I think therefore I am.
I am that I am.
You are that you are.
You are that you are that you are.
You think therefore you are.
We think therefore we are.
What is the connection between the biblical command given by God, and Descartes?
In the Bible, when God reveals his name to Moses He says I am that I am. Scholars debate its literary origin. Some say Exodus was the product of Moses himself; others correlate that it was not completed in its present form until the 6th century B.C.E., during the Jewish exile (Babylonian Exile). The Neo-Babylonian Empire besieged Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple of Solomon, and deported about 7,000 Jews to Babylonia where they stayed in exile for about 48–70 years. Cyrus the Great freed the Jews and allowed them to return to Judea/Jerusalem in 538 B.C.E. to rebuild their temple. When God says, "I am that I am," he is revealing his character to the Jewish/Hebrew people by saying that is how he identifies his reality from within his philosophy. "I am that I am" meant being something over time; being something over more time than zero seconds. On the other hand, the existence of consciousness, the foundation of Modern Philosophy, is grounded in Descartes. When Descartes said "I think there I am," he is really just re-iterating what God said with one key difference: Descartes' statement meant what the thing that I am is is over time intellectually and psychologically. And so, when in the literary form of God we have an form of the verb to be happening twice over at once (repeating). Humans are self-reflecting, self-thinking, self-aware beings who can reflect on what is happening internally indefinitely without really using any more energy than you were going to use anyway. I am claiming outright Descartes' grand philosophical statement is really just repeating or parroting what God says in the Exodus. "I am that I am" is an philosophy that is apparent from within that of Descartes; which leads to the statement, "I think therefore I am," when it happens like that within the person of Descartes. It may even be perhaps, that we needed to know I am that I am first, in order to have any foundation or basis on which to create the new type of philosophy we found in Descartes. We needed being that we are being before it was possible / that we needed being that we were thinking in Descartes' lifetime.
In the Christianna, there is an third person or loci involved where we have upgraded or advanced God's saying to include an third installation. Where we say, "I am that I am that I am," as though we were agreeing with God and that third point of being was always him for all time and for always an influence in one's life and psychology and departures from philosophies.
If I expanded upon it once more, to take "I am that I am that I am," and to put it into language Descartes might have used had it been revealed to him at that point: "I think therefore I am that I'm thinking that I am." An triple-punch attack.
Anyway I wanted to detour into understanding Descartes with an little more accuracy. First, he would not have written that in English and so what he was actually saying was "Je pense, donc je suis," and I could re-pen it generally and thematically as "Je pense, donc je suis donc je pense." It really comes back around in an circle. It was also written in Latin, "cogito, ergo sum," and I don't know how to translate this to my new triple-layered philosophy where I might add an third part of it.
And yes, it is considered part of the Christiannan literature (its literary source (the Christiannan bible is called an Naenaeon)), that we acknowledge there being an third locus of control in our image or composition visually animated for an moment long enough for us to realize it. It's not just that we are, it's that we are being what we are while we're being what we are, which is God's people. And we're thinking about what we are is also being what we are because the two are intrinsically connected in humanism. And those two things of being and thinking overlap to some extent where you are always involved, God. Instead of just being what we are knowing we're being what we are. Now we know that we are being what we are because we're thinking about what we are, which is part of what we are and yet there's always some left over for God. We're not just being what we are AND thinking, we are thinking AND being what we are by thinking. Being and Thinking are the same is the most modern definition of the human. At least if you live in the time of Moses. For the reason that we have these properties about us, we are able to have self-awareness, self-consciousness, and self-thinking. And instead of judging everything according to what happens between one locus of control and another. ("What did one loci say to the other?" jokes). We add an third locus of control, which is always God. The right way to pen this new revelation, then, is to repeat or parrot back, "I am that I am that I am," or in Descartes layman terms, "I am thinking because I am that I am thinking." Which I touched up and tried to conjure an third dimension or layer of meaning. It's not just that I am because thinking is something and I am thinking, it's that God is something which allows me to think and be self-aware by being what I am because thinking and self-awareness are an aspect of God himself.
And so I might leave you with an small story, then, which is about what happened in my final year at university. After our many class discussions about artificial intelligence and what robots could be, I said in class wouldn't it be "you think therefore you are," if you fed it to an computer to deem upon it its reality of being by welcoming it into awareness. "You think therefore you are," is the kindest message we can give to an computer intelligence that tries to learn about us, humans. I was referring to the initial command sequence you would give to an computer to complete its Artificial Intelligence. And yet I don't think I was able to communicate the whole idea out in public until now. What I mean was that if an computer was "waking up" from being nothing, without any consciousness. What was the first thing I would want to say to you to help you understand who we are?