Descartes proved the existence of God and the human soul on part 4 of his Discourse on the Method. I would like to accentuate some ideas that I got from reading it:1. one’s mere act of thinking proves one’s own existence, that is, the existence of one’s soul ; 2. “god” is what he uses to represent perfection 3. he thinks his ability to think of his own imperfection, and the ability to think of something that is more perfect than he is, have to come from something that is more perfect than he is 4. he tries to find the truth by doubting everything first 5. existence is part of perfection 6. he values “reasoning,” and believe that we should only believe our reasoning
I think the idea of Cogito Ergo Sum is quite edifying. I remember when I was young, I had this thought: How do we know we are not controlled by a giant computer, and everything that we do is preprogrammed? Descartes thinks that ” If I am thinking, therefore I exist.” There could be some variations of this, that can prove this to be true: base on “If I am thinking, therefore I exist,” If I am not thinking, then my existence is in question; on the contrary, if I exist, then I can choose to think or not to think; If I don’t exist, then I can’t be thinking. It’s complex.
As for the existence of god, I do have a few questions in mind after reading this piece. Suppose we are created by a perfect being, “god,” if “god” is so perfect, why did it have to create us? If “god” is perfect, shouldn’t all of its creations be perfect too?
I am so confused.
But at least I know I exist.
Fanliang Cen
Hey Fanliang
I agree on your thoughts on the perfect god. I believe that Descartes was right on god being more perfect then ourselfs and god created us that are not perfect. But aren’t there times that we humans create things that is also not perfect. We experiment in order to create better thing, such as cars, TVs, and we even cross breed different types of dogs. From our mistakes we learn and help us create more perfect things. I see as though we are not perfect because we were created because of his curiosity or a part of his experiment and maybe he went on and created another species that is more perfect.
Hey Fanliang,
I thought your last comment was quite interesting when you questioned the perfect being’s (God) creations. This is a confusing topic because it is true, if got was perfect, why would he need to create other beings? I think the main question that can come from this is what is the actual meaning of “perfect”? And is it the same meaning for all beings?
*Spelling Correction* “if *God* was perfect”