Ontology Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! === Ontological argument === {{Main|Ontological argument}} In the [[Christian philosophy|Western Christian]] tradition, in his 1078 work ''[[Proslogion]]'', [[Anselm of Canterbury]] proposed what is known as 'the ontological argument' for the existence of God.{{NoteTag|"There are three main periods in the history of ontological arguments. The first was in 11th century, when St. Anselm of Canterbury came up with the first ontological argument."<ref>Szatkowski, Miroslaw, ed. 2012. ''Ontological Proofs Today''. Ontos Verlag. p. 22.</ref>}} Anselm defined God as "that than which nothing greater can be thought", and argued that this being must exist in the mind, even in the mind of the person who denies the existence of God. He suggested that, if the greatest possible being exists in the mind, it must also exist in reality. If it only exists in the mind, then an even greater being must be possible—one which exists both in the mind and in reality. Therefore, this greatest possible being must exist in reality. Seventeenth-century French philosopher [[René Descartes]] deployed a similar argument. Descartes published several variations of his argument, each of which centered on the idea that God's existence is immediately inferable from a 'clear and distinct' idea of a supremely perfect being. In the early eighteenth century, [[Gottfried Leibniz]] augmented Descartes's ideas in an attempt to prove that a 'supremely perfect' being is a coherent concept. [[Norman Malcolm]] revived the ontological argument in 1960 when he located a second, stronger ontological argument in Anselm's work; [[Alvin Plantinga]] challenged this argument and proposed an alternative, based on [[modal logic]]. Attempts have also been made to validate Anselm's proof using an [[automated theorem prover]].<ref>{{Citation |last1=Benzmuller |first1=Christoph |title=Automating Gödel's Ontological Proof of God's Existence with Higher-order Automated Theorem Provers |date=2014 |url=https://page.mi.fu-berlin.de/cbenzmueller/papers/C40.pdf |work=ECAI 2014 |pages=93–98 |access-date=2023-11-26 |doi=10.3233/978-1-61499-419-0-93 |last2=Woltzenlogel Paleo |first2=Bruno|s2cid=46020663 }}</ref> More recently, [[Kurt Gödel]] proposed a [[Mathematical logic|formal argument]] [[Gödel's ontological proof|for God's existence]]. Other [[existence of God|arguments for God's existence]] have been advanced, including those made by Islamic philosophers [[Mulla Sadra]]<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ayatollahy |first=Hamidreza |url=https://www.academia.edu/8187996 |title=Mulla Sadra's Seddiqin Argument for the Existence of God An Islamic Response to Hume and Kant}}</ref> and [[Allama Tabatabai]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Tabatabai |first=Allama |title=Encyclopaedia Iranica |url=https://iranicaonline.org/ |access-date=2023-11-18 |website=iranicaonline.org |language=en-US}}</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page