Essay, Research Paper: God's Existence

In the beginning of Scholasticism, one of the biggest problems is the place of dialectic, because it was often inconsistent with theology. Anselm made a moderate point between dialectic, philosophy and theology; “We believe in order to understand rather than understand so that we may believe”. From that point of view, He proved the existence of the God. In the “Proslogium”, Anselm began his dialectic argument to define the God as ‘something-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought’. He stated, the idea of the greatest being cannot be separated from its existence, because if it lacks existence, a still more perfect being could be thought. Whereas, the God is necessary to exists, not just in the understanding. In order to support the proof, Anselm used an example of the Fool. He insisted that the God existed even in a mind of the Fool who said, there was no God. Anselm stated, because when the Fool hears ‘something-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought’, he understands what he hears, and what he understands is in his mind. Thus, the God is in his mind. In the “A reply to the forgiving by a certain writer on behalf on the Fool”, Gaunilo wrote an attack on Anselm’s argument that the god could not be conceptualized by human being. He stated that the fool would make an objection because if the god could exist in his mind, other unreal thing also could exist. He also criticised that the example of the painter could not support Anselm’s argument. Gaunilo supported his criticism using a parody on Anselm’s argument in which he proves the existence of the most excellent island. He replaced ‘the most excellent island’ for ‘something-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be- thought’ and show that we could prove the existence of almost anything using Anselm’s style of argument.


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