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To: BMCDA
I *did* forget about the apparent age. Thanks for reminding me. As far as I can tell, that would be a difficult claim to dispute. How would you do it?

On the face of it I treat it as an interesting philosophical proposal but I do not sense it matches objective reality. But on what basis apart from what I have been taught? A *real* skeptic would say everything we know about ourselves and the universe is but a figment of the imagination. Can you disprove that claim?

I tend to walk a fine line between reason and unreason, as you can probably tell.

575 posted on 03/17/2004 9:27:08 PM PST by Fester Chugabrew
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To: Fester Chugabrew
A *real* skeptic would say everything we know about ourselves and the universe is but a figment of the imagination. Can you disprove that claim?

The illustrious Dr. Samuel Johnson was walking with a mystic-minded cleric who said much the same thing. Johnson kicked a rock and said he had disproven the cleric's speculation by a "reductio ad lapidum"

576 posted on 03/17/2004 9:38:22 PM PST by Virginia-American
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To: Fester Chugabrew
I *did* forget about the apparent age. Thanks for reminding me. As far as I can tell, that would be a difficult claim to dispute. How would you do it?

I can't and that's exactly my point: these two scenarios are equivalent i.e. they are indistinguishable from our point of view.
And that's why Last Thursdayism is rejected by Occams Razor: it explains what we see no better or worse than the assumption that the universe really is as old as it appears to be but it is more complicated because it involves an additional entity (and a very complex one at that).

A *real* skeptic would say everything we know about ourselves and the universe is but a figment of the imagination. Can you disprove that claim?

No, and I don't have to because just as in the former example if there is no way to tell the difference it ceases to be a problem.
And the turtle-principle applies here too: if everything we know about ourselves and the universe is but a figment of the imagination of a higher entity then this entity and its universe can also be just a figment of the imagination of an even higher being ;)

577 posted on 03/17/2004 9:59:29 PM PST by BMCDA
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