The Ontological Argument Made By Anselm - 1365 Words

The ontological argument made by Anselm was criticized by one of his contemporaries, a monk named Gaunilo, who said, that by Anselm s reasoning, one could imagine a certain island, more perfect than any other island, tf this island can exist in the mind, then according to Anselm, it would necessarily exist in reality, for a perfect island would have this quality. But this is obviously false; we cannot make things exist merely by imagining them. Anselm replied, upholding his argument by saying that Guanilo is essentially comparing apples and oranges. An island is something that can be thought of not to exist, whereas the non-existence of that than which a greater cannot be conceived is inconceivable, Only for God is it inconceivable†¦show more content†¦This argument states that everything in this world has certain potentials for change. It also states that, for these potentials to be met, another object, that already exists, must set off said potential. That object, in tur n, would have to have been put in flux by something else, and so on and so forth. All of this ultimately leads to one object which started all this change, that one object being God. Aquinas second argument is that there are many things that happen in this world, and that these occurrences are effects derived from a cause. The effects in turn can be the cause of something else and so on and so on. Nothing, however, can be the cause of itself, so there must be a first efficient cause that sets off other intermediate causes, in hopes of reaching an ultimate goal. Therefore, according to Aquinas, the first of all the efficient causes would be God. The third argument Aquinas makes is that of possibility and necessity. This argument holds that everything in this world has possibility to be and not to be. If there is the possibility that everything at one time or another cannot be, then at one time there was nothing, because everything that could have been, wasn t^(et if there was nothing at one time, then there was nothing that could be^and so there would still be nothing. Therefore, there had to be something that existed to cause all the possibilities