Summary: "A) emotion, will, and especially information are starting points, B) existence/truth is fulfillment, C) god upholds our existence - he created you, D) credido ergo sum is slightly wrong, E) Jean-paul sarte was a sophist."
Let me tell you the most important things to take away from this post.
A/D) three things: decisions/will, emotions/perceptions/intentions, and logic/information. these three are integral to existence.
B) seek the truth with a passion. and God is truth, so seek him above all else.
C/E) god CREATED you, your raw conscious existence. God is smarter than you, shut up.
A) the starting point
You are utterly lost and confused, at the end of all things, the edge of sanity (maybe you are using Descartes's method of doubt?). what is your reaction? "help me! I'm lost! tell me what is true so that I can cling to it!
3 things you need here at the ultimate depression:
1) you need help - Jesus Christ, - emotion
2) you must decide to seek truth - will (though we would argue that God gives you the desire for truth),
3) the primary thing you need is truth (besides a savior). - facts
We will focus on the last one, but mention the first two now and then. The last one, 3), demonstrates the primacy of truth and fact. In order to do anything, we need to know what to do. Before we can form opinions, before we feel normal emotions, we need to know the environment around us. There are emotions of confusion, emotions of seeking the truth, but notice how those emotions are intertwined with fact - the search for truth.
Note also that these three, emotions, will, and truth are sometimes considered the three main components of a human. the reason, heart, and will.
B) existence/truth is fufillment
Now, what is truth? Reality, facts about the world, existence, being. Right? Here at the end of all things we search for what is out there, truth, and that is a very great thing. Possibly our greatest joy in heaven will be learning more and more about God (intertwined with feeling and living out that knowledge). Fellowship with other people is learning who they are, feeling and using that information. In less weighty areas, see that we have only to see a vast army, a black horde marching somewhere, to feel emotion. It is the existence, the power, the might of the army that is special. Even during battles, it is the way troops move against each other, the way the machine carries out its tasks that excites us, not how the machine changes. So we see that our greatest emotions stem from existences, from truth.
C) god upholds our existence
refer to the material argument for the existence of God in "Time, space, material, and infinity"
when we subdivide matter more and more, we see many levels of particles. the atom, electrons within atoms, gluons within electrons, quarks, etc. Scientists have identified at least 30 layers of particles. now as we keep going down, we will either go for infinity, which demands God, or we will stop at some particle (for instance the electron) which does what it does and we have no idea why. we can't subdivide it, it just floats around in space and repels other particles for no reason. this also demands God.
I favor the latter option, but either way, God is neccessary for the existence of matter. He upholds our existence. One person wondered "what if we were just a thought in Gods head?". We ARE just a thought. He upholds us by his will.
Now, that is just matter. Whether God upholds our spiritual components, or our raw existence itself, I have no idea. It would be cool though.
Just food for thought: in what sense are we 'given' existence if there was no 'us' for existence to be given to? Or another way: when god created your human, why did you inhabit it?
Look, God didn't just give you a body, he didn't just give you a soul and a mind. He CREATED you. Raw, living, bare consciousness. YOU! Praise the lord of heaven he created you!
D) 'credido ergo sum' is slighly wrong.
the famous philosopher descartes is probably less famous that the sentence he wrote "credido ergo sum" which means "I think, therefore I am".
I would alter this a little. How about, "I perceive, therefore I am." For a person is not just made up of thoughts, but memory too. However, the very act of perceiving requires thinking/processing. You see something and you must immediately attach meaning to it, or else the perception will vanish. You must translate the real world into your own head. Now, I'm NOT saying that "you see one thing, I see another, and let's tolerate each other." But the things you see must be added to your body of knowledge inside your head.
I could add emotion into the picture by remembering a recent post of mine, which held that perceptions and emotion are roughly the same.
So, all three components: emotion, will, and fact, all come together in existence, perhaps. You perceive and translate into emotion/thought-fact. You must immediately decide what to do with it (will) and integrate it into your body of thought (logic/facts).
E) jean-paul sarte was a sophist.
Jean paul sarte was an existential (humans can change themselves) philosopher. sophism is the belief that you are the only being in existence. sarte is most famous for his statement (and essay behind it) that "Existence precedes essence." Basically he said that 'man must first show up on the scene, and then define himself'. He pointed out that other objects in the universe don't think, and so they don't define themselves, which makes humans unique in that they define themselves. Hence - humans can change themselves - and sarte is an existentialist.
Sartes problem is confusing essence/definition with thought. I can think that I am a purple gorilla, but that changes nothing in the real world. In the same way, the fact that humans can think about themselves has nothing to do with who they really are.
