If you like muffins...

This essay was my final paper in a humanities class. 

It is obnoxiously long for a blog post; I am aware of this.

It pretends to be deep, but I'm quite confident that my feeble three hours of working on this paper did not produce any profoundly groundbreaking thoughts which I am morally obligated to share with mankind.

This is just for your amusement, if you are, in fact, looking to be amused.

So, if you're familiar with René Descartes... Or you enjoy pondering the nature of God and the universe... Or you feel like subjecting yourself to four pages of philosophical rhetoric.... Well, then this blog post is for you.

Knock yourself out:

Prompt: Descartes offers several proofs of God’s existence. Evaluate his proofs. What would count as success for Descartes? If you think Descartes is successful, what is the concept ‘God’ that Descartes is employing?

René Descartes was a rationalist philosopher. The rationalists wanted to prove everything by reason alone, because they thought that 'the senses' were unreliable. Generally, people tend to think that the existence of God can only be proven by using both senses and reason, but Descartes' attempted to logically prove the existence of god with reason alone. One can build arguments against in his theories, but I have concluded that Descartes presents valid, successful reasoning.

René Descartes spent significant amounts of time considering human knowledge, and in doing so he attempted to whittle down extraneous, circumstantial human understanding to find the things that he could know for sure. He discarded all the wisdom, understanding, and information he had gained from his experiences and his senses, which he had deemed untrustworthy, and discovered that he knew essentially nothing at all. He doubted every bit of knowledge he thought he had, everything except his very existence. The reasoning behind this was that, because he doubted, he could be at least sure that a being who doubted had to exist. He could be certain that he himself was in existence. This is the meaning behind Descartes' famous saying: 'Cogito, ergo sum.' — 'I think, therefore I am.'

After arriving at this premise, Descartes ventured to prove the existence of a god. His proofs can be simplified and summarized as such: First: I exist. Second: in my mind there is the notion of a perfect being. Third: an imperfect being, like myself, cannot think up the notion of a perfect being. Fourth: therefore, the notion of a perfect being must have originated from the perfect being himself. Fifth: a perfect being would not be perfect if it did not exist. Sixth: therefore, a perfect being must exist.

So is Descartes' reasoning sound? Does this argument irrefutably prove to us that there is a god? I think we can all agree that the first point is valid. We can all be sure of our own existence. No one argues that they don't exist; if they did, they wouldn't be there to argue their opinion anyway.

The second proof, however, is not as irrefutably true as the first. It is apparent that Descartes had an idea of a perfect entity in his mind. I find that I am in the same position as he, but there are certainly people in the world who don't have this kind of idea. What are they supposed to believe? Should they assume that, because Descartes and myself believe there is a god, God exists and simply failed to put that idea into their minds? Or should they make the assumption that a belief in a god is not the innate, natural position that Descartes thought it was? It is very evident that not everyone in the world has this idea of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving god. Many Christians actually believe that mankind is not capable of conceiving and grasping the idea of God. This seems to be in direct conflict with Descartes' belief that everybody has this idea of a perfect being from birth, yet this Christian belief does not contradict Descartes' view; it supports it. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, "He has set eternity in the hearts of men; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end." So all people, while incapable of fully comprehending God—though some do more than others—have an inner longing for something that lasts beyond this life. This idea carries over to support the Descartes' third point.

He postulates that an imperfect being, such as himself, would never be capable of thinking up the notion of a perfect being. When I make blueberry muffins, I'm under no delusion that the muffins think about me. Yet I can conclude even more decisively that they aren't thinking up a mystical creature that invented them. They aren't thinking at all; they're muffins. Now, if when I was making them I had sprinkled into the batter a teaspoon of imagination, that might be more plausible. But it isn't within the power of the muffins to acquire such an imagination; that ability rests with the baker—me—assuming I possess, somewhere in my kitchen, a jar of imagination without which baked goods of any kind could not hope to fathom myself, the Easter Bunny, or any notion of what happens after they've been chewed up and swallowed. The point is this: the ability to imagine lies in the creator, and the creator alone. This is something Descartes recognized. If creation has the capacity to imagine things, it is imperative to understand that that ability could have only been given by a Creator. This brings us to the fourth and fifth pieces of his argument.

The fourth and fifth points present very simple and valid lines of logic, which are congruent with all previous proofs. If one logically reaches the conclusion that an imperfect being could not imagine perfection without the idea of perfection, or eternity, having been placed in the imperfect being's mind, the next practical resolution is that perfection must, in one form or another, exist. To try to reason the acquisition of a notion of God that didn't come from God is to attempt a rather vast leap in reasoning; how else could a flawed being fathom perfection? Furthermore, in response to the fifth postulate, how could something be perfect that does not exist? Existence is a necessary attribute of a perfect being; existence is a necessary attribute of anything. This is backed up in the reasoning of the first, second, and third postulates and reflected in Descartes' view of our knowledge derived from experience. 

Descartes successfully builds a logical argument to prove the existence of a god. He does not succeed in determining which god, specifically, but instead the inherent truth that a perfect being does exist. He succeeds in that he is able to reach a conclusion not from senses or knowledge gained from experience, but merely from the nature of existence itself. This is the essence of his reasoning. Like any conclusion reached using Descartes method, the understanding and acceptance of each piece of this puzzle is crucial in grasping the theory as a whole. Pascal reminded us that this is the most important conclusion we can reach; as C.S. Lewis said, "Christianity, if false, is of no importance and, if true, is of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important."