Descartes Was Right In the End

Brian, this argument has nothing inherently to do with theism or even an omnipotent being. The French philosopher René Descartes in his struggle against scepticism wondered whether there might be an evil demon which is manipulating his thinking to make him believe that he has a body, that there are objects about him, and so on. Contemporary theorists of knowledge who want to appear au courant may conjecture instead about being a brain in a vat of chemicals stimulated with electrodes by some mad scientist or a body lying in the Matrix while inhabiting a virtual reality. Descartes actually tried to escape the evil demon hypothesis by means of the ontological argument for God, who, as a perfectly good being, would not be a deceiver. For Descartes God was part of the solution, not the problem.

Unfortunately, once you start seriously entertaining these evil demon hypotheses there’s no way out of them. Even your argument for God’s existence could be a delusion wrought by the evil demon!

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