Descartes knew one thing — he existed. Hence, the famous cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am. Descartes, no atheist, had no intention of his new science displacing God. In fact, Descartes' central aim was to demonstrate the existence of God. He reasoned that if he, Descartes, existed and was imperfect, then contingent upon that understanding, there must be an infinite and perfect source outside of him and that had to be God. It is crucial to understand that his "arguments for the existence of God proceed, as his system demands, only from the contents of his own consciousness ... he intends (only) the purely intellectual and rational comprehension of God" (Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

Later in the 17th century, scholars and philosophers, notably Spinoza, took Descartes' way of reasoning and developed a worldview called Cartesianism. Spinoza took the view that Descartes had it right, except for his notions of the existence of God. To Spinoza, if God exists at all, he exists in nature or is the sum of the natural and physical laws of the universe and certainly not an individual entity or creator. Spinoza went to great lengths to dismiss the Bible as "a purely human and secular text, meaningful judgments about which can only be made by philosophers" ("Radical Enlightenment"). Indeed, Faulconer regards Spinoza as a "radical materialist."

Jonathan I. Israel writes that Spinoza and his followers "rejected all compromise with the past and sought to sweep away existing structures entirely, rejecting the creation as traditionally understood in Judaeo-Christian (sic) civilization, and the intervention of a providential God in human affairs, denying the possibility of miracles, and reward and punishment in an afterlife, scorning all forms of ecclesiastical authority."

Joseph A. Cannon is editor of the Deseret News.