Bertrand Russell on The ontological argument
Russell regarded the ontological argument as a logical curiosity — superficially valid but ultimately a trick of language.
Bertrand Russell's engagement with the ontological argument is famous partly for its candour. He once remarked that the argument made him feel as though it must be wrong, but he could not say exactly where — a sentiment shared by many philosophers who have grappled with it.
Russell's mature position was that the argument fails because existence is not a predicate — a criticism he shared with Kant. To say that God exists does not add a property to the concept of God; it asserts that the concept is instantiated. The ontological argument treats existence as though it were a quality like omnipotence or perfect goodness, and this is a category error.
In Why I Am Not a Christian (1927), Russell addressed the argument briefly but decisively, placing it alongside the cosmological and design arguments as an example of motivated reasoning dressed up as logic. He regarded it as the most intellectually interesting of the classical arguments but also the most obviously sophistical.
“The argument proceeds from the idea of a most perfect being to the existence of that being. But it is a very curious argument, and I am not sure it is not just a play upon words.”