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To: donh
So you do actually believe we'd be more, um, faded looking if we existed because someone (or God) dreamed us up? And where was the proof you were going to offer up? If I were whipping up a good illusion of reality, don't you think I'd take the trouble to condition your mind, when I created it, to convince you everything was really real?

The problem for you is that you live your life AS IF all of the particulars were REAL. You relate to the world as if it were real - if you didn't, you could not function! You breath air as if it were real and if suddenly you could not get oxygen, the pain in your lungs would certainly feel real! You have just created a massive dichotomy for yourself in supporting your silly argument. You can't live as if the universe were an illusion, you must live as if it were real. THERE IS A SUBJECT/OBJECT RELATIONSHIP - in fact there are thousands of such relationships. God created the subjects and the objects so it would only make sense that they would have relationships. The universe if chock full of such relationships, not only with regard to human life, but also in Physics, physiology, chemistry, etc. Therefore, your argument falls on the evidence of your own life experience. Yes, deny it all you want, but the evidence of your own life and how you live it and relate to the things in the world supports a real universe, not an illusory one. That goes for your pal Berkeley too.

The position you are attempting to argue is the ultimate skepticism that results when men start from themselves and have no infinite reference point. Rationalism only ends in skepticism.

5,489 posted on 01/20/2003 6:56:06 AM PST by exmarine
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To: exmarine
The universe if chock full of such relationships, not only with regard to human life, but also in Physics, physiology, chemistry, etc. Therefore, your argument falls on the evidence of your own life experience. Yes, deny it all you want, but the evidence of your own life and how you live it and relate to the things in the world supports a real universe, not an illusory one. That goes for your pal Berkeley too.

Berkeley's not my pal, he's a rude git. But your response to him is wholly inadequate. You have, longwindedly, in no manner whatsoever supplied evidence that reality must look somehow different--less tangible or detailed or rich--if it was imagined up.

The position you are attempting to argue is the ultimate skepticism that results when men start from themselves and have no infinite reference point. Rationalism only ends in skepticism.

No reference point is an infinite improvement over a reference point you are absolutely sure of, but have no proof pursuasive to skeptics. Popes murder whole peoples because of such cocksurely held "infinite reference points".

5,621 posted on 01/21/2003 5:35:35 PM PST by donh
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