Conflict to Improve

Blaise Pascal in his essay Pensees where he expresses his thoughts on maths, god, certainty he criticized Descartes' philosophy on his use of "God" concept to create certainty. In contrast Pascal believes God's existence as a whole, not as a "convincing" tool. Descartes suggests using mind and physics while Pascal says mind can not perceive everything so soul and feelings  are necessary. Even if they seem complete opposites and Pascal sounds right to criticize Descartes' placement of God, it's still eye-opening in terms of using science and judgment.

In quote Pascal mainly attacks Descartes on his use of God's "flick to put world in motion". When we read Descartes' Discourse on Method he looked for Foundation for basis and only accepted %100 truths. So he rejected deceiving senses and relied on thoughts saying "except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power." However, at end of his meditation he turned into describing God like a trigger of everything, also given us body that survives in nature hence one can trust his feelings mostly. His belief is abstract because he only mentions God to complete his way of thinking. In comparison Pascal says God can not be perceived or put in place with mind and can only be understood by heart. He also approached question of belief with pragmatist point of view, when you believe in God you won't lose anything if he doesn't exist but if he exists you'd be suffering deeply.  Pascal didn't try to find a place for God, instead he believed him as better option and being skeptical isn't worth it because human needs God to feed their souls.

To sum up, Descartes' thoughts are more than effective in today's Western world since most people agreed on God's certain existence and because it's abstract, belief has not much to do in daily life. Thus, we might argue his view has opened a path to approach world and God skeptically and made it easier to develop methods of science which Descartes and also Pascal did better than defining God. Therefore Descartes shouldn't be offended because of his thoughts on God as Pascal did, we should consider his way of thinking (skepticism, analyzing, discovering, constructing) as gainings.