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To: gore3000
You are trying to confuse the issue.

You don't need my help for that.

The question is whether there is intelligence in the Universe.

Excuse me, but the original question was glaringly the Berkelerian classic: could the universe be the product of someone's imagination? The secondary question became: what is the essential difference between Berkeley's conjecture, and the conjecture that God created the heavens and the earth? You can talk about whatever you please, but don't mis-represent the history of my conversations.

You tried and failed to show that there is none in our reality.

No, I have not. As usual you are assuming I have made a common argument you're familiar with, from scanning a few snatches of the argument, with your usual spectacular vacuum of attention.

You then tried to assume that our life is a dream

I have not. I have suggested 1) that you, nor anyone else, can't prove otherwise, and 2) that this is remarkably similar to the claim that God created the heavens and the earth out of nothing. ie. dreamed them up.

and I pointed out that whatever this reality is it definitely had intelligence also because the dreamer must be intelligent.

So you claim, once again without offering any pursuasive evidence that this claim even means anything tangible.

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.

You cannot make this true by claiming it over and over, any more than Descartes could.

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.

Occum's razor calls for abandoning the argument as anything more than an exercise in staying awake all night in the dorm. It doesn't help you put meat on the table to figure out whether or not reality is a dream, or that you exist as a codicil to your apparent ability to think. Occum's razor certainly does NOT prescribe the notion that intelligence must underwrite the universe, any more than it underwrites the necessary connection between thinking and being. These are extraneous, ornamental notions which the contingencies of life are not waiting on to be solved.

6,327 posted on 02/02/2003 11:07:41 AM PST by donh
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To: donh
Excuse me, but the original question was glaringly the Berkelerian classic: could the universe be the product of someone's imagination?

And the answer to you was that whether one states that the present reality is indeed real or a dream does not change that reality and that either way you need an intelligence at the end of the trail. This is why materialism is total nonsense.

6,348 posted on 02/02/2003 3:39:37 PM PST by gore3000
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