Atheistic Materialism Automatically Disqualifies Free Will

You've got me beat when it comes to diplomacy, man. I must give you that. I guess my nature is to say that if it makes sense, and if the alternatives do not, and if everything I currently know to be logical dictates it, and if no one I talk to seems to be able to find flaw with it, well hell, I'm gonna believe it. But I honestly can appreciate the skeptical view of things.

Communism and Nazism were two seperate, yet eventually presumed equal things.

Nazism was created as an evil thing. Communism was innocent enough in the beginning, specifically when Marx and Lenin used it. It was only tainted by Stalin (who teamed up with Hitler, in the original "AXIS of evil").

I'm no Communist, but I believe it would certainly be a good thing for America at this time. Russian Communism is certainly better than American Capitalism.
When I imagine America now, the old picture of the snake eating its own tail comes to mind; yet remember, self mutilation is not a perpetual thing. If you give yourself enouph paper cuts, eventually you will die.

America is like the old empires- Rome, Turkey, Egypt, Macaedonia etc... and where are they now?

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"I know a man who was born with his heart on the outside. Every man's worst fear, he also had heavy hands. he couldn't touch his lovers face, he couldn't hold a baby." - Buck 65

Now, hold your horses, Travis.

Yes, it's true that communism looks a whole lot better than nazism on the paper. But you can't get around the fact that it's undemocratic. And I tell you... Lenin wasn't always Mr Nice Guy. Compared to Stalin he's Dalai Lama, but Lenin too sent a lot of people to Sibiria and murdered people with different views. And we have to remember that after the revolution there was a democratic and more moderate socialist coallition in power - but Lenin and the bolsheviks would not have it. Then of course he did a lot of good things to modernize and intellectualize Russia, but then Stalin came and it all went to hell.

It's also known that communists and nazis/fascists worked together against socialdemocrats and liberals around Europe. The communists loathed democracy then and communists stll do. You can't have a democratic society totally without capitalism. What we don't need is hypercapitalism.

Well, this is a very interesting issue to discuss but it's totally off-topic here. Better not get me started... lol..

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The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".

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They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.

Travis.

Eh, they weren't exactly stand-up guys themselves in all things, from what I've heard.


Why?


Where are ANY of the old empires or countries? What you're saying here sounds roughly akin to the famous Simpson quip "If he's so smart, how come he's dead?"

Never said they were. Just pointing out a fact.

With the cut-throat way America works in its pursuit of capital, a large sum of Americas population is being left to die. Check the unemployment rate. it gets bigger and bigger by the year. The harsh reality of someone not being able to provide for his family, makes him turn to the bottle or the needle.
Families quarrel, and eventually that drives them to expensive medicines for their depression (after all, health care isn't exactly in a great state there).
If they can't afford medicines, the depression turns to violence towards family members, sending them to jail, leaving the poor family poorer.

Now you're going to mention some empty promises that Bush declared in his State of the Union. Go back to any other SOTU, and you will notice that nil to nothing was achieved.

The thing that those empires had in common was... they all became greedy. They ruled the world, and they wanted more. Eventually they tried to steal what little possessions a country less wealthy, but with more heart had... and they became HISTORY chapter 4. I'm not saying I want America to fall, I'm just pointing out the inevitable. It's the perpetual mistake of greed.

Yoda,

As I've indicated before, you are basically throwing these outrageous theories out there, with no explanations for them other than the idea that if we can't explain how the brain works well enough to prove that we have free will, then you've proven your point. I'm sorry, but that's not logical. You are the one making the claims; come up with something to back up the conslusions other than our ignorance of the human brain. If you can't, you haven't made a good point at all.

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One of the biggest myths told is that being intelligent is the absence of the ability to do stupid things.

This is not the first time you've claimed this. I should have spoken up sooner. Some (a small minority) of translations of some bible texts use the word "sphere" as an adjective when describing the sky, heavens, or whatever word that particular version uses for the sky. Never does The Holy Bible, in ANY translation, refer to the earth as spherical. It does, however, describe the earth as flat.

Daniel 4:11
The tree grew, and was strong, and the height thereof reached unto heaven, and the sight thereof to the end of all the earth:

Matthew 4:8
Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;

Assuming that these things could happen at all, they certainly couldn't happen on a spherical world. Sure, you can take a word or two from some translations of the bible and make the bible look like all kinds of things that it's not; but this is argumentation worthy of Christian apologetics and creationists, not someone who thinks as logically as you usually do.

