Only God could have placed the concept of infinity within us.

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Parent debateThis argument is used in the debate Does God exist?.
Keywords: God, Infinity[ edit ].

SummarySummary

I am an imperfect being, yet I have within me the idea of a being more perfect than myself. This idea couldn't have been invented by me, so it was put into me by a being more perfect than me.

QuotationsQuotes

“Then, reflecting on the fact that I was doubting, and that, consequently, my being was not all perfect, for I could clearly see that it was a greater perfection to know than to doubt, I set out to find out from where I had learned to think of something more perfect than I was; and I evidently knew that it must be of some nature that was indeed more perfect. As for the thoughts I had of many other things outside myself, such as the sky, the earth, light, heat, and a thousand others, I was not so concerned to know where they came from, because, noticing nothing in them that seemed to me to make them superior to me, I could believe that, if they were true, they were dependencies of my nature, insofar as it had some perfection ; and if they were not, that I had them from nothingness, i.e. that they were in me, because I was defective. But it could not be the same for the idea of a being more perfect than mine: for, to hold it from nothing, it was something manifestly impossible; and because there is no less repugnance that the more perfect is a continuation and a dependence of the less perfect, than there is that from nothing proceeds something, I could not hold it from myself either. So that it remained that it had been put into me by a nature which was truly more perfect than I was, and even which had in itself all the perfections of which I could have some idea, that is to say, to explain myself in a word, which was God.”

René Descartes, Discours de la méthode, 1637.

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