Descartes

If I make a mistake when programming the video recorder, this proves that God doesn't exist, because a being that was all-powerful and wholly good couldn't allow me to make such a mistake.

Although Descartes would not have known what a video recorder was back in the 17th Century he would have probably still recognised the central argument of the passage above, that: God is omnipotent and morally perfect; an omnipotent and morally perfect God could not allow humans to make mistakes; we do make mistakes therefore such a God does not exist.

By going through Descartes' text I will try and show that Descartes would agree that God would indeed not deceive us but would allow us to make mistakes and would not share the above conclusion that God therefore does not exist.

A belief in an omnipotent, perfect, wholly good God is central to Descartes' epistemology. For it is only such a good and perfect God that guarantees the clear and distinct perceptions he has about reality and knowledge1. God is Descartes' ultimate answer to doubt. So Descartes needs to address the question of why such a God would allow us to make mistakes and he attempts to do this specifically in his Meditation IV.

For Descartes Ð''it is impossible that God should ever deceive [us]. Ð' For in all fraud and deceit there is a certain imperfection: and although it may seem that the ability to deceive is a mark of subtlety or power, yet the will testifies without doubt of malice or weakness; and such, accordingly cannot be found in God' (Descartes, Rene, A Discourse on Method, Meditation and Principles, Everyman 2004 p 103). Ð'

Yet, we do make mistakes. Descartes says Ð''some men err in reasoning' (p 25) and that he was as Ð''open to error as any other.' (p 25).

Descartes says that he has a God given faculty Ð''of judging [or discerning truth from error]' (p 103) and that this faculty will not Ð''lead [him] into error, provided [he] use[s] it aright.' (p 103). He explores one reason we do not use this faculty of judging correctly when he explains: Ð' Ð''I am Ð'... a mean between God [perfection] and nothing Ð'... in other words, as I am not myself the supreme Being, and as I am wanting in many perfections, it is not surprising that I should fall into error . . . [as] error is not something real, which depends on it's existence on God, but is simply defect; and Ð'... in order to fall into [error], it is not necessary God should have given me a faculty [that allows me to fall into error], but that my being deceived arises from the circumstance that the [God given] power of discerning truth from error is not infinite.' (p 104).

Descartes is not satisfied with this explanation and explains that Ð''error is not a pure negation Ð'... but the privation or want of some knowledge