Existence of God :: Ontological arguments

The dilemma of the existence of God has troubled mankind for thousands of years. Many philosophers have put forth their theories in order to prove the existence of God. Most of these arguments can be termed as ontological. These arguments differ from other arguments for the existence of God since they are not based on empirical data such as the existence or nature of the universe, but are rather grounded in pure logic. First we will look the arguments presented by Anselm. He believed that God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived if one understand this, then God exists in his head word but it is greater to exist in reality as well as in the mind than to exist only in the mind therefore, something that exists only in the mind is not that than which nothing greater can be conceived therefore, God exists in reality as well. Anselm also puts this another way we can conceive of a being that cannot be conceived not to exist such a being is greater than one that can be conce ived not to exist therefore the superior conceivable being cannot be conceived not to exist therefore, the greatest conceivable being exists. This argument does seem to conclude that something resembling the traditional theistic God exists contradictory the cosmological and teleological arguments, which seem restricted to a creator and a designer respectively.This argument was immediately criticized by Gaunilo, who argued that par bothel reasoning could be employ to prove the existence of a perfect island. This is a reduction of Anselms position it shows it to have absurd consequences. However, it is not clear that there is a limpid concept of the perfect island to start with how many palm trees is the perfect number? Anselms own reply seems to distinguish the perfect island which is a perfect spokesperson of one kind of thing from the perfect being which is a perfect example of a thing, with no restriction to kind. It is no virtue, excellence, perfection of an island qua i sland that it exists, but it is a virtue, excellence, perfection of a being that it exists, so the argument works only for the concept of a perfect being. The bigger criticism is the one Kant levied at Descartess version of the argument, but applies equally to Anselms. It is that existence is not a great-making quality of a being, because it is not a quality of a being at all in Kants terms existence is not a real predicate.