Anselm on God: the Ontological Argument

[tigerboy]

Another excellent piece from RR. He assumes that you are an intelligent adult with an interest in the topic, but no more. If he introduces any heavyweight theological terms he always briefly explains what they mean or points you to another lecture where you can get the in-depth version..

[DRB]

What you said in that re-cap of Plato made me wonder something. What would Plato think about things that we don't have any concept of and can't be recognized as anything except through some kind of experiment? As a physics student, my mind goes to things like the wide varieties of weird particles that take immense work to identify. Another example might be going into a workshop and finding a strange-looking tool and not know what it is or what it does.

[snoopster]

As someone who was introduced to the Ontological Argument without any historical context I found this enlightening. I initially thought the argument was weak much in the way Guanilo did. Then I saw it as very strong but useless because it seemed absolutely water tight and yet too simple. But now I see the whole argument hinges on the idea of a Maximally Great Being. If I'm right would it require someone to fully adopt Platonism to be persuaded or is it simply that Anselm's idea of a Maximally Great Being has Platonic roots. It seems to be that I can reject the idea of a 'perfect' chair but accept the idea of a Maximally Great Being due to the different natures of both. Is that reasonable to do?

[wjckc]

Baffled by the responses to a video on philosophy.

[wayneanddonita]

IMO, 1 Samuel 5 exemplifies the Anselmian notion that a real God is greater than an imaginary one...;-)

[majikos]

I'd like to know what constitutes the 'perfect island'

[alexlupini]

The best explanation of Plato's Theory of Forms I ever heard: simple and concise !

[mrbobspongeful]

Thanks for the upload Doc. You have explained the concepts very clearly!

[bitkronk]

This was the most informative video I found on this topic.

[jesusstudentbrett]

Hey professor, thank you for your sharing these lectures. At 7:57 you said Psalm 52 but i think you meant Psalm 14 "The fool has said in his heart, there is no God".

[cyberpotato]

Having a bit of deja vu here. I believe the 'Anselm on God' post is pointing to the previous lecture 'Aristotle on Scholasticism'. Video 44 repeats 43. I bet the link for video 44 is misdirected back to 43.

[joshjeggs]

To disagree with this argument is to disagree with Plato's thinking which is fine. I'm not sure I'm into Plato as well.

But I understand Anselm's response which is quite amazingly brilliant and seems to have been misunderstood as special pleading.

In Guanilo's example he simply misrepresents Anselm as he does not define an island, so he shoots himself in the foot. E.g if i define an island as a mass of land with water all around it, then a perfect island could be found by definition.

If Guanilo is pressed to define the CONCEPT of an island Greater than anything..so on
You would find that he would contradict himself while doing it, as an island is already defined. lol

It's very related to the flying spaghetti monster that created the universe thing the fools use as an objection, but when pressed by what they mean by spaghetti the end up contradicting themselves as they say spaghetti which is made up of physical substances created the physical world, circular reasoning.

Anselm is not saying that if you think of it, it exists. he is saying if you can think of it, it is possible. by think, he means defined. contradictory elements of a "defined" object is not Defined.

the next part of the argument is where it gets interesting.

[OnlyMyPOV]

There has never (in the history of this world) been only one god and goddess. Cuneiform texts begin the history and therefore bear witness to the gods (which the biblical Elohim suggests). The bible teaches henotheism (according to Dr Michael Heiser). By the time of Aristotle the Greeks would have been introduced to the Mesopotamian gods (if not before that time).
There is no justification for believing in one single god and the exclusion of goddesses.