I think. Therefore I am. But again, ladies and gentlemen, understand this. Descartes was not doing all of this, simply to prove to the world that Rene Descartes existed. What he was searching for was a starting point for the pathway to certainty.
to the pathway to a truth that really matters for everybody. He was looking for. a rational intellectual foundation. for affirming not the existence of Descartes. but the existence of God.
What is real? Are we real? How can we know? Philosophers and storytellers have been arguing about that one for a while. Is there really any way we can know for sure?
As Christians we know that there is. Hello and welcome back to Renewing Your Mind. I'm glad you've joined us. We live in a vibrant, exciting world. But how do we know it's really there?
Well That's what we're going to look at in today's episode as we explore another message in Dr. R. C. Sproll's series, Think Like a Christian. How we perceive the world is important.
not only for our own existence, but for our relationship with God. If the heavens really declare the glory of God, it's important for us to have confidence that the heavens are actually there. But how can we find that confidence? We'll get to that shortly, but before we do, a quick reminder to make sure you listen to the end of today's episode to find out how you can receive a lifetime of digital access to Dr. Sproll's entire 12-part series.
along with a special edition Renewing Your Mind notebook. But now, here's Dr. Sprohl. We continue now with our brief study of the Christian. and the mind.
We've been looking at some of the foundational issues of knowledge that became almost the preoccupation of Christian thinkers and philosophers. in the seventeenth century. And we've been looking specifically at the work of the French Jesuit mathematician Rene Descartes. and you recall that we made mention of his famous little slogan, Cogito ergo sum, I think, therefore, I am. And in our last session, I tried to give some background and introduction.
For why a man of the intellectual magnitude of Descartes would spend so much time trying to prove his own existence, And we saw that in the light of the problems of the breakdown of authority, particularly in the church. In the sixteenth century, that the question of the seventeenth century was, how can I know if if anything is true? How can I Trust. Whatever knowledge I have received from my teachers, from The experts in various fields. And as I said, this.
became a time where careful scrutiny was given To the science of epistemology. which studies the question, how can I know? Anything. Yeah. Descartes, in light of the problem of scepticism that was confronting the Church and the culture of his day, began his intellectual pilgrimage.
By declaring war on gratuitous assumptions. He said, I am going to doubt Everything that I have ever learned. I am going to doubt everything that I can conceivably doubt. I'm not going to take anything for granted. I think we will see, I hope we will see, that there still were a few things he took for granted, that he didn't.
totally abandoned But the process was one of rigorous and systematic doubting. He looked at things like this. He said, How can I? No, for sure regarding anything that I observe with my eyes, or hear with my ears, or taste with my mouth, In other words, how can I be certain of anything that I perceive with my senses.
Now, you know, in our day and age, there is a predilection in our culture. To say, unless we perceive it with the senses, we can have no confidence in its truthfulness at all. We say, I want to see it, taste it, touch it, smell it, or so on. We want physical. tangible, sensible.
evidence to believe whatever it is that we believe. But what Descartes said was I'm going to challenge My very ability to perceive. And he basically challenged this on two. separate levels or planes. On the one hand, Descartes focused in on what we call the subject Object.
Problem. You, as a living, breathing, thinking person are a subject. And Everything that exists outside of you could be called objects. You're looking at me, I'm an object of your knowledge, even though in myself I am a subject. As I look at you, you're an object of my perception.
This piece of chalk that I'm holding here is an object about which I'm now speaking.
Now, the question in the old subject-object problem is this. How can I know for sure? That the external world The objective world. The world that exists outside of my own mind. Really exists.
As I perceive it.
Now this is no small question. We're asking the question how accurate Is my perception? of reality. Is everything the way it seems to be? as I perceive it.
Or is there some kind of built-in Distortion. that takes place. In this transition between the external world and my mind. My ideas are in my mind. And my ideas about you are not gained by having a direct link up between my mind and your mind.
The only way I can get into your mind. If you choose to tell me something or reveal something about what's in your mind. And you do that in various ways. You may act it out, you may speak it, you may write it, but for me to get in touch with that, I have to use one or more of my five senses. I'd have to read with my eyes or hear with my ears, you see, or if I were blind, I could read it with my fingers with Braille.
but some part of my body would have to be engaged in this communication process between us. You see, the body Is your personal Transition to the world around you. Your way of getting from your mind. to the external world. is your body.
Now that's something that was understood clearly. by the writers of the sacred scriptures. You hear Peter, for example, saying We do not declare unto you cunningly devised myths. or fables. That is, we're not writing fiction.
stuff that we've made up Out of our own speculative imagination. But what did he say? But we declare to you That which we have. seen with our eyes and have heard with our ears. Or we think of doubting Thomas after the resurrection, saying, unless I can put my hand into the wounds on his body, I will not believe.
