Rene Descartes - Existence of God Essay - 1961 Words

Rene Descartes third meditation from his book Meditations on First Philosophy, examines Descartes arguments for the existence of God. The purpose of this essay will be to explore Descartes reasoning and proofs of Gods existence. In the third meditation, Descartes states two arguments attempting to prove Gods existence, the Trademark argument and the traditional Cosmological argument. Although his arguments are strong and relatively truthful, they do no prove the existence of God. At the start of the meditation, Descartes begins by rejecting all his beliefs, so that he would not be deceived by any misconceptions from reaching the truth. Descartes acknowledges himself as, a thing that thinks: that is, a thing that doubts, affirms,†¦show more content†¦Our senses display that the sun is a small object. Astronomy projects that the sun is a large object. It is an example of A Priori vs. A Posteriori or Reason vs. Perception. Descartes concludes that the source of our ideas is in the mind using our reason, not our senses. Almost everything that we believe to be true is through perception. However, the senses are sometimes deceptive. Presume that everything our senses tell us is false. Descartes points out that we have dreams regularly and in those dreams, everything we experience is not real in the physical sense. It is reasonable to doubt everything our senses tell us. Using similar logic, we can say that everything we have learned from physics, astronomy, medicine, and other such fields are all doubtful. Descartes even believed simple logical statements such as 2 + 3 = 5 or a square has 4 sides could be conceived as false. Through the theory of innate ideas, Descartes believed that God, eternal, infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, and the Creator of all things which are in addition to Himself caused the idea of God in his mind. When a manufacturer creates a product, he stamps his name or logo to the product. At the moment of his creation, God imposed the idea of himself in the mind of Descartes. In other words, God stamped the innate idea of Himself into Descartes mind at birth. If God caused this idea to be in his mind, and all ideas are clear and distinct, God exists. ThisShow MoreRelated Renà © Descartes Argument on the Existence of God Essay1528 Words   |  7 PagesRenà © Descartes Argument on the Existence of God The problem with Renà © Descartes argument about the existence of God has to do with his rationalist deductive reasoning. Descartes deduces that truth about the existence of God lies within his idea of a perfect God and Gods essence (as a perfect being who must exist in order to be perfect). 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