Proving the Existence of God through Rational Deduction of Rene Descartes
By
Aiman Reyaz, New Age Islam
September 08, 2013
The French philosopher, scientist and
mathematician, Rene Descartes (1596-1650) is considered to be the father of
modern philosophy because of several reasons, but the most important of all is
his radically new way of thinking which broke away from most of scholasticism (
a mixture of the Aristotelian philosophy with Christian theology). And
according to Bertrand Russell, “this had not happened since Aristotle, and is a
sign of the new self-confidence that resulted from the progress of science.”
There was no one who could have imagined
that doubt could lead to proof- proof of the infinite, perfect Being i.e., God.
The question which Descartes is trying to answer is, ‘what can we know with
certainty?’ we have, on the one hand, our scholastic tradition (this includes
the thought of Aristotle and all the Medieval Christian thinkers and most
especially of St Thomas Aquinas) on the other hand we have this new, exciting
and “heretic” Galilean, Copernican science. How can we deduce objectively which
is right?
The way to do this, according to Descartes,
is to find a new foundation, of what some called the “Archimedean point” for
all knowledge 2, 3. This point is the hypothetical point from where one can
objectively perceive the subject with totality. The expression comes from
Archimedes, who said that if given the right size of lever, and standing at the
correct point he could lift the earth. Ever since then the notion of this
point, this foundation point for all knowledge, has fascinated philosophers,
and more especially to Descartes.
So what he hopes is to find some absolute
crux of certainty, of which there can be no doubt. He is in search for that
something, that foundation where he could base and derive all his knowledge.
And the way to do this is- wait for it- try to doubt everything, yes
everything. Question everything, doubt everything, think negatively as if
nothing exists and see if any belief can’t be doubted 4.
His way of deducing things is very
intriguing. He begins by doubting every belief, but he realises that he can’t
list all his beliefs. So he categorises them in different branches and doubt
each branch. The first thing he does is to ask that he experiences thousands of
sense experience and all the “knowledge” which he has, are they genuine or are
they dubitable?
For example when we insert a s
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