Why the ontological argument does not prove God's existence.

The ontological argument :A critique

The ontological argument is designed to logically prove God's existence; hence it is possible to disagree with the argument, even if you do believe in God. I think this argument does NOT prove God's existence because the first premise is not strong enough and the second is just wrong. It cannot be applied in this case as it contradicts Anslem's very definition of God.

The ontological argument: A summary

Anslem's argument is based on his definition of god as "something than which nothing greater can be thought" and his three premises, such that:

Premise 1: God exists at least in our understanding

Premise 2: Existing in reality is better than existing in understanding

Premise 3: it is possible to think of God existing in reality

Then the argument might be paraphrased as :

1. God does NOT exist in reality (Assumption for an indirect derivation)

2. God exists at least in our understanding  (Premise 1)

3. Therefore God exists only in our understanding (from 1 and 2)

4. Existing in reality is better than existing only in understanding (Premise 2)

5. It is possible to think of God existing in reality (Premise 3)

(That is there is no logical contradiction in thinking that god exists in reality.)

6. Therefore, it is possible to think of God to be better than God is. (From 4, and 5)

(Because if something exists only in our understanding but it is possible for something to exist in reality,

then it is possible for that thing to be better than it is. )

7. God is the greatest being that can be thought of. (by definition)

8. Since 6 and 7 contradict each other, it means that the assumption in 1 must be wrong, therefore the

opposite must be true, hence god does exist in reality.

My Critique:

The way it stands, this argument can be proven invalid by:

1) Showing that the premises are false or

2) Constructing another invalid argument that has the exact same form as this argument, or

The second attack; that of constructing a counter example has already been stated by Gaunilo, in his

reply on behalf of the fool, where Gaunilo applies the same set of steps to prove the existence of a lost island greater than which cannot be thought of.

My objection to the argument stems from the fact that the first two premises are less than certain, and that they do not apply to the present case in particular.

Problems with Premise 1 (God exists at least in our understanding):

To Anselm something exists in our understanding if we are able to think of it, to have a concept of it. He draws the distinction between something existing in thought and existing in real by using the example of a painting existing in the painter's [imagination] understanding even before he paints it, and once he is done paining it, it exists in reality too.

He says that even the fool can understand the definition of god as that than which a greater cannot be thought, just by hearing these words. (page 1) Thus Anselm gets his first premise that god exists at least in our understanding.

But later, Anselm draws a distinction; he says that there must be more than one way in which something is thought; to think a thing is to think the word that signifies that thing. But in another sense, it is to understand what exactly the thing is. (pages 2 and 3) That to merely hear the name of something and thus it existing in your understanding, for example hearing of Santa Claus; is different from actually knowing and understanding what Santa Claus is.

He says No one who understands what God is can think that god does not exist (page 3). 

To me at least, it is not clear which kind of understanding he is using as the premise in his argument. Is he talking about a) god's existence in the understanding of the fool or b) god's existence in the understanding of the NOT fool

a) god's existence in the understanding of the fool: 

If I am a representative sample of the fools then I can say that God can only exist as a name in the fool's understanding, but not as the concept per definition.

For as soon as I think of something as great as I can make it, I right away can think of something better,

so I can think of things than which greater things CAN be thought of, but I can never think of this one

thing that is maximum and complete perfection to which I cannot add anything to make it better. Thus I

cannot think of God and thus God does not exist at least in my understanding.

OR

b) god's existence in the understanding of the NOT fool:

Then Anselm must be talking of God existing at least in the understanding of the not fool the one who

'understand[s] what exactly the thing is'. But this makes his argument for proving his premise circular and thus weaker. For someone to understand exactly what the thing is, it presupposes that, that thing already exists in their understanding. It does not prove the existence, of that thing in their understanding. Instead, it follows from the said existence. For e.g. to actually understand what santa claus is, santa claus must first exist in your understanding, and then you would understand what he is.

So I think that the first premise is not the strongest, but even if I were to accept it, the second one breaks his argument anyways.

Problems with Premise 2 (Existing in reality is better than existing in understanding):

At a first glance it looks almost reasonable, but then, I canΓÇÖt answer the question why? Why would existence make something better? May be it is a valid claim as applied to some things, like cupcakes, but definitely not valid when applied to ideas that are already complete in themselves, like perfection or infinity.

For example, the infinity on the number line, only exists in our understanding, there is no real number that is infinite, however there exists an implicit infinity in the fraction 1/3 which can be written as a non-terminating decimal 0.3333…. 

Now saying that if infinity exists in real it is a better infinity than the infinity that exists in our understanding would be wrong. There is no question of infinity becoming qualitatively better merely by existing in real. It is as good or as bad as it is, whether in real or in our understanding. Another example would be the idea of wanting to add something to infinity to make it even more infinite. By definition, infinity is endless. You cannot add something to infinity to make it even more endless. It is already endless.

Similarly if we accept the definition that god is complete perfection then, how would his existence add to his perfection? He IS already perfect, it is done, mission accomplished, if his existence can make him 'more prefect' then it means he was not perfect to begin with, thus contradicting the definition.

Therefore, it is wrong to use this premise for God. It should only be used for things that CAN be made better. By using it for the already 'best' things we will always arrive at a contradiction and thus can prove anything.

Conclusion:

Based on the above objections to the premises, I think the ontological argument, however well intended, does not prove god's existence.