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Descartes' Third Meditation

The Existence of God

Rebuttle:

Immanuel Kant

The Idea of God

Cause and Effect

  • disproved the ontological argument
  • Idea of a perfect God cannot lead to the conclusion that God exists
  • Aruged that propostion/quality can exit only if such a being exists first
  • Example of a triangle

Ontological Argument

Does the idea of a perfect God prove God's existence?

  • Anselm of Canterbury
  • From: God is the most perfect being one can think of (God = "a being than which no greater can be conceived")
  • To: God must exists
  • Descartes' similar ideas...

"The whole force of the argument rests on the fact that I recognize that it would be impossible for me to exist, being of such a nature as I am (namely, having in me the idea of God), unless God did in fact exist" (Descartes, 35).

Rebuttal

"Now it is indeed evident by the light of nature that there must be at least as much [reality] in the efficient and total cause as there is in the effect of the same cause" (Descartes 28).

  • "I did not draw it from the senses"
  • "Nor was it made by me"
  • "Thus the only option remaining is that this idea is innate in me"
  • (Descartes,34)

"From these considerations it is quite obvious that he cannot be a deceiver, for it is manifest by the light of nature that all fraud and deception depend on some defect" (Descartes, 35).

"To be sure, it is not astonishing that in creating me, God should have endowed me with this idea, so that it would be like the mark of the craftsmen impressed upon his work" (Descartes, 34).

Response

Descartes' argument for God's perfection and infiniteness is based on an assumption of what he knows to be the characteristics of God. He talks about God being inifinite but does not base that on his archimedian point. Therefore he has no basis to claim this.

Conclusion

With our example of the cause and effect, we know that necessarily the cause of something needs to be greater than that of its effect. Therefore that cause must also have a cause that is of an equal or greater level of perfection. And if we continue with this thought we will eventually get to the root cause which must be more perfect than anything in existance or more likely perfect and infinite.

Descartes' cause-effect chart

The Cause

The Effect

Descartes

>

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Basic ideas such as the ideas of rocks and their features

"Something cannot come into being out of nothing, and also that what is more perfect cannot come into being from what is less perfect" (Descartes 28).

Sources

"Descartes is able to prove that God exists and that He is not the Deceiver."

Descartes proves that God exists by realizing that he has an idea of God that could not be created by him but only by God alone. Descartes also proves that God is the cause of all things by realizing that he is finite and imperfect, but God is infinite and perfect making him the ultimate source of creation as he is the cause that is greater than all things.

"If the objective reality of any of my ideas is found to be so great that I am cetain that the same reality was not in me, either formally or eminently, and that therfore I myself cannot be the cause of the idea then it necessarily follows that I am not alone in the world, but that something else, which is also the cause of the idea exists" (Descartes 29).

Descartes, Rene. Meditations on First Philosophy. Trans. Donald A. Cress. Third ed. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hacket, 1993. Print.

"Not only can a stone which did not exist previously not now begin to exist unless it is produced by something in which there is, either formally or eminently, everything that is in the stone" (Descartes 28).

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