Concept of god according to descartes assignment

Descartes’s theory of ideas. Considered formally, as the content of my thinking activity, the ideas involved in the cogito are unusually clear and distinct. (Med. III) But ideas may also be considered objectively, as the mental representatives of things that really exist. According to a representative realist like Descartes, then, the connections among our ideas yield truth only when they correspond to the way the world really is. But it is not obvious that our clear and distinct ideas do correspond to the reality of things, since we suppose that there may be an omnipotent deceiver.

In some measure, the reliability of our ideas may depend on the source from which they are derived. Descartes held that there are only three possibilities: all of our ideas are either adventitious (entering the mind from the outside world) or factitious (manufactured by the mind itself) or innate (inscribed on the mind by God). (Med. III) But I don’t yet know that there is an outside world, and I can imagine almost anything, so everything depends on whether God exists and deceives me. The next step in the pursuit of knowledge, then, is to prove that God does indeed exist.

The proof of God’s existence actually makes the hypothetical doubt of the First Meditation a little worse: I now know that there really is a being powerful enough to deceive me at every turn. But Descartes argued that since all perfections naturally go together, and since deception is invariably the product of imperfection, it follows that the truly omnipotent being has no reason or motive for deception. God does not deceive, and doubt of the deepest sort may be abandoned forever. (Med. IV) It follows that the simple natures and the truths of mathematics are now secure.

In fact, Descartes maintained, I can now live in perfect confidence that my intellectual faculties, bestowed on me by a veracious God, are properly designed for the apprehension of truth. But this seems to imply too much: if I have a divinely-endowed capacity for discovering the truth, then why don’t I always achieve it? The problem is not that I lack knowledge of some things; that only means that I am limited. Rather, the question is why I so often make mistakes, believing what is false despite my possession of God-given mental abilities.

So these respective ideas are clearly and distinctly understood to be opposite from one another and, therefore, each can be understood all by itself without the other. Two points should be mentioned here. First, Descartes’ claim that these perceptions are clear and distinct indicates that the mind cannot help but believe them true, and so they must be true for otherwise God would be a deceiver, which is impossible. So the premises of this argument are firmly rooted in his foundation for absolutely certain knowledge.

Second, this indicates further that he knows that God can create mind and body in the way that they are being clearly and distinctly understood. Therefore, the mind can exist without the body and vice versa. On this account, the mind is an entirely immaterial thing without any extension in it whatsoever; and, conversely, the body is an entirely material thing without any thinking in it at all. After looking into the concept of God and Soul according to Descartes, it is important to ask the question is the concept of immortality really a Christian concept and is the condemnation of Descartes justified in any way by the Catholic Church.

Thus secular philosophies sanction the idea of the immortal soul, even though the Bible does not. Believe it or not, God’s Word teaches something entirely different. History of a Controversial Teaching The doctrine of the immortal soul caused much controversy in the early Catholic Church. Origen (ca. 185-254) was the first person to attempt to organize Christian doctrine into a systematic theology. He was an admirer of Plato and believed in the immortality of the soul and that it would depart to an everlasting reward or everlasting punishment at death.

In Origen De Principiis he wrote: “… The soul, having a substance and life of its own, shall after its departure from the world, be rewarded according to its deserts, being destined to obtain either an inheritance of eternal life and blessedness, if its actions shall have procured this for it, or to be delivered up to eternal fire and punishments, if the guilt of its crimes shall have brought it down to this … ” (Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 4, 1995, p. 240). Origen taught that human souls existed before the body but is imprisoned in the physical world as a form of punishment.

In the first century the Jewish philosopher Philo taught a Platonic concept: “… The death of a man is the separation of his soul from his body … ” (The Works of Philo, translated by C. D. Yonge, 1993, p. 37). Philo followed the Hellenistic view that the soul is freed upon death to an everlasting life of virtue or evil. In the New Testament the Greek word translated “ soul” is psuche, which is also translated “ life. ” ?????? In Psalm 16: 10 David uses nephesh (“ soul”) to claim that the “ Holy One,” or Messiah, wouldn’t be left in sheol, the grave.

Peter quotes this verse in Acts 2: 27, using the Greek psuche for the Hebrew nephesh (notice verses 25-31). Like nephesh, psuche refers to human “ souls” (Acts 2: 41) and for animals (it is translated “ life” in the King James Version of Revelation 8: 9 and 16: 3). Jesus declared that God can destroy man’s psuche, or “ soul” (Matthew 10: 28). If the Old Testament describes death as an unconscious state, how does the New Testament describe it? No one wrote more about this subject than the apostle Paul. He describes death as “ sleep” (1 Corinthians 15: 51-58; 1 Thessalonians 4: 13-18).

The first resurrection to immortality will take place when Christ returns to establish God’s Kingdom on this earth. Later will come another resurrection??? to physical life??? for people who had never had a relationship with the Father and Jesus Christ. They, too, will gain the opportunity for immortality. The true final answer is not death but resurrection. From the above it is clear that the concept of immortality of Soul is actually not a Christian concept and there is no reference to it in the Holy Bible.

Even if one does not want to rely too much on the above view of the Biblical verse, still one can say that immortality of Soul cannot be a Christian concept because according to Christian belief, the God is the Supreme commander and if our souls were immortal then there would not be any difference between the earthly human beings and the Divine God. And for human beings to be at par with the Supreme Commander is impossible. If one does not want to take this argument also then and stick to the belief that immortality of the soul is actually a Christian concept and Descartes has not proved it according to C.