Ontological Argument

Proving God exists
Brief History:
• Ancient Greece falls
• Roman Empire (longest lasting ~ 1000 years)
• 4th century CE (400 years after Christ) – Roman emperor Constantine is battling against the Barbarians and is losing – he sees a gold cross, repents and accepts Christ – battle turns around and Romans win battle
1. After this, he added Holy so it’s the Holy Roman Emperor and this is how Catholic Church gets started and makes himself pope. (According to theologist, Peter was first pope)
2. Council of Nicea – council under Constantine – This is where the Bible is assembled – There are 4 Gospels: Mathew, Mark, Luke and John (Peter’s Gospel doesn’t make it in)
• Now we’re in 1000 CE (500 years before Protestantism) and we are in the thick of the Middle (Dark) Ages & Catholic Church has been around for 600 years now and are a powerhouse. During Middle Ages, there is no separation of church and state. The church made all governmental and religious laws. The Pope was president and leader of church
• Medieval Philosophy:
1. Done mostly by Catholic Christian clerics or monks  only people who were literate at this time
2. The Bible is only in Latin (Scholarly language)
3. Medieval Christian philosophers had a high view of human reason (the use of logic and rationality)
4. They thought that capital R Reason (ability to use logic and rationality) was a gift from God (put in your soul) and given to everyone and as a result could be used to discover capital T Truth (sounds like Socrates) – Basically, you could “reason your way to faith”.
5. Saint Anselm (1000 CE) & Saint Thomas Aquinas (1200 CE)
They were both focused on proving God’s existence and the Christian doctrine
Aquinas spent hours by candlelight trying to prove existence
Reason functions like the Holy Spirit (Holy Spirit is supposed to move you and fill you)
Socrates & Plato
1. Both Anselm & Aquinas had the greatest respect for Socrates and Plato.
2. When Aquinas wrote his books, he would reference as Socrates and Plato but wouldn’t use their names; he called them “The Great Teachers”
3. They felt that Socrates and Plato came as close to the Truth (when Aquinas uses Truth, he means Christianity) as you can using Reason that God gave you without getting it right.
4. Socrates & Plato got close with the Form of the Good
o Side Note: Form of the Good according to Plato:
Immaterial
Absolute
Independent
Unchanging
Impersonal (like Gravity)
• If you add a mind (make it personal) and change Good to God  Western God
5. You must believe in God and Jesus Christ  Socrates and Plato did not have Jesus Christ
They wrote that Socrates & Plato were in hell (they lived 500 years before Jesus)
They believed Bible was history and science book and everything that happened in the book ACTUALLY happened
Believed in Hell, Purgatory and Heaven  Most people go to Purgatory
Dante’s Divine Comedy
1. The Roman poet Virgil takes Dante on a personal tour of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven
2. Along this trip, Dante describes Hell as a series of 7 concentric circles.
3. The bottom of Hell is the worst  Satan is here and he is doing the torturing. He has 3 people in his mouth and chewing them and spitting them out for all eternity  One is Judas (the disciple who betrayed Jesus); Second and third are Brutus and Cassius (the men who betrayed Julius Caesar)
4. The top level of Hell are Socrates and Plato
o They lived 500 years before Jesus so how did they know? How can you be held accountable for something that you couldn’t have done? Meaning, how could they be responsible for rejecting Jesus if Jesus wasn’t there?
6. Martin Luther
• Logical Argument is made up of
1. Premises (claims)
P1: (Premise 1) All men are mortal
P2: Socrates is a man
2. A Conclusion (/) which necessarily follows from the premises
3. Example:
P1: (Premise 1) All men are mortal
P2: Socrates is a man
Conclusion (/): Therefore (/) Socrates is mortal
• When you critique a logical argument, you must:
1. Never disagree with the conclusion
2. Must show that at least one of the premises is false – if you do that, then the conclusion is necessarily false
• The Ontological (The study of Being) Argument for the Existence of God (1000CE)
1. P1: God is the greatest or most perfect being
2. P2: A perfect being which exists, is greater or more perfect than a being which does not exist
3. / Because of these two premises, God MUST exist (it is logically impossible for God not to exist)
• Let’s analyze this:
1. P1: Amsel is not stating that God exist in P1 so it is not circular; rather, all Amsel is claiming is that anybody (theist or atheist) must agree that if God exists, the God would be the greatest. He’s talking about the “idea” of God here.
2. P2: Question – Which is better, the idea of a million bucks or a million bucks right there on the table? Of course the cash on the table. So which is better, the idea of something good ($) or the ‘actual’ something good ($ on table)? If you agree that the actual $ is better, then you agree that P2 is true.
3. /: A God or a perfect being which exists is better than a God which doesn’t exist so any perfect being (any God), in order to actually be perfect, must exist, for, to lack existence means you are not perfect.
4. Overall, this is a valid argument. The conclusion follows from the premises. To make it invalid, you have to have negative evidence against one of the premises.

