Mindanao State University – Iligan Institute of Technology

College of Arts and Social Sciences

Department of Philosophy and Humanities

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

in Epistemology

RELIGIOUS DENOMINATIONS: APPLICATION OF RENÉ DESCARTES’ CAUSALITY

ADEQUENCY PRINCIPLE

Submitted by:

Zefra Gaezenne F. Girado

Submitted to:

Mr. Joharel S. Escobia, MA

Department of Philosophy and Humanities

January 2023
Introduction

Religion has existed for thousands of years and has played a big role in our lives since
then whether the eras have changed. People join religion to seek order for the world, the thought
of afterlife promises conveys tranquility, some join to help them shape their identity, how to
spend a day based on their God's teachings. 1 For the past thousands of years. There are over
4,000 religions acknowledged all around the world and there are 5 main religions which are:
Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism.2 Part of the reason why people stay
religious is because they believe that the belief of God has some sort of involvement in how their
world works3, that being said, whatever they do God is part of it.

This is evident in the history regarding The Holy war where Muslim and Catholics
fought over the Holy lands. Religion can be misinterpreted by a lot of people mainly because of
authorities that use this to their advantage twisting what they understood to better suit their
agenda. A lot of these instances can be seen during the medieval period using the name of the
lord to create meaningless crusades in the middle east, another is the indulgences of the church
that allowed people to pay huge sums of wealth to be forgiven by their sins this even started a
revolt inside the church by Martin Luther. It is disgusting how far these authorities of the church
would do just to get their way.

Even in the modern world the church teaches us to be honest and yet they themselves
cover their tracks of infidelity through the use of money. In our time we managed to witness a
Pope retire after 600 years just because of scandals they hid by paying the media. The number of
priests and church authorities that have molested minors have been staggering to say the least.
The words of God they use to manipulate these minors into doing their heinous and perverted
acts and yet the heads of the church do not take heed to the people's plight that their children are
being mistreated by these individuals. And so, they are forced to speak to the media and the
church being the biggest cult in history they are able to buy the media's silence.

Religion used to be just one which was Hinduism, garnering the oldest religion title, then
Buddhism came along and the exponential growth increased until it became 4,000. One of the
reasons this happens is because of denominations. I have said before that the reason why people
stay in religion is because they believe God guides us in our decision making in our everyday
lives however, as humans as we are, we only like to stick to our narrative because it gives us a
sense of our own world, it is fundamentally part of being human. 4 It is obvious this is the case,
everyone has their own opinions, we are all not raised in the same welfare, we had different
upbringings.5 This eventually means that everyone has their own interpretations about the word
of God.

Now the purpose of this study, with all the words I have said, I would like to know if
denominations are still important today. There are so many religions that it feels like it's up to us
how we think of our God. Personally, even though I am Roman Catholic, I have done my fair
share of believing what the priests have said in our Cathedral a quarter of my life but now
religion is a bit confusing, considering sometimes it is not anymore applicable in some scenarios
of our life. I would like to ask the question whether at this point religion is important but after
further research, religion is indeed necessary for human survival. I then shall redirect my
question to the importance of religious practices because these are what makes humans disagree
with each other due to culture and geographical differences.

The philosopher I will be referring to is the Father of Modern Philosophy, René

Descartes and the religion I will be basing from is Christianity, although I believe this all goes to
every religion that has denominations. I will be using one of his causal arguments which is
Causal Adequacy Principle to dissect and find the answer to this research. I believe this
framework will be able to help me find the answer because this framework believes that the
mode substance must have the same qualities as the finite substance because a mode cannot have
something if it does not have anything to begin with and only a finite can give that, a finite can
give existence to a mode substance but a mode substance cannot make a finite substance exist.6
Body

I would like first to discuss what denominations are so we could have a clear direction on
where we are going. It is an organization operating under a shared name, tradition, and identity is
known as a religious denomination. These denominations claim to be not supported by the
government.7 For instance, Christian denominations like Baptist, African Methodist Episcopal,
Catholic, and Seventh-day Adventist are all of them. There are various reasons as to why
religious denominations happen. It stated in a video that it was a myth Christians did not get
along, hence the numbers of denominations but retorted that one of the reasons was Cultural
Diversity, mainly the Jews and Gentiles. They both eat differently, they both consider certain
days to be sacred and some not, they celebrate sacred days differently too.

Another reason is the geographic concern. Some groups would speak Latin, Greek,
Hebrew, they ended up not understanding one another but despite all these differences, when you
walk up to either denomination, they will have one common belief about God and the people's
relation to him.8 A one size fits all Christianity would never work because we are all very
different people. A lot of people connect with God in different ways such as praying, activism,
contemplation, family, etc.9

Different articles state the same reasons as to why religious denominations happen but
what if it is not the personal opinions, upbringing, narratives that causes this event happening?
My theory is the problem lies in the one who proclaims the Word of God, the Priests. Priests are
humans, they do not have the nature of God, how sure are we that what they preach are truly
God's words when they only have the understanding of mere a human being? We have seen this
happen countless times, especially when people kill in the name of god or that they were chosen
to judge the living and kill them for punishment.

