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Anselm's Converse

The converse to Anselm's argument is worthy of discussion, it is not made to appear that often.

  1. God cannot possibly be thought to be less than perfect
  2. God as a mere idea is never perfectly imagined
  3. God is not a mere idea.
  4. Ergo, God exists.

I should state that God is not perfectly imagined unless He is also imagined to exist… then God is not a mere idea because ideas are not “Noumena”. But then ideas do not create, so either God exists necessarily or He does not exist.

(2) becomes the statement that even if God is thought to exist He is not so thought (conceived) perfectly - unless in place of "perfectly" there is something (a la Descartes) which is so accurate and descriptive an idea, such as a circle that in itself (it) becomes nothing more than its own essence and that essence is to be a “God-like being”.

From that essence, everything perfect must be entailed, and so done and found perfectly. (C.f. Kurt Godel's ontological proof.)

(3) becomes “God is not a mere idea if He is thought to exist” unless one states that a God-like being is thought to exist more so than an idea, and that ”God-likeness” is to be necessarily God-like. That requires by essence, necessary existence and “being”.

For (4) to follow from (2), it (2), requires a "noumena" of a complete order of magnitude (or extension) above the mere “idea” of (3) and for the idea to truly become as “Noumena” without modal collapse. Evidently, there is only modal collapse if a God is pre-conceived in (1). Yet then, God already exists necessarily in the argument, whereas there is only a lack of modal collapse (and worth found in the proof) if God is not thought to exist and then faith appears to have ”Noumena-Genesis” and the idea produces God from the machine.

So, the proof has value only if the argument pre-supposes the possibility of an existent God, rather than to state He is necessary. After that manner, God is as Hartshorne states, ("perfection is not impossible"). To the nay-sayer God is shown as "possibly conceivable" at the very least.

So either God exists so necessarily that the proof is without any consequence now God is to be conceived (and there is truly modal collapse), or there is no initial assumption that a “god-like” being could exist and the proof shows He may be rationally conceived to exist and to be conceived as necessarily so. Simply repeat the argument a second time to find God is actually rationally conceived as opposed to merely possible to conceive; receive the proof or reject the method.


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