Descartes' Thoughts On Religion

Descartes gives us extensive material on God, unlike his views on morality and society. In the Discourse he praises, “the constitution of the true Religion whose ordinances are of God alone.” God to Descartes is, “a substance that is infinite [eternal, immutable], independent, all-knowing, all-powerful, and by which everything else, if anything else does exist, [must] have been created.”

Descartes presents to us an argument for God’s existence, in Meditations, which Kant later renames the ontological argument. This argument starts with “the idea of God” as “the idea of a supremely perfect Being.” But “a supremely perfect Being,” by definition, “possesses every sort of perfection,: including that of existence, “since existence is one of these.” If one was to separate existence from the idea of God, by definition that person is no longer thinking of God. “For it is not within my power to think of God without existence.” “And this necessity suffices to make me conclude (after having recognized that existence is a perfection) that these first and sovereign Being really exists.” “And so I very clearly recognize that the certainty recognize that the certainty and truth of all knowledge depends alone on the knowledge of the true God, insomuch that, before I knew Him, I could not have a perfect knowledge of any other thing.”