Anselm And Aquinas On How God Exists - 1277 Words

To begin with, while reading Anselm and Aquinas’ views on how God exists, these important philosophers spent much of their time looking and searching for the idea that God actually exists. Therefore, of course there would be some mishaps along the way and people would try to argue against their idea of God’s existence. In this paper will be explained the proof of God and of course some objections against them that will make you wonder. With Anselm s ontological argument and Aquinas’ ways, we can use that to help prove God’s existence. It would be self-contradictory to deny that anything greater than the all perfect God exists. In chapter two of Anselm, we read about how the fool who doesn’t believe in God, Anselm tells him that,†¦show more content†¦Anselm does a good job of showing how God exists in our understanding and therefore could exist in reality, however there can also be an objection to this. Exactly how Guanilo did to him, when he brought up the idea of the ‘Perfect Island’. He replies to Anselm, criticizing how if there was proof for the most greatest, conceivable island; which there isn’t, then Guanilo believes that there isn’t enough proof of the greatest conceivable being, which is God. â€Å"If one were to try to prove to me that this island in truth exists and it’s existence should no longer be questioned, either I would think he was joking or I would not know whether to consider him or me the greater fool, me for conceding his argument or him for supposing he had established with any certainty such an island’s existence without first showing such excellence to be real and its existence indubitable rather than just a figment of my understanding, whose excellence is uncertain† (pg. 311, Guanilo [6]). Therefore, Guanilo says that even though there is a concept of a perfect island that does not prove the actual existence of it. Hereby saying that Anselm doesn’t have the proof to conclude God’s existence is real. But, this goes back to saying that this does not actually defeat the thesis; because even if you can think of something greater than God, then surely a greater being must exist still claiming that God’s existence is true.