Descartes view about God?
Can anyone simplify for me exactly what Descartes view on the existence of God and his talk about 'essences'? I'm totally stumped and got an essay due in two days.
Looking at this atm
http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/4d.htm
October 16, 2012
2 Comments • Newest first
Well in order to understand his philosophy you have to ask your self the question he is trying to debunk. How do you know you exist and all of this isn't all a dream? After all there is no way to actually tell if this is just a realistic dream or an actual reality. Descarte had to rebuild his world with something substantial and that is his famous line I think therefore I am. Which makes sense, something must be there to have these thoughts. Funny though David Hume later debunks that belief proving that rationalism can only go so far. His belief in god is that we not perfect creatures, we are flawed so we do not have the power to create or have ideas of such perfect things like god. It s sounds a bit like Plato's theory of forms. How there must be another dimension where we get these ideas of perfection. Anyways so now that you know you exist and god exists how do you know god isn't deceiving you? (Think of it like the matrix how do we not know god is putting us to sleep and creating another reality for us to live in where truth does not exist?). He concludes that's not possible because our god is righteous and good and that's how we know the materials around us is real. I'm sorry I wish I could be more in depth but I gotta get to class I'm on my phone during passing period.
u have a link to an article or something?
I believe his reasoning for god went something like this: I exist. My existence must have a cause. Since my existence cannot be its own cause, I must have a cause greater than my own since i'm so obvi flawed and not so perfect.
he made the assumption that he can prove his existence. This is faulty reasoning. You can provide evidence for your existence, but you cannot prove it.