Critical Thinking and Logic passage review
Description
Consider the following passage: But it now occurs to me that there is another way of investigating whether some of the things of which I possess ideas exist outside me… Now it is manifest by the natural light that there must be at least as much <reality> in the… cause as in the effect of that cause. For where…could the effect get its reality from, if not from the cause? … But what is my conclusion to be? If the objective reality of any of my ideas turns out to be so great that I am sure the same reality does not reside in me…and hence that I myself cannot be its cause, it will necessarily follow that I am not alone in the world, but that some other thing which is the cause of this idea also exists… So there remains only the idea of God; and I must consider whether there is anything in the idea which could not have originated in myself. By the word ‘God’ I understand a substance that is infinite, <eternal, immutable,> independent, supremely intelligent, supremely powerful, and which created both myself and everything else…that exists. All these attributes are such that, the more carefully I concentrate on them, the less possible it seems that they could have originated from me alone. So from what has been said it must be concluded that God necessarily exists. Explain the argument seen in the passage. Offer up and defend your best counterargument to the argument from the passage.
