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God's Existence and Aquinas Objection

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God's Existence and Aquinas Objection
Anselm's argument of God's existence and Aquinas objection I was in the debate team in high school. And there were times that our team would take the against side of the statement. In his famous work Prologion, written in 1077-1078, Anselm presents the idea the God exists because God is the greatest thing of all, that the idea of thinking of God exists prove its existence. Hundred of years later, Thomas Aquinas brings up the account that addresses Anselm's idea in objection 2 of Question II, First Article of Summa Theologica. Aquinas objects Anselm's argument later in his work by attacking the idea that God is something that can be thought greater. To understand Anselm's argument for God's existence, one must first understand the principles that forms the argument. The first principle is the claim that “nothing greater can be thought.” There is too types of existing, existing in understanding (existing0) and existing in reality (existing1). Then, we try to think of something is existing1. Anselm let “something” be “something than which nothing greater can be thought (NGT),” or in another word “a being than which nothing greater can be conceived” according to the Proslogion. The very first act of thinking that something is existing1 serves as the basis of it existing0. Because in the process of trying to think of something greater, we already establish its existence0. For example, there is a flower A, existing1. This flower A is the most beautiful flower, that this flower is a NGT. In order to prove this flower is NGT, one has to think of all the flower he has seen, flower B, C, or D. In the process of searching through one's mind trying to think of a flower that is more beautiful than flower A, flower A already exists in one's mind, which is existing0. To open his argument, Anselm then said an example of NGT is God. The second principle is the principle of “thinking of non-existing objects (Principle E).” Anselm uses the example of a painter conceiving the

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