Noah Millman takes on St Anselm. Two falls, two submissions, or a knockout,

and let’s keep it good and clean, guys. Ding! “Suppose the greatest thing

that I can conceive is the Stay Puff Marshmellow Man. By Anselm’s logic,

that means either that (a) the Stay Puff Marshmellow Man exists, or that (b)

the Stay Puff Marshmellow Man is not truly the greatest thing that I can

conceive, since something real that I can conceive would, in fact, be

greater than something purely imaginary. All that follows is that, to

qualify as the greatest thing that I can conceive, the thing must actually

exist. Which means not that God exists but that (a) whatever is the greatest

thing in reality is, by definition, God, and (b) the recourse to my

consciousness is wholly superfluous to the argument. Anselm’s attempt to run

this logic backwards is nothing but a bit of linguistic slight-of-hand.”

(Noah runs the excellent Gideon’s Blog. He is a sort of thinking man’s Thomas Friedman.)