Anselm's Ontological Argument for God is Sound

The existence of God is one of the most important issues in philosophy. If God exists, then there is an incomprehensible, supernatural authority that we must all submit to. If God does not exist, then we can and must live our lives by our own judgment.In this debate, I have argued for the supremacy of reason, what my opponent calls empiricism. According to Ayn Rand, the definition of reason is "the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses." [1] By definition, reason has no valid function apart from the integration of the evidence of the senses.The fact that reason must start from evidence has implications for every area of logic, most of which I cannot discuss here. However, in the area of concept formation, it implies that we must form concepts according to the facts, and define our concepts according to the essential traits we have identified using observation.The example I have repeatedly given of a valid definition is "man is the rational animal." The concept of man is formed according to the facts, since we can observe that there are human beings and that they are substantially different from other animals. We then study human beings in depth and conclude that the essential trait distinguishing them from other animals is reason. Thus the definition of man, by genus and differentia, as "the rational animal."My opponent's definition of God is nothing like this. It is arbitrarily asserted with no evidential foundation, and with nothing indicating that it has any link at all back to reality. It is accepted by faith, like the Bible, like the Trinity, and like the entire religion of Christianity. One arbitrary assertion cannot prove another.It should now be clear why empiricism is not a "red herring" in this debate. Far from being irrelevant, it is the fatal flaw in any form of the ontological argument. To say it is irrelevant is to say that a conclusive objection to an argument can be irrelevant to deciding whether the argument is sound!Objections to EmpiricismMy opponent has thrown a variety of objections at empiricism, apparently hoping that one of them will dislodge it and save Anselm's argument.1. Floaters and optical illusions appear to our senses to exist, but they actually don't.2. The senses are not infallible.3. Maybe we're all plugged into the Matrix.4. You can't prove anything exists outside your mind.5. Maybe all of the lower organisms are just pretending not to be as intelligent as we are.I'll answer this case point by point.With regard to points 1 and 2, the fundamental issue to grasp here is that our senses are inanimate physical objects, acting according to the law of causality. They cannot distort the input they give us, and they do not give us explicit judgments about what we perceive, since judgments are made by the mind. Therefore, anything the senses tell us is necessarily valid. Indeed, the senses are even infallible, in the sense that they always yield exactly what physical organs like these yield under the conditions they are under. That said, it is up to us to interpret the deliverances of the senses, and we are fallible. We can make mistakes - even, on certain occasions, about elementary perceptual facts like whether there is a lake on the horizon when we are walking through a desert. However, such mistakes are rare, and we quickly learn how to counteract them.With regard to points 3, 4, and 5, the fundamental point to grasp is that these are all arbitrary assertions, and therefore deserve no consideration. An arbitrary assertion is one that is offered without any supporting evidence or reasoning (like my opponent's definition of God - see a pattern here?). The correct response to any arbitrary assertion is to dismiss it out of hand, without consideration.Arbitrary assertions are not the same as assertions that are possible. "Possible" means there is some evidence in a claim's favor, not that we can't conclusively disprove it. The concept of possibility is not a blank check to mystics. It is arbitrary, not "possible," to suggest that we "might" all be plugged into the Matrix, or that there "might" not be anything outside of my mind, or that the lower organisms "might" be pretending not to be intelligent. Such claims deserve no consideration.Science and NaturalismMy opponent claims that the scientific method is deficient, because it relies on causality and induction. He does not actually say why the concepts of causality and induction are problematic, however, so there isn't much to address here. Regardless, his argument contains a contradiction, since he used the concepts of causality and induction to arrive at the conclusion that these concepts are invalid.My opponent also claims that the theory of evolution "could be changed and subjected to the biased review of the scientist looking at all the evidence" and cites a bunch of creationist sites to support his argument. This isn't true, nearly all scientists arrive at the conclusion that the theory of evolution is true, regardless of religious or philosophical orientation.From the Pew Research Center: "Nearly all scientists (97%) say humans and other living things have evolved over time – 87% say evolution is due to natural processes, such as natural selection." [2]The debate is over as far as the mainstream scientific community is concerned. The only people who still seriously dispute the theory of evolution are religiously motivated organizations like my opponent has cited. Anyway, this isn't a debate about the theory of evolution.My opponent also claims that "if we didn't observe the watch or website, like DDO, being created, we can't know how it was created," reasserting the teleological argument. (Wait - I thought we were debating the ontological argument? Oh well.) The problem with this argument, as I said previously, is that we have overwhelming evidence that watches and websites have been made by humans in other cases, and are only made by humans. We have no previous examples of gods creating universes.ConclusionIn this post, I explained why Anselm's ontological argument fails (again), defended empiricism against some alleged counterexamples, and explained why the scientific method is a valid epistemology. For the reasons I have given, we should negate the resolution.[1] http://aynrandlexicon.com...[2] http://www.people-press.org...