Descartes and Doubt

“Among these, one of the first that I was drawn to consider was that often there is less perfection in works composed of several pieces and made by the hand of diverse masters than in those at which one alone has worked. Thus one sees that buildings undertaken and completed by a single architect are customarily more beautiful and better ordered than those that several have tried to refashion by making use of old walls that had been built for other ends.” (21)

In the first three parts of his Discourse, Descartes (like Bacon in Book I of The New Organon) seems to be engaged in explaining 1) why old foundations and forms of knowledge are not to be trusted; and 2) where we should look for true and certain knowledge. The answer to both of these inquiries is implied in the building metaphor quoted above: old foundations of knowledge and inquiry are diverse and do not tend towards the same end (“one can imagine nothing so strange and inconceivable that it has not been said by some philosopher [23-4]) and we have only our individual selves to rely on when constructing new foundations (or at least we have Descartes the individual to rely on). Descartes repeats numerous times that he is not intent on tearing down all the walls and foundations of the ancient “city” of knowledge in which he was reared and rebuilding it from the ground up, he merely intends to do it with regard to himself and his own ways of thinking (of course, it seems he intends for his analysis to serve as a model): “…as regards all the opinions that I had hitherto accepted as credible, I could not do better than to undertake to reject them once and for all and replace them afterwards by better ones…when I had adjusted them to the standard of reason”. (22) To this end, Descartes proposes four precepts by which to govern his thought, the first of which (“never to accept anything as true that I did not know evidently to be so…” [25]) is most important for this post. My question, then, is that if Descartes truly takes this precept to heart, how and why does he not only continue to adhere to Christianity, but do so “provisionally”? The case could be made, as it was in our discussion of Bacon, that it would be dangerous, given the political and religious climate at the time, for Descartes to doubt the Christian principles on which he was raised, despite the fact that it was not something he could not know it to be true “evidently”. But the fact that he accepts it “provisionally” seems to suggest something different from the case of Bacon: it seems as if it is something which could potentially be disputed and shown to be false, whereas in Bacon, it seemed to be merely a moot point as religion had little or no impact on his own method (or at least, so says I). I know a doubting of religion (and of everything) is coming later, but as regards the method being described in the Discourse, it seems pertinent to ask whether he would be more consistent if he rendered unto faith what is faith’s (as Bacon does), or else doubt religion, along with everything else, from the get-go rather than “provisionally” accepting Christianity under the guise that it will help “not remain irresolute” in his actions. Or am I reading too much into “provisionally”?