The Greatest Conceivable Being Essay

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The debate of the existence of a Greatest Conceivable Being, in religious terms a god, has raged for centuries, costing many people their lives and many more their time attempting to configure a flawless proof of its existence; yet today we are no closer to a definite conclusion than we were five-thousand years ago at the beginning of recorded history. That being said, many great minds have put forth compelling arguments both theistic and atheistic in an attempt to answer what may be the greatest question ever asked: “Does a Greatest Conceivable Being exist”. Before any arguments are presented we need to define what a Greatest Conceivable Being is. The Greatest Conceivable Being has all possible perfections particularly omnipotence, being all …show more content…

This argument is built off of the definition of a greatest conceivable being, in that in order to be the Greatest Conceivable Being it must have all the conceivable perfections. Anselm argues that existence is a perfection, as something imagined becomes more perfect if it in fact exists. For example, suppose you have an ideal date, a person who is in every way perfect, however unfortunately for you they do not exist (Green 43). Wouldn’t that person be more perfect if they existed? A monk named Gaunilo famously criticized this argument by stating by the same logic one would be able to create the “greatest conceivable island” or any item that would be the “greatest conceivable” of its kind. Guanilo effectively showed that one could use the argument to prove the existence of non-existent things. Anselm defended and strengthened his argument however by demonstrating the difference between the quantitative properties of the “greatest conceivable island” proposed by Guanilo and the qualitative properties that apply to a greatest conceivable being. In other words, since a greatest conceivable island is a tangible thing its possible to imagine something larger or grander, while the power of a greatest conceivable being has maximums that cannot be exceeded (Himma). …show more content…

The problem of evil is as it sounds: how could an omnibenevolent and omnipotent being allow for people to undergo suffering, sadness, and hardship. These conditions are seemingly under the influence of the greatest conceivable being, and should be able to be removed by him if he chose. Thus since evil exists, and since the greatest conceivable being has to be omnipotent and omnibenevolent it is not possible that both evil and a greatest conceivable being could coexist. This argument is very compelling, yet is not completely sound. There have been many criticisms of this theory, the strongest being the concept that there cannot be mountains without valleys (Green 56). This criticism argues that it is not possible to experience joy without having some understanding of pain. One can also not demonstrate certain admirable qualities like forgiveness or compassion without being wronged or having experienced some evil. It is impossible to imagine a universe in which evil in some form does not exist. Typically when one refers to greatest conceivable being’s omnipotence they mean that the greatest conceivable being is able to do all things that are possible in a universe. One can then infer that because we cannot imagine a universe without pain or evil, it

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