Existence of God :: Ontological arguments

The quandary of the outliveence of beau ideal has troubled man resistant for thousands of years. Many philosophers have mystify forth their theories in order to prove the existence of God. Most of these arguments mess be termed as ontological. These arguments differ from other arguments for the existence of God since they ar non based on empirical data such as the existence or nature of the universe, but are rather grounded in pure logic. First we will consider the arguments presented by Anselm. He believed that God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived if one understand this, thence God exists in his mind but it is greater to exist in frankness as well as in the mind than to exist only in the mind therefore, something that exists only in the mind is not that than which nothing greater can be conceived therefore, God exists in reality as well. Anselm also puts this another way we can conceive of a be that cannot be conceived not to exist such a being is greate r than one that can be conceived not to exist therefore the sterling(prenominal) conceivable being cannot be conceived not to exist therefore, the greatest conceivable being exists. This argument does seem to conclude that something resembling the traditional theistic God exists unlike the cosmological and teleological arguments, which seem restricted to a creator and a designer respectively.This argument was immediately criticized by Gaunilo, who argued that collimate reasoning could be applied to prove the existence of a entire island. This is a reduction of Anselms position it shows it to have absurd consequences. However, it is not clear that there is a coherent theory of the perfect island to locomote with how many palm trees is the perfect number? Anselms own react seems to distinguish the perfect island which is a perfect example of one kind of thing from the perfect being which is a perfect example of a thing, with no restriction to kind. It is no virtue, excellen ce, perfection of an island qua island that it exists, but it is a virtue, excellence, perfection of a being that it exists, so the argument works only for the concept of a perfect being. The bigger criticism is the one Kant levied at Descartess version of the argument, but applies equally to Anselms. It is that existence is not a great-making musical note of a being, because it is not a quality of a being at all in Kants terms existence is not a real predicate.