An Explanation of the Ontological Argument for the

Existence of God
The philosopher and monk Anselm, who first formulated the ontological argument, quoted
Psalms 14 in the Bible: The fool says in his heart: “There is no God.”

But Anslem maintains that the Fool’s declaration is logically contradictory, and therefore false.

To begin, even the Fool at least understands the concept of God, so he is in effect saying that
God is only imaginary:

● God is only in our minds

But the word "God" means, at its most basic, "a being than which none greater can be
conceived." So the Fool is saying:

● [The being than which none greater can be conceived] is only in our minds

But it’s possible to conceive of something greater than a thing that exists only in our minds. You
can conceive of the thing existing in our minds and also in reality. Here we are generally using
the following definition of “great”: of an extent, amount, or intensity considerably above the
normal or average. With this definition, we can see that it is greater to exist in the mind and in
reality because this second type of object has everything the first one has plus more.

So the statement as analyzed translates to:

● [The being than which none greater can be conceived] is [not a being than which
none greater can be conceived]

Obviously, this statement is a blatant contradiction. So it must be rejected. The statement “God
is only in our minds” is contradictory and therefore false, and the following statement is true:
God does not exist only in our minds.