Well you have to keep in mind that Hume was a classic British Empiricist while Descartes was a French Rationalist. That being said, Descartes proof of God is a little more complicated than what you stated.
Descartes firstly set out the Evil Genius which he must now refute, thus he must prove God to exist and be benevolent for him to continue his systematic work for all beliefs.
He starts with the statement that he has ideas, one of which is an all perfect benevolent God.
He then uses three causal principles (note how Hume doubts causality itself lol)
Everything including ideas have a cause
A cause cannot be less real than it’s effect
A cause cannot be less real than the idea it comes from
After setting out these principles he shifts his attention to something more metaphysical:
He states that the more real something is, the more independent it is of other ideas.
i.e. The idea of a chair is dependent to it’s builder
From here he concludes that the idea of God is the most independent of all ideas as God is all powerful and omnipotent. The idea of God does not require anything else for it to exist objectively, and thus the idea of God is most real
Going back to his main argument, after setting his metaphysical reality of ideas, he concludes:
Since the idea of God is the most real, God is the only thing that can cause this idea to exist
Anselm’s argument? That’s a bit crude don’t you think. More like an improvement, an evolution in thinking you might say. Inter-theoretical growth, yes that’s it!
I doubt that anything can be more real than anything else, how many partially real things exist? How can Descarte say that the idea of god is the most independent idea when its obviously derivative of human faculties?
Humans are limited in knowledge, God is all knowing.
Humans are limited in capacity/ability, God is all powerful.
Humans are limited in the length of existance, God is ever present.
Hume’s take on the source of the idea of god seems much more reasonable. For Hume, the idea of God is derivative of our own nature but without limitation.
One would be obliged to ask, was man fashioned in gods image or god fashioned in mans image?
‘Cannot’ and ‘do not’ are two different things. Just because the blind from birth people in the study don’t dream of images, doesn’t neccessarily mean that they are incapable of it. It may very well be the result of a decision of the subconscious.
What exactly does it mean to be ‘real’? Does it mean ‘not imaginary’? (eg not merely a hallucination) Or does it mean ‘genuine’ (eg an original painting, not merely a print)? Or does it mean ‘profound’ (eg “I have real feelings for my wife”)?
Mainly, my point is that comparing flying pigs to an entirely trandescent, omniscient, omnipotent being is ridiculous and proves (or disproves) nothing.
They (the pig and our “God” figure, respectively) are fundamentally different things. The same could be said of comparing a unicorn to said trandescent being.
I was hinting that having the ability to conceive an idea does nothing to prove the existence of that idea. Case and point is that we can have ideas and conceive things that DO NOT exist, ie unicorns and flying pigs.
I believe a cause can be less real. My will to strike someone - the idea - might well be justified as it’s cause. Is that just as real as the action?
Descartes thinks so, but there’s nothing to prove it ever existed. Surely something that’s real can be identified as tangible?
Come to think of it, the strike ceases to exist a couple of seconds later. So maybe the “Everything” here isn’t more real at all.
In fact, the only thing we’ve proved is that things we’re certain have an existential property cannot be proved to do so… which strikes me as a pretty weak foundation to start “proving” a god with…
Clearly, you’re a believer. To an atheist like myself, the claim that unicorns and transcendent beings are “fundamentally different things” makes no sense at all.
Just out of interest, what is the fundamental difference between these two mythological creatures?
Hume says that ideas are not innate but are derivative of our experiance. We can imagine a gold mountain because we have seen both mountains and gold.
We can imagine god as being omnipotent , omniscient, omnipresent because we have limited power, limited knowledge and limited existance.
He is not as much directly refuting descartes proof of god as he is discerning a different source for the idea of god, which indirectly discredits descartes “proof”
The idea of the flying pig has two essential elements that you and I have both experienced, namely, pigs and wings. Put them together and you have a pig that flies.
But where did you get the idea that there could be an entirely trandescent being? Someone told you. Or you read it somewhere. But who told them? Where did they get the idea?
I think you would agree (clearly, you’re a non-believer) that there is no essential element of “God” that is viewable in the world, correct? Then how did we come by the notion of God?
… Or perhaps we made it up. I know what you’re getting at, and it’s very much the Cartesian position, but I’m not entirely sure there’s a single essential element that we couldn’t have imagined.
I’m suspecting that, were this point to be true, God wouldn’t be described with so many human attributes and qualities.
I’m also pretty sure that there are things with essential qualities we do not understand. Or maybe there aren’t, but we’re capable of talking about them, or pretending we can.
These are mostly qualities. “Time”, “Evil”, “Infinity”, “Causality” or “Curse” seem to fall under this category. They possess neither pigs nor wings.
But we can still talk about them as if they existed - which they might or might not.
If these things do exist, are they god? If something has non-demonstrable non-material qualities and is capable of being talked about, is it the creator, the being worthy of worship?
