Do religious people actually exist?

As Descartes said "I think, therefore I am". To prove that religious

Bernie Woodham...

And Pee Wee Herman said, "I know you are, but what am I?"

Frank from Deeetroit...

Curley Howard said "soitainly."

Sean Carroll...

And Gregory House said, 'There's no "I' in "team". There is a "me",
though, if you jumble it up.'

people exist then we need to show that they actually think. Because
they don't think, it is possible that they don't actually exist.
Therefore, perhaps it is safe to simply ignore them. :)

jmpc...

They cant deal with the thought of life being random. They cant deal

Dale Houstman...

Probably not, but... life isn't exactly "random" since it is constrained
within certain natural "laws". The odds are good - for example - that no
matter how long you live, you will never simply sprout an extra head, or
suddenly find yourself constructed entirely of Wheatina.

with the thought that we are alone and dont have a specific purpose.
They cant deal with the thought that someday even if 1 million years

Dale Houstman...

Except for those which we bravely put forth ourselves, again constrained
by natural "laws" and the cross-purposes of others near and far.

from now humans may not exist. And they cant escape the parent-child
relationship they grow up with either. They must continue having a
father figure in life. Most of them do no harm, and alot of them
actually do alot of good in the name of their beliefs. It is just so
ironic and sad how they scorn and hate people for not believing. Kind
of hypocritical I think. I think on a subconscious level they know they
are wrong.

Dale Houstman...

Undoubtedly this is true for some, but I have too much respect for many
of the religious people in my life (past, and present) to actually think
all of them are lying to themselves over their own beliefs. I think they
are "wrong" (insofar as the facts of the matter are concerned), but a
good load of them do not - unconsciously or otherwise I think - know
they are wrong. And although I am perfectly willing to disagree with
their pronouncements when given the opportunity to do so, I think most
of them sincerely do believe in their myths. And more power to them: it
is a horrible thing when one loses faith in one's own mythologies. We
all have them, or human life would be impossibly drab. But the old
canard "there are no atheists in foxholes" (patently false) has a
counter text in "there are no deists in heaven" which is most likely
perfectly accurate.

Bernie Woodham...

You sound pretty arrogant and condescending yourself.

KenStahl...

Actually, he didn't say that - but he did <> a
statement in French that roughly communicates that idea.

He wrote "Je pense, donc je suis" in his Discourse de la

Neil Kelsey...

"I think, therefore I am" is an exact translation from the French
version you just quoted. It's not a rough translation at all.

methode pour bien conduire sa raison, et chercher la verite
dan les sciences". Somewhere along the line it was then
translated into the Latin "Cogito, ergo sum".

KenStahl...

"I think" and "Je pense" are only general equivalents. They
do not mean the same thing. If they did, there wouldn't be a

Victor Velazquez...

Although in this case we know that they do mean the same thing because
Descartes was kind enough to write in detail about his thought experiment.

But you are correct that the nuances of these phrases' meanings are not
always identical.

field of studies known as psycho-linguistics. If "Je pense"
and "I think" both conveyed the same meaning we wouldn't
have the word "pensive" in our English vocabulary. For

Neil Kelsey...

There are lots of French words that made their way into the English
language when France conquered England. The English already had an
Anglo-Saxon word for "think," it was "think," so the new French words
were used for finer meanings. It doesn't mean that in the original
language the meaning of the word changed. "Penser" is still the verb
"to think" in French. This happened a lot to the English language,
because the English were conquered at various times by the Vikings, and
the Romans (on several occasions). As a resuly there are all sorts of
Scandaniavian and Latin words in the English language from those
cultures too, and when there was an existing Anglo-Saxon word then the
new words were used for slightly different meanings.

similar reasons the phrase "Je le vois bien" is generally
translated something along the line of "so it is" rather
then "I the see good" even though that is the literal
translation. Yet clearly "Je vois" means "I see" as an

Neil Kelsey...

Actually, the literal translation is "I it see good." "Le" is an
impersonal pronoun ("it") in this case.

KenStahl...

Well, that goes to show what happens when high school French
starts fading into the background too much. I had forgotten
about the "impersonal" aspect when used in certain contexts,
but once you mentioned it I can see the point.

"exactly" translation by your definition. And you can't
blame this on idiomatic usage. People who think in French
don't think the same say as people who think in English.
Therefore direct translations might roughly convey a roughly
equivalent meaning, but they don't provide the exact meaning.

I am not fluent in any foreign language, but I know
smatterings of several and learned along they way that
translating a statement and conveying the meaning of the
statement in the context of the original language are two
different things.

Sean Carroll...

Good logic, but unfortunately ignoring them doesn't make them go away
like it does with dogs.

mike3...

Since they exist, then they think. Hmm..........................