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Descartes Cosmological Proof Of God Analysis

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Religion is an important belief in life for many people, in which they believe in supernatural powers. There are millions of people that believe that God exists in this world; however, there are also people that do not believe in God. Several famous figures in history have given proofs for God’s existence, such as René Descartes, Isaac Newton, and Thomas Paine. However, there are also people that do not believe in these proofs, such as David Hume. Through Soccio 's “Archetypes of Wisdom: An Introduction to Philosophy”, one can see that Hume rejects Descartes’s ontological proofs, Newton’s teleological proof, and Paine’s cosmological proof of God’s existence.
In his book “Discourse on Method,” Descartes gives two ontological proofs of God’s existence. The first proof appears earlier in his book when he doubts himself about not being perfect. Descartes is aware that since he has doubts, he is not perfect, because a perfect being would know everything. However, since he has the notion of what perfection is, it means that there must be a perfect being that exists out there that give him the idea of perfection. And according to Descartes, that perfect being is God as he states that “... this idea was put in my mind by a nature that was really more perfect than I was, which had all …show more content…

To Descartes’s first proofs about God exists because He is a perfect being, Hume would say that no individuals can say that God gives them the idea of perfection since individuals do not know what perfection is because “nothing in our experience even remotely resembles perfection, eternity, or infinite power.” Therefore, as a result, this proof of God’s existence does not work. Descartes’ second proof would be rejected by Hume too, because his second proof does not have any evidence, and it is created from any sense experience; therefore, it is just “meaningless utterance” to

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