MoFo's Religion

[Yoda]

Honestly man, if you're genuinely this inept at thinking conceptually, then no wonder you hate philosophy. Now all we need to do is get you to stop trying to talk about it, and we'll all be happy.

[will.15]

Nobody said it was simple. I said that at some point, a molecule either reacts normally or it doesn't. This is inarguable. When a molecule hits another, it either reacts as molecules always do when we observe them, or it simply refuses to. This is the simplest of logic; it's not speculation, and it doesn't involve saying that the universe is easy to understand, either. Yet when I ask you whether or not you believe this, you dodge the question. Repeatedly.

Understanding how a molecule works doesn't explain everything about the universe and the creation of life. Do you really think a scientist buys into this?

Also, even if you get around the fact that you've clearly contradicted yourself (notwithstanding your impressive argument of "no I didn't"), you're still left trying to explain your position by appealing to sheer speculation about what science may or may not discover on some far off point. Which you could use to state anything, no matter how absurd or how strongly contradicted by empirical data.
No, there is no contradiction in what I am saying. You saying there is doesn't make it so. Science has more answers than in the past, but they are still learning new things about the universe. Assumptions about how the universe operates and how it came about changes or is modifed with new information. You keep saying molecules operate in a logical way. What does that have to with the notion our brains are purely physical, that we use those brains to make decisons?. What is supernatural about the thinking process?

[Yoda]

Understanding how a molecule works doesn't explain everything about the universe and the creation of life. Do you really think a scientist buys into this?
Nope. Do you think a scientist believes in something on the theory that, hey, maybe someone will come up with some totally wild new theory some day that contradicts all the stuff we've seen so far, so it's okay to believe things that there's no support for given what we do know?

No, there is no contradiction in what I am saying. You saying there is doesn't make it so.
I think I figured out the problem. You keep saying this, but you're not clicking your heels together. That's why it isn't an argument.

Science has more answers than in the past, but they are still learning new things about the universe. Assumptions about how the universe operates and how it came about changes or is modifed with new information. You keep saying molecules operate in a logical way. What does that have to with the notion our brains are purely physical, that we use those brains to make decisons?. What is supernatural about the thinking process?
And again, you ask a question I've answered a dozen times: the supernatural part is that you're saying there are physical somethings in our brain which don't react to other particles the way all the other particles we observe do. That they're just exempt from the causes that precede them.

The idea that anything in the universe can choose whether or not to react to something else is a supernatural idea. It has no basis in science and contradicts mounds of empirical data. Not even quantum mechanics allows for it. There are all sorts of questions about how the universe works, but there is no conception of physics that posits that anything in reality has a choice about how and when to react to the forces that impose upon it. To say this isn't supernatural is to define the word in such a way that nothing would qualify.

[will.15]

Honestly man, if you're genuinely this inept at thinking conceptually, then no wonder you hate philosophy. Now all we need to do is get you to stop trying to talk about it, and we'll all be happy.
Oh, is that what we are doing, discussing philosophy? You are trying to prove free will is proof of the existence of God. Well, that is your philosphy, I guess. And I see your argument, because there isn't a simple scientific explantion of the thinking process, God gave it to us, pretty unconvincing.

[Flimmaker1473]

Science can't explain everything. And that is where God comes in. Just a thought us Christians have.

[Yoda]

No, that is not my argument, it has never been my argument, and I've told you the same several times. To continue to repeat that it is suggests that you're either being highly disingenuous, or are hopelessly confused, after all this time, about what's being said to you.

[will.15]

Nope. Do you think a scientist believes in something on the theory that, hey, maybe someone will come up with some totally wild new theory some day that contradicts all the stuff we've seen so far, so it's okay to believe things that there's no support for given what we do know?

No, we are not talking about wild new theories. Scientific thought is constantly evolving as we acquire new information through new archeological finds and technology.


I think I figured out the problem. You keep saying this, but you're not clicking your heels together. That's why it isn't an argument.


And again, you ask a question I've answered a dozen times: the supernatural part is that you're saying there are physical somethings in our brain which don't react to other particles the way all the other particles we observe do. That they're just exempt from the causes that precede them.

No, I am not saying that. You are saying that. You are saying the particles in our brain don't operate the way it does in the particles in a rock. Well, the particles in our brains are different than the particles in a rock. That is why we are not rocks.

