Assessing Traditional Arguments about God's Existence - Essay Example

Anselm during the 11th century CE. According to him, the existence of God can be derived from the belief that a being, which is more powerful than any other can be, conceived (Pojman 54). The argument goes ahead to hold that, considering that a more powerful being cannot be conceived is evidence to show that the only conceivable being that can be conceived remains the greatest. Therefore, the conception of an all-powerful God that surpasses all other beings shows that God exists. I believe that the ontological theory is not successful, mainly because it is one grounded upon reason, and it is obvious that the reasoning of a man is guided and based upon his past experience and the knowledge held.

In supporting the argument, the proponents argue that disputing the existence of God is awkward, like the act of imagining that a four-sided triangle, which cannot be drawn (Malcolm 41-50). The proponents continue to argue that humans can tell that claims disputing God’s existence can be rejected without referring to any evidence or tolerating any arguments in support of the viewpoint. The unsuccessfulness of the argument can be verified from the very premises it is built upon, including that it relies upon the experience and the knowledge of man to impose the viewpoint that God exists, without exploring anything beyond the reasoning of man (Pojman 54).

The areas that the argument does not account for include the differences in the reasoning, and the knowledge held by different people – from different social and cultural settings. For example, a person of one social and cultural setting will conceive a God of one kind, and another from a different one will conceive a different one. These differences serve to show that the different Gods conceived by the different groups can be flawed; therefore, the existence of a more superior being cannot be disputed.

The reasoning against the argument shows that it is not valid, because the specific inferences, it is grounded upon cannot be reasoned out from an objective point of view, and because the premises are not verified for validity in any way. The invalid inferences of the argument include the conception that God exists and that another god who is greater than the conceptualized God exists (Malcolm 41-50). Others include the inference that God exists as an idea in the mind. The inferences show that the different ideas developed by different people may show that different gods are conceived.

There is the inference of holding other things constant, which shows that the reasoning blocks the conception or proves of a higher power or being, which is not a proper reasoning for a substantial and reasoned argument (Pojman 54). The argument is not sound, mainly because the different premises it is grounded upon, are themselves flawed right from their conception. The premises that are distinctively false or unfounded include the following: that the conception of a superior God blocks the possibility that a power which is higher than him exists and that the superior God exists as an idea, which shows that another idea of a more powerful force can still be developed.

Other unfounded premises include that the reality of God is not verified in any way, and the claim that the conception of a higher being will be a contradiction of reality, although the reality to be contradicted has not been verified in any logical way (Oppy 72). Citing the unfounded nature of the inferences and the premises used by the