Rene Descartes and the existance of God

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Posted by Don on July 17, 2003 at 12:25:35:

The "principle of sufficient reason" is sort of based on the concepts of cause and effect as applied to ideas themselves. Since Descartes has disqualified the use of the senses to prove the existance of God (e.g. "look at the order of the physical universe! there must be a God") he limits his arguments to the realm of ideas themselves. So Descartes applies Aristotlean concepts of causality to make the argument about ideas. For Descartes, ideas don't seem to occur spontaneously, and there seems also to be some sort of conservation in the stuff and creation of ideas. From this comes the concept of sufficient reason, such that ideas of perfection must come from perfect stuff, because imperfect mental stuff cannot create create perfect concepts.

Of course, most people would also have a hard time accepting this principle in step 3, and step 2 seems to be, again, Original Sin, which might be a hard sell to anyone not Christian.

For Descartes, this "proof of God" may have been as much a smoke screen as anything else. Descartes wanted to avoid the fate of Galileo, so he had to be careful not to rub the Church authorities and its Scholastic cronies the wrong way. At the same time he was trying to advance new approaches to reasoning. On top of this, he was also a man of faith who apparently who had no problem separating the realm of faith from the realm of reason. And despite his good faith toward his faith, his works were still condemmed by the Church by the late 17th century, and after Newton nobody of significance probably cared about proofs of God.

So I think it is kind of interesting how even great thinkers need to protect their cultural/philosophical underpinnings against the ramifications of their innovations.

And here I am 400 years later wondering in my own little way if I am doing the same thing. Is upholding the traditions of my parents a good enough reason for being Christian? Is utilitarianism a good enough reason for holding onto the idea of God? Can I conceive of an workable ethical system without the concept of an absolute?

These things kind of elude me.

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Re: Rene Descartes and the existance of God Bob 12:34:14 07/17/03 (0)

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: The "principle of sufficient reason" is sort of based on the concepts of cause and effect as applied to ideas themselves. Since Descartes has disqualified the use of the senses to prove the existance of God (e.g. "look at the order of the physical universe! there must be a God") he limits his arguments to the realm of ideas themselves. So Descartes applies Aristotlean concepts of causality to make the argument about ideas. For Descartes, ideas don't seem to occur spontaneously, and there seems also to be some sort of conservation in the stuff and creation of ideas. From this comes the concept of sufficient reason, such that ideas of perfection must come from perfect stuff, because imperfect mental stuff cannot create create perfect concepts. : : Of course, most people would also have a hard time accepting this principle in step 3, and step 2 seems to be, again, Original Sin, which might be a hard sell to anyone not Christian. : : For Descartes, this "proof of God" may have been as much a smoke screen as anything else. Descartes wanted to avoid the fate of Galileo, so he had to be careful not to rub the Church authorities and its Scholastic cronies the wrong way. At the same time he was trying to advance new approaches to reasoning. On top of this, he was also a man of faith who apparently who had no problem separating the realm of faith from the realm of reason. And despite his good faith toward his faith, his works were still condemmed by the Church by the late 17th century, and after Newton nobody of significance probably cared about proofs of God. : : So I think it is kind of interesting how even great thinkers need to protect their cultural/philosophical underpinnings against the ramifications of their innovations. : : And here I am 400 years later wondering in my own little way if I am doing the same thing. Is upholding the traditions of my parents a good enough reason for being Christian? Is utilitarianism a good enough reason for holding onto the idea of God? Can I conceive of an workable ethical system without the concept of an absolute? : : These things kind of elude me.

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