The idea that anything in the universe can choose whether or not to react to something else is a supernatural idea. It has no basis in science and contradicts mounds of empirical data. Not even quantum mechanics allows for it. There are all sorts of questions about how the universe works, but there is no conception of physics that posits that anything in reality has a choice about how and when to react to the forces that impose upon it. To say this isn't supernatural is to define the word in such a way that nothing would qualify.
So you want to explain to all those scientists the thinking process is supernatural, that it defies scientific logic?

And again, you keep making statements you declare as true when they are not.

Just because you or I can't explain something, doesn't mean it doesn't operate by the laws of physics.

[Yoda]

No, we are not talking about wild new theories. Scientific thought is constantly evolving as we acquire nw information through new archeological finds and technology.
Uh, the idea that some parts of physical reality can CHOOSE whether or not to react to other parts is, indeed, a wild new theory.

So you want to explain to all those scientists the thinking process is supernatural, that it defies scientific logic?
It only defies science if you posit that it's not predetermined. Otherwise, it's perfectly consistent. That's the point.

If you want to start arguing scientifically, great. Then explain to me the scientific basis for anything you're saying. I see none. I see an appeal to our collective ignorance being used to justify wild speculation without empirical evidence.

SoJust because you or I can't explain something, doesn't mean something doesn't operate in the laws of physics.
Nobody's arguing this. What I am arguing is that, for choice to exist, individual physical elements have to be able to choose whether or not to react. No part of this statement is arguable, even if you expect all sorts of scientific tumult. It's not a scientific statement; at this level of broadness, it's a simple logical statement.

There is no angle from which your position is not ridiculous. You are positing a supernatural idea with no evidence. I know you don't think of yourself as the kinda guy who does that, but that's what you're doing.

[will.15]

No, that is not my argument, it has never been my argument, and I've told you the same several times. To continue to repeat that it is suggests that you're either being highly disingenuous, or are hopelessly confused, after all this time, about what's being said to you.
What is your point then if that is not what you are saying? If the existence of man cannot be entirely explained through science, there has to be a supernatural component, how can that not be God?

[will.15]

Uh, the idea that some parts of physical reality can CHOOSE whether or not to react to other parts is, indeed, a wild new theory.

Again, those are your conclusions, it is not what science says. You are creating you own narrow inflexible rules for how creation of the universe came about.


It only defies science if you posit that it's not predetermined. Otherwise, it's perfectly consistent. That's the point.

Some things are predetermined, others are not. It was predetermined Tom Cruise would be a big star who was into Scientology?

If you want to start arguing scientifically, great. Then explain to me the scientific basis for anything you're saying. I see none. I see an appeal to our collective ignorance being used to justify wild speculation without empirical evidence.

I already said I wasn't a scientist. You sure are not either, saying stuff like how come the molecules in our head don't act like the ones in rocks.

And what I said about empirical evidence is true. You haven't read in the last year how scientists have found evidence that challenge our assumptions of the universe?


Nobody's arguing this. What I am arguing is that, for choice to exist, individual physical elements have to be able to choose whether or not to react. No part of this statement is arguable, even if you expect all sorts of scientific tumult. It's not a scientific statement; at this level of broadness, it's a simple logical statement.

There is no angle from which your position is not ridiculous. You are positing a supernatural idea with no evidence. I know you don't think of yourself as the kinda guy who does that, but that's what you're doing.
I am not saying anything supernatural at all. I am saying we have brains, we think, and we make decisons that affect us, and sometimes we deliberately change our behavior to some degree. That is free will. I don't see anything ghostly or strange about it. I don't see how reason defies science.

[Yoda]

What is your point then if that is not what you are saying? If the existence of man cannot be entirely explained through science, there has to be a supernatural component, how can that not be God?
Because we can just not have free will. Perfectly consistent with scientific observation and logic, requires no supernatural invocation.

Also, there's a new contradiction that comes from your latest claims. You keep saying that the way the universe behaves is far too complicated to understand, which is true, even if it's not generally relevant to the point I'm making. So the question is: how can you say we have free will just because it kind of feels like we do? If it's so insanely complicated, why can't choice be an illusion? The same thing you use to defend one part of your argument invalidates another. You want to posit complexity and uncertainty when it suits you--when we're talking about cause and effect--but ignore it when it doesn't--when you want to say feeling like you have choice must mean that you do.

