Anselm's Proslogion, Chapter II--The Ontological Proof of God Essay

Anselms Proslogion, Chapter II--The Ontological Proof of divinity - Essay ExampleHowever, to maintain the position, the atheist would have to add a nonher attribute, that of existing in reality, to purportedly make it the greatest come-at-able being. It is just as if someone had claimed 7 to be the largest accomplishable number you could always add a number to make it greater. And when an atheist does add the attribute of existence, therefore he is no longer an atheist. This is a brief summary of the ontological line of descent.The immediate response this argument received was from Gaunilo of Marmoutiers, a Benedictine monk, who predictably flipped the tables and applied the same set of arguments to prove the existence of the disjointed Island, in order to demonstrate how the argument is fundamentally flawed. However, the argument was critiqued on the grounds that the very conceit of the greatest conceivable being does not apply to Islands, or any objects as such, and that it applies to immortal alone. mavin of the popular criticisms of St. Anselms argument is theological, proposed by St. Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theologica, who questioned the soundness of the initial insert of Anselms argument, stating one cannot possibly know the essence of God ergo it is beyond humanly possible to adequately consider that premise. He also strikes a major blow to the first premise, pointing out that not everyone necessarily conceives God to be the greatest possible being, seeing that some have believed God to be a body. The criticism leveled by St. Thomas Aquinas was so strong, that it was said to have lay the argument dormant for centuries.David Hume also leveled a criticism against cosmological argument in his work Dialogues Concerning rude(a) Religion, which broadly applies to the Ontological Argument as well. Hume stated that existence of something cannott be established based on a priori reasoning. And whatever we