Anselm Ontological Argument

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CRITICAL EVALUATION OF ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
Ontological arguments are arguments based purely on reason which are used to reach a conclusion that God exists. Most of the times these arguments begin with some necessary and well known premise and build up on it step by step using logic and deductive reasoning to connect the dots and end up with the conclusion that God exists. Ontological arguments have been around for many a years but the first and most well known argument was given by St. Anselm in 11th century and his argument is what I am going to analyse in this assignment.
Criticism of St. Anselm ontological argument-:
1- St. Anselm argument concludes that a perfect being which we have named God does exist in reality. But I can apply this same argument on a country rather than a being. I can conceive of a perfect country in my mind, a country in which every citizen is happy and there is no suffering. A country which is the best and no better country than it can be imagined. Now using the similar method of deductive reasoning that St. Anselm did, I can conclude that a perfect country does exist. But it …show more content…

Therefore, in this case God is God on if it exists otherwise it is an entirely different entity named X. When we are talking about an idea that exists only in mind then we are talking about X. But if X exist in reality then is no longer X but God itself. Now if we apply ontological arguments on God, we begin with conceiving God as an idea in mind. But can I actually conceive God in this case? In this case if God does not exist, we cannot conceive God either as we would conceive X rather than God. If there is no God, conceiving it is impossible in this case. So even if we assume existence to be a property, St. Anselm’s arguments still fails as one of its premises is that ‘we can think of God as an idea in mind’ which is prohibited in this case and it breaks down the whole

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