Cosmos Body of God

COSMOS THE BODY OF GOD: ISA PURUSHA TATVA
M.M.NINAN
4. ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
Ontological arguments are arguments, for the conclusion that God exists, from premises which are
supposed to derive from some source other than observation of the world—e.g., from reason alone. In
other words, ontological arguments are arguments from nothing but analytic, a priori and necessary
premises to the conclusion that God exists. The argument essentially is "if we can imagine anything
it is likely to be true."
But there had been lot of objections on this assumption and hence this argument.
St Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109)
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ontological-arguments/
"The first, and best-known, ontological argument was proposed by St. Anselm of Canterbury in the
11th. century A.D. In his Proslogion, St. Anselm claims to derive the existence of God from the
concept of a being than which no greater can be conceived. St. Anselm reasoned that, if such a being
fails to exist, then a greater being—namely, a being than which no greater can be conceived, and
which exists—can be conceived. But this would be absurd: nothing can be greater than a being than
which no greater can be conceived. So a being than which no greater can be conceived—i.e., God—
exists.
Seventeenth century René Descartes, eighteenth century Gottfried Leibniz, and in more recent times,
Kurt Gödel, Charles Hartshorne, Norman Malcolm and Alvin Plantinga have all presented muchdiscussed
ontological arguments which bear interesting connections to the earlier arguments of St.
Anselm, Descartes and Leibniz. Of these, the most interesting are those of Gödel and Plantinga; in
these cases, however, it is unclear whether we should really say that these authors claim that the
arguments are proofs of the existence of God.
Oppy 1995, presents eight major kinds of ontological arguments, viz:
1. definitional ontological arguments;
2. conceptual (or hyperintensional) ontological arguments;
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