Descartes Ontological Argument for God's Existence

The purpose of this paper will be to examine Descartes' argument for the existence of God. First we will review Descartes' proof for the existence of God. Then we will discuss the reasons that Descartes has for proving God's existence. We will also discuss some consequences that appear as a result of God's existence. Finally we will point to some complications and problems that exist within the proof.

The primary problem with most religions in the world has always been that they presuppose faith; that is one cannot be reasoned into believing in a religion, if such wasn't the case then we would have seen a huge migration to one religion or another. In any given religion, the main proof of God's existence is the fact that the holy scriptures- whichever ones they maybe- inform us of his existence and his powers. Then again, we only believe in these scriptures because we think that they come from God.

Université René Descartes

Anselm of Canterbury was the first to attempt an o...

René Descartes at work

Suffice to say, this is a circular argument that cannot be used as a proof. We would all like to believe that we believe in God and our given religion because of faith. But what is faith? And how can a Muslim, a Jew, and a Christian all possess the same certainty about their given religions without there being any doubt in their minds as to the certainty of their religions and faith.

Descartes set out to build a set of arguments designed to prove God's existence. On those, he constructed all of his other arguments. His goal in proving God's existence was twofold; he wanted to build ground to base his arguments on, that is that he exists ...etc. That goal will not be discussed in too much depth in this paper. It is his other goal, the...