In a word, what Thomas was asking for was what we call today empirical verification. That is proof or evidence that is founded on. Sense perception on seeing, tasting, touching, hearing, and so on.
So that the mind, according to this theory, should not adopt or embrace as true That which cannot be verified or proven By the five senses.
Now it's precisely at this point That They cart sort of turns the tables. Because of this problem of the subject and object. What Descartes is really saying here, ladies and gentlemen. Is that rather than sense perception being the highest form of proof? And the preferred method of arriving at certainty.
He was saying that it is an inferior way of getting at truth. And a very dangerous basket if you put all your eggs in it. He was not. Decrying or denying the utility of sensation. But he was trying to show the limits.
Of learning truth simply through what you see, taste, hear, touch, and so on. Because, again, of this problem, how do you know? That when you are seeing something, your eyes aren't playing tricks on you. You know what a mirage is. Where you think you see.
A pond of water But there's no pond of water there. What is a hallucination? Hallucination we tend to understand. As a distorted picture of reality, I've mentioned this before: that one of the fascinating The baits. Earlier on in this century took place at Harvard when the crown prince or the high priest of The new drug movement, particularly LSD Timothy Leary, was performing experiments In the psychology department with the use of so-called hallucinogenic drugs.
Like pie oaten. Others And it was found out that he was introducing a chemical substance called LSD. into these experiments, and he got into big trouble. And so there was a court trial. About this case.
Because it was against the law. to be practicing this trade with the use of hallucinogenic drugs. And a hallucinogen is something that distorts the mind. perception of reality.
So they hauled Timothy Leary into court in Boston. And for his defence. He more or less invented, or at least popularized, a word that became overnight. an integral part of the pop vocabulary of America. It was the word psychedelic.
Remember that? The defense leery put on was this: he said that under the influence of this drug, mind-altering, chemically altering drug, LSD. That what happens Yeah. Not that the mind's apprehension of reality is distorted As is in the case of an hallucinogenic drug. but rather the mind is now Enhanced.
In other words, in simple terms, what he was saying is LSD gives you a more accurate picture. of what's actually out there. than you have without the benefit of LSD. And he had artists and musicians and people creating to the witness stand and artists saying, wow, when I was tripping out on LSD, I was seeing blends and harmonies and hues and tints of color that I had never been able to perceive with such acuity as I did when I was under this drug. Or musicians saying Wow.
My sense of harmony Was raised to a whole new dimension. When I was under LSD. But what we're interested in here from an epistemological perspective is this. Who can prove Leary wrong? How do you know?
That reality is as you perceive it. We do know for example. that there are built-in limits. to our sense perception. I tell the story of when I was a little boy and my dad got me a dog and Uh my mother sent me to the hardware store to buy a doggy whistle.
And I paid for this doggy whistle and I took it home. And it blew it, it didn't work.
So I went back to the store and I told this owner, I said, I bought this dog because it doesn't work. And he said, what do you mean it doesn't work? I said, well, listen, I belong to it. He said. Wait a minute, he said.
Don't you understand that this dog whistle makes a sound at such a high frequency that your ear doesn't hear it. But your dog will hear it. Go home and blow it a few times, see what your dog does.
So I went home and blew it a few times, and sure enough, here comes the dog.
So that was my first little scientific experiment with understanding that some animals have far more developed. and more acute Senses of what's going on around them than we do. We know that there are animals who have a far more advanced olfactory sense than we do. That is, they can detect, they can track just on the basis of smell. things that are miles away.
We know the radar units of the bat and so on. We're all familiar with that.
So why do we make the assumption that reality really exists as we perceive it. You know, this is what provoked the question in the 18th century: if a tree falls in the forest, then there's no warning. There to hear it. Was there any sound? And Bishop Barclay's essay at Berkippi, that to be is to be perceived, was an advance in this issue, and it's what provoked the 20th century question.
mentioned before If a man speaks in the woods, And there's no woman there to hear em. Is he still wrong? Yeah. But in any case You get the idea here. That if I look at the audience that is in front of me today And I'm trying to figure out how tall a man is who's sitting in the back row, who's a retired Chicago policeman.
and he's sitting there and I just look at him and eyeball him And if I try to use my thumb as a gauge if I hold my arm out in front of me, and close one eye, and hold my thumb over this man's body, I can cover his entire body with the thumbnail of my right hand.
So it's okay. They know what I'll call that policeman. Tom Thumb. Because he's no bigger than my thumb.
Now what's wrong with this equation here? It's from this distance that I am removed from him. and if I put a small object in front of my eye, That small object will obscure my entire sight of that man, and it would be a ludicrous inference to conclude that he's no bigger than the nail on my thumb. But you see, we have learned through the experience of daily life. To make those adjustments of depth perception.
and the like. Yeah, but Big car to say, How do you know? But this isn't all one big distortion. How do you know that the lunatic in the insane asylum isn't having the accurate perception and we're the ones that aren't perceiving reality truthfully? Or, he says, suppose somebody else gets into the mix.
