Questions that form questions that form questions...

Let me start off by saying like the others that DesCartes is very much like how the spirit of honors is described, and not just DesCartes, but the Enlightenment period as a whole. From the way the Enlightenment period was described, it was the beginning of people questioning things they had just believed their whole life, which is what honors seems like it is to me.

"and from that time I was convinced of the necessity of undertaking once in my life to rid myself of all the opinions I had adopted, and of commencing anew the work of building from the foundation" (Meditation 1)

I can't form a full opinion on DesCartes' questioning on God and whether He deceives us, or if it's another force. However, I can understand where his questioning comes from. I have been studying a lot about Election/Reprobation, that sort of thing, and something that crosses my mind frequently and doesn't settle in my spirit is the idea that God places the desire of salvation in our hearts and that He doesn't in others. How did I arrive at that idea? Well, if God has an elect from the beginning of time, meaning that He knows from the beginning of time, and if He is in control of all things - does He control our thoughts? Shouldn't He if He were in control of all things? So I read DesCartes and I understand the questions he's asking. What if God created us to be deceived about all things? Isn't God supposed to work all things together for our good? However, if He is God, who sees the bigger picture, and defines what is good - wouldn't we have to declare what He has planned as good? Maybe our idea of good is false because if we were to think that something He has done were not good, we must be false. He is good, what He does is good, so if we disagree we must be misunderstanding.

"But perhaps Deity has not been willing that I should be thus deceived, for He is said to be supremely good. If, however, it were repugnant to the goodness of Deity to have created me subject to constant deception, it would seem likewise to be contrary to His goodness to allow me to be occasionally deceived; and yet is clear that this permitted."

(sidenote: Why is he referring to God as Deity? Is deity not the belief that you can earn a good after life? Maybe he just has an overall wrong picture of salvation. If that were the case, then my blog is pointless. haha.)

Then there's also the question: What if disbelief is not the goodness of God? What if we have the idea of deception from the evil one?

"I will suppose, then, not that Deity, who is sovereignly good and the fountain of truth, but that some malignant demon, who is at once exceedingly potent and deceitful, has employed all his artifice to deceive me."

I like the response that DesCartes has to all of this questioning though. He basically concludes that even if he never comes to an answer about life, if he never discerns between dreams and reality, then he shall abandon all his questions and continue to happily dream. It reminds me of when Job was arguing with his friends about the character of God and whether Job deserved all this, and there comes a point in chapter 13 where Job just simply says, "Be quiet and I will speak. Let whatever comes happen to me. Why do I put myself at risk and take my life in my own hands? Even if He kills me, I will hope in Him." vs. 13-15.

There comes a point at the end of the questioning, and even DesCartes did this, where we must stop and resolve to just have faith, to hope in something greater than we can understand.  There is a part of me that rejects all of the questioning I have, because unlike DesCartes I do not put full trust in the human mind. How dare we assume that our simple minds can understand the lofty things of God? Even though I question and I think things over and over, at the end of the day, the things I question, the things I imagine do not define who I am. The things I imagine do not define my faith either. I know that God is good, that He has been good to me, and if I never understand the deeper questions, then I shall do like Billy Graham and teach Christ on a 3rd grade level, and that will be that.

There are a few other things that came to mind while I was reading this that don't really have anything to do with my blog, but I was wondering what others' opinions were.
Because the Enlightenment period is when people began to question and go against the general idea, is this period when the first declared atheists came about?

Also, why doesn't DesCartes believe in putting a period at the end of a thought, instead of just adding a comma and keep going! When I first started reading I was like, "Why didn't you put a period there, your idea just ended, this is a new one!!" I was quite frustrated.

 commented on Meghan's