Yeah, it looked like word salad to me too.

@oldFloyd pass me the condescending dressing to pour over the word salad. It looks tasty.

I enjoy the magnificent foolishness of @waitingforgodo's absurd questions. He reminds me of @St-sinner and @Word.

@anglophone and even St-Siinner cannot abide this post...read above!

@anglophone Thank you! Each of his questions is more ridiculous than the last!

Particularly annoying as well is when people accept this argument (meaningless though it is), then immediately jump to the god of Abraham and Isaac, to Bible stories, to Jesus, to salvation, etc., things that the tautological argument doesn't address or does not support in any way.

@nogod4me You sound desperately ignorant, that it's a well known discussion not a personal stance.

Ignorant of what? Things that you believe in your own imagination? Offer proof instead of conjecture on magical, mythical, beings. You have even defined this single god as male and you are assuming spirits exist. You allude that your beliefs are established fact.

Looking at this and your other posts, it appears that your non "personal stance" seems to be an obsession.

@nogod4me some people can't comprehend that what others post are not their personal belief but rather the contentions of third parties for discussion and it this case rebuttal. As has been outlined in several other posts this is a discussion about St Anselm's ontological argument.

@waitingforgodo There is no argument to make. No one has evidence about a god in order to make an argument. Bigfoot, leprechauns, Nessie, and god are defined entities in fiction, fables, myths and legends. But they are not define by reality and existence.

A god is not defined by reality or existence, believers make the assertion that it is, the god makes no assertion whether it exists or not, it is therefore the believer who must then prove the assertions they make.

You cannot assert that a god is defined by the words: "that for which no greater can be conceived," and that it "exists in the understanding." An imaginary, non-existent, being does not have to be any of those things. A god cannot exist in the understanding unless we have knowledge of that god. We have thousands of fables and stories of gods, do you believe any of these actually exist because you "understand" the fable or story?

The theist must FIRST prove their god exists, then everyone on the planet can join the conversation.

For example, Thomas Jefferson said this about the trinity concept: "Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus."

A greater god might declare cogito ergo sum deus,

@waitingforgodo Oh my error I had forgotten my Latin Grammar for a moment there.

"There are no children for you to rape and claim for your god here, so get the fuck out of here."

Sorry to hear of the"rape the minds of gullible, defenseless they take into captivity like they did me" and any concomitant damage to it precluding you from comprehending that this post is about refuting Anselm's ontological argument.

Why would I refute bullshit? Who has got that kind of time?

And more recently, Norman Malcolm, Charles Hartshorne, and Alvin Plantinga.

@Wallace Thanks Wal, although their improved version of Anselm to, 'a being that necessarily exists can't not exist' smacks of Voltaire's inadvertently amusing 'if god didn't exist man would have to invent him'. I'm certain that you are in a much better position to delight and intrigue us with questions or observations. Would you be so kind?

@waitingforgodo I gave it a try in what follows--but not much insight, you'll see. Anselm’s “That than which nothing greater can be conceived” would be that which has every “great-making” property to the maximum degree—i.e., that which is absolutely perfect in every respect. Hence, any such being would be omnipotent, omniscient, etc., because any degree of weakness or ignorance would be a flaw. And in like fashion, such an entity would have to exist since to be nonexistent would be a great flaw. That is, in the same way that an existing friend is greater than an imaginary friend, an existing god is greater than an imaginary god. To say otherwise is to say that God=that than which nothing greater can be conceived=is not that than which nothing greater can be conceived. It is to say that absolute perfection is imperfect and this, according to Anselm, is the contradictory position of atheism. Many seminal thinkers—including Descartes, Leibniz, and others—found this line of reasoning cogent.
Of course, not everyone was convinced, and it is easy to ridicule it as sophistry or mere wordplay; but the problem for centuries was that no one seemed to be able to pinpoint just where the fallacy lay. Anselm propounded it in the 11th century. However, Kant (18th century) claimed that “existence” is not a property like knowledge, power, etc., and that the argument fails by confusing these. So to say “God exists” is not to say “God has the properties of omnipotence, omniscience, and existence,” but rather (something like) “a being with the properties of omnipotence and omniscience is instantiated in actuality.”
I think Kant’s analysis was widely accepted and then with the logical development of the “predicate calculus” in the early 20th century the standard critique became “Existence is not a predicate (=property).” It is a “quantifier” instead. And then it seemed the ontological argument had finally been put out of its misery for good.
However, with further development in “modal logic” [=logic of possibility and necessity] the argument was resurrected and some even claimed this was Anselm’s original reasoning but that there was no way for him to express it concisely in the logic of his day.

I’ll try to summarize this. First, note that there are both necessary and contingent modes of truth and falsity. For example, “The square is blue” has a contingent value because it could be true or false while “The square is a rectangle” is necessarily true (since it CANNOT be false) while “The square is a circle” is necessarily false (since it CANNOT be true). Likewise, the truth value of “Bachelors are unhappy” is contingent since it could be true or false, while “Bachelors are unmarried” is necessarily true and “Bachelors are married” is necessarily false. (Of course, one could redefine these words, but the modality is involved with the meanings.)
Now corresponding to the modes of truth and falsity are the modes of existence and nonexistence. For example, “The existing house on the corner” is contingent because it might not have existed; in fact, at one time it didn’t exist and at some later time it won’t exist again. Likewise, (although it sounds awkward) the nonexistent house in the vacant lot contingently doesn’t exist, because someone may build it later. However, the nonexistence of square circles is different--: they necessarily do not exist because they CANNOT exist, and the same is the case for married bachelors. But are there things that necessarily DO exist—things that CANNOT NOT-exist?
Apparently Plato thought there were, and Anselm was in the Platonic tradition. And so surely he would have deemed a necessary omnipotent, omniscient being greater than a contingently one! And furthermore, while existence is not a predicate, the modality of the existence or nonexistence is. So there is no fallacy in concluding that God’s existence must have a necessary modality—and this is to say that either God necessarily exists or necessarily does not exist, i.e., that either God has to exist or that his existence is impossible. But proponents of the argument contend that surely we would agree that God’s existence is at least possible—that it’s not like that of a square circle or a married bachelor. Therefore, it must be concluded that God necessarily exists.
So far as I know, everyone agrees up to that final step (although it certainly needs to be explained better); that is, the logic is good to that point. However the late William Rowe (philosopher from Purdue University) forcefully argued that just because Anselm’s concept is not contradictory (like a square circle) it does not follow that it is a possibility. In fact, he contends the only way a person could know that it was possible was to know in advance that God does exist—in which case the proof would be unnecessary. Also some theologians familiar with the argument contend the argument has become a puzzle for the amusement of logicians and even if it is sound it has no religious value.
Cheers.

@Wallace Again thanks Wal for your insight and superlative summary of this proposition. If I'd known you were bringing the sledgehammers I'd have brought bigger nuts. You'd be doing us all a favour if you'd post thought experiments , conundrums, matters for consideration or questions that you must have yourself or have gathered, gleaned and garnered over the years. All the best.

As a side note they'd better stop that form of squaring the circle to calculate pi before the apes reach apeiron.