One of the things that Protestantism and Roman Catholicism both believed in was the devil. And he said, How do you know that what you think you are seeing? or think you are hearing. Isn't A trick Conjured up. By the devil.
And he would point to such things as the appearance of the witch of Endor in the Old Testament, who conjured up Samuel for Saul. And Was that A fake? Or did the devil really have the ability to produce Samuel. Or was it an illusion? How do you know?
And so he considered the possibility of Satan as being. The Great Deceiver Who went about causing people to come to a distorted knowledge of the truth. And so, what I'm saying is that he went through this rigorous process doubting everything that he could possibly doubt. Authorities disagree, so he can't appeal to authorities. How could he know anything for certain?
Well, he boiled it down to this. He said, Well, There's one thing. I cannot doubt. without affirming at the same time That I'm doubting it. And that is, I cannot doubt.
that I am doubting. Because in order to doubt that I'm doubting. Requires that I do what? Craig out. that I'm doubting.
So that if I doubt that I'm doubting I most certainly am. Darling. And if I doubt it. I'm proving it. Do you see that?
And he said, Okay, so one thing I know for sure. is that I'm doubting. But if I know that for sure, I know something else. That in order to doubt Doubt itself. is some kind of thinking.
It requires consciousness. It's not just a tingle in my toe. But it is a negative affirmation or denial in my. Head in my thinking.
So If I'm doubting. I must be thinking. Or maybe I can doubt. that I'm thinking. But in order to doubt that I'm thinking I think I must think that I'm not thinking.
So even if I think that I'm not thinking, what am I doing? I'm thinking.
So, no matter how I come at this. I can't escape. The indubitable truth. that I am thinking. And thought.
Must have a thinker. And so he says If I'm doubting. I'm thinking If I'm thinking I'm being. I'm thinking I am.
Now I know that I'm thinking. Kogito, I think. Therefore I am. But again, ladies and gentlemen, understand this, as we'll look at more in the next time. Descartes was not doing all of this.
simply to prove to the world that René Descartes existed. What he was searching for was a starting point for the pathway to certainty. To the pathway to a truth that really matters for everybody. He was looking for A rational intellectual foundation. for affirming Not the existence of Descartes.
but the existence of God. Now, again, why would we go through so many intellectual gymnastics to come to something? a conclusion that most of us just take uncritically. And automatically, as a given of our experience, even the great. Immanuel Kant did not try to prove the existence of the self.
He said that this is the transcendental apperception of the ego. You can't perceive yourself as a self. You can't see yourself, your innermost self, or taste, or f you know But you Cannot deny it. It's so integral to your own consciousness. And so what we're saying here, as Descartes was trying to indicate, is that all thinking begins With consciousness.
And so, from the Christian perspective, we have to ask: how does our consciousness? Include and relate not only the consciousness we have of ourselves. But how does the consciousness of ourself Relate. through our consciousness of God. That's one of the most important questions a Christian will ever struggle with.
And that's what we'll be looking at in the days to come. We have been made in the image of God. We don't exist because we think. but because God made us. We are because He is.
That's the confidence the world so desperately seeks. We know we are. And we know the world is. because all of this was created by God. We're nearing the end of a brief time with Doctor Sproll's series, but there's still plenty to hear if you'd like to dig deeper.
If you call us with a donation at 800-435-4343 or give a gift at renewingyourmind.org. You can receive a lifetime of digital access to Dr. Sproll's entire 12-message series, along with a Renewing Your Mind notebook. Tomorrow will conclude our time of study in this series, as doctor Sproll outlines for us two different ways by which we can find certainty in our search for truth. Here's a preview.
Peter said, We don't declare to you cunningly devised myths or fables that somebody could just simply weave out of their own speculative imagination. But we declare to you those things that we have seen with our eyes and heard with our ears. In other words, the Bible records narrative after narrative after narrative that makes assertions about what people actually see. Or observe. That is, the resurrection of Jesus is not presented to us in the New Testament as a construction of fiction.
Or as a theoretical abstract possibility, but the claim of the biblical writers is that there were an abundance of eyewitnesses who testified to seeing Jesus die and three days later seeing him come back from the grave.
So that much of the testimony of the scriptures rests upon empirical observation. But beyond that, we have to say if something is observed in nature or in the external perceivable world, the obvious question that we're going to ask regarding that information that we get through the census, the obvious question is So what? What is the significance of all of this? What is the meaning of all of this? And that's where the mind is now actively engaged.
in trying to understand the import of the data that we are getting. I hope you'll join us here. on Renewing Your Mind.
