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The role of religion in science
Descartes argument of god
The influence of science in religion
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DESCARTES’ GOD Do we need a watchmaker god or the Christian God, and how is it related to living a good life? The subject of god has always fascinated me, and I love to read about what position others place god in their lives. It is also interesting to see how people have different interpretations of who or what god is. I disagree with a lot of what Descartes says, I believe that modern science is very good, but the Christian God needs to be in the first position because science cannot resolve all life’s issues. We need to have a goal and an end, which is eternal happiness with God and assisting others on our way. Descartes’ god is the watchmaker god that simply winds up the clock of time and walks away, letting all things happen on …show more content…
I would imagine that if god is not allowed to change what god created, then god is not perfect or a supreme being. In the Christian faith, it is documented that God is omnipotent, which is all powerful and can do anything, including changing laws that He put into place. For example, if I am a computer programmer and developed a computer program, I would be allowed to change the code as I see fit. Why would God not be allowed to change what he created? On the same point of Descartes’ perfect god, he speaks of the world being an awful place and that god’s natural law has to be manipulated by Descartes’ method2, modern science, to make human life easier and better (6, 2). If god is perfect, and the law is perfect, then it should follow that the creation that proceeds from god and the law would be perfect. So the question is, why is the creation, the world, awful and in the need of manipulation? In Christianity, God is perfect, the law is perfect, creation is perfect and all the fruits of the creation are perfect. All the advances we make are ordained through God because we are His creation and He ordered the capacity our minds and knowledge to make such advancement. Sin entered the world because we turned away from God and the consequences were sickness and pain, but God will heal us if we ask, and this includes giving men the knowledge to make medical advancements, science. God interacts with us on a daily basis and yearns to be in relationship with us. Descartes’ god sets things in motion and leaves because god has no control over the world once it is set in
... God alone remains; and, given the truth of the principle that whatever exists has a cause, it follows, Descartes declares, that God exists we must of necessity conclude from the fact alone that I exist, or that the idea of a supremely perfect – that is of God – is in me, that the proof of God’s existence is grounded in the highest evidence” Descartes concludes that God must be the cause of him, and that God innately implanted the idea of infinite perfection in him.
Baird and Kaufmann, the editors of our text, explain in their outline of Descartes' epistemology that the method by which the thinker carried out his philosophical work involved first discovering and being sure of a certainty, and then, from that certainty, reasoning what else it meant one could be sure of. He would admit nothing without being absolutely satisfied on his own (i.e., without being told so by others) that it was incontrovertible truth. This system was unique, according to the editors, in part because Descartes was not afraid to face doubt. Despite the fact that it was precisely doubt of which he was endeavoring to rid himself, he nonetheless allowed it the full reign it deserved and demanded over his intellectual labors. "Although uncertainty and doubt were the enemies," say Baird and Kaufmann (p.16), "Descartes hit upon the idea of using doubt as a tool or as a weapon. . . . He would use doubt as an acid to pour over every 'truth' to see if there was anything that could not be dissolved . . . ." This test, they explain, resulted for Descartes in the conclusion that, if he doubted everything in the world there was to doubt, it was still then certain that he was doubting; further, that in order to doubt, he had to exist. His own existence, therefore, was the first truth he could admit to with certainty, and it became the basis for the remainder of his epistemology.
My thoughts on God are clear and distinct that he is existent. Descartes’ now has ‘rebuilt’ the world, solely because of his power and reasoning. Descartes’ is only able to use his power and reasoning because he knows God is a guarantor of his ideas and thoughts. As Descartes thinks about his own imperfections, it leads him to think about perfection, and how it has to come from something superior to him.... ...
...nection with Descartes’ physics, God is the first cause of motion, and the sustainer of motion in the world. Furthermore, because of the way he sustains motion, God constitutes the ground of the laws of motion. Finally, Descartes held that God is the creator of the so-called eternal truths. In a series of letters in 1630, Descartes enunciated the view that ‘the mathematical truths which you call eternal have been laid down by God and depend on Him entirely no less than the rest of His creatures’ (letter to Mersenne, 15 April 1630; Descartes 1984–91 vol 3: 23), a view that Descartes seems to have held into his mature years. While it never again gets the prominence it had in 1630, it is clearly present both in correspondence (for example, letter to Arnauld, 29 July 1648; Descartes 1984–91 vol 3: 358–9) and in published writings (for example, in the Sixth Responses ).
First, Descartes contends that God’s perfection implies his immutability because a modification of his action would deny the perfection of the creation. Accordingly, Descartes says: ‘Thus, God imparted various motions to the parts of matter when he first created them, and he now preserves all this matter in the same way, and by the same process by which he originally created it’ (AT IXB, 62). The conservation of the initial conditions of the universe is possible because of God’s continual action on the universe. Finally, Descartes concludes this argument explaining that it is reasonable to think that God preserves the same quantity of motion in matter. Under these considerations, we can say that Descartes founds his physics on his metaphysical conception of God’s immutability, and it makes possible to universalize the laws of
With the “Design Argument” in Meditations on First Philosophy to ignite his proclamation of the topic of free will, Descartes summons free will is given entirely through the creator, God. With his robust belief of God, Descartes concludes free will attributes to God’s creation of a person. Descartes announces, “I make mistakes because the faculty of judging the truth, which I got from God, is not, in my case infinite” (54-55, Meditations). Descartes believes errors of judgment are given to him from God, but in the end the choice is up to no one but himself. He takes full responsibility for his de...