Rest assured that I understand precisely what you're getting at. In fact, I've already replied to it:

"Right, we don't know just how it works. So let's go into hypotheticals: are you saying you believe in a purely physical phenomenon inside the part of our body called the brain that somehow stands outside the ol' tangible cause-and-effect all matter is subject to?

We can trace a thought, so to speak. We can see chemicals react and impulses travel. So, are you saying that one of those impulses is special somehow? Is one of those puddles of chemical doing MORE than just reacting? If so, how is that possible?"

If you pointed out a blatant contradiction in The Bible, and my only response to it was "if God exists, we can't possibly hope to fully understand Him" (which is, I'm sure you'll agree, true), you'd roast me for giving you a cop-out answer, and rightly so.

If someone claimed that everything in the bible is true, and I pointed out contradictions, then the answer you referred to would be a cop-out, yes. But I'm not making a claim that is being disproven. You are using the absence of proof to prove your side, and it isn't logical at all.

Nope. I'm not sayiing anything of the kind. I don't see the point of using hypotheticals here.

I don't know the answers Yoda. Would you like me to now make a bunch of wacky speculations, ask you questions I know you can't answer and then claim that I have mapped out and proven my wacky speculations?

Edit: I edited this a bunch of times, because I was being distracted while trying to write it. If you read some of the old stuff that isn't there anymore, please disregard. Thanks.

This is where the heart of the matter lies: I am not using absence of proof on my end to prove anything. It is you that has an abscence of proof. Everything we know currently points solely in ONE direction. The only way your stance could be validated is through some utterly unforseeable and borderline supernatural revelation into the very nature of physical matter.

I'm making a claim that is supported by all human knowledge of physical matter and how it behaves. How could you possibly then conclude that, when you oppose this claim, the burden of proof lies with anyone other than you?


Hypotheticals are the only way for you to make your case, as clearly the brain is a wholly physical device. It boils down to one simple question: why is the physical matter that constitutes our brain fundamentally different from any other matter? It is perfectly reasonable to acknowledge the possibility that there's something beyond our comprehension, but it's ridiculous to ASSUME it's there, which is precisely what you're doing.

FYI: I'll get back to you on the matter of the word "sphere" shortly. Thanks for waiting. I'll try to make it quick.

I'm sorry, but you aren't making any sense at all. Atheism simply means not having a belief in any deities. How do you make the leap from there not being any good answers to your questions about the brain to the conclusion that not having a belief in any deities excludes the possibility of free will? The absence of evidence of free will coming from nature does NOT prove that it came from a god. If you aren't saying that, then how in the world are atheists being contraditory if they believe in free will?

Edit: The only possible way you could be making a good point here is if all atheists who believe in free will are claiming that it is a FACT that we have free will, and that it CAN'T come from a god. Obviously, that isn't anywhere near the truth.

As I said a bit earlier, it's not so much Atheism really, as denial of a supernatural force in regards to us. A Soul, or something. It's just that the two almost always go together. I think what you might be getting hung up on is the assumption that I'm saying you must believe in God if you believe in Free Will. I'm not, really, though you certainly have to believe in something supernatural (unless you're ready to take some major leap in logic which contradicts all scientific reason and understanding thus far in human history).

This matter is more of a "if you want to throw the concept of God/the Soul out, hey, fine, but know that you're sort of a fatalist if you do." I know Atheists and Agnostics who believe, based on the principles I've described, that there is no God, and that they have no Free Will. That's perfectly possible; but, as is evident from your arguments, you're very reluctant to concede that you aren't, in fact, making your own choices, even though your other beliefs logically dictate it.

For what it's worth, this is really my contention with your stance in a nutshell (taken from my last post). It sums my argument up rather well: you're basing your belief in Free Will on an unfounded and unsupported assumption that we will not only have a major scientific breakthrough in regards to the brain in the future to validate your stance, but that said breakthrough will also fly in the face of the very nature of the way we have concluded that matter interacts with each other. And yes, that's probably a run-on sentence. The bolded sentence is key.

"Hypotheticals are the only way for you to make your case, as clearly the brain is a wholly physical device. It boils down to one simple question: why is the physical matter that constitutes our brain fundamentally different from any other matter? It is perfectly reasonable to acknowledge the possibility that there's something beyond our comprehension, but it's ridiculous to ASSUME it's there, which is precisely what you're doing."

Hehe. Ah, the life of a geek.

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Since you are so fond of repeating yourself...

"The only possible way you could be making a good point here is if all atheists who believe in free will are claiming that it is a FACT that we have free will, and that it CAN'T come from a god. Obviously, that isn't anywhere near the truth."

and...

