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Originally Posted by Drayab
Which of course is a bunch of bull because we all know that it is easy to imagine things that don't exist. Dragons, unicorns, superstrings...
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The imagination is the sum of the parts of what we have experienced and observed. Dragons are lizards, dinosaurs, and fire. Unicorns are horses with horns. Superstrings...well M theory makes more sense to me, but it's not impossible. Adn both string theory and M theory are based on comparing physics to fabrics and biology.
The idea of a supreme being has existed since before language. It is *possible* that God is not a combination of other things, as parts of God are unique unto Himself. While this is far from proof, this does cancel out Dryabs claim.
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Originally Posted by Darwin
Although it is popular among Christian philosophers to point to Descartes statements about God, I have certainly read opinions from others that Descartes added this to his philosophy merely to avoid persecution by the church.
It certainly doesn't fit in with the rest of his ideas, it just seems stuck on as a pious afterthought. We must remember that the atmosphere at the time made it terribly dangerous to express ideas that even hinted at less than orthodox ideas about God, much less atheism. This is one reason that Descartes spent much of his life outside France, where the Catholic Church was particularly intolerant, and very dangerous to him. Descartes was eager to stay alive.
Spinoza, who was a great admirer of Descartes, was excommunicated from the Jewish community of Amsterdam because his ideas were seen as both threatening to Jewish theology of the time, and perhaps most importantly, because they might create danger for his community from the Christians.
So I don't think that Descartes' statement about God has to be taken very seriously today, as I think it interferes with our appreciation of his wisdom.
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That's an interesting, and certianally possible theory, but we won't know that till we meet Decartes in heaven. Or we won't.