Criticisms Of Anselm's Ontological Argument

In this paper I will dispute that Anselm’s ontological argument is dependent on Anselm’s personal faith in God. My argument lies within the premises that Anselm offers, it would not be rationally acceptable to create content of a maximally perfect being unless the person already accepted the Christian faith. The premises for Anselm’s argument can only be held if the only conception of non greater (relative to his attributes and worldly design) is God but if one does not follow such religious paths how can it be god. So in a sense god wouldn’t exists since you can’t have a mere conception of god without prior experience or impression of him. I will engage this scope of criticism by touching on Humean concepts and conveying how Anselm faith structured …show more content…
“God is that which no greater can be conceived” is a statement that rules out any credible support other than from Anselm own Christian devotion. Anselm makes this evident when he states “I may understand that you exist as we believe you to exist, and that you are what we believe you to be” (Anselm, 7) this means that Anselm alone doesn’t know the clear nature of God but he is able to make simple inferences for this proof. So how can we come to know that God is none greater than can be conceived if we are designating our own definition of a maximally perfect being. Anselm portrays that God can be known solely from reasoning in thoughts rather than from impression of god himself in our knowledge. According to Hume and his empirical beliefs in “Dialogues concerning Natural Religion”, “The only manner to prove that a being a priori is if its inverse entails a contradiction” (Hume, XI). But the nature of god according to Anselm isn’t dependent on experience because “He alone exists through himself” (Anselm, 9) in other words knowledge and existence of God is independent from experience so we can attribute him to