These are evident in the time of the crusades where Christian and Muslims were having a
war over the Holy Lands, yet so ironic because the 6th commandment of God is "Thou shalt not
kill". Even Modernist thinkers misinterpreted the part where Jesus cleansed the temple.
Modernist thinkers believe He was being hypocritical to what He preaches regarding giving
offerings to God. But sources say He was mad because people were selling by the Temple, using
the location as if it was a tourist spot. They should have sold somewhere not too far but near
enough to the Temple. Modernist thinkers started saying that Jesus was being political. 10 Hence,
which is why I believe that humans cannot interpret the Holy Scriptures purely itself.
 The religions around the world, or at least the main ones, have one common view of God.
God's nature is composed of Holiness, Sacredness, Omnipotence, Omniscience,
Omnibenevolence, Omnipresence.11 Obviously, these cannot be found in human nature, there is
not even a common say for what the nature of human beings are. It can be defined that the
nature of humans are physical beings, as knowers, agents of responsibility, and as a person in
connection to others, society, God, and the goal or purpose of human life.12 Another source states
that, humans are rational beings, free, unique, intrinsically a social being and cannot detach
themselves from other creatures in the universe, sexual by nature, but the uniqueness of
expression of a person’s sexuality makes him/her different.13

A third source says that humans are Empathetic, Intuitive, Creative, Passionate, Life-long
Learner, Good Listener, Persuasive, Responsible and Kind, Leader, Honest and Have Integrity,
Courageous, Self-Aware, and lastly Wholehearted.14 All of these sources have different sayings
but one thing is for sure, is that they do not have one nature that says they are like God's nature.
With that being said, are the word of God that priests preach truly God's word or is it tainted with
human comprehension? We tend to chase after God because sometimes our identities get
muddled, we seem to be not contented with the materials we have here on Earth, even feel like
less significant.15 If we could fix those by ourselves, then that would make us Gods but we are
not, we lack, therefore we are not God. Henceforth, we cannot venture into divinity realms and
claim to understand his words.

As stated before, I have chosen Descartes' Causal Adequacy Principle. The principle
expresses as "there must be at least as much reality in the efficient and total cause as in the effect
of that cause”. In some other sources or interpretations, it simply means either "something cannot
come from nothing" or "something cannot give what it does not have".16 Although it seems
repetitive for Descartes to say such since St Thomas Aquinas has already stated a similar
quotation but there is actually more to it. To visualize this quote more, there are examples which
we can refer to. In order for boiling water to be hot, it also needs to be caused by something that
is equivalently hot such as fire. Wood is not equally as hot as fire so it cannot make a water boil.
For a bridge to be strong, it must be made by something strong also, in this case it has to be iron
since iron itself is strong.

Descartes introduces his idea "Levels of Reality Principle", things that are more real than
the last. These are modes, finite substances and finally infinite substances. Modes can also be
called properties or accidents, these terms are always referred to as "qualities" of an object hence,
a mode cannot exist without attaching itself to something which is what we call a finite
substance.17 Humans, chairs, foods, and houses are finite substances. They can exist even without
being attached to a mode unlike modes that depend on finite substances in order to exist. There is
only one infinite substance, and that is God. Descartes' explanation for this is because humans
cannot think of the idea of "Gods" by themselves, it is beyond their understanding unless it was
God himself who implanted the idea first, like a trademark.
 Take the formula mode > finite > infinite in the case of proclaiming the Word of God by
Priests. Priestly Title > Human > God. Without the title of Priest, priests are just mere human
beings who studied scriptures. We may even go an extra mile by thinking Holy > Scriptures >
God, without the quality of a scripture of being Holy, you will find yourself reading a fantasy
book, sarcastically we end up with mere humans reading and interpreting fantasy books but I'm
not here to bash the idea of religion but possibly trying to make a sense out of it. The only thing
that makes us believe that we are listening to the Word of God because it comes from a human
who has a priestly title since he spent years studying sacred scripture, liturgical theology, moral
theology, sacraments, canon law, philosophy and both ancient and modern languages yet all
those under human understanding, conditions, and comprehensions. It would be foolish to ask for
divine courses taught by God himself but I believe that is the only way we could ever learn
divinity and understand the scriptures for what it truly is and actually proclaim the word of God.
Conclusion

To recap, we have discussed what a denomination is and how it happens. It is an

organization operating under a shared name, tradition, and identity known as a religious
denomination and is not supported financially by the government. Denominations happen
because of cultural and geographical differences and not because Christians cannot get along
with each other. I introduced my own theory regarding how denomination happens. It was not
because people had their own different and personal ideas and perceptions of God but because it
was the Priests themselves, who have the duty of proclaiming the Word of God are not divine
enough to complete their task. The nature of God is commonly known as Him being Holiness,
Sacredness, Omnipotence, Omniscience, Omnibenevolence, Omnipresence.

The nature of human beings varied from sources to sources but all showed that Human
nature and God nature are nothing alike. According to the Causal Adequacy Principle of René
Descartes, we have deduced that priests are mere humans when their priestly titles are removed
since titles are modes/properties/accidents. Humans who studied seminary courses which would
certify them to proclaim the word of God, problem is that these are under human understanding,
conditions, and comprehensions which would mean the Word of God they are proclaiming are
tainted with human thoughts and are not indeed purely the Word of God. The only plausible
fixation of this issue would be to have divine courses taught by God himself which is in fact
foolish. Therefore, a human Priest cannot proclaim the word of God if they themselves do not
have God like qualities because according to the Causal Adequacy Principle, "there must be at
least as much reality in the efficient and total cause as in the effect of that cause”.

I have now concluded that since the root cause of our differences came from the source
directly, the preachers or priests, people may still make their own denominations but I highly
believe it is up to us how we perceive God in our lives. Religion may still be a part of us as
stated in the introduction, denominations too but I believe religious practices such as Holy
Masses every Sunday is not necessary so long as we stick to the principles of the God we believe
in. If such person would reason that the god they believe enjoys killing. Government intervention
will be there to resolve such problem since Descartes highly advises that the most we can do is
follow the moral precepts provided by one's country's laws and customs, religion, and the
reasonable and moderate views of one's community.
Biography
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%20you%20to,of%20the%20five%20major%20religions.
2
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