Stephen Fry on The ontological argument
Fry regards the ontological argument as an intellectual curiosity — a parlour trick of logic that no one actually finds persuasive.
Fry has addressed the ontological argument with the bemused scepticism of a well-read layperson. He finds it fascinating as a piece of intellectual history — the idea that Anselm thought he could prove God's existence through pure reason alone has a certain magnificent audacity — but he does not find it remotely convincing. The argument's conclusion seems to follow from its premises, yet something is clearly wrong. You cannot conjure an entity into existence through definition, however clever the definition.
His objection is partly aesthetic and partly philosophical. The aesthetic objection is that any argument for God's existence that requires this much logical machinery to understand, and that convinces essentially no one who does not already believe, has failed at its stated purpose. God, if he exists, should be more obvious than a medieval syllogism can make him.
The philosophical objection is the standard one: existence is not a property that can be included in a definition. Saying that God is 'the greatest conceivable being' and that a being who exists is greater than one who does not is a category error. It treats existence as an attribute, like omnipotence or goodness, when it is actually a precondition for having attributes at all.
“I have never met anyone who was persuaded to believe in God by the ontological argument. I have met people who were persuaded to study philosophy by it, which is considerably more useful.”