Saturday, October 8, 2011
The Role of God
Descartes attempts to prove God's existence in Meditation III in order to rule out the possibility of an evil genius and to ensure that everything he clearly and distinctly perceives to be true is in fact true. Without discussing the merits of the argument (which we only summarized in class), discuss the role of the existence of God in Descartes' project. Assuming he can prove God's existence, can God guarantee the truth of clear and distinct ideas? Can God guarantee sense perception? Is it wise that God plays such a prominent role in his project?
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God plays a major role in Descartes’ project. In Descartes’ project he argues that God is the answer of all things and knows all, God is a perfect supreme human being. One of Descartes major attempt in his project is to prove that God exist by using his argument “I think there for I am”. He tries to relate that to the existence of God by explaining on page 43 that when we think about a supreme being we think of god just as if we think of a triangle we see one thing a triangle. If we perceive an idea clearly and distinctly then it is true. Rather God can assure someone of their senses and their perceptions to me are skeptical. Because if we cannot neither physical talk to God or see him, all we can know is that he exist then how does that allow us to be sure of what is true or false. If knowing God is true and we will know all things and know what is true then why do we still have faults. This is where Descartes’ argument to me falls at this point. To me he contradicts himself when he says on page 36 that since God has given him the faculty to make no mistakes he should be flawless. Then he goes on to say that God has not given him the full knowledge so therefore he makes mistakes. To me Descartes promise this full knowledge if we believe that God exist but then turns it to say that we will never have full knowledge. So if we will never have full knowledge. How can we be sure that our knowledge is reliable or even true?
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