Though it may not be prudent in stirring more of the same
debate on Descartes, I think I should once more make apparent my confusion on
the subject of God. I am frankly skeptical of how quickly Descartes is able to
arrive at the existence of God. Descartes manages in just a few short pages start
from knowing absolutely nothing to being absolutely certain of the existence of
an omnipresent and omnipotent God. I believe he does this purposefully out of
necessity. I also believe Descartes confuses what God is in order to ensure the
survival of his argument.
Perhaps I am skeptical because I understand God to be so
much more than a being of infinite existence. I am inclined to believe that the
God that Descartes proves and the traditional Christian God are two completely
different beings. The Cartesian God is infinite and perfect. I believe he
designs his God this way to strengthen his own meditations. Why does Descartes
try to reason his way through the existence of God when God is not a reasonable
thing to understand. I believe that God became his scapegoat that through whom
everything is possible. The God that Descartes’ reasoned his way into is in no
way the same God that he uses to justify the existence of the corporeal. I feel
as if Descartes assumes too much of God in trying to obtain his essence.
Descartes pretends to know the essence of what or who is God
when in Meditation One he poses that there could be some great deceiver out
there. What if he had the wool over his eyes according to his understanding of
what constitutes a God? He draws on geometry as how we know the existence of
God. To be Godly is to be infinite according to Descartes. Is it really that
simple? His assumptions of God are central to his argument and the root of why
it falls apart for me. God should be God, not the essence of infinity.
Descartes shouldn’t mix words. I believe it is very difficult to define God as
infinity or know the absolute essence of God. I don’t think we or Descartes are
capable of creating an absolute list of what is God. The indeterminate nature
of God makes it near impossible to prove his/her existence.
I am still not convinced that Descartes every truly let go
of all the ideas that were given to him. Perhaps they were just deeply imbedded
in his thinking. Is God an adventitious idea? Was God some sort of allusion to
something else indeterminate according to Descartes?
I share in your skepticism in Descartes way of proving the existence of God. I am mostly confused about when he says that since he (Descartes) is a finite being has “innate” idea of an infinite God. I honestly don’t think we come into this world with an idea of God. Since many of us are around people who speak of God we may just think that this is an innate idea because as long as we can remember we can remember ourselves thinking about God. But also having an idea of something doesn’t make it true. The thought processes of children, especially babies, are not really known. There are some innate behaviors such as knowing how to eat and breathe, but I don’t see how it is possible for us to know for sure if we all have an idea of God. So it is doubtful.
ReplyDeleteI also don’t agree with God and infinity being interchangeable words. To me they are two completely different things. God may be infinite, but to me infinity is not God. It is just a perception of time. This may all seem jumbled up and unorganized because this is the way my brain is on this subject.
I wonder if simply ignoring the connection between infinity and God would help, since this sounds like just a confusion of terminology to me. I agree that they may not be interchangeable words, and think it is much clearer if the ideal of the Christian God is not used as a model. Descartes is only proving that there is some infinite existence, that the concept of infinity must have been derived from the actual existence of infinity. This could be infinite time, space, energy, etc.; but none of these say that infinity interacts with us or governs our lives.
ReplyDeleteI likewise agree that the proof against the Great Deceiver is finicky. If the Great Deceiver was truly infinite deception, then we could easily be deceived into thinking that we have proved a lack of its existence. The divine deceiver would probably be able to make us think and experience whatever it chose, and if we knew that it existed then it would not truly be deceiving us. I believe that there is no way of determining whether or not infinity is deceptive or not, based on Descartes model.