So now he says, “If I am doubting, then I know that I am thinking. Then he said, “Okay, what else is clearly contained within the idea of my doubting?” Well, for someone to doubt, they must be thinking. So, he came to the certain conclusion that he was doubting. If I doubt that I am doubting, I prove that I am doubting. So, one thing I know for sure is that I am doubting. Because if you doubt that you’re doubting, what are you doing? You’re doubting. But the one thing he couldn’t doubt was that he was doubting. I’m going to doubt everything that I can conceivably doubt.” So, Descartes embarked on this process where he doubted everything. I'm not going to trust scientific authorities. I’m not going to trust theological authorities. He said, “How do I know that what I am perceiving in the external world really exists out there, or is not simply a hallucination in my own mind, or an illusion perpetrated by some wicked devil who’s fooling me? I can’t trust, in the final analysis, with absolute certainty, what I perceive in the external world. He questioned whether the hand that he saw in front of his face was really there. But I want to cut through all of the confusion of my day and get down to those basic ideas, those basic truths that are indisputable, that I can take to the bank, that I can live my life on-on the basis of certitude.” And so, from this, he set out on what I call a “systematic doubt process,” by which he, being from Missouri, that Southern part of France, he decided to question any thought or any proposition that he ever heard-to question it to death. Show me its validity.” He said, “Even my own conjecture does not bring certitude. He said, “Don’t just tell me what everybody else believes. Today, watch the entire message for free. Sproul identifies the one reality that René Descartes could not escape through his doubt: his own existence. “I think, therefore I am.” Have you heard this phrase before? In this brief clip, R.C.
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