Criticisms of Arguments for God's Existence

by mo

The Ontological argument for the existence of God is no doubt one of the most effective arguments for the existence of God there is. It was originally proposed by St.Anslem. He said that God is the 'being than which no greater can be conceived'.

This was a very solid foundation to the argument because even an atheist will admit that if a God did exist then he would by definition have to be a 'being than which no greater can be conceived'.

So Anslems Ontological argument can be divided into 6 distinct parts or steps.

1. There are two states of existence. In the mind and in reality
2. Existence in reality aswell as in the mind would be greater than existence in the mind alone.
3. God exists within peoples minds.Whether they choose to believe in God is irrelevant because he is still concievable in peoples minds
4. God is the greatest possible being that can be concieved of by definition and is perfect
5. Because of this God can not exist only in peoples minds and so must exist in reality because God by definition is the greatest being of which can be concieved and a being like this most exist in both to maintain this status
6. Therefore God exists

The main criticism of this argument is that I could concieve of a perfect island. It exists in my mind as perfect. Because it is perfect it must exist because such a perfect island could not only exist in my mind but must also exist in reality.

The point is that anyone can concieve of something perfect and in Gods case Anslem claims that because of this perfection in our mind he must exist in reality. Obviously this completley negates the argument because people can use it to prove the existence of anything perfect they want.

The Ontological argument works very well on paper more so than any other argument however when put into practice we see the same logic can be applied to whatever we want.