 Mirroring our discussion in  Section 7.2,  one kind of interpretation has Descartes relaxing his epistemic standards. He’s aware that the naturalistic solution does not stand up to methodic doubt, but he’s not attempting to overcome the Now Dreaming Doubt with perfect knowledge. A problem for this interpretation is that it doesn’t square with the following reply Descartes makes to Hobbes’ first objection: “an atheist can infer that he is awake on the basis of memory of his past life” (via the continuity test); but “he cannot know that this criterion is sufficient to give him the certainty that he is not mistaken, if he does not know that he was created by a non-deceiving God” (Replies 3, AT 7:196, CSM 2:137). Evidently, Descartes’ solution is not supposed to be available to the atheist. Taken at face value, this reply rules out a relaxed standards interpretation; it indeed rules out any interpretation involving a naturalistic solution to the problem of dreaming.