Of René Descartes's Argument For The Existence Of God

In the third Meditation, René Descartes aims to offer an argument for the existence of God, based simply on what he knows with certainty. In this, he reviews his doubts, what he knows for certain, and what he no longer doubts. While arguing the existence of God, Descartes explores God as a possible deceiver, his capacity to overcome this doubt in God’s goodness through formal and objective realities, and how effects supremely rely on their ultimate cause. Through his various claims and objections, Descartes establishes a relationship between a finite idea or event and its infinite cause to prove that God is a perfect being by himself that placed innate ideas of his existence in our thoughts. Before he begins his argument for the existence …show more content…
Therefore, the meditator’s idea about God must have a cause. The meditator cannot be the cause of this idea of a perfect God because he has imperfections and thus could not be the cause of this idea of a perfect being. From this, he can conclude that the cause of his idea is due to God’s existence. God cannot be a deceiver if he is the cause of a perfect idea Descartes’ argument for the existence of God begins with the meditator’s singular idea of God. He claims, “The idea that enables me to understand a supreme deity, eternal, infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, and creator of all things other than himself, clearly has more objective reality within it than do those ideas through which finite substances are displayed” (Descartes 73). Therefore, his idea of God has maximal objective reality. Objective reality is merely means that reality exists independent of our mind. Everyone can identify every aspect of the objective reality because it is a perception of formal realities. He believes this idea must have a cause because everything that comes to exist must have had a cause. This cause that gives that reality to the effect must also posses that reality. Formal reality is