The existence of God was easier to prove than the existence of the world according to Descartes. Everything perceived clearly and distinctly was true according to Descartes. To have a credible claim, Descartes needed prove the existence of God and that this God was not a deceiver. He claims that God has his mark of craftsmanship stamped on His work, and this proves that He actually exists. Descartes meditated on the existence of God by thinking about how he himself was produced.
Through elimination techniques, Descartes has proved that he is not a product of himself, parents, or other source less perfect than God. According to Descartes, the fact that we had an idea of that which has “infinite perfection” (Rational Vedanta), was enough prove that God existed. The idea about us and God emanate from God, according to Descartes. The source of such an idea aforementioned cannot be from us or our ideas of us.
Human beings are real creatures, as are other objects too. Therefore, because we were not (like Descartes) created by ourselves, or that these things were not created by us, did not emanate from partial sources, or any other source, there must be a source for these things and ourselves too. Human being a complex creature must come out from a complex creature. God cannot be a deceiver since deception is an imperfection.
Descartes was correct in a way in his arguments about proving the existence of God. Firstly, our ideas that have been there for several years in mankind that there is existence of a supernatural and perfect being, is a prove that the there is a source of such an idea-called God. In addition, someone who was perfect was only liable to creating things of lesser degree of perfection such as ourselves. In addition, there can never be any other source of the things that we see and even of ourselves, rather than from a supernatural being, namely, God. Like Descartes, somebody must have implanted the ideas of inner perception about a being like God-he would not be able to grasp the idea of God, if the latter gave him a “flawed intellectual” perception (Rational Vedanta).
Descartes argues that extension is the essential property of all material things, even when the material things do not exist. Of course, everyone can be surprised how man is able to conceive the truth of processes and methods such as mathematical methods, yet fail to believe in a supernatural being. In my opinion and experience, the existence of God can be justified by the fact that we always feel that we require help and intervention from a being not limited as we human beings-which points to the fact that our minds conceive the fact that this being exists. Only “the idea of God” can originate not from “myself” according to Descartes (Sandmeyer, 2).
Descartes meditates on the existence of himself and even the confidence human beings have on such things like mathematics which are in nature abstract ideas. Probably, the fact that human being has confidence in such things can be used to challenge him why he cannot be confident of the existence of God. In my opinion, the reality of God cannot be doubted. Probably the right term to use for Descartes would have been the existence of a supernatural being and therefore, whether the name is God or not, the existence of a being with greater powers more than man is not doubtable.
Works Cited
Rational Vedanta. “Rene Descartes (1596-1650)”. Rational Vedanta. Web.
Sandmeyer. “Introduction to philosophy: Outline of Descartes’ Meditations”. Sandmeyer. Web.