Descartes And Paley's Proof For The Existence Of God
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Does God exist? If so how can this be proven? These are the two questions that guided philosophers Descartes, Pascal and Paley in their proofs for God. Each man provides his take on the ultimate question and attempts to solidify their answer. Descartes Mediations Three and Five provide a wide take on the question, while Pascal offers a Wager and invites the reader to play a game while lastly Paley discovers a stone in the woods. In the following essay, I will detail each of these philosopher’s proofs of God and provide an explanation as to why I believe Paley’s Theological Argument contains the best explanation to the existence of a supreme being. Meditation Three explains that God must exist because he has infinite objective…show more content… God by definition is perfect and perfection in its essence calls for existence. Descartes comes to the conclusion that it is a contradiction to believe that God is supremely perfect but does not existence. Perfection entails existence or it would not actually be perfect. As an example he uses a triangle, explaining that even though triangles do not really “exist” outside our imaginations, their properties are fixed. He explains that even though the idea of a particular triangle might only exist in my mind, all triangles have the same angles and properties. He could not have invented this idea of a triangle because its properties are fixed and universal wherever he goes. Descartes uses the same logical to prove the existence of God, he explains “[t]hus it is no less contradictory to think of God (that is, a supremely perfect being) lacking existence (that is, lacking some perfection) than it is to think a mountain without a valley.” God must exist by definition much like a mountain must have a valley. Descartes believed that there was no way around this logic, to have a supremely perfect being, who can not deceive His creations, this being must