The Ontological Argument: Proving The Existence Of God

God is the representation of standards that exemplify the means of reality and morality. The character of God is the foundation for truly understanding the absolute truth of our existence, the purpose of our being, and the morals we must follow. The before Christ era’s identity admitted that the earth was a constant struggle for existence. The struggles are shown through fatality, ailment, misery, and natural disasters, but do not take away from the purity of morality. Atheists’ thriving argument against the Christian faith is the evidence of evil and the suffering people must endure. “If God is all good and God is all powerful, why does He allow evil to exist?” Everything was perfect and worked in perfect harmony. Genesis 1 verse 31 says, “ Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day,”(Gen, 1:31). The animals did not eat each other. Nothing could come to wipe out creatures. Creation was designed perfect until Adam’s rebelled against God. His actions brought about evil, death, and destruction into the world. Death is not an enemy, but a part of creation passing. “Without a foundation of an initially perfect creation, there is no foundation upon which to say that these natural evils are bad and contrary to God’s original purpose”(Broocks). God ultimately dealt with immorality through the shedding Jesus’ blood on the cross and providing an eternity without

The Ontological Argument for the Existence of God The ontological argument is an a priori argument. The arguments attempt to prove God's existence from the meaning of the word God. The ontological argument was introduced by Anselm of Canterbury in his book Proslogion. Anselm's classical argument was based on two principals and the two most involved in this is St Anselm of Canterbury as previously mentioned and Rene Descartes.

With the passage of time, there also have been scriptures appearing that support the existence of God. Stories, events and many supernatural occurrences that is beyond human’s intellect. The Myths of Fire, Water, Earth and Air were famous for their supernatural existence in the Roman Era. Before the Ancient Greek religion turned into mythology, existence of God was well practiced by the Greek people. Homer, a famous Greek writer, writes in the ‘Odyssey’ about how if man does not follow the God and believe in them, then man will fall and be doomed. The Greeks were a very religious civilization. They showed that one could believe in the gods without having solid, concrete proof. Looking at this religion we can see that God does exist.

THE ONTILOGICAL ARGUMENT: A method of proof which uses intuition and reason alone; examines the concept of God, and states if we can conceive of the greatest possible being, then it must exist.

The ontological argument can be stated in this way: “God is the greatest being imaginable. One of the aspects of perfection or greatness is existence. Thus, God exists.” Or put another way—“The fact that God can be conceived means that he must exist.”

The Teleological Argument defends the proof for the existence of a God, it is also called The Design Argument. It discusses the intelligent design in the universe. The supporting theory behind this is that the universe is so vastly complex and well balanced that only a creator could have designed it. All of the sophistication and detail could not have occurred by chance. When examining the immense universe and seeing the complexity, intricate detail, and unique order there are a variety of explanations for how it may have come to existence, however because of these complexities and order only a designer could have designed it. The basic idea of the teleological argument is that the world does have intelligent purpose, by looking at nature and seeing its order unity and designed complexity. If one is to look at all living creature, the existence of DNA shows intelligent design. Someone or something had to design the information imprinted in the DNA. There is no absolute way this could have happened by chance.Therefore, there must be an intelligent designer . There must be a God. Even if we apply scientific theory; I.e. The Big Bang theory, The teleological argument supports the existence of a big banger. This big banger has always existed; not requiring a beginning or an end.

Anselm’s Ontological argument sets out to not only prove God’s existence, but to show that God’s existence is self-evident. Similar to other ontological arguments, it uses a priori knowledge to argue its validity, meaning that the propositions made are derived from internal reasoning instead of sense experience.

Throughout Proslogion Anselm defends his argument that “God is which nothing greater can be thought” by providing key elements. Anselm proposes that one cannot imagine a god that is greater, and even non-believers have a conception of the western god. Anselm asserts that since everyone has an understanding of god in their mind, then god exist in reality. This paper will evaluate some of the main key elements that Anselm uses to prove that the ontological argument is correct in Proslogion. I contend that Anselm does not exhibit proper terminology and provides vague statements and therefore his argument that “God is which nothing greater can be thought” is invalid.

The ontological argument was first formulated by St. Anselm in the 11th century. It argues the existence of God from a deductive and a priori stance. God is a being than which none greater can be conceived. This is the response given by St Anselm to the fool in the psalm who believed there was no God. St Anselm the Archbishop of Canterbury and of the Benedictine Order explained that for God to exist in the mind he would not be the greatest being. However were God to exist in the mind and reality this would make a being ‘than which none greater can be conceived’, this means God must exist.

In Anselm’s ontological argument of the existence of God, Anselm’s goal is to prove the existence of God by purely logical truths and reasoning (that is, his argument only contains A Priori knowledge). A summary of Anselm’s argument is that, because God exists in understanding, and that God is the supreme being, and that real things are greater than things only existing in understanding, then God must exist in understanding. A formal, numbered argument follows:

The Ontological argument is an a priori deductive argument. That is, an argument relating to being, that is independent of prior knowledge of the subject and with a conclusion you must accept IF one accepts the preceding premises. St. Anselm of Canterbury presents the Ontological

All ontological arguments are based in the idea of logic and reasoning. They are created with the intent to show that God exists based on how we can observe the world around us. Much of well-known theological rhetoric is based in the idea of believing in something that one cannot observe, and all ontological arguments produce rhetoric that there is observational proof of God.

In the history of philosophy, the ontological argument has its roots in the work of St. Anselm, and its use as a proof for the existence of God. Anselm never used

The existence of God is something that most people take for granted. In your upbringing you are taught that God is the most supreme being, the creator of all, infinite and eternal. Taking into account the type of society in which we live in and the fact that it is usually our parents who teach us about God, most people do not even question his existence. Many philosophers who believe in God have tried to prove his existence using many different types of argument. One of these arguments is the ontological argument. It was made famous by the 11th century philosopher Anselm. The ontological argument has three properties: 1. It is an a priori argument. 2. It treats existence as a property. 3. It is

Throughout the course of this essay we shall examine two of the major philosophical arguments for the existence of God. The arguments that we are going to focus on shall be the Design argument and the Ontological argument. We shall compare, evaluate and discuss both the Design (or teleological) argument for the existence of God and the Ontological Argument for the existence of God, as well as highlighting philosophical criticisms of both theories too. By doing so, we shall attempt to draw a satisfactory conclusion and aim gain a greater understanding of the respective theories and their criticisms of each theory.