Good Day,
I will be answering in response to the following prompt:
With reference to Anselm's Ontological Argument for the existence of God, evaluate the strengths and
weaknesses of his argument as well as his response to Gaunilo.
Anselm asks us to think of God as the best possible thing which can be thought of, and then tells us that
God is greater than that thing, and that is what god is. He says, “God is that than which no greater can be
conceived.” He argues that if we can think of god as the greatest thing that exists, then the only thing
better is one that does in fact exist. I find his argument to be weak, however. I find the argument to be
hypothetical rather than actual fact. He speaks of God as something we must imagine and says that he is
better than what we imagine. If he is greater than the literal greatest thing we can imagine, then how is
it possible that he exists outside of our imaginations? This is kind of what Gaunilo proposed as a criticism
to his argument. He used Anselm’s ideology on the greatest possible island, which he proposed that he
could imagine this island so it must exist, and there couldn’t be a better one because if there was, it
would have to be real, and his island would no longer be the best. Anselm responds to Gaunilo’s stance
by stating that it is invalid because, his argument is only true for God, because he is a necessary being.
This argument, again, lacks foundation because Anselm uses his own definition of God as a necessary
being to explain why God exists.
Thomas Frame
