e that the argument depends on three axioms, those being the principle of sufficient reason, the law against infinite regress, and the law of noncontradiction. The former two have already been defended, and the latter one is not in dispute by any side of this debate. These axioms, or first principles, I propose, are the bedrock of all necessary existential propositions. As can be seen, without them, the necessity of the ontological and the cosmological argument fails to be established. Yet, as has been shown, the failure to accept these principles leads to peculiar absurdities that makes contingent existence non-existent. I refer the reader to the arguments given on behalf of the principle of sufficient reason and law against infinite regress earlier in the paper. It is not that the arguments prove the existence of such laws but that the failure to accept them is a failure to accept contingent existence, and it is just those axioms that those who believe that nothing is necessary wish to deny. If the reader will look back, he will see that chairs would be nonexistent without such principles of distinction.There seem to be necessary existential propositions given the arguments concerning necessity and contingency, and necessity and possibility, but there remain objections to the notion of necessary existential propositions, generally through counter-examples. The absurdity of these counter-examples is supposed to shed serious doubt upon the ontological argument. These arguments tend to take the form, "If the ontological argument is true, then it follows that this (an absurdity) exists." Concerning necessary existential propositions, it now becomes relevant to discuss in what sense a necessary existential proposition is real and in what sense something calling itself a necessary existential proposition is merely apparent.One common argument against the ontological argument as I have stated it, is that it is argued that one can conceive of...
