Imaginary dialogue with a stubborn defender of the ontological argument
Characters: Sâmkhya (S), TheAnselmian (A)
A: By God I mean a necessary being. A necessary being is a being which cannot not exist. Therefore God exists.
S: God is necessary only if he exists.
A: But he must exist. It is in its definition.
S: You can define God as you want, but what is at issue is whether this definition is instantiated in reality.
A: It must be instantiated since its denial is self-contradictory. In effect, to say that God does not exist is to say that what cannot not exist can not exist.
S: You are confusing two kinds of existence, logical and factual. We cannot infer factual existence from logical existence, which is involved in the concept of God. It would be contradictory to say that if God exists, he can not exist. But it is not contradictory to say that there is no God.
A: You cannot hold that the existence of God is a necessary a priori truth and at the same time hold that «God exists» is a contingent statement.
S: I don’t claim that the existence of God is an a priori necessary truth. I claim that the necessary truth is that if God exists, he exists necessarily.
A: You are not meaning what I mean by God. God is not some kind of conditional necessary being, but only a necessary being. Its existence is a necessary truth.
S: To say that God may not exist is not to say that he is not what he is. It is to say that we have not enough knowledge to know with certainty whether he exists or not.