Descartes gave an alternative to Plato’s idealism and Aristotle’s realism in his philosophy of using doubt where he proposed that doubting something is the only way to ensure that it is real. From this, he formulated an ontological argument for the existence of God which unfortunately has some dubitable parts. According to Descartes, God is a perfect being, and if not so, He would not be perfect. The ‘I’ is imperfect and undoubtedly exists so if God was imperfect, then he would not exist because he would be human.
Descartes uses this as a premise to explain the existence of everything where he says that because God is perfect, he would not deceive us meaning that he could not create real man and make everything around him fake meaning that everything we see is real. However, using doubt, how do we know what we are seeing is real? People often see dreams and hallucinations, and no matter how convincing they may be, they are illusions. Therefore, God’s perfection does not make everything real.
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Descartes says that God’s perfection is an innate idea but if his philosophy is built on doubt, how can we be sure that this concept of God exists and that it is not a figment of our imagination or socialized into us by society? He also equates perfection to God so do atheists have no innate idea of perfection because they don’t believe that God exists? It seems more realistic that we believe in the existence of God because we are taught to when we are young.
If God is a perfect being meaning that he is all-knowing, all-powerful and all-good, why would he create imperfect beings in humans? Moreover, why are there so many imperfections and evil things that are associated with Him such as the death and disease of children which are said to be the will of God? Admittedly, a perfect being would not wish harm on innocent children for whatever reason.
