God’s Existence, Essay Example

After a careful study of Meditations Two and Three, it seems that Descartes was successful in proving that God really exists. Descartes uses Method of Doubt to find out that he still experiences certain hyperbolic and metaphysical doubts, but tries to get rid of them by proving that the Evil Genius, which tries to deceive him, does not exist, and only God can possibly be real, as far as God does not deceive.

Though his tools are limited, Descartes uses the surrounding world, objects, and ideas to brainstorm and doubt the issue of interest. He classifies different ideas into being intern or inborn, come from the outside, and be invented or created by Descartes himself. Consequently, Descartes proves that God is clearly an objective reality, a function of represented content, rather than an object made up by him. Descartes claims that “By ‘God’, I understand, a substance which is infinite, independent, supremely intelligent, supremely powerful, and which created both myself and everything else (if else there be) that exists. All these attributes are such that, the more carefully I concentrate on them, the less possible it seems that they could have originated from me alone. So, from what has been said it must be concluded that God necessarily exists” (Descartes). Therefore, Descartes defines God as an infinite substance, which, as he has proved, has more formal reality than finite substances. Most importantly, Descartes argues that if the objective reality of certain ideas is far too great to be made up by himself, they should be created by someone from the outside, which, in turn, proves that there is a God, who is powerful enough to originate such ideas, and these ideas are present in God either formally or eminently.

Works Cited

Descartes, Rene //Discourse On Method and Meditations On First Philosophy//Hackett Publishing 4th Edition, 1999//ISBN 0-87220-420-0

Audi, Robert, ed.//The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy//Cambridge University Press//2nd Edition, 1999//ISBN 0-521637-22-8