Rene Descartes Proof Of God's Existence
Descartes Proofs of God’s Existence Over the years, God's existence has been a subject of much thought and research where many philosophers have tried to outdo each other countless times. Rene Descartes came up with three proofs of God’s existence. These theories of proof are The Cosmological-Ontological Argument, Conservation of Existence Argument and Existence Is a Perfection Argument as listed by Kung (2006). The aim of this paper is to compare the Existence Is A Perfection Proof and the Cosmological-Ontological Proof. The Cosmological-Ontological Argument states that everything has a cause and that there must be a cause for his ideas that God is an infinitely perfect being. The argument further states that he has an idea that represents
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Something must have created humans and that that creation is perfection itself. The two arguments are not very different from each other because they are talking about a perfect being. The existence of objects in the universe must be existing because a perfect being created them. They both speak of perfection and a perfect being who can put both concrete and abstract ideas in their creations. However, the cosmological-ontological argument seems to be more convincing because it elaborates more on the existence of a perfect being and why Descartes was able to conceptualize the existence of that perfect being. Why Humans Err According to Descartes as Damasio says (2006), he was not like God although it was God that created him. He was somewhere between perfect and nothingness; therefore error doesn't have to come from God. He stated in Fourth Meditation that human error originates from the state of being between perfect and imperfect as a defect. He says that human error comes as a result of conflict between the will and the intellect. The scope of the will is infinite while that of the intellect is …show more content…
Therefore, human error comes from confused perceptions that are beyond their understanding because the intellect is finite and therefore people cannot understand everything. To avoid error Descartes proposes that human being should avoid making judgments unless the perception is clear. The argument is convincing because if one does not understand a perception correctly, they are likely to make mistakes when basing their judgments on that perception. It is through the understanding of perceptions that a person can accurately make a decision based on what they have understood. Making judgments blindly is likely to lead to errors. References Benzmüller, C., & Paleo, B. W. (2014, August). Automating Gödel's ontological proof of God's existence with higher-order automated theorem provers. In Proceedings of the Twenty- first European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (pp. 93-98). IOS Press. Damasio, A. R. (2006). Descartes' error. Random House. Kung, H. (2006). Does God exist?: an answer for today. Wipf and Stock Publishers. Nolan, L., & Nelson, A. (2006). Proofs for the Existence of God (pp. 104-121). Blackwell Publishing
Something must have created humans and that that creation is perfection itself. The two arguments are not very different from each other because they are talking about a perfect being. The existence of objects in the universe must be existing because a perfect being created them. They both speak of perfection and a perfect being who can put both concrete and abstract ideas in their creations. However, the cosmological-ontological argument seems to be more convincing because it elaborates more on the existence of a perfect being and why Descartes was able to conceptualize the existence of that perfect being. Why Humans Err According to Descartes as Damasio says (2006), he was not like God although it was God that created him. He was somewhere between perfect and nothingness; therefore error doesn't have to come from God. He stated in Fourth Meditation that human error originates from the state of being between perfect and imperfect as a defect. He says that human error comes as a result of conflict between the will and the intellect. The scope of the will is infinite while that of the intellect is …show more content…
Therefore, human error comes from confused perceptions that are beyond their understanding because the intellect is finite and therefore people cannot understand everything. To avoid error Descartes proposes that human being should avoid making judgments unless the perception is clear. The argument is convincing because if one does not understand a perception correctly, they are likely to make mistakes when basing their judgments on that perception. It is through the understanding of perceptions that a person can accurately make a decision based on what they have understood. Making judgments blindly is likely to lead to errors. References Benzmüller, C., & Paleo, B. W. (2014, August). Automating Gödel's ontological proof of God's existence with higher-order automated theorem provers. In Proceedings of the Twenty- first European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (pp. 93-98). IOS Press. Damasio, A. R. (2006). Descartes' error. Random House. Kung, H. (2006). Does God exist?: an answer for today. Wipf and Stock Publishers. Nolan, L., & Nelson, A. (2006). Proofs for the Existence of God (pp. 104-121). Blackwell Publishing