René Descartes Made a Couple of Assumptions That Have Been Debated Ever Since in His Proof

René Descartes made a couple of assumptions that have been debated ever since in his proof of God’s existence. His statements in Discourse on Method are that it is better to know than to doubt, that the impure cannot create something more pure, and that the idea of purity is better than the existence of impurity. Going from these posits, he states he is impure since he can doubt, that he has the idea of God in his mind, that an impure being cannot create the pure idea of God so man could not have done it, so that pure idea must have come from a pure being, and the only pure being in existence is God, and therefore God exists. (Of course, Descartes does not take into account the fact that he is an imperfect being trying to use imperfect logic about a perfect being’s existence, but that is one reason why the debates continue)

Nearly every religion believes in a supreme being, but none of them attempt to prove such a being exists through any Cartesian logic, and looking at a wider view of religion, it is flawed and unspecific. Christianity, in fact, states that it is better to not know and yet believe, rather to have a proof and perfect knowledge of God. Descartes proof fails to prove that the God that he believed in is the one and only God. Some, like the Judeo-Christian Elohim, the Jewish Yahweh, and the Islam Allah, are perfect and pure while some, like the Greek Zeus or the gods in the Norse traditions of Yggdrasil, are somewhat less so. The defining characteristic of supreme beings is that they created the world and have authority over life and death. This definition is at odds with Descartes’s view that God is always perfect and pure, so his proof would fail that test among those whose gods have human failings, so the proof is flawed. Among those that do view God as pure, any of them could use his proof. Followers of Allah’s, Vishnu’s, Elohim, and Yahweh could easily use this proof to say that their god is the one, so Descartes’s proof is unspecific.

René Descartes attempted to use his own logic, which he was greatly skilled in and admired for, to prove something that needs no proof for some people, or uses false premises for others.