Hum final Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 1

Hum final - Essay Example As such, let us look into one of the more intriguing argument pertinent to the existence of God. St. Anselm is one of the leading theologian-philosopher during the medieval period. He provided us with one of the many versions of the ontological argument for the existence of God. According to Anselm, ‘God is the greatest conceivable being.’ And since God is the greatest conceivable being, therefore God exists. Now, one may not agree right away with him but let us try to clarify some point made by St. Anselm. Two things can be inferred from the argument. First, the human mind is capable of conceiving the greatest being. That to say, that it is only the human mind that has the capability and the capacity to recognize the greatest being. Second, the moment that the greatest being is conceived, it exists. At the onset it seems that St. Anselm seems to jump from mental conception of a being to its actual existence. But is he guilty of it? No! For St. Anselm, the actual existence is greater than mental existence so much so that â€Å"if the greatest conceivable is not ac tual, it is not the greatest conceivable being† (Grave 32) As such, at the core of his argument is the truism that existence is better and that understanding this is the greatest key to ‘defining’ God. What is existence then? If we are going to look at Realism, in its simplest form, it affirms the claim that X (a thing) exists at a given place Y in time Z. This is basically similar with axiom of location which purports the idea that a thing if it is real, exists at least on one location, and at most one location. It attests to the reality of matter, thus affirming materialism or the physical body of objects. As such, it is not surprising that naturalism basically supports this strand of interpretation in lieu of existence. On the other hand, another way of understanding existence is via apprehension of the universals or forms or ideas and this is termed as