Ontological Argument Essay

For suppose it exists in the understanding alone: then it can be conceived to exist in reality; which is greater.…

I need to go out into the world and conduct some sort of empirical investigation using my senses.

Likewise, if I want to prove that bachelors, unicorns, or viruses don't exist, I must do the same.

As the objection is sometimes put, Anselm simply defines things into existence-and this cannot be done.

Gaunilo shared this worry, believing that one could use Anselm's argument to show the existence of all kinds of non-existent things: Now if some one should tell me that there is …

Thus, on this general line of argument, it is a necessary truth that such a being exists; and this being is the God of traditional Western theism.

This article explains and evaluates classic and contemporary versions of the ontological argument.

Likewise, cosmological arguments depend on certain empirical claims about the explanation for the occurrence of empirical events.

In contrast, the ontological arguments are conceptual in roughly the following sense: just as the propositions constituting the concept of a bachelor imply that every bachelor is male, the propositions constituting the concept of God, according to the ontological argument, imply that God exists.

One of the most fascinating arguments for the existence of an all-perfect God is the ontological argument.

While there are several different versions of the argument, all purport to show that it is self-contradictory to deny that there exists a greatest possible being.