"If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't." - Lyall Watson

Yoda,

Let me show you how silly you sound to people who have found no good reason to believe religions are anything other than a bunch of stories and concepts made up by humans.

I believe that The Matrix is real, and that it is the explanation to why we have déjà vu. If you don't have a belief that The Matrix (or something very similar to it) is real, and can't answer my questions about how déjà vu can exist in brains, when science tends to show us that it doesn't exist in any other physical things, then it is inconsistent for you to believe in déjà vu.

Standing ovation from Matt.

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www.esotericrabbit.com

...only when I don't get answers.


I already addressed this:

"It is perfectly reasonable to acknowledge the possibility that there's something beyond our comprehension, but it's ridiculous to ASSUME it's there, which is precisely what you're doing."

It's really quite simple. Tell me where the weak link in my chain of logic is:

1. We have brains. 2. They are made of matter, and nothing more. 3. The matter that makes up our brains is not particularly special or different from the matter in many inanimate or unintelligent things. 4. We have never, ever found any evidence to suggest it is anything more than physical. 5. We have also never, ever found any matter that defied cause-and-effect for no discernable reason.

The thing is, if you reply to a paragraph like this with "we don't understand the brain yet," you're ignoring what I've already said, which is that, yes, we've still more to learn, but what's on trial is the basis you have for believing in Free Will; which amounts to, well, diddly squat. I'm not arguing with you about whether or not it is possible, because it's POSSIBLE we could have the way matter works all messed up, and it's POSSIBLE that JFK was murdered by aliens; but for you to EXPECT the fundamental behavior we've observed for all of human history to be somehow turned on its head in a future experiment, and believe in Free Will based on THAT, is absurd, and I think you most definitely know it.


Invalid parody: for your satire to stand, you would need to produce empirical evidence that déjà vu defied physical behavior as we know it. Which it does not.

I've answered the other questions, and there is no difference between those and the one I didn't answer. You're not asking REAL questions; you're asking questions that you know can't be legitimately answered with anything other than something that amounts to "I don't know", and expect everyone to applaud as if you've made a good point. You haven't. The fact that I can't prove how free will can work in a brain, when we think it can't work in anything else we observe, would only win you points if I were claiming that free will is a fact. I'm not.

Again, this would be a good argument to refute the claim that free will is a "FACT". That would be the case whether the person making that claim was a theist or an atheist. Otherwise, a theist could make ANY valid claim at all, just by saying "god made it so". However, since you are claiming that not having a belief in a god disqualifies the belief in free will, the above does nothing at all to prove your point. Do you get it yet? You are the one making the assertions. You need to prove them, with something other than questions that can't really be answered, in order for me to agree with you.

One thing you keep assuming is that I believe we will one day understand exactly how the human brain works. No way. I don't believe that we will understand exactly how the most advanced and complicated thing we know of works. Perhaps you could explain to me how our brains could be both simple enough for us to understand, and yet intelligent enough to enable us to understand them?

Are you saying that you would concede my point if I used free will rather than déjà vu (I would obviously have to use something other than The Matrix, maybe a religion that doesn't have anything to do with a god of any kind?)? Of course you wouldn't, because you aren't really going on facts and logic here; you are only going on your personal speculation and belief that there really is a god, whether you admit that or not. The rest is just pseudoscientific nonsense you use to try to make people believe in a god.

From your second post:

"You know humans have free will. You know this, not because you read your bible, or because religious people you have followed taught you to, but because you know that you are capable of making decisions on your own."

From your third post:

"I don't believe in fate, Chris."

If you're not claiming it as a "FACT," you're sure as hell claiming it as a belief. Neither claim holds up.


I'm not assuming that at all. But, by stating that you believe in Free Will, you are logically bound to also believe that we will discover something about the brain which contradicts our current knowledge that it is a purely physical device. Either that, or we'll have to discover that physical matter works on all sorts of wacky levels that would in today's world be considered metaphysical.


What? I didn't even imply that. I said your parody was not comparable because the concept of a piece of our brain which somehow allows us to process and spit out decisions independent of our circumstances is wholly unsupported and contradicted by all scientific knowledge to date. Déjà vu does not have those same contradictions. Hence, invalid comparison.


Highly rhetorical paragraph. We're not having a discussion about the motivation for my claims, but rather, their validity.

FYI: I'm fortunate enough to have a Hebrew scholar as a friend (yay), so I've got some info on the "sphere" translation, but it's a tad late and I've got a weird sort of headache, so I'll reply to that, and any other new posts tomorrow.

You have a lovely night...not that you have a choice.