The Ontological Argument

Question 1

Who created the Ontological argument?

Answer 1

Saint Anselm

Question 2

Who was Saint Anselm?

Answer 2

He was a monk and then the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093

Question 3

What was the name of Anselm’s book?

Answer 3

Proslogion (Discourse on the existence of God)

Question 4

What does the word “Ontos” mean?

Answer 4

Essence, existence or being

Question 5

What type of argument is Anselm’s Ontological argument?

Answer 5

Deductive
A priori

Question 6

What is meant by a deductive argument?

Answer 6

Argument where if the premises are true, then the conclusion must be true.

Question 7

What is meant by a priori argument?

Answer 7

Argument which relies on logical deduction and not on sense experience

Question 8

What is P1 of the Ontological argument?

Answer 8

God (by definition) is the greatest conceivable being meaning there is no one in the world better than him.

Question 9

Why does Anselm believe the first premise is true?

Answer 9

Anselm believes this is just the common sense view of God:
““This is a definition which even a fool understands in his mind, even though he does not understand God to exist in reality.” - The Proslogion
Also can be backed up by the biblical verse “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised”
Also it seems fair that people get to create their own definition of God
According to Anselm, something is great if it has great-making qualities.

Question 10

What is the second premise of the Ontological argument?

Answer 10

It is greater to exist in reality than not to exist in reality implying that there is no point in it existing in imagination.

Question 11

Why does Anselm believe the second premise is true?

Answer 11

Anselm believes that things that exist in our minds and reality are better than just things that exist in the mind.
Existing in reality is a great-making quality

Question 12

What is the conclusion of the Ontological argument?

Answer 12

Therefore, as the greatest conceivable being, God must exist.

Question 13

Why does Anselm believe the conclusion is true?

Answer 13

If the premises are true then so is the conclusion.
A non-existence being can never the greatest if it existed.
So the greatest being must exist and the greatest being is God that means God must exist.
If God didn’t exist, he wouldn’t be the greatest being and so that being wouldn’t be God

Question 14

Who was the first to critize Anselm’s ontological argument?

Answer 14

A fellow monk, Gaunilo of
Marmoutiers.

Question 15

Who was Gaunilo of Marmoutiers?

Answer 15

A christian who wrote directly to Anselm and believed you couldn’t come up with a priori argument for God’s existence

Question 16

What was the name of the book Gaunilo wrote in response to Anselm?

Answer 16

“Reply to Anselm on Behalf of the Fool”

Question 17

How did Anselm react to Gaunilo’s criticisms?

Answer 17

Anselm appears not to have minded the criticism, since it gave him the chance to emphasize a second stage of his argument in his Responsio; so from early on, Anselm arranged that the Proslogium should appear with Gaunilo’s criticisms attached.

Question 18

How does Gaunilo structure his argument?

Answer 18

Gaunilo’s attack used a parody of Anselm’s argument. He gave an Ontological Argument for the existence of a ‘perfect lost island’

Question 19

What is the first premise of Gaunilo’s criticism?

Answer 19

It is possible to conceive of the most perfect and real lost island.

Question 20

What is the second premise of Gaunilo’s criticism?

Answer 20

It is greater to exist in reality than to exist only in the mind.

Question 21

What is the conclusion of Gaunilo’s criticism?

Answer 21

Therefore the most perfect and real lost island must exist in reality. (but it doesn’t)

Question 22

What method of argument is Gaunilo using?

Answer 22

“Reductio ad Absurdum” (Reduces to Absurdity)

Question 23

What is “Reductio ad Absurdum”?

Answer 23

An argument’s conclusion is so absurd that the argument must be wrong.

Question 24

What is Gaunilo suggesting by his argument?

Answer 24

He is suggesting in effect that Anselm’s argument can be used to prove the existence of an endless number of perfect objects and so the real fool would be anybody who argued in this way. We can show that a perfect island does not exist, so Anslem’s argument does not work.

Question 25

What is the name of the book in which Anselm responded to Gaunilo?

Answer 25

Responsio

Question 26

How does Anslem respond to Gaunilo’s criticism?

