Descartes second maxim. flawed?

Question:

Descartes second maxim. flawed?

i have no argument with his first maxim
basically
i doubt everything -> i am doubting -> someone must be doing this doubting -> i am
(cognito ergo sum)

but i wonder about his second
i have the image of a perfect being in my mind ->as an imperfect being i would not be able to put it there myself -> someone else must have put it there -> god exists

the problem about this (among others) as i see it is that if he was an imperfect being he would have no way of knowing if the image was perfect or not. a perfect being would be to vast to comprehend. and as it can not be comprehended its limits if the do or do not exist remain unknown. as he only has himself to compare with he can only conclude that this image is of a being better than him.

thoughts?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Both attempts that Descartes make in his 'Third Meditation' are completely laden with unverified assumptions and sloppy logic.

First he suggests that he has in his mind an IDEA of such an entity. Because nothing can come from nothing, he argues, the idea must have come from somewhere and the only place for it to have come from is outside himself, a.k.a. reality.

Then he backs up his idea of the existence of God in another way. He suggests that he cannot be sure that he has always existed, nor that he is perfect. God, on the other hand, must logically have always existed and must be perfect. Therefore God must have created him, and not he God.

Do these work? No.

Take his assumption that 'nothing comes from nothing'... how does he know that? He doesn't - the assumption came from nothing, thereby disproving it!

Likewise with his assumption that ideas must have a basis in reality. In fact, there are numerous ideas that are purely conceptual and have no real-life analogue. Take the mathematical idea of a 'plane' (or all of math, for that matter): are there any infinitely extending two-dimensional objects in the real world? If there are, I certainly haven't seen nor heard of them!

And if his ideas of perfection and God are off, then perhaps it is quite possible that God is not NECESSARILY perfect or always in existance. Just because Descartes can't imagine it, it hardly means it isn't so.

Even theologians take a bit of umbrage at his attempt to DEFINE god into existence. St Thomas Aquinas, for example, felt that there were plenty of great ways to prove God exists and that simply defining God into existence not only demeans God but also implies a lack of divine free will in the matter (as if God HAD to exist whether or not he wanted to).

Some suggest that the only reason Descartes put that nonsense in to begin with was to placate the religious censors who might otherwise have prevented his work from ever being published. I suppose we'll never know for sure about that one...