Descartes stands with his position that God is perfection by saying “it is impossible that God should deceive me. For in every case of trickery or deception some imperfection is found… [and] the will to deceive is undoubtedly evidence of malice or weakness, and so cannot apply to God” (90). Through these words, Descartes explains that the natural light proves God’s perfect being because a deceiver is powerless and malevolent. God is not powerless and malevolent because he is not a deceiver. He has no imperfections. Therefore, the natural light proves his pure
After settling that God exists in his first few passages, Descartes adds that God is the perfect being. Due to the fact that he understands what a perfect being is, than God must be a sovereign being. Similar to his triangle theory that it is not a necessity to imagine a triangle. It is not a necessity to imagine a perfect being rather a thought that has run through our mind. The triangle as imagined and conceived has three sides and a hundred and eighty degree angles as always. It is imperative that these characteristics are always attributed to the triangle, likewise the attributes of a perfect being are placed on God.
Having faith is believing in things that you don’t see. According to the Meditations, Descartes gets rid of beliefs that he isn’t certain of and keeps the ones that are undoubtable. He tries to prove that God has must exist since we have such a clear and distinct idea of him. I believe it is impossible to prove without a doubt that God exists.
In the Third Meditation, Descartes forms a proof for the existence of God. He begins by laying down a foundation for what he claims to know and then offers an explanation for why he previously accepted various ideas but is no longer certain of them. Before he arrives at the concept of God, Descartes categorizes ideas and the possible sources that they originate from. He then distinguishes between the varying degrees of reality that an idea can possess, as well as the cause of an idea. Descartes proceeds to investigate the idea of an infinite being, or God, and how he came to acquire such an idea with more objective reality than he himself has. By ruling out the possibility of this idea being invented or adventitious, Descartes concludes that the idea must be innate. Therefore, God necessarily exists and is responsible for his perception of a thing beyond a finite being.
Descartes thinks that we have a very clear and distinct idea of God. He thinks God must exist and Descartes himself must exist. It is a very different way of thinking shown from the six meditations. Descartes uses ideas, experiments, and “proofs” to try and prove God’s existence.
...mething that is all-powerful has control over every thought, belief, and idea that we have. If Descartes believed this then he must believe that this deceiving God was putting the idea in his brain that if he ignores his senses he will obtain truth. If his God was deceiving and all-powerful then he will never discover truth. Descartes tries an alternative way to look at reality, the initial idea and the concept as a whole. Descartes constantly contradicted himself in his explanation and his points seem to work against themselves, as opposed to supporting his hypothesis. At the end of the First Meditation the one thing that remained certain is that we all have the same perception, but existence is our own perception. Nothing in the external world is certain. Descartes could not think outside of the “box”.
When you read chapter one of Genesis you have the feeling that God is perfect. God holds all power and control. God turns chaos into order. "God said 'Let there be light.' And there was light, And God saw the light, that it was good" (Gen 1. 3). God's word is action, God's word is law in the universe. When God creates something, he ends it with God seeing that's its good. This is in effect giving support to the perfect nature that is God and the creations God has made. "God does not play dice" (Armstrong 9), God has order and a purpose for what he makes. An important aspect to God is seen while he is creating the world. He separates water from land. Light from Darkens, Day and Night, Male and Female. This shows that boundaries are important to God. We see examples where God put boundaries on mankind with their language by mixing the language up so confuse man and killing off the evil from the good.
Rene Descartes, a 17th century French philosopher believed that the origin of knowledge comes from within the mind, a single indisputable fact to build on that can be gained through individual reflection. His Discourse on Method (1637) and Meditations (1641) contain his important philosophical theories. Intending to extend mathematical method to all areas of human knowledge, Descartes discarded the authoritarian systems of the scholastic philosophers and began with universal doubt. Only one thing cannot be doubted: doubt itself. Therefore, the doubter must exist. This is the kernel of his famous assertion Cogito, ergo sum (I am thinking, therefore I am existing). From this certainty Descartes expanded knowledge, step by step, to admit the existence of God (as the first cause) and the reality of the physical world, which he held to be mechanistic and entirely divorced from the mind; the only connection between the two is the intervention of God.
Plato; a Greek philosopher who postulated about the difference between the body and the soul would disagree with this as he believed in the idea that the soul is indeed distinct from the body. He stated that the soul was capable of knowledge as it was immortal and as such had experienced the forms during its time spent in the , 'world of the forms ' before it was incarnated our mortal bodies. Plato goes so far as to use the term , 'imprisoned ' in his book phaedo when describing the nature of our soul in the body; he states that the goal of our soul is to reach the , 'world of the forms ' and that true philosophers avoid distractions such as ,loves and lusts, and fears.....and endless foolery ' the body creates which 'impede us in the search