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To: gore3000
This should be no surprise because the one thing that we can be sure us is Descartes's dictum - I think therefore I am. Somehow, somewhere, no matter how one philosophizes on the issue there is an intelligent being in the Universe therefore there is intelligence in the Universe, an intelligence that cannot be explained by any materialistic explanation.

Tell me, do you have proof that the other beings that inhabit your dreams don't actually think, and therefore, are not?

Could you post that proof here?

You don't know squat about what happens behind the veil of reality, because all you have is reality to run tests on. "I think, therefore, I am" is an untestable hypothesis. You might be right, you might be wrong, you'll never know--because knowing, in a workaday critical sense, is a job for beings that can examine evidence, and evidence is the stuff of reality. You just can't peer through that door, until someone fits you with some of those keen 4-D meta-reality goggles--the ones where one pane is grue and the other is bleen. Your opinions about Decartes' principle are just that, pure opinions, one might say, ungrounded in any mundane need for evidence. And they are granted the appropriate level of respect we reserve for such things.

6,303 posted on 02/01/2003 11:53:44 PM PST by donh
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To: donh
This should be no surprise because the one thing that we can be sure us is Descartes's dictum - I think therefore I am. Somehow, somewhere, no matter how one philosophizes on the issue there is an intelligent being in the Universe therefore there is intelligence in the Universe, an intelligence that cannot be explained by any materialistic explanation.-me-

Tell me, do you have proof that the other beings that inhabit your dreams don't actually think, and therefore, are not?

You are trying to confuse the issue. The question is whether there is intelligence in the Universe. You tried and failed to show that there is none in our reality. You then tried to assume that our life is a dream and I pointed out that whatever this reality is it definitely had intelligence also because the dreamer must be intelligent. Descartes's statement proves the existence of at least one intelligent being and that being is the one observing this thing we call the reality we live in.

Your whole argument on this point is the very reason for Occam's Razor. You are trying to put off an obvious conclusion by taking it to further and further levels. This is totally fruitless and does not change the results.

6,314 posted on 02/02/2003 5:52:00 AM PST by gore3000
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To: donh
You don't know squat about what happens behind the veil of reality, because all you have is reality to run tests on. "I think, therefore, I am" is an untestable hypothesis.

What's beyond the veil of the material is what is the real.

6,360 posted on 02/02/2003 8:40:27 PM PST by Tribune7
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