St. Anselm (1033–1109), who was once Archbishop of Canterbury, devised an ingenious argument for God’s existence. It’s known as the ‘ontological’ argument because it reaches its conclusion by inferring something from the nature of being (or existence) itself, and that’s what ontology concerns.
Beings that aren’t real – ones that exist only as objects of the imagination – aren’t as great as ones that are. A real pizza, say, is much better than the mere idea of one! And God is (supposedly) the greatest being imaginable: a perfect being, in fact. Hence, to say that a perfect being exists only in the mind is a contradiction (for mere imaginary existence is an imperfection). A perfect being, then, is one that must exist! | |||