The philosophy on the existence of God is highly visionary, but also one of the most controversial. In most cases, philosophers argue that a deity and controls all beings. However, no one establishes specifically where the being resided and the true nature of the being. In his meditations, Rene Descartes tries to prove to the philosophy world that God exists. He laid forward a number of arguments o show that God truly exists and demystified most of the views that God did not exist. This paper analyzes the statements and arguments by Rene Descartes in support of the view that God truly exists.
Rene Descartes, at the beginning of meditation III moves to argue through the sense of skeptics. He uses the doubt and analysis thinking on major things and existence of major bodies. He notes that many things are similar in different physical states. Most notoriously, he notes that when asleep and dreaming, most of the things that occurred in his real life when awake also appeared. Through his doubt and analysis, he doubts whether there exists any difference between being asleep and being awake. Similarly, he notes that he could doubt everything except a few beliefs. The belief is that an evil genius tried to deceive him to believe that he did not exist but he could not fall for the deception. Similarly, he notes that the evil genius tries to deceive people that God does not exist, yet in reality he does.
Rene Descartes proves beyond doubt the elements of mathematics and simple semantics. He concludes that matter is also a certainty in the world. Having convinced himself of these beliefs, Descartes finds it hard to believe that God does not exist. This made him conclude that if all these things, including him existed, then God also exists.
Rene Descartes also proves the existence of God through his classification of ideas into truths and falsity. Descartes argues that ideas are not false as the person in the state of imagination imagines of a real idea. In Descartes’ view, falsity does not apply to imagination. Through this classification, he classifies existence into formal and informal reality. He explains that the existence of God fell in the class of formal reality. In formal reality, beings existed in three forms, infinite, finite, and mode. He explains that God is the only existing being in the infinite formal mode thus he justifies the existence of God.
Descartes, driven by curiosity, digs more into the ideas and claims that some ideas are more real than others are. He dismisses his own claims that all ideas are real and says some ideas are simply passive. However, it is not clear which ideas he refers to when he talks of the nature of God. In the same light, Descartes notes that there exists a chain of being on earth. Descartes compares his living to the people who lived before him and comes up with the concept of dualism, the existence of a separate mind and body. According to him, the being of the body mainly depends on the operations of both the mind and the body. For him, this unique synonymous chain is enough to show that God exists and he is a powerful maker.
Rene Descartes also tries to prove the existence of God through uttering powerful quotations in support of the ultimate existence of the deity. He says that God is good thus to exist is to be good. Through the explanation, he shows that if being good is existence, some supreme power was good to all people and that must be God. He refers to God as perfect by saying that greater goodness is perfection and certainly, some forms of existence are more formal than others because the beings have a greater sense of existence. This proves his affirmation that God exists.
Rene Descartes also attempts to prove the existence of God through the analysis of his own thoughts. He thinks that these thoughts may have come from him and they may not have any tangible reality. He notes his understanding of God as a supreme, powerful, intelligent, and supernatural being that aided the creation of everything including his being. He notes that the Supreme Being as well created his mind. He moves through his establishments of truths, half-truths, and absolute falsity and concludes that by all the arguments he had laid, God exists. He further notes that his efforts to prove otherwise did not draw him to any conclusive point as he still found out the same fact that God exists and he does so through a powerful being.
Rene Descartes is a renowned philosopher who went out of his way to prove to the world of philosophy that God truly existed and that he controlled everything on earth. He does so in a number of ways. He proves that his imagination could not lie all around as he is sure he exists and God exists. He uses quotations, as God is great and good and shows the existence of God through quoting His actions. He culminates his argument by saying that through evaluation of his thoughts, from truths, duality, doubting, and reality, he knew that God truly exists.
Terms Used
Deity - A powerful being that is viewed as the creator and sustainer of life. It is the other word for God.
