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A priori arguments for God, image - Coggle Diagram
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Criticisms
Gaunilo
He used reductio ad absurdum to criticise Anselm's argument. If a Lost Island is the greatest island imaginable, and it wouldn't be the greatest if it didn't exist, then the Lost Island must exist which is absurd. As a monk, he was not arguing that God didn't exist, just that Anselm's argument is not philosophically sound
Anselm did respond to Gaunilo, saying that his argument could only be applied to a supremely necessary being like God, not a contingent being like an island
John Hick pointed out that a perfect island is undefinable anyway, and Alvin Plantinga said islands have no 'intrinsic maximum'
Aquinas
While the concept of a square is self-evident so long as we know what 'square' means, God cannot be self-evident as human language is limited when describing the transcendent as we struggle to understand it. Aquinas therefore argued that the only way to God was an indirect one by looking at God's effects in the world
Kant
Refuting Descartes' notion that you cannot reject God's existence as a defining predicate of God is existence, he argued that there is no contradiction if you reject the whole concept along with the predicate. I would not be contradicting myself if I didn't believe in mermaids or beings that were half-human and half-fish, only if I accept one not the other
Existence is not a predicate as it tells you nothing about the concept of God itself. Saying that mermaids do not exist does not alter the concept of the half-human, half-fish beings in any way, they would still be mermaids regardless of whether they are real or not
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