Jessalyn Parsons
Descartes’ Religious Journey to find God
In the book Meditations on First Philosophy, Rene’ Descartes states many theories and makes many points on a numerous amount of things. In “Meditation One: Concerning Those Things That Can Be Called Into Doubt”, I struggled with what Descartes was actually saying in terms of God, did he believe in His existence or didn’t he? However, by “Meditation Three: Concerning God, That He Exists”, I realized where Descartes stood religiously. I agree with Descartes when he doubts the existence of God in the first two meditations because by the third he has found his own way and proof that God does exist and to believe in Him.
Descartes has many things that he considers to be reasonable to doubt. Throughout Descartes’ life he has had a long standing opinion that there is a God who is able to do anything who has actually created Descartes himself. He has believed in God’s existence and God’s creations his whole life. However, in Meditation I he is trying to clear his mind of what he believes in, and consider others beliefs that contradict his. He finds himself questioning, “How do I know he did not bring it about that there is no Earth at all? No Heavens?” (page 463 Kindle). He acknowledges that he judges others sometimes for their mistakes when they feel they have all the knowledge. Descartes views this is a deception on God’s part. Descartes argues that since God is said to be supremely good, why would he deceive us? Since God did not create me to be deceived all of the time, why would he allow me to be deceived on any occasion? An argument Descartes makes on the doubt that God exists, is that some people view God as only good and that if He really did exist, no evil things would ever happen. Descartes tries not to oppose the opinions of others in this first meditation. He wants to imagine that he came to be what he was by fate, chance, or a connected chain of events, or some other way besides God creating him. Since being deceived or even making a mistake is seen as an imperfection, he says that the less powerful they see the creator of who we exist, the more probable it will be that we are so imperfect that we are always deceived. Descartes argues that it is not enough to make these observations and that we must take steps in our lives to remind ourselves of what we believe in and keep them in our memories. We need to take them exactly as what they are, although sometimes we may doubt them, so that it is more consonant to believe them rather than to deny them. This takes Descartes into his first meditation; he forces himself to believe that his creator is not a supremely good God, the source of truth, but rather an evil genius who is powerful, intelligent, and clever. He looks at this evil genius as though he has spent Descartes’ entire life in an attempt to deceive him. He knocks out his seemingly obvious beliefs of heaven, air, earth, colors, shapes, sounds, and all other external things as nothing but hoaxes of his dreams, things that are not real and that do not exist. All of these things he now doubts. He sees himself now as having no hands, eyes, flesh, blood, any senses; they are just false beliefs that he possesses these things. Even though it is no longer in his power that he knows anything true, it is within his power to take care decisively, to withhold his assent to what is false, although more powerful, however clever and smart this evil genius may be, to have any effect on him. Descartes decides to put aside all of his doubts, as though he has discovered all of his doubts to be false, and decides to stay on this course until he knows something for certain, or in fact that he discovers for certain that nothing is certain.
