Defending Your Faith: An Introduction by R. C. Sproul

Author:R. C. Sproul [Sproul, R. C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Christian Books & Bibles, Ministry & Evangelism, Discipleship, Theology, Apologetics, Religion & Spirituality, Religious Studies, Education, Christianity
ISBN: 1581345194
Amazon: B0024NP646
Publisher: Crossway
Published: 2003-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

“I Think, Therefore I Am Not an Illusion!”

Having gone through this systematic doubting process, Descartes came to the conclusion for which he is so well known: Cogito ergo sum.“I think, therefore, I am.” He said, in essence, “No matter how skeptical I become, the one thing that I cannot doubt, whenever I’m doubting whatever it is that I’m doubting, is that I am doubting.There’s no way I can escape the reality of doubt.”

Then Descartes raised this question: “What is required for there to be doubt?” He argued that for there to be doubt, there must be cognition.Doubt requires thought—conscious thought—because doubt is an action of thinking.Without thinking, there can be no doubting.So if I’m doubting, I know that I’m thinking.At least I think that I’m thinking.And if I say I don’t think that I’m thinking? Well, in order for me to say I don’t think that I’m thinking, I must be thinking.I can’t escape the reality that I am thinking, because to doubt is to think.And then he goes to the next premise: “Just as doubt requires a doubter, just as thought requires a thinker, if I am doubting, I must conclude, rationally, that I am thinking; and if I am thinking, then I must be.I must exist, because that which does not exist cannot think, that which cannot think cannot doubt; and since there’s no doubt that I’m doubting, it would mean also that I’m thinking; and if I’m thinking, I am also existing.” And so he came to the conclusion, “Cogito—I’m thinking—ergo—therefore—sum—I am.”

People who are not students of philosophy may look at the elaborate process that Descartes went through and say, “This is why philosophy is so foolish, that somebody would spend all this time and all this effort to learn what everybody who is alive and awake and conscious already knows—that they are, in fact, existing.Nobody really is denying their own existence.They’re not really believing that they are simply an actor appearing in somebody else’s dream.” But again, remember what Descartes was about.He was a mathematician, and he was looking for certainty in the philosophical realm that would equal in force and power and rational compulsion the certainty that can be arrived at in mathematics.

The reason this is important is that Descartes is disposing with the first option—that reality is an illusion.There may indeed be illusions in reality, but if we say that all reality is an illusion, that would mean that nothing exists, including myself; and, as Descartes has shown, I can never doubt the existence of myself without proving the reality of myself.The first of the four alter natives, as a sufficient explanation for the universe, has to be discarded because Descartes’ argument proves that something exists; and that something that exists, if nothing else, is his own consciousness.

I have argued that if my piece of chalk exists, it would ultimately prove the existence of God.Yet I acknowledge that my chalk could be an illusion.But even if it is an illusion, there must be someone suffering the illusion.

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