"The criticisms of the Ontological Argument are very strong" Assess this claim.

The criticisms of the ontological argument vary immensely in strength. It can be argued that the strongest criticisms come from Aquinas, Descartes and Hume in their criticisms of the definition of God. The criticisms of the definition of God are damaging because they challenge the very starting point of the ontological argument - and if the starting point of the argument is flawed then the argument itself cannot be logically successful. Descartes' definition of God is 'a supremely perfect being' and his criticism is strong because he is challenging his own argument when he asks 'how can we be sure it is necessary to prescribe all perfections to God?'. Descartes' response to his self criticism is weak and therefore would not be enough to convince most people of his definition of God 'one should attend closely to ones idea of God and one will see that perfection is essential to him'. Aquinas argued that we cannot define God in the way that Anselm does because we cannot be certain that the human mind has the correct concept of God, as God is so far beyond our limited human understanding. This criticism is strong because if we cannot understand God's nature then we cannot conceive of God in the way that Anselm proposed, and therefore, only someone who completely understands the essence of God, would be able to derive meaning from the Ontological Argument (therefore the only being that can find meaning from the Ontological Argument is God himself).The Third criticism of the Ontological Argument - the objection to deriving existential claims from the definition of God - appears to be a strong criticism, but when looked at in conjunction to the responses to these criticisms, is in fact very weak. This criticism attempts to damage the key concept of the ability to go from an idea in the mind, to a reality. Guanilo claimed that this attempt at logic was 'absurd' and would therefore lead to absurd consequences e.g. the existence of a perfect island. This objection appears strong, however the responses are stronger and therefore defeat the challenge. Anselm responded by saying that his logic when applied to contingent things, such as the perfect island, would be absurd; but when applied to God it makes sense as God is necessary (perfect and unchanging) so cannot be compared to a contingent object.