God on Descartes

I think ...he was a bit off (Therefore I am?)
lol

ANyway, here's his proofs I exist:

(from wikipedia:Meditations on First Philosophy)
Meditation III: Concerning God, That He Exists

Descartes proposed that there are three types of ideas: Innate, Invented, and Adventitious. Innate ideas are and have always been within us, Fictitious or invented ideas come from our imagination, and Adventitious ideas come from experiences of the world. He argues that the idea of God is Innate and placed in us by God and he rejected the possibility that the idea of God is Invented or Adventitious.

Aside:
Innate ideas: There are no innate ideas. Babies can be born without brains, to take an extreme case. Fictitious ideas: (several comments) Maybe our imaginations aren't really our own, and thoughts are put into our heads by Other. Secondly, maybe nothing is imaginative (a scary thought), in that everything we imagine is real, somewhere (on some level?).

Argument 1
Something cannot come from nothing.
The cause of an idea must have at least as much formal reality as the idea has objective reality.
I have in me an idea of God. This idea has infinite objective reality.
I cannot be the cause of this idea, since I am not an infinite and perfect being. I don't have enough formal reality. Only an infinite and perfect being could cause such an idea.
So God — a being with infinite formal reality — must exist (and be the source of my idea of God). An absolutely perfect being is a good, benevolent being.
So God is benevolent.
So God would not deceive me and would not permit me to error without giving me a way to correct my errors.

Argument 2
I exist.
My existence must have a cause.
The cause must be either:
a) myself
b) my always having existed
c) my parents
d) something less perfect than God
e) God
4. Not a. If I had created myself, I would have made myself perfect.
5. Not b. This does not solve the problem. If I am a dependent being, I need to be continually sustained by another.
6. Not c. This leads to an infinite regress.
7. Not d. The idea of perfection that exists in me cannot have originated from a non-perfect being.
8. Therefore, e. God exists.
Descartes argued that he had a clear and distinct idea of God. In the same way that the cogito was self-evident, so too is the existence of God, as his perfect idea of a perfect being could not have been caused by anything less than a perfect being.

I DO exist, but I don't even know where to begin in showing how his proofs of me are goofy.
(to be continued..)

Okay, I guess I have to do this (begrudgingly...isn't it obvious?)
proof 1 is false, for 5 reasons:

1. He says his idea of God has infinite reality. (How do you measure the quantity of reality of an idea? He's playing a word game. It's binary: his idea either exists or it doesn't. Or existed, rather. He wrote it down, so it still exists (we assume the words preserve the nature of his idea). And this sentence ("This idea has infinite objective reality") can be taken two ways, which is why he came up with this muddled proof in the first place, I assume. An idea is an idea, and not proof that say, everything in your dream world, for example, actually exists. Is he saying any idea is necessarily true? If so...) ANyway, I will accept that he had an idea of God.

2. his definition of God is an infinite and absolute perfect, good, benevolent being, and, to summarize, only The Actuality of this idea could have caused him to conceive of such a thing. (That's Isai's summary of his argument)

This is wrong in SO many ways:
a. the source of this idea could be anyone, say even the most absolute evil being.
b. his idea is obviously a historical meme, that he may not have conceived of had he been raised in another culture (say, if he were a fish, lol). You know, absolute goodness isn't the most obvious idea, in a world with so much misery, I would say. If anything, it's just a psychological coping mechanism that doesn't make any sense upon reflection, because can something be infinitely perfect and good and yet infinitely small? What exactly is God an infinity of? If evil exists, God then would have to be seen as not being infinite. You can't have something exist that's not a part of something infinite. And there can't be more than one infinite.
c. If God is benevolent, why then would he allow me to conceive of an absolute evil, namely hell, i.e. an eternity (infinity of time) of suffering. If I conceive of that, then along the same line of argument, it exists, and so God is not benevolent, and so Descarte's God does not exist. You might even say God is infinitely malicious.
d. White lies exist. If God is benevolent, he might well deceive you.

This is so tedious. Don't y'all have brains of your own?
Anyway, argument 2 is wrong, too.
His existence has a cause. Yeah, his parents. Infinite regress? There goes his infinity again.. I heard the universe may have simply popped into being. Yeah, I don't understand it, either, but that seems like it would negate his infinity thing. Then the matter just did what it had to do, I guess, including evolving into us.
(Just because he says he wasn't perfect doesn't mean he actually wasn't, so maybe he did create himself.) -this doesn't make sense to me, but maybe it would to him..
It seems like he was really in love with his idea of perfection. It could not have been put in him by a non-perfect being, he says. Yeah, whatever. He never states what his idea of perfection is, aside from being a good, benevolent, and non-lying eternal absolute. As Jack Nicholson said in that movie, "You Can't Handle the Truth!!"

(my idea of infinite perfection means that there would be no suffering, which doesn't exist (I believe, and as of this writing), so neither does 'God'...presto, the exact opposite).