Existence of Divinity and Soul: A Philosophical Refute to Atheism
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Existence of Divinity and Soul: A Philosophical Refute to Atheism
The debate between theologians and atheists regarding the existence of God and the soul has been going on since time immemorial. Atheists refute the claim of the existence of God and soul by posing logical and rational matter-of-fact arguments from the physical world, which are hard to counter using notions and dogmas of faith and theology. Especially in the wake of the Reformation, skepticism about God and soul increased, and after the discovery of America, it received more impetus. Consequently, theology lost its status as “the mother of sciences.” Finally, industrial and scientific revolutions drove the notion of God out of modern society and replaced it with an impersonal nature as a source of causal explanation (Pagden 79). Thus, although theology still exists and people believe in it, skeptics refute it with much stronger arguments than before.
In his argument against atheism, a renowned philosopher, Descartes, suggests that the doctrines cannot convince non-believers of faith and Scriptures; conversely, the debate regarding the existence of God and soul can only be settled and won by theologians using a philosophy based on natural reasoning (Descartes 1). He believes that there is sufficient natural reasoning to verify the existence of God to the atheists and lists several reasons that can demonstrate the existence of God and soul in his essay. On a similar note, in his famous “An Essay on Man,” Alexander Pope validates the concept of God using philosophical propositions based on natural reasoning. These two works provide enough philosophical reasoning to refute the claims of atheists on logical and rational grounds. Therefore, this essay assesses and analyses the philosophical doctrines of both Descartes and Pope to establish a firm ground for theology against atheism.
In one of his “Selected Philosophical Writings,” Descartes provides solid and irrefutable reasoning in favor of divinity. In his second meditation, he uses a logical proposition to validate the separate existence of body and mind by proposing that the body is a divisible entity. In contrast, the mind is an indivisible entity. Descartes logically explains his argument that a person can think of a body as divided into two halves or many parts; conversely, the same person cannot conceive a mind divided into parts. Therefore, he verifies that these two entities are different and even contrary (Descartes 10). Furthermore, Descartes makes logical analogies to prove the soul’s immortality and affirms that the human mind does not change with changes in its perception and understanding, whereas the human body, once it changes, does not revert to its original state (Descartes 10). Therefore, he identifies the human soul and body as two separate and contradictory entities, and this proposition paves the way for his further argument in favor of divinity.
One of the basic instincts of humans is the search for perfection, and Descartes uses this instinctive human urge as an example to prove the existence of God. He uses the example of man’s quest for absolute perfection as one of the phenomena whose underlying cause must be something that meets the standards of being absolutely perfect. This fact indicates that if someone dreams of a perfect machine, this vision of an ideal machine must have stemmed from a cause. Using this analogy, he explicates this argument on the existence of God and states: “in the same way the idea of God, which is found in us, demands God himself for its cause” (Descartes 11). Thus, he puts forward a strong case in favor of the existence of God by using his philosophical principles that the idea of something is the proof of its existence.
The idea of God being an infinite being with infinite prowess is a manifestation of His absolute and ethereal nature beyond the nature of material things. In Meditation III: Of God That He Exists, Descartes uses very logical and natural philosophical arguments to convince the non-believers about the existence of God. He elaborates on the traits of being a God, such as “independent, all-knowing, all-powerful” (Descartes 35). However, for him, these traits are so glorious, excellent, and non-human that a finite mind like him cannot trace their origin in his own thinking and judgment. In simple words, a finite being cannot think of ideas associated with an infinite being on its own. For the same reason, the idea of God is not the working of a man’s own finite mind but “given me by some substance, in reality, infinite” (Descartes 35). This philosophical analogy further reinforces his argument about the existence of God in many ways.
For instance, it clarifies that God’s traits are not conceivable by a finite human mind; furthermore, it provides a rationale for the existence of God by tracing His origin in the realm of infinity which is beyond the grasp of the human mind. For the same, this argument logically claims that God cannot be a figment of the imagination of the finite human mind; this argument also substantiates the case of the existence of the soul since a human can feel an infinite God only through an infinite substance that is soul. Thus this explains the existence of God and soul using philosophical reasoning that appeals to logic and rationality and, therefore, can be put forward to convince the atheists on logical and rational grounds.
Can a human exist without God? This is the question that Descartes puts forward to proceed with his philosophical argument further. He asks if God does not exist, then anything that has caused his existence would be less perfect than God because “anything more perfect, or even equal to God, cannot be thought or imagined” (Descartes 37). Descartes moves further forward and proposes that maybe he is responsible for his existence himself. In that case, he would have made himself incredibly perfect and would logically not desire any more perfection as he is the God himself. Moreover, suppose this argument was accurate; in that case, his desire for knowledge should not exist because being a creator of himself from nothingness is a greater perfection than the quest of knowledge, which he does not have right now (Descartes 37). This rationale automatically refutes the notion of the spontaneous existence of humans and other beings.
Having a finite body does not account for the existence of a perfect, infinite soul; for the same reason, the existence of human thinking or mind can only be used to explain the existence of the soul. In the same vein, Descartes considers the mind as purely intelligible compared to the incomprehensible corporal body; it is the mind that is capable of independent existence from corporal body parts. In this mind, one thinks of an independent and complete God. Therefore, a dependent and incomplete mind cannot contemplate an infinite, independent, and complete being (Descartes 42). Using this analogy, Descartes verifies the existence of an independent and infinite within the finite and dependent human body as it is the soul alone that can comprehend God’s existence and not the corporal body.
These are the main logical propositions Descartes makes in his argument in favor of the existence of God and soul. Undoubtedly, these arguments make a strong case for the existence of God and soul in terms of rationality and basic human logic and clarif...