Elliott takes on Descartes

This appeared on his “Circus Argument” after I used Descartes’ dictum to refute his contention that Atheists can’t be sure they exist. No mention of ‘Peter Godfrey’ this time, so he can pretend he thought of it himself. My response (posted to his blog) is below.

[[I think, therefore I am. So atheists can know something. If only that one thing. So P2 is no longer accurate.]] - This rebuttal is a complete failure. Just because you can think doesn't mean you really exist. Matter a fact, the atheist cant even be sure he is thinking at all. As we have already talked about, the atheist cannot accept an objective reality. This means they cannot be sure that their brains and thoughts are really theirs. They cannot be sure that they aren't pre-programmed visions of an alien. They cannot be sure that their thoughts are not dreams of a butterfly. They cannot be sure of anything.  They have no foundation. So it is a true statement that atheists cannot know anything and P2 stands. One must remember that without objective reality you are really are lost. 

Elliott; I see you've made a vain (and foolish) attempt to refute the Descartes objection I raised in response to your Objective Reality Argument (why didn't you do it there?). It fails, of course (as do all your arguments) because, even if our thoughts ARE those of a butterfly (or imposed on us by Aliens etc, etc) that STILL means we effectively exist as discrete entities.

In fact, your argument above does more to support the contention that so-called "Objective Reality" is insecure, as your list of alternate possibilities clearly demonstrates. If we are pre-programmed visions of an alien, we must be real in order to BE programmed, therefore we exist; if we are dreams of butterfly, we are the butterfly and therefore we exist.

You can't get around it, Elliott. I'd be happy to debate you on this at debate.org. I'm still waiting for you to grow some balls and take on the challenge - but I won't be holding my breath.

By the way; I checked out your "Origin of Life" Face Book page - do you seriously assume that everyone who ignores you is too scared to take you on and therefore count that as a "victory"? What a sad, pathetic little man you must be if that's what you have to do to pretend to some kind of relevance in the world.

I'm starting to feel sorry for you.