The Ontological Argument

Advantages and Disadvantages of the Ontological Argument

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  • Created by: serebro
  • Created on: 23-03-14 17:22

The Ontological Argument

Advantages

  • Is it deductive, meaning we can see it clearly develop
  • Anselm answered Guanilo's island by saying that this principle is reserved to God only
  • Norman Malcolm argued that God has to exist necessarily to be God, otherwise God wouldn't exist at all. This means it's contradictory to say God doesn't exist.
  • Alvin Plantinga God is perfect and must exist in any conceivable world.

Disadvantages

  • Guanilo's Criticism of the first form - Analogy of the Island
  • Circular Logic
  • Anselm sees existence as Analytical, but existence is Synthetic as it is a contingent concept
  • Betrand Russell sees existence as a fact rather than a description, like Kant did
  • Kant, existence is not predicate

Evaluation

Although Anselm's and Descartes' argument show that by definition a God is a being that must exist, a definition cannot prove that such a being exists in our world. We can create fantasy characters in stories that are supreme and perfect, which also exist in this fantasy world, but not in reality. God could exist as a concept in minds, which explains why we are capable on agreeing that God is a supreme being, but perhaps not in reality, hence why this is an argument with criticism.

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