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rene3.txt
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1993-06-20
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Rene Descartes' Ontological proof regarding the existance of God.
By: Andy Montgomery
E-Mail: Exec-PC (414)-789-4210
I can remember looking up into the night sky and wondering at the
countless stars, pondering infinity and the existence of God. I can remember
because it was just last week. Since man climbed down from the trees, he's
done this. I'm no different. I do it all of the time. I lost a lot of sleep
as a child thinking about God, etc. As a CHILD. Well, I'm a grown-up now,
but to say that I still don't lose sleep over it would be a lie. Rene
Descartes woke up all of that existential phenomenological dread in me again.
Gee... thank's Rene'!
Descartes gives it the old college try on this one, I must admit. He got
me all pumped up and thinking that finally someone was going to give me the
proof to ease my soul. Many in the class were truly hopeful, and a few of us
often talked for hours after class of Descartes' ideas. But you can normally
punch a hole or two in any argument. I may have done that. Bummer! Just
when you think you've finally gotten to the truth. . .
After thoughtfully proving that he exists, (Cogito Ergo Sum: "I think,
therefore I exist") Descartes set off to prove the existence of God. He did.
But there's a problem. But I'll get to that later. Descartes starts off by
reasoning that he's not perfect. This is true. He's not omnipotent, eternal,
immutable, and all of that other good Godlike stuff. "Well," Descartes
wonders, "if I know that I'm not perfect, then where did I get the idea of
perfection from?" Good question. He reasons that he must have gotten the
idea from something that's more perfect than himself. But where do you find
this perfection?
He looks for perfection in nature, but it's not there. He realizes that
he's more perfect than anything else in nature, so he couldn't get the idea of
perfection from something less perfect than himself.
He then checks to see if he may have just made it up in his own mind.
Nope. It wouldn't be perfect if it came from a dream, from nothing. It
wouldn't be eternal, etc. Then where?
The last stop arrives after he gets down to the simplest answer, and
holds it up to be measured by his truth yardstick. It measured up alright:
Thus the only hypothesis left was that this idea was put in
my mind by a nature that was really more perfect than I was,
which had all the perfections that I could imagine and which
was, in a word, God. To this I added that since I knew some
perfections which I did not posses, I was not the only being in
existence, and that it followed out of necessity that there was
someone else more perfect upon whom I depended and from whom I
had acquired all that I possessed.
TA-DA! God exists! Cool... God exists because he's perfect. If he
weren't perfect, he wouldn't be God. Simple enough. Also, Descartes points
out that God has to exist outside of the corporeal universe. God cannot be
physical. To be physical would be an imperfection, because all corporeal
things can change, they can all change and disintegrate over time. God must
exist outside the bounds of time and space.
Descartes argues that people never could get the answers that he did
about God because they couldn't think about something without picturing it.
But because God is perfect, thereby lacking any corporeal nature, God cannot
be pictured. Philosophy to that day had as its main maxim, "the first thing
in understanding something is to observe it with your senses." You can't
observe God, just as you can't truly observe a geometric object. God is
outside of the observable. As he puts it:
What makes people feel that it is difficult to know of the
existence of God, or even the nature of their own souls, is
that they never consider things higher than corporeal objects.
They are so accustomed never to think of anything without
picturing it--a method of thinking suitable only for material
objects--that everything which is not picturable seems to them
unintelligible.
Descartes sums up God by saying that because perfection--God--is so clear
and distinct, God can't be false. All that we have--all that we are--is
derived from God, and even though we cannot see everything clearly and
distinctly all of the time, that does not mean that nothing can be true, it
only means that we are imperfect beings who cannot see the simplicity of all
things by virtue of our imperfection. That's not God's fault, Descartes says,
that's our fault.
Okay, God exists. God has to because God is perfection. Here's where
the Cartesian argument falls down for me. God is perfect and exists outside
the bounds of time and space. Why? Because if God were corporeal, he would
be subject to manipulation, observation, and change over time. Once again;
God can't be subject to change over time. You see where this is headed?
To use Descartes' own methodology, I'm looking for the clearest answer.
If something is in a state of perfection, it can never change. There can be
no change in it at all. Ever. Why? If it were perfect, it would have no
need to change--it's perfect as is. God, being perfect, couldn't affect
anything because to do so would require action, and action by definition
requires a change in state to act upon something else. God couldn't, for
example, create a cute bunny-rabbit because to do so would require a change of
state; to change would imply that the state it was in prior to the creation of
the cute bunny-rabbit was other than perfect. That can't be because God is
perfect, and can never be in a state other than perfect or else God wouldn't
be God. Therefore, God--eo ipso--his perfection, exists in a state of stasis.
What are the ramifications of this little philosophical mental cramp of
mine? God can never be of--nor ever affect--this material world. God has no
active part in this creation. Could he even have created this reality? All
God is, it seems, is perfection: a state which man uses to measure and
indicate his imperfection. God, by virtue of perfection, is a static,
never-changing entity. We are dependant on God, as Descartes rightly states,
because we are not perfect and in order for there to be imperfection (man)
there must somewhere exist perfection (God).
I guess that I didn't punch a hole in Descartes' existence of God. At
best I may have tripped over the ramifications of God's perfection.
Descartes' math still holds up; God still exists to me. But if my math is up
to snuff, God is an ineffectual entity that never changes due to God's
perfect state.
Or, I could be full of shit... I failed algebra six times in my life.