The Ontological Argument II: Anselm

This is the second article in a series of posts addressing arguments for the existence of any god or gods.  See my first post here.


Anselm was an eleventh century Monk whose version of the ontological argument may well have been the first, and in my experience is the best known.  At this point, I must reiterate a point from my original post: I am not a physicist, not a philosopher, so my opinions here are more that of the educated layman.  I certainly welcome comment on what will follow.

The Ontological Argument I: Overview

In an earlier post, I discussed my path from moderate Christianity to atheism.  In that post, I talked about things that influenced me personally, but I did not get into actual arguments in much detail.  I think I'd like to do that, for several reasons including the opportunity to clarify my own thoughts on the matter.

This post will be the first in a series of posts, where I attempt to address as many of the arguments that are offered to support the existence of a god or gods as I can.  I am a physicist, so in many cases my position is that of an educated layperson rather than an expert.  Still, I hope to be able to say something new and accurate.  I also intend a parallel, and probably shorter, series of posts covering arguments against the existence of any gods.  The two sequences will be complementary, since a big reason for my atheism is simply that there are no good arguments to believe.

I'll start with Ontological arguments.

Why I Am an Atheist

PZ Myers over at Pharyngula has been running a regular series with the title of this post.  It's based on reader submissions, and each day he selects one at random.  With his readership he has a lot of submissions, so if I send this to him it might never get posted.  If only I had my own place to put my thoughts ...

My parents are not religious.  I'm not actually sure if they are agnostic or not, but we would only go to church for, in my father's words, "hatches, matches and dispatches": Christenings, weddings and funerals.  We didn't even hit Christmas and Easter.

Atheism and Feminism

One of the hardest lessons I ever had to learn was that just because someone agrees with you on one thing, no matter how important that thing is, doesn't mean they can't be a complete shit in some other way.  And even knowing this doesn't stop it being disappointing when it happens.  I bring this up because I want to talk about the arguments that arose out of ElevatorGate in the skeptic/atheist community over the last eighteen months or so.

Now, after all this time I don't have too much to add to the substance of the "debate" itself.  From the links to the right, it should be easy to see that I come down on the side of Rebecca Watson and her allies in the whole affair.  Really, I want to focus more on the fact that so many self-professed atheists proved to be uninterested or even hostile to feminism from a personal perspective.