Descartes Existence of God Cosmological Argument Paper I need help in revising this paper and i also need to add 500 more words into it. i have to use Chic

Descartes Existence of God Cosmological Argument Paper I need help in revising this paper and i also need to add 500 more words into it. i have to use Chicago Notes and Bibliography style, also i have to cite Descartes or Hume. heres what my peer reviewer wrote: The basic content is good – you have a solid starting point. In your revision you will need to expand on the explanation of Descartes’ position and explain Hume’s (you haven’t really covered Hume at all yet). You’d then make a brief case for which is better. Given your intro, you’ll also want to explain what this does to undermine Descartes’ proof for the existence of God. Running head: DESCARTES’ COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF
GOD
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Descartes’ Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God
Faisal Almeshhen
Critical Thinking
April 7 2019
DESCARTES’ COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
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Introduction
In philosophy as well as natural theology, the cosmological argument is basically an
argument that attempts to prove the existence of a unique being that is God by the facts that things
exist and assuming that these things must have a cause that can only be due to a supernatural event.
Thomas Aquinas is known to have developed the most popular argument on the existence of God
but not proof, other prominent figures have argued about this concept but this paper will only focus
on the text of Descartes while comparing it with similar text by Parmenides or Hume and try to
disprove his argument for the existence of God. It is in his Fifth and third meditation where
Descartes speaks more about the existence of God and gives an argument of why he believes in
the existence of God.
Descartes’ meditations projects can be said to have contributed to an extensive attempt at
determining certainty or absolute truth, where he tried to question the existence of a unique being.
Descartes used hyperbolic doubt to seek true knowledge in establishing the existence of the
material world, where he started his meditations by trying to identify doubts in his beliefs in order
to reject them. Descartes further reflection in his first meditation leads to his skeptical argument
of he is dreaming or being deceived by an evil demon misleading him to view everything he thinks
as false. It is from this that he is able to question his own existence, where he becomes aware of
his own mind and certain he exists, and his existence can not be doubted. After being certain he
exists, Descartes moves on to the issue of the external world to prove God’s existence in his third
meditation. However, in this third meditation, he provides a cosmological argument to arrive at an
DESCARTES’ COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
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unambiguous prediction for the existence of clear and distinct truth for the existence of God, which
raises some concerns since it is viewed to have provided an unsound argument (Lascano, &
Kaufman, 2017).
There is various plausibility’s in his cosmological argument, in the account of God’s
existence in meditation three and five. In meditation three he tries to prove God existence from
God’s activities, while in five he attempts to deduce God’s existence form his nature. To argue on
this objectives, Descartes bases his underlying assumption on “innate ideas” (ideas inherent in
mind that gives him the understanding of supreme God) and “realities”- where he defines formal
and intentional or objective realities. Formal reality can simply be described as a reality of which
a substance or something contains a virtue of occurrence. Descartes introduces differentiation of
formal reality into infinite, finite, and modal grades, where unlike all substances that have finite
reality, God is only being that has infinite formal reality, while the mind follows the ideas that
have a modal formal reality. He also introduces the intentional or objective reality in the occurrence
of idea representing something else, where an idea of God’s existence has an infinite intentional
reality. These concepts prove crucial to causal argument Descartes presents for the God existence
(Spark notes, 2018). It is from the distinction of these aspects that he is able to create his logic of
“nothing can come from nothing”, where for an effect to happen in the first place there must be a
reality, and an effect must have a much reality as its cause, as, so something perfect cannot come
or be made from something that is less perfect. It is from these perspectives Descartes gets his idea
of God. He believed also believed that all ideas including those are not true come from other ideas
that are real, like a flying bull is not a real idea, but can be said to originate from a real idea of a
bull put together with a flying object. Therefore, the idea of God as per Descartes, came from
DESCARTES’ COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
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something real as God, and because there is no evident thing here on earth that is real as God, then
he concludes to have been born with the idea, so God exists (Lascano, & Kaufman, 2017).
However, despite many plausibilities in Descartes argument of God’s existence mainly
based on his premises structured to deduce the existence of God, where once accepted one can be
able to say God exists, but when any of the premises is denied, then the conclusion fails. It is from
these premises Descartes believed to have solved the problem of proving God exists, but many
have argued against it and disapproving his arguments (Creech, 2015). David Hume and Descartes
argue on our ability to have the knowledge, but providing different restrictions. Hume holds a
different position or a competitive alternative to Descartes casual argument of the existence of
God. He argues that we can not have knowledge of actual God existence hence we cannot prove
His existence as Descartes. Hume gives a view of Descartes premises to be flawed by arguing that
we can get knowledge of our ideas using experience such as from seven philosophical relations
instead of innate ideas as Descartes suggested. Hume proof that nothing can necessary be certain
and the knowledge of the external world is impossible, hence we can have the imagination or idea
of God and not the reality.
The theories of Hume and Descartes both have strengths and weaknesses. Descartes theory
strength is that he could provide premises to proof it, but had a weakness is his innate ideas that
are open to criticism. People are not born with the mind they gain it after living for some time.
Hume believes that ideas originate from impressions, but this has a weakness in that it can not be
proved as it is based on imagination. Hume belief has strength in all ideas came from experience
or impression that it is not open to criticism (Owens, n.d).
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To conclude, Hume theory seems successful that Descartes, as it played a key role in
undermining the Descartes causal argument for the existence of God. It created a stronger
argument in the impression of reflection more than Descartes innate ideas. Based on Hume
position, one can be able to refute the presupposition that Descartes offered concerning innate
ideas of God. Human being as well as other animals can be said to acquire knowledge from
instincts and habitats, something that makes me to agree with Hume in understanding things based
on experience we have of encountering them. Therefore, Descartes claim of God’s existence as
seen in meditation three and five is unfounded.
DESCARTES’ COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
References
Creech, P. B. (2015). The Problem of Infinity in Meditation III. Global Tides, 9(1), 1.
Lascano, M. P., & Kaufman, D. (2017). Arguments for the Existence of God. In The Routledge
Companion to Seventeenth Century Philosophy (pp. 505-535). Routledge.
Spark notes. (2018). Principles of Philosophy by: Rene Descartes. Retrieved from
https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/principles/terms/
Owens, D. Skepticisms: Descartes and Hume. Retrieved from
http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/1211/1/owensdj3.htm
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