April 11, 2024
There are many proofs for the existence of God as argued by Descartes that I struggle to wrap my head around, but there’s one that just resonates with me.
This post is divided into the two proofs I learned today.
I'm going to start with the one I don't like, so if you are only interested in the one that interests me personally, then by all means, skip this first part.
Proof 1: Because I have an idea of God, then God must exist.
Descartes primes us for this argument by saying that there are only three places that ideas can come from: the senses, our own invention, and something innate within us. He then rules out the fact that the idea of God can come from the senses or from our own invention. This leaves only the third option--- that the idea of God must be innate within us.
He first rules out the senses on the proposition that the idea of God has the highest level of objective reality while ideas that come from the senses have a very low degree of objective reality. God has the highest degree of reality because by virtue of being God, it simply has no cause, while everything else about our reality depends on a cause and thus, has a lower degree of objective reality. I think a causality basis for reality is a stretch, but I need to consider it some more.
Regardless, with that reasoning in place, that the idea of God has the highest degree of reality, it is very easy to see how information from the senses cannot give rise to the idea of God. Specifically, ideas from the senses, like ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ have very little reality because they are defined as privation qualities; hot is the absence of cold, cold is the absence of hot.
Anyways, that’s all a very complicated way to show how the idea of God does not come from the senses, but to me, I think it can also be explained away intuitively: ideas I get from the senses require me to physically interact with something. Since I don’t physically interact with God, the idea of God does not come about through the senses. That's all Descarte's needed to say. eye roll
Okay, now that that is squared away, Descartes rules out the other possibility, that the idea of God arises from our own invention. Disclaimer, this argument seems quite weak to me.
But, the argument goes like this:
Things with lower degrees of reality cannot cause things with higher degrees of reality. (think: the color gray of a stone cannot cause the stone, but the stone can cause the color grey to arise, or something like that, i’m not totally sure honestly)
The infinite has a higher degree of reality than the finite because of the causality basis from earlier (infinite things require less to cause them than a finite thing would)
God is infinite.
Therefore, as finite beings, we are incapable of inventing the idea of an infinite thing.
With these premises, it’s clear that according to Descartes, since we have an idea of God that neither arises from the senses nor from our own invention, then idea must have been placed there by the infinite thing itself: God.
Issues with this proof:
This relies on the fact that something infinite has more ‘reality’ than something finite. To me this feels counter-intuitive because our reality is built upon finite things. Specifically, if the only thing in the world known clearly and distinctly is that “I am thinking, therefore I am,” and from that, it immediately follows from that “I am a finite thing,” then why would an infinite thing have more reality than that which I know for certain???? In other words, finiteness necessarily follows from “I think therefore I am” in a way that infiniteness does not. And if that is the starting point for that which I know, then it seems to me that the finite which is within our reach has a higher level of objective reality. But, honestly I just need to understand Descartes definition of reality a bit better because I admittently just learned it today.
This argument also relies on the fact that a finite being cannot conceive of something infinite. This can only really be proven by Descartes definitions of reality in a way where his own definitions beg the answer. To me, this also feels counter-intuitive because I think that as long as I have a concept of finite quantities and finite extensions, it naturally follows that I can ‘discover’ the concept of infinity through reason quite simply. First, I can continue to add more finite quantities together until I see the pattern that something can always be added, or I can continuously cut the finite quantities until I see the pattern that there is always something more to be cut. This is precisely the definition of the indefinite that we have reasoned to from the finite. (Keep in mind, that the indefinite is different than the finite— a brick is clearly a finite object, yet it can be indefinitely cut up, whereas something truly infinite is just an infinite object in itself. ) Therefore, once we reason to the indefinite I think it naturally follows that we can reason to the infinite with one more step of extrapolating. Once we see how something can be split up indefinitely, we can imagine indefiniteness in itself, which is just infinity.
Basically, this can all be boiled down to the common criticism of "you can't just think something into existence."
Proof 2: We do not have the power of creating ourselves, so something must be creating us.
This can be seen in three simple premises:
Creation and preservation are the same thing. I.e. The fact that I was once created is no different than the fact that I continuously am preserved and continue to exist each moment.
I know that I am not creating myself every moment.
Something must exist that keeps creating me every moment so that I am preserved.
Sure, there’s lots of issues here too, but this resonates with me because it reminds me that I do not have the power to create myself.
But, nevertheless, here are the issues I still have:
First, it can easily be debated that creation is in fact not the same thing as preservation and that something can be created or equivalently, set in motion, such that everything that follows is a domino effect preserved by the first force. I totally agree with debating this point.
Secondly, it is a bit fuzzy as to whether or not I can preserve myself. I can definitely not preserve myself each moment if I chose to. More than that, if we really do cling to the idea that “I think therefore I am,” then by thinking, I am preserving myself each moment. (Although I guess thinking isn’t really a choice we have, so we don't fully have authority to preserve ourselves) Regardless, this point could be debated.
So, if there are these glaring issues, then why does this one resonate with me more than the last argument?
It resonates with me despite those problems because it reminds me that even if I tried really hard, I have no capacity to create myself and am obviously reliant on something else bigger to create me.
This is obviously a very natural view that all of us hold, but I forget it sometimes and this argument brought it back to the front of my mind.
Consciously remembering that there is something necessarily bigger than myself is, I think, the whole point of philosophizing about this question of God anyway; it’s not necessarily to prove or disprove anything, but just to reflect on the enormity of this place that we are in that we know we cannot create ourselves.
This has clearly been a lot of rambling, but it’s just my thoughts from after class today.
I have lots more to read and learn about Descartes' proof of the existence of God, and there's even way more proofs by different philosophers that I can’t wait to read too! So obviously this is not the end of the discussion. More to come!
With much love,
Arden
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