Rene Descartes Problem Of Evil

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Descartes is a philosopher who wrote the Meditations establishing the existence of mind, matter, and God. He considers the problems of the sources and nature of knowledge; the validity of truth; the nature and destiny of man; the existence of god, and the creation of the universe. In his time conventional ideas were often being questioned and Descartes was eager to come across a new method for accessing the truth.
His original view was that God created the universe and he resembles the mind because both do not need physical bodies to exist. If a belief can be doubted then it is not certain and does not make a good foundation. At first he considered authorities such as parents, teachers, priests, etc. but found that they are not good sources …show more content…

Mine and all existence is contingent except God. So why did god create Descartes, an imperfect being that doubts and makes mistakes. Descartes must confront why God would allow us to exist and why imperfections such as evil are present. The problem of evil is the problem that results when we consider that a perfect good god has created a universe in which evil exists. The way that can be explained is God gave us completely perfect free will on the one hand and an imperfect intellect on the on the other. Hence we are responsible for evil not Him. Descartes uses the Cartesian Circle to help prove Gods existence. He says that we know that God exists because we have the ability to clearly and distinctly perceive things. Since God is non-deceiving we know everything that we perceive is true. He then goes on to say that we can be certain that God exists solely because we clearly and distinctly perceive him. This argument seems to make a lot of sense, when in actuality Descartes is just making a circular argument. This argument is the same as trying to define a word using a part of that word in the definition.Descartes defines God as a substance that is infinite *eternal, immutable* independent, supremely intelligent, supremely powerful, and which created both myself and everything else. He concludes that since he has an idea of God, that such a God must truly exist. He makes some valid …show more content…

An idea is any conscious mental state. He finds that he possesses the idea of a perfect being. A perfect being has all perfectible qualities to an infinite extent. The way he goes on proving god exists is that if Descartes, an imperfect being, who makes mistakes, has an idea of a perfect being the being must exist. The way he explains this is ideas are effects, so every idea has a cause, and all events have a cause. The cause of an idea must be at least as real and perfect as what the idea is about. So, the cause of my idea of a perfect being can 't be less real or perfect then what my idea is about. This means I am not the cause of this idea, since I am not perfect and I have

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