The Onotlogical Arguement.

The Ontological arguement is one that has been built upon and expanded for years, however the premise of the arguement stays relatively the same. The traditional Ontological view is one that has been defined by Immanuel Kant as 'any arguement that is founded on priori reasoning'. Priori reasoning is reasoning that is not based on the need to experience the thing in question it is conceptual knowledge in a sense. All keyboards have keys is an example of this, you need not experience anything to suggest the fact because having keys is a prerequisite of being a keyboard. The majority of ontological arguments begin by defining God and then conclude that his existence is necessary, or that existence is a predicate of being God, in other words you cannot be God without existence as existence is part of being a God. To clarify I will use the following more simple, example. In terms of predicates, having eight legs is a predicate of being a spider if you don't have such, you are not a spider, similar to a prerequisite although they are normally associated with skills. Although somewhat disputed it is thought that Anselm of Canterbury devised the first form of an Ontological arguement his arguement is that if God is the greatest being we can concieve and we can think of him in our minds he must exist in reality or else he isn't the greatest, for a God that exists in both the mind and reality would be stronger. For example if you were to imagine winning the lottery, and then win the loterry in reality which would be a stronger feeling? of course the latter, as it is a reality rather than a concept. This arguement follows the orthodox 'make a claim about Gods nature and then conclude he must exist in order to be such' format as touched upon earlier. It is also important to note that Anselm didn't feel as though his arguements purpose was to prove God's existence but rather leave no option other than to believe God is self evident to him. In layman's terms we understand god as the most powerful being that exists, God exists in our minds therefore he must exist in reality if he doesn't he's not the most powerful being as he is merely a concept, we cannot be imagining something greater than god, therefore God exists. This idea's premise is very good it makes sense to say that something in your mind is weaker than something that actually exists however, it relies on the belief God is known to us from birth which I believe not to be the case. We can imagine God because we are taught of his existence from a very early age, no other reason than that. Rene Decartes is one of the philosophers who put a different spin on Anselms arguement or refined it. Decartes asserts that by studying Gods nature we can arrive at the conclusion he exists. Shapes for example are looked at and

geometric ideas are derived from the observation.Decartes like many others believed that God was perfection. To exist would be far more perfect than to not exist therefore God must exist in order to be complete and utter perfection. Again this arguement is good, if God was perfect it makes sense he needs to exist to be such, however there is no arguement put forward that proves God is perfection. The arguement seems a tad hypocritical also. How can you look at an attribute of something and use it to prove its existence! It's like saying Unicorns must exist because unicorns have horns. Well no, because if they don't exist they don't have horns and thus horns cannot be used to prove their existence, just my two cents. Norman Malcolm identified a second arguement within Anselms book that isn't suseptible to the criticism Kant put forward that is, existence cannot be a perfection of something. Malcolm asserts that ''a being whose nonexistence is logically impossible is greater than a being whose non-existence is logically possible'' is a second arguement put forward by Anselm. Malcolm rejected the idea that Existence is perfection but embraced rather the idea that necessary existence is perfection. A fatal flaw with Anselms initIal arguement put forward by Gaunillo is that there are many scenarios that follow the same logic that cannot be accepted. Most notably, think of an island ''more excellent'' than any other island. This island must exist in order to be more exellent than any other but then it cant because you made it up! Anselm responded by saying that his logic could only apply to things that had necessary existence, although he doesn't prove how God meets this criteria. He does on the other hand say that islands can always be improved and therefore never perfect nor the greatest of its kind that can be concieved which is fair enough. Kant said that the idea of 'a triangle has three sides' logic cannot be applied to god because it is infact IF a triangle exists it would have to have three three sides. He goes on to say 'God exists' must be either a synthetic or analytic proposition in otherwords the predicate is either within the subject (analytic) or outside of it (synthetic). If it is analytic the evidence is within the subject which means it Is only true based on what is said about the words and if it is a synthetic proposition, evidence would need to be found. Personally I believe any form of the ontological arguement is invalid because it relies on assumptions made by humans about the nature of god and then uses the said nature to prove its existence. Fairys are cool. existing is cooler than not existing. Fairys exist! you heard it here first.