@Leeuwenhoek:
"Anyone who has read Anselm would have understood this argument."

Anyone familiar with Anselm's argument would be familiar with all the fallacies he commits.

1. Greater is not defined. After all a nonexistent maximally great being that made you think it was existent would be greater that one that actually was existent. A maximally great blue creator bunny is greater than a maximally great creator god for no other reason than I imagined it to be the maximally greatest of all maximally great things.

2. One can conceive of a maximally great being greater than that of the Abrahamic god because one can conceive of a god that does not create genocide. kill babies. invent entire places of torture and the rest.

3. A fallacy of definition / equivocation. The brain does not think of maximally great beings. The brain has conceptions of maximally great beings. The conclusion is therefore, "Conceptions of maximally great beings exist." You do not get to switch definition mid stream.

4. Anselm's ontological argument engages in the Question Begging Fallacy.
The conclusion of the argument is contained in the premises. You are attempting to cause something to exist by adding existence to its definition, the same ploy you tried with "Necessary." Both existence and necessary must be demonstrated.

Someone else can try and remember some of the other fallacies in the argument. I'm tired. I don't need to point out the fallacies. All I need to know is how do you know. What evidence do you have?

Anyone can find out about the fallacies contained in various forms of the ontological argument with a simple search.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6yH0QgwR6Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6yH0QgwR6Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT9Z8ER_640

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d51NCYB34s

@ Lee, I simply don’t believe your assertion as I see no compelling reason to do so.

@Leeuwenhoek

All I am seeing here is a badly stated version of an Ontological argument.

Defining a god into existence, does not actually mean the god exists. Especially with the extremely flawed and fallacious Ontological argument.

Cognistic in post #50 pretty much covers it.

Sorry to inform you, but none of the so called, philosophical arguments for a god (Kalam, Ontological, Teleological, TAG, presup, etc) are both valid and sound. They all rely on fallacies and unevidenced premises.

@OP
What objective evidence do you have any god is real? Which god are you claiming exist?

The bible is the claim, not the evidence.

@Leeuwenhoek

I apologise if my response here is crude. You seem to be a thoroughly educated man. I am not a student of formal logic or semantics, just a mug who simply can't accept what others merely tell me without scrutiny.

Oden claims to know this infinite 'idea', beyond just being infinite in all respects, possesses a fabulous compendium of additional superlative human characteristics, as well as the quality of being 'necessary' and three seperate identities. How he actually knows this is not explained, moreover. I am forced to believe he got this information from his reading of the bible. If so and he was being truthful, why did he not include the traits of evil, cruelty or jealously? The bible uses these traits to describe god and in that book your god even confesses to them. I sense some preconditioned bias.

I own that I am the fool Anselm mentions. I hear, I understand the idea. I am just reasonably unable to accept it. He must have known a few people like me in his day.

Anselm says "And assuredly that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, cannot exist in the understanding alone." Assuredly I doubt there is enough logic or christian apologetics to cover this howler.

"For, suppose it exists in the understanding alone: then it can be conceived to exist in reality; which is greater."
It certainly could "be conceived to exist in reality", but how something can become a reality because reality is greater than mere understanding, leaves this as just a form of wishful thinking.
What I see is a base desire for his god to exist, because back in the 1100s what alternative did anyone have? Other than to be a fool like me?

I won't comment on Paul's Corinthian quote. After reading his letters, I honestly doubt he was saintly, chosen, or even mentally stable.

If your god is truth, and he wants all to be saved, I might accept the assurances of Pope Francis and Origen and others that despite perceived shortcomings we will all end up in Paradise, which is a pleasant little hypotheses, though I am compelled, probably by the devil, to be honest enough to admit, I just can't prove.

I get the idea, that every theist who discovers an atheist forum, figurers we are all atheists because we haven't heard their pet argument, haven't read their holy book of choice, or haven't heard their magical interpretation of it, will convert if we do.

Sorry theists, just because you may be credulous enough to believe for bad reasons, doesn't mean we're going to be. If you want to convince those of us with a modicum of critical thinking skills, of your theistic claims, you better come with something better than long refuted arguments.

Seriously Leeuwenhoek, were you an atheist, then you heard the Ontological argument, and became convinced by it? I doubt that is the case. I would guess you were already a theist, and you use this argument in an attempt to make your theistic beliefs sound more rational. Please correct me if I am wrong...

So, nothing greater can be conceived than this god-being?

Well that should be easy to test.
List all the qualities that (you think) this being has, and if I can come up with something greater, then your version of this god-being is not the right one.

Leeuwenhoek:

So you're arguing that your god must exist because it's the best and greatest in concept and therefore in reality?

The character in the Bible certainly doesn't qualify under this definition. Everything it touches turns to crap. Everything it does is profoundly evil. Take the flood: Did every man, woman, child, and baby deserve to die horribly? Take the story of Job: Did he and his family deserve to suffer because god made a bet with Satan? What about Jesus? What kind of deadbeat father makes an underage girl pregnant and then arranges for the resulting child to grow up and be tortured to death?

If any of this had happened, and if god existed, it deserves to go on trial for crimes against humanity.

Anselm's argument is more applicable to Superman than Jehovah.

I can conceive of a building taller than the greatest skyscraper in existence. So I'm curious, does this make it real? If you set an arbitrary condition for belief, then of course you construct rational arguments to satisfy those beliefs.

As I said earlier, all the deities humans have invented are unevidenced, thus all I'd have to do is conceive of a deity that was sufficiently supported by objective evidence, and it would by definition be "greater than" all the deities in theistic religions. Thus those deities would be falsified by the criteria Anselm has set for us. The problem all arises from Anselm's arbitrary and unevidenced definition of "god" as the greatest conceivable being. The deity he conceives is imaginary, thus he's defining a deity he doesn't believe in, an objectively evidenced or real deity.