Descartes's Argument For The Existence Of God Essay

that God exists because he is finite and God is not. God is infinite. Descartes knows that

I have an idea of a perfect being; it must contain in reality all the

He states, "From the fact that I cannot think of God not existing, it follows that existence cannot be separated from God and thus that he actually exists." (298) The existence of God is something that cannot be separated, just as we cannot separate the idea of an ocean without sand. Descartes explains that man is a finite

Descartes also explains the difference between being an idea and being merely an opposite of an idea. He uses heat and cold as his example; whereas heat is an idea, cold is simply non-existence of heat. That is a very important idea that he uses in his argument to exclude a potential critique of his argument.

Descartes claims ideas regress from one another till they reach absolute perfection, and Descartes suspects that if ideas are too perfect for him, then they must had originated from something more perfect that him. He uses these ideas to ‘prove’ the existence of god, Descartes states that god has various qualities he’s infinite, independent, supremely intelligent, supremely powerful and which created both myself and everything else, these ideas are so perfect he claims that the more he concentrates on them, the less possible it seems that they could have originated from him alone. He thus concludes god exists! Descartes is supposing that the idea of god necessarily comes because of the regression of ideas must go down to perfection and because God is perfection and perfection is

Descartes’s first, and arguably most important deduction, is that he must exist, even if nothing around him does. He deduces that “it necessarily had to be the case that I, who was thinking this, was something” (Descartes 18), leading him to his famous axiom “I think, therefore I am” (Descartes 18). Even if his senses, his prior knowledge, and anything about his physical body and life are a fabrication, his mind itself must exist. This crucial discovery is the basis of Descartes’s philosophical musings. Descartes takes this single, certain fact and expounds upon it to “confirm” that the soul, God, and many other things certainly exist outside of his mind. Concerning things outside of his mind, Descartes determines that “they are not something I have fabricated; rather they have their own true and immutable natures” (Descartes 88). Using triangles as an example, Descartes reasons that they have “a certain determinate nature, essence, or form which is unchangeable and eternal, which I did not fabricate, and which does not depend on my mind” (Descartes 88). Concerning his body itself, Descartes reasons that his mind and body are tightly joined; “when the body is in need of food or drink, I should understand this explicitly, instead of having confused sensations of hunger and thirst” (Descartes 98). By determining that things such as his body and surroundings did in fact exits outside o f his mind, Descartes can start to “confirm” what he believes to be the true nature of God by his A priori

My initial approach to René Descartes, in Meditations on First Philosophy, views the third meditation’s attempts to prove the existence of God as a way of establishing a foundation for the existence of truth, falsity, corporeal things and eventually the establishment of the sciences. When viewed in this light, Descartes is accused of drawing himself into a ‘Cartesian circle,’ ultimately forcing this cosmological proof of God to defy Cartesian method, thus precipitating the failure of the third, fourth, fifth and sixth meditations. This approach to the meditations, in the order with which they are presented, allows me to state that a proof of the existence of God cannot hold

Descartes also explains the difference between being an idea and being merely an opposite of an idea. He uses heat and cold as his example; whereas heat is an idea, cold is simply non-existence of heat. That is a very important idea that he uses in his argument to exclude a potential critique of his argument.

Descartes utilizes another rule in his thought process which states that objective reality cannot exist without formal reality. By this he means that we cannot form an idea without a cause. Assuming that God does exist would be an example of a Formal reality. Whereas the idea of God, is considered objective reality because it represents an infinite substance. Ideas themselves automatically have objective reality because the idea itself represents some reality. Also, the more perfect ideas cannot come from the less perfect; this is called The Causal

Descartes’s attempt to prove the existence of God begins with the argument that he has the clear and distinct idea of God as the “most perfect being and that there must be at least as much reality in the efficient and total cause in the effect of that cause” (40). Therefore, this idea of God can’t be from himself, but its cause must be God. So God exists. In what follows I’ll explain these terms and why the premises seemed true to him.

Descartes not only uses the methods of mathematical proofs but also uses mathematical concepts themselves, like geometric shapes, to serve as an example of something both clear and distinct. However, when translating the method some adjustments must be made to ensure the structure of his argument. Descartes, in explaining the qualities of a triangle, notes, “I did not see anything in all [these qualities] to assure me that there was any triangle in the world” (Discourse, 20). However, there is a fundamental difference between God and triangles. Descartes highlights the differences with the idea of “infinite perfection” (Discourse, 24).

Considering this statement a God could very well exist as a creator, but Descartes states that God is a perfect being and further describes God as follows,

After recognizing the existence of the I, Descartes examines the existence of God and whether God is a deceiver. Descartes came conclude that God exists, because the “I” has an idea of a God, and the “I” could not have originated the supreme idea of God by itself. Thus, God must have projected the idea of God to the “I”. Descartes begins this argument by acknowledging that we commonly mistake and adapt the mechanisms of how we receive ideas to be the same mechanisms as how we receive images (in the mind) of as the objects that we perceive to exist in the external world. We look at objects outside of us through our senses (eyes) and later attribute the resembling image that come to our minds to the objects we looked at. Using this method of

Secondly, to come up with the second proof of Gods existence, Descartes thought that the power and action that is needed to preserve something is capable of creating something new. He argued that there must be as much power in the cause just as it is in the effect. According to the philosophical writings of Descartes, upon knowing that he did not have power to preserve his own existence because he was just a thinking thing; Descartes concluded that the power must have come from outside him (Descartes, Cottingham and Murdoch 26) And since he is a thinking thing, he claims that the one who created him must also be a thinking thing, possessing all the ideas and attributes of god. In addition, he observed that his parents could not be responsible for creating and preserving his life. Descartes therefore concludes that the one who created him and gave him ideas of a perfect God must be God, therefore God exists.

Descartes says that the idea of God comes from an outside source (God) but that it is within from birth, meaning that it is innate. If the thought is innate, then this means that you came up with it and know it to be true, thus making you the creator of the thought. You created the thought that there is an omnipotent, infinite being that created you. You, being the creator of the thought had to have created this idea from somewhere, is it not possible that you know this is true because you are that