Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Descarters proof for the existence of God part I

Descartes makes a few arguments for the existence of God. His most famous, which can be found in the Third Meditation, can ultimately be summed up in five steps. First, Descartes proves that he exists. He attempts to withdraw all his senses and regard all thoughts as false and worthless. He discovers that he is a thinking thing; a thing that doubts. Even though the objects of his sensory experience may have no existence, the modes of thinking still exist; therefore he exists. And from this process of doubting Descartes argues that he is imperfect, because a perfect being has all knowledge and cannot doubt.
Second, Descartes discovers that all ideas are either innate or adventitious. The innate ideas could not have been put there by himself, because if he could put innate ideas into himself then he could just as easily put other ideas into himself also which he proves that he did not because he doubts. So, the innate ideas must be put into his mind by a greater being. The adventitious ideas are external to him, and since he cannot create ideas from nothing, there must be some objective reality to these ideas. Even though some of these ideas seem absurd and completely without truth, they still are made up of an external reality. Like, the image of a mermaid, which is not known to exist, comes from the image of a woman and a fish. Therefore, something exists externally from him, and his thoughts are dependent on these objects being real.
Third, Descartes describes what he believes to be the attributes of God. He has ideas of eternity, infinity, omniscience, omnipotence, and creation; the defining attributes of God. And since all fraud and deception depend on there being a defect, God cannot be a deceiver because he is perfect by definition. Also, after Descartes’ proof for the existence of God, he says since he was created by God then he is somehow created in His image or likeness, and since he is a thinking thing, so, too, God must be a thinking thing.

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