“Perhaps no other argument in the history of thought has raised so many basic philosophical questions and stimulated so much hard thought. Even if it fails as a proof of the existence of God, it will remain as one of the high achievements of the human intellect” (William Rowe, Philosophy of Religion: An Introduction, 51).
Rowe is referring to Anselm’s ontological argument for the existence of God; it is a brilliant argument and continues to hold great weight in philosophical/religious debates on God’s existence. Many have opposed the argument, e.g., Kant and Gaunilo, attacking the first premise (Guanilo) and asserting (Kant) “that it [the ontological argument] requires that existence function as a predicate or attribute for a subject – in this case, God” (Groothius, Christian Apologetics, 190). Sound, argumentative reactions to these two men have come forth by further developing Anselm’s argument, but the one most intriguing is that by Alvin Plantinga in his conception of “possible worlds". Plantinga borrows from Leibniz’s cosmological argument, which further borrows from the principle of sufficient reason (PSR) (Groothius 198-199). His argument is this:
1. It is possible that a maximally great being exists [i.e., a Perfect Being, which none greater can be conceived].
2. If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some possible world. That is, God's existence is not impossible (logically contradictory), so we can conceive of a world in which God does exist.
3. If a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world. (Otherwise, it would not be maximally great.)
4. If a maximally great being exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world.
Plantinga’s further development of Anselm’s argument is intriguing and brilliant. It places a “heavy burden of proof on those who deny that God’s existence is possible. One can only demonstrate the impossibility of God’s existence by showing a contradiction within the idea of God” (Groothius 200), which is extremely difficulty if not impossible. Though Gaunilo uses “the greatest possible island” argument to refute Plantinga, his argument fails from the first premise: it is possible that a greatest possible island exists. It is NOT possible for the greatest possible island to exist, nor is it necessary for this island to exist; it is necessary for God to exist by definition. Rowe does well in addressing the ontological argument, showing that the argument still contains a strong force in the dawn of the 21st Century.
JDG
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