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Alexandra ZetlaouiPHI2010Jason Miller19th of September, 2011Word count: 442 St. Anselm believes that we can prove God’s presence by simply understanding the nature of God and existence. He uses an ontological form of argument (which is the studyof nature of being/existing) to create his premises to prove that God does in fact exist. In this essay, I will simplify and explain The Ontological Argument by showing that all the premises have to be true without contradicting themselves. Anselm believes that God is ‘a being than which non greater is possible’ (Anselm), and uses the logic of A. Priori (claim or argument independent of experience that can be proven true or false) to prove his reasoning. He believes that as long as you can understand nature and its existence, than understanding the concept of God’s existence should be a given. In the first premise, he states that ‘God exists in the understanding’, a statement meantto prove that he could of existed in our realm or at least our minds, which is linked the second premise “God might have existed in reality’ making God appear as a possible being. He then goes on to premise three, deducing that ‘If something exists only in the understanding and might have existed in reality, then it might be greater than it is’. Anselm believes that existence is a great making quality (something that exist is superiorover something that does not), so if we understand that this ‘being than which none greater is possible’ exists in our understanding of nature and that there is a chance that it could very well exist in our reality, than nothing is greater than he because of that existence property. In the fourth premise however, Anselm stops his reasoning and supposes that ‘God exist only in the understanding’. He is going against his previous claims, using Reductio ad Absurdum, a sentence later proven to be false, by first assuming that it is true. By saying that God only appears in the understanding he is saying that God is just an idea, nothing more than a concept, which denies premise one. The next claim goes on to say that “God might be greater than He is’, which changes the definition of God to ‘a being inwhich a greater is possible’ (premise six), meaning that something greater than He can possibly exist (premise seven) and because that claim provides us with a contradiction (any statement that applies a contradiction cannot be proven to be true), it must be a false concept. Therefore, it cannot be true that God only exist in the understanding (premise eight) and God has to exist both in the understanding as well as the


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FSU PHI 2010 - St. Anselm

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