Answer 26

An island would have to exist necessarily, since a contingent island would be less perfect than an
island that existed necessarily.
But islands are contingent, and so cannot exist necessarily.
Therefore the logic of the argument related to a perfect island does not apply to God.

Question 27

What is a necessary object?

Answer 27

An object that doesn’t rely on others for its existence

Question 28

What is a contingent object?

Answer 28

An object that depends on another object for its existence

Question 29

What is the conclusion of Anselm’s response to Gaunilo?

Answer 29

The ontological argument only applies to necessary objects.

Question 30

Who was the second person to criticize Anselm?

Answer 30

Immanuel Kant

Question 31

Who was Immanuel Kant?

Answer 31

1724-1804
German Philosopher
He lived (and died) in Prussia

Question 32

Does Immanuel Kant reply directly to Anselm?

Answer 32

Unlike Gaunilo, Kant is not directly replying to Anselm; He’s just writing about the Ontological argument in general.

Question 33

What was Kant’s first objection?

Answer 33

Existence is not a predicate

Question 34

What does Kant mean by “existence is not a predicate”?

Answer 34

Anselm tells us that God is the greatest conceivable being, so we can imagine God with all the predicates (omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence, and so on) adds to our concept of God.
But if I then say, ‘Oh, and by the way, God exists’, nothing has been added: there is no difference between our concept of God and our concept of
a God that exists.
Moreover, the only way I can know that God really does exist is to experience them
Equally, the only way I can know that God exists is by sense experience. Logic alone gets me nowhere.
To say that something exists, such as,
‘Cows exist’, tells you nothing about cows that you have not found out from a sense experience.

Question 35

What was Kant’s second objection?

Answer 35

We can accept the proposition that
‘existing necessarily’ is part of what we mean by ‘God’, but it does not follow from this that God exists in reality.

Question 36

What does Kant mean by “existing necessarily” not following God that exists in reality?

Answer 36

Anselm’s Ontological Argument in effect claims that the proposition ‘God
exists necessarily’ is analytic (true by definition)
But there’s still no proof that God exists as it must be proved by sense experience.
‘God exists necessarily’ is logically true, because that’s how we define God, but it does not follow that there really is a God.
The overall argument is that you can’t define things into existence.
Even if ‘existing necessarily’ is part of what we mean by God, it does not follow that God exists in reality.

Question 37

How does Thomas Aquinas view the Ontological argument?

Answer 37

Thomas Aquinas insisted that we do not know God’s definition, so Anselm must be wrong.

Question 38

What are the weaknesses of Anselm’s Ontological argument?

Answer 38

Although there are several scholars who still defend the Ontological
Argument, the majority of scholars reject it,
largely on the basis of Kant’s objections.
Some would argue, however, that any attempt to define God would be to limit God. Anything that can be classified and analysed can be
understood by humans, and many Christians would argue that this is at best futile and at worst irreligious.

Question 39

What are the strengths of Anselm’s Ontological argument?

Answer 39

It is a deductive argument, so if it succeeds, it is a proof of the existence of God. It does not depend on anything we observe, and since human observation is not always reliable,
that can be seen as a good thing.
The argument can be taken in a different way, For example, Karl Barth claimed that Anselm never intended the argument to be a proof of God’s existence. Instead, Barth argued that it
was the result of a religious experience given to Anselm. In other words, for those with faith, Ontological Argument is clearly true, because it is an expression of their faith.
Ontological Argument is a good training
ground for learning about the difference between analytic and synthetic propositions, necessary and contingent beings, and so on.

Question 40

Does Anselm’s Ontological Argument prove God’s existence?

Answer 40

It is deductive rather than inductive. In a deductive argument, if the premises are true, then the truth of the conclusion is guaranteed.
Unlike the Design Argument, it claims to be true without having to use any fallible sense experience, so is a priori rather than a posteriori.
Anselm argues that ‘God exists necessarily’ is analytic – it is true by definition / logically true.
So, if the premises of Anselm’s argument are true, then it is a proof of the existence of God.