Philosophy and the Existence of God

The reading of Meditations on First Philosophy presented our philosophy class with an interesting proof of the existence of a god as given by Rene Descartes. A few definitions are needed first. Ideas have objective reality, while objects, things, have formal reality. Objective reality, the reality of ideas, comes in degrees, based on the how much formal reality it is based on. The example is this: the idea that unicorns exists has little objective reality, because unicorns do not have much formal reality. The proof follows as thus

Proof of God (Descartes)

• (Causal Effect) There must be as much (blank) in a cause as the (blank) in the effect (Cause is greater than or equal to effect)
• The Causal Principle (P1) holds true for things with formal reality an for things with objective reality
• If any idea has so much objective reality that Descartes cannot be the cause of it, then something other than Descartes exists
• Descartes has an idea of God
• The divine idea “tops out” the scale of objective reality
• Passivity Principle (I’m not the cause of all my ideas) (perception comes to one without willing it)
• The only thing that could cause the divine idea is a formally real god

The conclusion to this argument being that a god exists. Descartes prudently steers away from claiming the characteristics of god or claiming which god is the correct god (Descartes was a devout Roman Catholic). Descartes does however claim some properties of any divine being so as to ward of those who would doubt his theory. 1) God cannot be a thought created by man, because by the Causal Principle, an imperfect being cannot create a perfect god. 2) God cannot be the sum of culture, family influence, ones own ideas, etc., because a divine being is the perfect one-ness. The list goes on.

Personally. I have a hard time reconciling premise #5 and the idea of objective reality. If the idea of god tops out the scale of objective reality, how is one able to imagine it? Anything that is comprehendible, or thinkable as it were, by humans, cannot tip the scale of objective reality, or one would not be able to think it by my reasoning. Another problem I have is that Descartes has an idea of god. Does not his idea of god represent an imperfect idea, by the Causal Principle? An interesting theory that I believe takes too many "well if this..." moments to be plausible, while also not applying some of his own logic to his argument.