Anselm's Definition Of God

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hand, contingent
beings (such as ourselves) depend on something else for their existence.
One example of this is, that as a child we utterly depended on our parents
for food, clothing, and shelter. Contingent beings therefore can begin to
be or cease to be at anytime. They can, unlike God, be here today and gone
tomorrow.

Anselm uses the definition of God (the ontological argument), in which I
have described above, to prove God's existence. As I mentioned, Anselm
believes that God is the greatest being we can possibly think of. He does
this by first trying to prove the opposite of what he really wants to
prove. For example, lets suppose God does not exist in reality. We then
could think of something greater, a being that has all the same virtuous
characteristics as we think God as having, but also being able to exist in
reality. He then tries to prove that this supposition leads to a
conclusion which cannot possibly be true. Then the original God would not
actually be the ...

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to argue that God cannot be thought not to
exist. Anselm does this by stating that God cannot even be thought not to
exist, not only is his existence a fact but his non-existence is
completely impossible. He confirms this by saying "And indeed whatever
exists except you alone can be thought of as not existing. You alone of
all things most truly exists and thus enjoy existence to the fullest degree
of all things, because nothing else exists so undoubtedly, and thus
everything else enjoys being in a lesser degree." (Anselm Chapter 3) The
nonexistence of all other beings is possible, but when it comes to the
nonexistence of the most perfect thinkable being, it is not possible. ...

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