The Ontological Argument proves that God exists!

Ave!A Priori ArgumentsI accept the Anselmian definition of god. However, we’re not debating Anselm’s formulation of the ontological argument.Thomas Aquinas misunderstood the argument. You don’t have to argue that you know everything about the essence of god. You just have to argue that you know god would have all great-making properties to the maximal extent. If I claimed that I fully understood what those great-making properties were, then Saint Aquinas’s criticism would apply. I’m not making such a claim in this debate, however.Hume says that there is no being who’s non-existence does not imply a contradiction. I think that can be disproved. Imagine a being called ‘X’’ that is an objective feature of all reality. It exists in all possible worlds. Because of that, it would entail a contradiction for that being not to exist. We can conceive of a being who’s non-existence entails a contradiction, so Hume was incorrect.The X, Y, and Z trait argument makes an assumption that is biased towards the person who rejects the ontological argument. It assumes that there is no being that can exemplify all three traits. It only begs the question: why is there a being that can’t exemplify all three?God’s Justice and God’s MercyCon argues that god’s maximal justness and god’s maximal mercy entail a contradiction. I’ll quote from Gregory Koukl to show that there is no contradiction. (Hey, Con got to quote, too!)‘’Jesus told a parable in Matthew 20 about laborers who were hired at different times in the day, but when the day was over, were all paid the same wage whether they worked all day or only a portion of it. One of the men who had worked all day long complained. Jesus' response was, "Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what is yours and go your way, but I wish to give to this last man the same as to you. Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with what is my own?" There was no injustice here because there was no obligation to pay all men equally, only an obligation to pay what was agreed on. A mother has an obligation to her children, for example, that she does not have to the children of her neighbor. If she gave food to her own children but not to the kids next door, no one would call her unjust or unfair. If she chose to do so she, would be considered gracious, but no one would suggest that she was obliged to do so. And now we've introduced another word into the discussion that is very important: graciousness, or simply, grace. Grace involves the giving of something that is not required (required giving would be called obligation) motivated by the heart of the one giving, not by the worthiness of the one receiving. We say, "That was a gracious gesture," because it was something that was not deserved or required; it was something beyond what was necessary. Jesus' little parable says volumes about the question at hand. It says that since gracious giving is not obliged but a choice, God is not obliged to extend grace to everyone equally. If He chooses to extend forgiveness to some and not to others (and please note that I'm not arguing that He did, but if He did) He would be neither unfair or unjust because, to paraphrase Jesus, is it not lawful for Him to do what He wishes with what is His own? If you cancel one of your debts, are you obliged to cancel all of them? I suspect not, and neither is God. So God is not constrained by His grace. Grace is not an obligation, by its very definition and by its very nature. And if there is no obligation then there is no responsibility for God to make it available to everyone. "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy," He says. God has no obligation to pardon, then, and this is not a violation of justice or fairness. But if God is just, then He does have an obligation to punish the guilty and an obligation not to punish the innocent. A violation of either would be injustice. God cannot merely let the guilty go free, and He can by no means punish the innocent. And this, incidentally, is not good news; its bad news, because the other thing God says about this situation--and one that we're all aware of in our more honest moments--is that we are not innocent, we're guilty. Whether God has made forgiveness available to everyone or not is another issue, and I don't want to address that here. But I want you to be clear on one thing: God owes no one forgiveness, but He does owe them punishment, if they break His law--and that's all of us. Those who are finally condemned will have received justice; those who are finally saved will have received grace, which they did not deserve.’’[1] http://www.str.org...[1] http://www.str.org...God’s Foreknowledge and Free WillThe problem of theistic fatalism argues that since God knows everything, he will know what we do next, so we can’t be free agents. This problem is only superficially convincing. It turns out that the problem misunderstands what it means to be omniscient. Omniscience is the trait of knowing anything that is logically possible to know [1]. It is not the trait of knowing everything. Since it’s logically impossible to know the future actions of free agents*, it is not possible for god to know what we will do next. Ergo, omniscience and free will are reconcilable.*If that were the case, then it would be pre-determined, and you wouldn’t be dealing with a free agent.[1] http://www.patheos.com...[2] http://plato.stanford.edu...Kant’s Objection: Existence is not a predicateKant was right to point out that existence isn’t a property. Rather, it’s something required for you to give properties to something. But, the modal ontological argument doesn’t require existence to be a property. It only requires necessary existence to be a property. [1]Why is existence greater than non-existence? It's clearly greater to exist than not since if you didn't exist, there would be ~you and so nothing great could arise in which you're the only existing entity whatever. In fact, it may even be nonsense to say that non-existence is greater... how would that work out? If nothing is not anything, and since only things have the capacity for greatness, however big or small, then how in the logical world can ~thing be somehow "great"? [2][1] http://www.kantstudiesonline.net...[2] https://docs.google.com...The Gasking Objectionhttp://www.youtube.com...P5 of Gasking’s objection is logically incoherent. There exists no logical state of affairs which contains a non-existent being which creates the world. You can’t create the world if you don’t exist, because non-existent beings have no casual properties.P6 is also unsound. It is impossible for a being that does not exist to be greater than a being that does exist. A being that doesn’t exist has no properties, therefore, it can’t have any great-making properties. From that, a non-existent being can ever be greater than an existing being.Vale!