It seems to be sexy nowadays to meander into atheist forums and drop one of the many modal forms of the ontological arguments (OA).  I wanted to write a piece that is first informative for people to read and understand OA's and their problems. And second, I wanted a place to point OA advocates when they decide they want to post these because I'm starting to feel like a broken record when I post against OA.

Ontological arguments in one form another attempt to argue from definitions to existence. That is, they attempt to define a god (or some attribute of god) and then from one or more definition deduce that a god, by definition, must exist. This was Anselm's basic approach in his famous argument.

    1.) God is the greatest possible conceivable being
    2.) It is greater to exist than not to exist
    3.) In order to be greatest, God must exist
    4.) Therefore, God exists

When evaluating arguments, arguments are evaluated on have two components: their soundness and validity. When an argument is both sound and valid, it is a successful argument. On face, the Anselm's and most OA's appear to be valid -- that is the logic of the argument flows such that it guarantees the conclusion is true. Likewise, on face, the argument appears to be sound: the premises appear to be true.