Is Descartes's Argument For The Existence Of God?

Humans are finite substances so they cannot come up with the ideas of infinite substances unless it were given to them by an infinite substance. Descartes continues that while we advance gradually each day these attributes could never exist within us because we are only potentially perfect whereas God is actually perfect. Furthermore, Descartes argues that only God could be the author of his being because if it were he or his parent’s other finite substances that authored his being then he would not have wants or doubts because he would have bestowed upon himself every perfection imaginable to a finite being. Therefore, God exists because Descartes could not have thought of God because he is a finite substance thus the idea of God must have come from an infinite substance.

In his First Meditations, Descartes also forms the evil demon argument. Much like the dreaming argument, the evil demon argument also focuses on doubt and the extent to which we can trust our senses.

His belief in God even affected his theories on reality. One of his theories was that he was being deceived by a conniving and mischievous demon that was hell-bent on distorting his reality. The demon could be comparable to the evil dictator and the memory replacing machine in Total Recall. Despite the evil demon, Descartes did manage to reveal one very true thing and that is that he must exist if he truly is being deceived by the evil demon because he needs to exist in order to be deceived. He later summarizes this into his famous phrase “I think, therefore, I am.”(Descartes 136).

In the First Meditation, Descartes gives us the Evil Demon Hypothesis which serves to give him reason to doubt the existence of everything he perceives and believes. He describes a ‘malicious demon of the utmost power and cunning’ that has the sole purpose of deceiving Descartes (Descartes, 2010: 17). I will argue that his hypothesis has proven to be a strong one because only the cogito provides a way for us to frustrate or trick the evil demon.

The existence of God has always been an arguable topic. Descartes’ however, believed that he had proof of God’s existence through an intense analysis of the mind. Throughout this paper I will discuss what he has provided as proof and some of the complications that arise throughout his argument.

After giving his first proof for the existence of God Descartes concludes by mentioning that this proof is not always self-evident. When he is absorbed in the world of sensory illusions it is not quite obvious to him that God’s existence can be derived from the idea of God. So to further cement God’s existence Descartes begins his second proof by posing the question of whether he could exist (a thinking thing that possesses the idea of an infinite and perfect god) if God itself did not exist.

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.

Although Descartes’s argument works in proving God’s existence, Descartes cannot be sure that God would not permit that a computer or an evil demon to methodically deceive human. Human beings are good thinkers, and create useful and amazing technologies machine that can become a bad habit, which then nobody can stop. For example, phones and computer were invented many years ago to improve our communication and our lives in general, but nowadays, they are an extreme addiction which have caused many accidents and bad things. In my opinion, even though Descartes proves that God really exists, we can believe in God, but we cannot see him, and most people in the world today believe in what they see with their own eyes, such as a computer, or a phone

Descartes seems to be controlled by demon(s) when he says: “some malignant demon, who is

Descartes claims that God is all-powerful and completely good, yet gives no proof that God is good. If of course Descartes' belief is accepted. You assume that God does exist and that he is all powerful and that the idea of a perfect being does exist only because God put that idea there, then what is to say God is not an evil deceiver who can put any thought that God wishes you to think inside

In A Discourse on the Method, Descartes attempted to prove the existence of God in a priori manner. He did not trust his own senses when trying to prove the existence of God and therefore he relied on the ontological argument. By making the same assumption made by Anselm, which was that an ontological argument assumes that existence is a predicate of God, Descartes is able to conclude that ‘God exists’ is true by definition because the subject ‘God’, who already contains all perfections, already contains the predicate – exists, which is a perfection. Although this may be perceived as a strong claim to believers, many such as Gaunilo would have disagreed. Descartes postulates his argument in the fourth part of his Discourse in order to try and prove the existence of God. One must discuss why one feels Descartes attempted to do so and exactly how convincing his claim is. However, before one can understand his claim, it is important to grasp an idea of the background that Descartes was writing from when he wrote the Discourse and the meaning of proof.

Descartes’ Evil Demon argument is the idea that instead of his God deceiving him- because he is too good to do so – that perhaps there is an evil being of a similar power to God who is in fact deceiving him to believe falsehoods as fact (Reason and Responsibility, Feinberg and Shafer-Landau, 2015, 242-244). The premises for this go like 1. If I am to be certain of anything I need to be certain I am not being deceived by a powerful evil demon, 2. I cannot be certain I am not being deceived by a powerful evil demon, therefore 3. I cannot be certain of anything. This is harder to argue against because there is no evidence for an evil demon existing- however this does not stop Descartes from believing in God. This is a valid argument because the premises do follow on from each other however, it is not a sound argument because premise 2 is

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.

The demon was responsible for all the evil found in the world. To Descartes the evil demon was also responsible for the deception that is found in the world (Descartes). Descartes answer is systematically different for Leibniz because of who is being blamed for the evil in the world. While Leibniz indirectly blamed God for the evil, Descartes blamed an evil demon. This makes sense because Descartes thought that God was omnibenevolent, incapable of committing any evil, and the source of all the good in the

The Evil Demon problem or the Evil Genius Problem is where an evil demon presents a complete illusion of an external world. It is clearly stated that we will assume that there exists an evil demon who is capable of deceiving us therefore, I have reason to doubt that totality of what my senses tell me as well as the mathematical knowledge that it seems I have. The first major thing that we have to be sure of is the proof of our own existence. This can greatly affect Ludwig Wittgenstein's idea that certain fundamental proportion are just pain logical in nature. For example, what if the assistant's knowledge of the blocks actually being there was just a trick illusion done by the demon. If this Evil Demon Problem was actually true, then we can't really know anything, could we? Now in my honest opinion, I believe that the Evil Demon Problem does not exist. I believe that even if it did actually exist, I would still be thinking which proves of my actually existence. If the demon was to make me doubt that I was thinking, that would only show that I actually am thinking. As said from the great Descartes, "Cogito ergo sum" which means, "I think therefore I am". Just by thinking, I am already proving to myself that I am not an imagination and that I actually do exist. One major thing that I could think against this would be that I am actually thinking of my existence right now but what if I