In the finality of Descartes' first meditation, the meditator is already facing supreme doubt of all formerly inherited and empirical knowledge and builds an approach towards creating a foundation of doubt on all previous beliefs. Believing to have called all of their beliefs into question, the meditator still demands reason to doubt arithmetic and geometric knowledge – a knowledge that to them feels most intuitive; a “perfect knowledge”. To this, the meditator raises a hypothesis that applies their belief in god: The meditator's detailed argument is as follows:
P1. I firmly believe that there is an all-powerful god who created me.
P2. His omnipotence grants him the power to deceive us about anything, mathematics not excluded.
C. Even my most basic arithmetic beliefs may be attributed to god's deception.
However, even with this most basic representation of the possibility of deception, the meditator detects a problem. There are those who would call the very existence of god into question.The meditator then considers the possibility that they have arrived at their current predicament through a matter of mere chance or a chain of events – a sort of imperfection in and of itself. They argue, then, that it would come as no surprise that they are …show more content…
The meditator brushes over atheism in paragraph 10, simply stating, to appease skeptics by entertaining this theorem with the “imperfect creation” argument. However, it is clear that the meditator's belief in a god, all-powerful or not, has not been questioned and dismissed the same way the argument for the untrustworthiness of the senses has been. I believe Descartes is waiting for the right moment and the right Meditation to address the subject of god. For now, he must allow the meditator to establish one indisputable truth in order to start building a definitive belief
P1. I firmly believe that there is an all-powerful god who created me.
P2. His omnipotence grants him the power to deceive us about anything, mathematics not excluded.
C. Even my most basic arithmetic beliefs may be attributed to god's deception.
However, even with this most basic representation of the possibility of deception, the meditator detects a problem. There are those who would call the very existence of god into question.The meditator then considers the possibility that they have arrived at their current predicament through a matter of mere chance or a chain of events – a sort of imperfection in and of itself. They argue, then, that it would come as no surprise that they are …show more content…
The meditator brushes over atheism in paragraph 10, simply stating, to appease skeptics by entertaining this theorem with the “imperfect creation” argument. However, it is clear that the meditator's belief in a god, all-powerful or not, has not been questioned and dismissed the same way the argument for the untrustworthiness of the senses has been. I believe Descartes is waiting for the right moment and the right Meditation to address the subject of god. For now, he must allow the meditator to establish one indisputable truth in order to start building a definitive belief