1st critique of premises:
1. Guanilo  A Catholic cleric
a. All medieval philosophers thought logic was a gift from God, but Guanilo thought Anselm used it incorrectly with the P1 and P2 arguments
b. His critique: Just because you have the idea of something doesn’t mean “poof” that it in fact exists.  Here, he is attacking the conclusion
c. Anselm’s response to Guanilo saves his argument. He says the Ontological Argument (OA) only works for God. Why? Because the idea of a perfect being is completely, utterly, and absolutely unique. He says this argument only works for one thing: God. It doesn’t work for million bucks, etc. (If I imagine million bucks, and poof it appears. Can a unicorn poof? Sure, it could. Could a perfect being poof? This idea doesn’t poof because God is immaterial…there is no poofing of God. The minute God poofs, he ceases to be a perfect being.
Now, we are in 1700s.
Immanuel Kant
• Lutheran Christian
• He thought logic was a gift from God and Anselm used it incorrectly as well.
• He attacks P2  His critique: “Existence is not a predicate” 
• In grammar and in logic, you have a subject and a predicate and they function similarly.
1. Ex: John is bald  John is the subject. Is bald is the predicate.
• The purpose of a predicate is to add something to the subject. The predicate adds “is bald”, so we know John is bald.
• Kant will say existence cannot function as a predicate in the premises.
• Get an idea of unicorn in your head…
1. Unicorn is like a horse
2. Unicorn has a horn on its head
3. Unicorn is pink
4. Unicorn has wings
5. Unicorn exists
6. What changed to #6? Did anything get added to mental picture with #6? No.
7. Everytime there was a new predicate, something was added, but #6 didn’t add anything. This is what Kant meant, ‘exists’ doesn’t act like the other predicates.
• Overall, Kant says in P2, you cannot compare a perfect being which exists with a perfect being which does not exist because by adding the word “exist” onto perfect being, you haven’t really added anything. It’s not a predicate and doesn’t work like the other predicates do.
• Get an idea of God in your head…(subject first, predicate second)
1. God is perfectly free (can do anything that is logically possible)
2. God is perfectly knowing
3. God is perfectly good
4. God exists  nothing was added to idea of God when we wrote this. This predicate ‘exists’ adds nothing to the subject.
• What is different about these two sets of predicates? Unicorn are physical quality predicates and God was abstract immaterial predicates so there is a disanalogy. With the unicorn example, you have the idea of physical attributes based on physical experiences you had. (each person put their own, pink, horn,, wings, etc) Each person used our own imagination to get the idea of the unicorn. And therefore, you have an imperfect idea because they are not all the same.
• What about God? Are we using our imagination? Zeus is a product of imagination because he’s a white guy with a penis. With the perfect being (P3 God), the idea is the product of Reason (it is the product of logic). All 3 qualities are logically necessary qualities and they can only be attributed to one idea – God.
• Has Kant missed the point? Has the idea of Anselm proved his argument stands with the idea that it only works for God?

Another activity:
• You hear people say “God exists” and “God does not exist”
• The more pertinent question might be: What’s the difference between these two statements?
• Is there a difference? Kant would erase the exists and does not exists, and there will be the same subject, God.