The conflict between Gisbertus Voetius and Descartes Essay

Descartes, known as the father of modern western philosophy has had a huge influence on the people living in his time and laid the foundation for rationalism, something still important these days. His ideas were not supported by everyone, because they were controversial, contradicting and unfamiliar with the public back in the 17th century. His opponents had different ideas than he had posed and thought that his theories could not be right.
One of the people against him was the Dutch Calvinist Gisbertus Voetius. He was the first professor of theology at the Utrecht University. Voetius believed in the Calvinist ideas and was against the idea of 'the new philosophy' which Descartes came up with because this was a threat to the Christian belief. This later resulted in a ban on the works of Descartes at the University where Voetius works. The Cartesian philosophy, which is a form of rationalism struggled against the Aristocratic ideas, is what the church held on to and Descartes was blamed for being an atheist because of his revolutionary ideas. Another problem between the two was the Descartes used the method of finding knowledge that the university posed, by using your own knowledge and experimenting, and did not hold on the idea that knowledge should be received from the people with authority (God in this case), which was the conservative view Voetius had. These conflicts showed that the scientific revolution was full with fears of the new erudition based on the old concept of Christianity.
The church and with that the Pope opposed his beliefs completely because it was the opposite of the Christian ideas. Descartes himself knew that publishing his books could be dangerous because of this and his biggest fear was being caught by the inquisition, so he released some of his works later, when he thought he was safe for the persecution of the inquisition. His reason for moving to the Netherlands made sense because of this Descartes chose the more liberal country over France because this fitted with this own ideas and ideals. Descartes thought of himself as a religious person, but because he rationalized his faith, it was met with opposition. His philosophical revolution got him to Church's disapproval Descartes was the first one to favour the idea of 'men' over God, thinking that the human ideas and knowledge could be more important than Gods. His famous words "I think, therefore I am" showed this idea that people could control their own life and that humanity is important. This concept had a big influence on the crowd and people started thinking about this and slowly letting the church go. Humans were now the subject of life, which was a revolutionary step, which later resulted in the emancipation of humanity form the Christian ideas. The church first of all was against any idea that did not put God on the highest spot and raised questions by his name, but it also had big doubts because Descartes idea made people less religious.