CRITICISMS OF THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

BENEDICTINE MONK GAUNILO OF MARMOUTIERS - 'ON BEHALF OF THE FOOL'

'The fool might make this reply: This being is said to be in my understanding already, only because I understand what is said.' - Gaunilo, On Behalf of the Fool. 

'Now if someone should tell me that there is such an island, I should easily undersand his words, in which there is no difficulty. But suppose that he went on to say, as if by a logical inference: You can no longer doubt that this island which is more excellent than all the land exists somewhere, since you have no doubt that it is in your understanding' - Gaunilo, On Behalf of the Fool

ST THOMAS AQUINAS (1224-74)

'For the human mind does not have an intuition of the essence of God' - Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1265-74

'To know that God exists in a general and indefinite way is implanted in us by nature'

A priori arguments ultimately fail. 

DAVID HUME (1711-76)

'To reflect on anything simply, and to reflect on it as existent, are nothing different from each other.' - David Hume, Treatise on Human Nature, 1739

IMMANUEL KANT (1724-1804) GERMAN PHILOSOPHER

'existence is not a predicate' 

'By whatever predicates we may conceive of a thing we do not make the least addition to the thing when we further declare that the thing is' - Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 1781

'You have thereby posited the thing with all its predicates in the conception of the subject and assumed its actual existence'

NORMAN MALCOLM, AMERICAN PHILOSOPHER

'The doctrine that existence is a perfection is remarkably queer', 

'but what could it mean to say that it will be a better house if it exists than it does not' 

RICHARD DAWKINS (1941-) 

'Gasking didn't really prove that God does not exist. By the same token, Anselm didn't prove that he does.' - Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006