Descartes gave a few arguments that God exists and is real. Desocrates believed our idea of God is that God is a perfect being, he believed he is more perfect to exist than not to exist. Desocrates also believed that God is a infinite being. Descartes idea would be that God gave us this idea to type this paragraph about him so he must be real. When he thinks negative of an idea or thought he wonders if an evil demon plotted those thoughts.
Descartes talks about God as if God is infinite because he radiates out in every direction. Descartes imagines that he himself is perfect and has the perfect qualities of God. This leads him to the discussion of disobeying God and turning into what one wants rather than what God wants. By doing what oneself wills, not what God wills, one is basically implying the he or she sees him or herself as God-like. Descartes believes he is partially God because he is on his way to infinite knowledge, but since he is gaining little by little, he is in a state of potentiality.
Descartes is confounded by this so he will not admit anything since the idea is not yet known to him. He characterizes himself as a thing that basically thinks. What is thinking being? “It is a being which doubts, which understands, [which conceives,] which affirms, which denies, which wills, which rejects, which imagines also, and which perceives.” He has already established that he does exist, however denies that he is neither the body nor the spirit alone.
The next step that Descartes uses in the second meditation is the existence of this Godly figure. He questions his own beliefs with that of the God, and argues that a mind should be capable of thinking for them to be of existence, “Is there not some God, or some other being by whatever name we call it, which puts these reflections into my mind? That is not necessary, for is it not possible that I am capable of producing them myself?” He then puts forward that for one to be deceived by this “evil demon” as he describes it, they have to exist to be deceived.
However, Descartes is indeed certain of the fact that he is a thinking being, and that he exists. As a result of this argument, Descartes makes a conclusion that the things he perceives clearly and distinctly cannot be false, and are therefore true (Blanchette). This clear and distinct perception is an important component to the argument that Descartes makes in his fifth meditation for the existence of God. This paper explains Descartes ' proof of God 's existence from Descartes ' fifth meditation, Pierre Gassendi 's objection to this proof, and then offers the paper 's author 's opinion on both the proof and objection.
The two arguments that will be compared will between Descartes two different proofs for God’s existence. One in which he argues or explains how God has no imperfections meaning that he is perfect and how it ties into people. On another more confusing argument he argues about the distinction between two realities The first argument that he makes is the one he has in his third meditation in which he dismisses his existence to be able to go forth and prove God's existence. At first he goes on to say that “there must be at least as much reality in the efficient and total cause as in the effect of that cause,” or formal reality meaning that something can't come from nothing.
Existence is something that can be imagined and therefore is false and a fallacy. How does Descartes really know he exists maybe he is just imaging it all and that his premises behind the existence of God are fake as well. If someone exist then they must have been born which would mean that Descartes parents where the ones who brought him into existence, and their parents brought them in to existence and so on and so on. This would mean that God did not create Descartes existence but that someone way far down the chain of human existence started it
Descartes assumed first that it was God, who deceived us, but with the conclusion that God is all-good, he instead conclude that an evil demon exist. This evil demon possess the same power to deceive us, which God also would possess. God is perfect. Since humans have the ability to think of a being more perfect then themselves, then this being must have planted the idea in our mind. With the knowledge now that God is existing, perfect and is a non-deceiver – due to him being all-good –, Descartes can now move on to explain why material objects
Addressing the problems with Descartes is not a very difficult task to undertake. Descartes theory of Epistemology has been the subject matter of countless responses and prolonged debate and has been historically rather resilient. The main problem with Descartes argument, however, is that it relies too heavily on immaterial assumptions. Descartes’s use of god as a main tenet which he bases his theory around provides too much room for criticism. Proving the existence of god is a herculean task which Descartes does an admirable job of proving, but through trying to prove his “ontological argument” he seems to make some illogical leaps in order to reach his conclusions.
Descartes started his argument by saying that the knowledge of God is again innate in us. Again we see ta major problem here in the statement of Descartes. Experience will teach us the moral principles and the background needed to understand and have the knowledge about God. How can Descartes explain that God can be innate in us if experience gained from the senses would be the basis for us to understand and have a notion about God. His contradictions can only lead to confusion and back tracking.
Trying to rationalize a religion that by its very nature is irrational and unprovable is not strong justification for his conclusions. As I have mentioned in my second one pager it is impossible to link the existence of God to the physical laws and theories of the modern day or even Euclidean geometry of his day. His linking of God to physical properties can be summarized in the following passage. “Nor can it be said that this idea of God is perhaps materially false and thus can originate from nothing…" (Descartes Meditation 31) Unfortunately, as a Christian he should know that the existence of God is not a physical phenomenon and is a faith-based system that relies on not having proof of God.
Summary: Descartes continues from his knowledge of his own existence to reason the existence of God, His benevolent nature, and the disparity between our knowledge and will. The argument Descartes presents to prove God’s existence is through a series of premises. He states that all ideas he perceives (of himself, corporeal things, and God) can be reduced to a cause for believing them. That is because each effect gets its reality from a cause, meaning that the cause must have reality to begin with.
For how he can be certain that 2+2= 4 and not 5, how can he know for sure that he is not being deceived into believing the answer to be 5 due to a demon. But even if an evil demon did indeed exist, in order to be misled, Descartes himself must exist. As there must be an “I”, that can be deceived. Conclusively, upon Descartes’ interpretations we can come to decipher that in order for someone to exist they must indeed be able to think, to exist as a thinking thing.
For example, a rock can exist all by itself. This indicates that Descartes proposed that God if he wanted could create a world of beings that could exist all by itself. Therefore what he means to say is that if the mind and body are really distinct, they could exist all by themselves without being dependant on each other. Although he has changed a bit in his stance from his books like Discourse and Meditations which has versions like the First, the Second, the Sixth and so on, he was still critiqued by two of his successors, Nicolas Malebranche and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Malebranche developed an internal critique of Descartes theory of the mind.
With all these in mind, Descartes begins to understand how the Universe was created. He knows that he is finite. So the universe must have been created by an infinite force. He understands that God is perfect and infinite, therefore he couldn’t come up with the idea of God.
