Summary Of The Ontological Argument

The Ontological Argument itself was proposed by Saint Anselm, who was the Archbishop of Canterbury. This argument was proposed in order to prove the existence of God, and since its creation has caused quite a bit of controversy. This argument is also known as a reduction ad absurdum, known more colloquially as “reduces to absurdity”, of Atheism as it draws a deep comparison between two beings where one only exists in understanding while the other exactly similar being exists in reality. This is one of the two features of Anselm’s Argument, and the other presented feature of the argument is a priori or “after experience”. This refers to the notion that this argument is an a priori proof of God’s existence. The overall explanation of the Ontological
In an evaluation of the Ontological Argument, you can find the true meaning behind the stages presented and important information that leads to an supports the final point of God’s proven existence. The Ontological Argument begins with the statement “God is the greatest possible being that can be conceived” and continues on to a parallel and Atheist statement in the second statement that reads “God exists in the understanding but not in reality”. This allows for an opposite statement to be presented in order to assist in proving the final point. An example of the effectiveness of this is when people say something to the effect of “Oh sure I do not care, because I am always here to support you”. Obviously the two statements counteract each other but when used in arguments this can be helpful to getting the point across. Following the first two steps is an explanation of existence in reality and existence in understanding, and the relation of existence to the proof of God’s overall existence. The rest of the Ontological Argument deals with what constitutes God’s true existence, and since it is false that God exists only in the understanding but not in reality it can be concluded that God does exist under the given conditions found in the Ontological
This is for two reasons; one is because the objection proposed by Kant questions the integrity of the structure of the argument by defining the predicates in a way that makes them unreliable in the argument, and the second reason is because the concept of “willing” something into existence does not actually work. Related to the first reason, this goes back to the use of predicates in the argument. Predicates that are used in the Ontological Argument are according to Kant not real predicates, which means that just being a “being” does not constitute true existence on Earth. This challenges the final statement of Saint Anselm which states that God does exist because it changes the overall meaning of the world “being”, which is used as a describing word for God himself. Moving on to the second reason, Kant also believes that you cannot simply will something into existence. This is saying that even though you describe something as existing and then it will magically appear. Existence to Kant can only be earned when something has a physical place on the Earth, and no one can prove fully that God ever did. Kant’s objection did raise some questioning on the Ontological Argument, but overall despite the criticism the argument continued to have a large impact on the world of philosophy in religion and will be studied for many different generations to