what was descartes proof of god??

Question

and has he been proven wrong?

Answer 1

His arguments are about as good as Tolstoy's, and that is not being nice. Read them for yourself and decide.

Answer 2

1 I exist
2 I have an idea of a supremely perfect being, i.e. a being having all perfections.
3 As an imperfect being I would be unable to create such a concept through my own thoughts.
4 The concept must have come from God.
5 To be a perfect being God must exist.
6 God exists.

Talk about Swiss cheese! What about the perfect Cosmic Teapot? I can conceive it - hell, I even have a photograph of it!

The best results of this dotty train-wreck of logic are the parodies it spawned, including the near-identical premises that lead to the conclusion that God *doesn't* exist - because a Creator who could make a universe without existing would be 'greater' (and therefore more perfect) than one who did. QED.

The most serious hole lies in the premise that existence is 'a perfection' - a quality that perfect things must have. It practically demands that the universe be full of perfect things, including any perfect thing that can be conceptualised. In reality perfect thing are rather thin on the ground - even nonexistent.

Well, this is what passes for evidence of deities. Any resemblance to straw-clutching is entirely appropriate.

CD

Answer 3

If by proven wrong, you mean are his arguments invalid, then yes. Descartes arguments are logically flawed. His argument gets a bit complicated because of some tricky semantics, but basically (this is a gross generalization), it goes like this:

God can't be contingent, so either He MUST exist, or he CAN'T exist.

In order for God's existence to be logically impossible (i.e., in order for it to be true that God CAN'T exist), there would have to be a logical contradiction in the concept of Him existing. There isn't one(i.e., I can conceive of God existing without contradicting myself). Therefore, God MUST exist.

The problem with this argument is that it can be reversed. There is also no contradiction in thinking that God does not exist, which, according to Descartes' argument, would prove that He CAN'T exist.

As I said, this is a brass tacks version. You'd have to study Descartes' Meditations for the detailed version.

Answer 4

Basically, Descartes thought that we could be being decieved at every turn by an evil demon God. This Evil Demon could, logically, make us think that all of our falsehoods are actually true and vice, versa. Descartes felt that he could know one thing for certain, though, despite this evil demon. That is that he is thinking. The problem was that he could have no certain knowledge about the world outside his own mind. Thus, he thought that since we do know things about the external world and they are not false, then God must exist to ensure that this is so. God is not a deciever, and since Descartes thought that we did have certain knowledge about things outside of our minds that this proved that God existed. Of course, this argument is not very convincing and is not logically valid, and so it has not been taken very seriously as of late.