect island must exist. The lack of empirical basis for this claim formed Hume’s criticism of the argument for the existence of God.
Meanwhile, Kant pointed out that the existence of God was a prerequisite of the argument working. Take a triangle. It is true by definition that it has internal angles equalling 180oC and three sides, but that does not mean that the triangle exists. The argument states that if a triangle exists these would be its properties. In the same way that Anselm’s argument states that if God exists this is what he would be like, not that God does exists.
All in all God’s perfection could be a good test of anyone claiming to be God but it cannot be used to prove that he exists.
All in all the ontological argument for the existence of God is an interesting argument which goes round and round in circles in a fashion completely detached from reality.
Right, 500 words are gone so we don’t have time for that Descartes had to say on the matter. But don’t worry it’s not very interesting.
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