You are God, and I do not exist.

Oh what a splendid debate that you have started!! Thought pattern that was so evident in the Matrix You're whole argument is a classical Philosophical skeptical argument that the Ancient Greek Sophists loved to bust out. The fact of the matter is that there is no philosophical counter argument that totally refutes Skepticism because the skeptic (like you) doubts that this reply is not authentic because it is just a fabrication of my own mind. Everything that I am doing is made up through my mind alone, so it is as I'm my own mini god. You, this computer I'm typing on, the room I live in, etc -> all does not exist. The only thing that really exists is me. Everything else, as you said, is a fabrication. This is your argument, also known as the Egocentric Predicament. Egocentric Predicament: term coined by Ralph Barton Perry, is the problem of not being able to view reality outside of our own perceptions. All worldly knowledge takes the form of mental representations that our mind examines in different ways. Direct contact with reality cannot be made outside of our own minds; therefore, we cannot be sure reality even exists. There is no such thing as certainty Now I'm going to outline my counterarguments to the Egocentric Predicament: 1) Limits to skepticism 2) Rene Descartes famous ‘Cogito ergo sum' ("I think therefore I am") 3) The brief argument on the support of an omnipotent God apart from our own mental will I will spare people philosophical tangents. Many philosophers, like Kant and Locke, have great epistemological treatises that try their best to not necessarily refute skepticism, but prove that we exist in a world that is apart from ourselves. I will speak pragmatically, and keep my philosophic confusions to a minimum. 1- The reason why your whole argument is that of a skeptic is because you doubt existence and a world apart from oneself, even though human existence infers that we live in a world that is not subject to our own will. A skeptic, like you, who doubts existence, ends up doubting every aspect of life. Pragmatically, doubting everything is just not realistic. If we doubted everything we come across, we wouldn't be able to live. I would wake up one day and ask myself, why should I get up? Why did I even go to sleep in the first place if it is purposeless? Why do I even want to live? Furthermore, if the whole world was a fabrication of my mind, why would this fabrication fill itself with evils that sometimes suffer my fabricated well being? In other words, if we say that the mind (or "my" mind, from the skeptical point of view) is what creates the world, then why does my mind create a world that actually damages my own mind? Why does my brain create such a painful emotional and mental fabrication like my girlfriend breaking up with me or being made fun of by others? Logically, if my mind was the creator of everything, wouldn't it want to preserve itself? Realistically, emotional and mental trauma seems to do the opposite to the mind, leading of course to suicide. And of course the skeptic doubts everything in life, so it doubts life as well. So there is no purpose to live. Why don't we all just kill ourselves because life is good for nothing!! This is just not pragmatic. "If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be a word without meaning." – (Mere Christianity by C.S Lewis) Skepticism has major problems that if applied to our existence and world, we find out that we wouldn't be able to live. Thus, we should disregard the skeptical argument, and just take it as a given that WE DO EXIST. Now on to prove that a God exists apart from our mental capabilities. 2- I think at this point I have shown that the skeptic ridicules human existence into a pit of meaninglessness. This is similar to what the famous French mathematician and philosopher Rene Descartes originally had to do so to ultimately prove that there is certainty. "I think therefore I am" is not necessarily an ontological statement though, "He was concerned to discover some knowledge of real existence which could not be doubted under any conceivable circumstances. The cogito represented for him his first piece of certainty about existence, for it cannot be doubted, he held, without absurdity and contradiction. This certainty was intuitive, for, however much we explore and analyze the cogito, once it is understood it cannot seriously be doubted. If this is sound, the cogito at once vindicated Descartes method and established the possibility of that method being the key to additional real knowledge about existence, God, and nature. The singularity in thought is this: since the act of the mind is reflective, the cogito establishes, not my existence, but the knowledge of my existence… to say that I think and know that I think is to say that I am a thinking being at least; whatever else I may be is another matter." James Gordon Clapp Descartes argues that the one thing we know for sure, that no skeptic or evil demon can take away, is the fact that we are a thinking thing, or substance. And by our thinking (or reason) we can understand that something is real separate from something else. In other words, their are things that exists that are not dependent on something else (refuting what the skeptic would say: the world is dependent of the mind) "By substance, we can understand nothing else than a thing which so exists that it needs no other thing in order to exist." (Principles of Philosophy by Descartes) It is only evident that God satisfies this definition In other words, to believe in an all powerful God is separate from our own human reason because our humanity cannot comprehend such grandness known as perfection. 3. At this point, all I must do is to give a brief argument for the existence of an omnipotent God. Keep in mind that philosophy cannot prove the existence of God, but can only show the possibility of His existence. I have already proved that God has to be apart from human reason only insofar that God is omnipotent and omniscient. God should be held to high regard, that is, a God beyond human comprehension. His essence, then, must be unknowable, insofar that if he was knowable he would be controllable. But God is omnipotent to the extent that He is not controlled and not controllable. (It's good to note: The Bible says that no one has ever seen God's face, so it should follow that the Biblical God is unknowable to the human mind; He is what He is -"I AM THAT I AM" – See Leo Strauss "Progress or Return"). Ultimately, to believe in something beyond our human comprehension is to have faith, and not wisdom, of his existence. I think I'll end Round 1 with a splendid quote from Albert Einstein: "A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."