[Yoda]

Again, those are your conclusions, it is not what science says. You are creating you own narrow inflexible rules for how creation of the universe came about.
What on earth are you talking about? The idea that some parts of the physical world can choose how to react to other parts is a completely wild new theory with no empirical evidence behind it. That's not my opinion, dude.

Some things are predetermined, others are not.
So the matter in your brain is special somehow, which is why the things it does aren't predetermined, yes?
I already said I wasn't a scientist. You sure are not either, saying stuff like how come the molecules in our head don't act like the ones in rocks.
The problem with this is that you say "act like." I don't say they act the same; they're very different. I say they're made of the same basic building blocks (show me one molecular difference. Go ahead), and there's no reason to believe (and here's your entire claim, in a nutshell) that the stuff in your head is special stuff that operates under different rules than other stuff.

And what I said about empirical evidence is true. You haven't read in the last year how scientists have found evidence that challenge our assumptions of the universe?
I sure have. But none of it contains evidence that some physical matter can choose whether or not to react to things around it. And that's the thing you don't get: the fact that we don't know much about how things react poses no problem for my argument. Either some matter can sometimes CHOOSE how to react, or not. This is a logical statement, not a scientific one. It's not a statement contingent on us being currently ignorant of how things work.

I am not saying anything supernatural at all.
Yes you are. The idea that some physical matter CHOOSES whether to respond to stimulus is a supernatural idea. It's supernatural because it has no observational evidence to support it and because there's lots of empirical data to contradict it. Period.

I am saying we have brains, we think, and we make decisons that affect us, and sometimes we deliberately change our behavior to some degree. That is free will. I don't see anything ghostly or strange about it. I don't see how reason defies science.
I love how you try to make your position sound reasonable and straightforward by saying "we think," which skips over the entire issue.

[planet news]

Yoda, even if you get Will.15 to renounce free will as an 'illusion,' what then generates that illusion as it exists? You will surely substitute God, but why is this necessary? Why not another, as of yet unknown, material basis? Nevertheless, this is not the argument I am making. That's just the endless postponement of free will to scientific discovery. No, I argue for the immediacy of free will from the structure of being.

What you're saying is essentially "we can't get free will for free, so we need God."

I'm saying we don't need to steal at all: we pay a price which I have been calling "supplement." What needs to be explained is the One-effect constitutive of will -- that is, why we experience will as we do, which we certainly do. Again, to say free will is an illusion says nothing at all. It merely calls free will the name "illusion" for which you then substitute the name "God."

Your argument is flawed, even if Will.15 can't tell you why. I can tell he hasn't really thought about the problem outside of these forums, which is perfectly normal.

[Yoda]

Yoda, even if you get Will.15 to renounce free will as an 'illusion,' what then generates that illusion as it exists? You will surely substitute God, but why is this necessary? Why not another, as of yet unknown, material basis? Nevertheless, this is not the argument I am making. That's just the endless postponement of free will to scientific discovery. No, I argue for the immediacy of free will from the structure of being.
That's an odd question; indeed, why not some other unknown, material basis? That's entirely possible. It might be an illusion that results from a known process, or an unknown process. I make no claim either way, I just claim that it's an illusion. Again, from a materialist's point of view.

I'm saying we don't need to steal at all: we pay a price which I have been calling "supplement." What needs to be explained is the One-effect constitutive of will -- that is, why we experience will as we do, which we certainly do. Again, to say free will is an illusion says nothing at all. It merely calls free will the name "illusion" for which you then substitute the name "God."
What you're describing sounds identical to "soft" determinism, which tries to get around the problem by subtly admitting free will doesn't exist in the way we often use the term, and then just saying that the illusion of choice we have can be called free will. That's reasonable, but it's not an argument against determinism.

Your argument is flawed, even if Will.15 can't tell you why.
It's more than that. There's no way he's going to like your "supplement" theory. He will predictably regard it as a bunch of philosophical mumbo-jumbo. Which means, from his perspective, my argument isn't flawed at all. He needs to articulate an explanation given the other things he professes to believe, and therein lies the futility.

I don't think it's flawed from my perspective or yours, either, mind you. But that's a separate question.

I can tell he hasn't really thought about the problem outside of these forums, which is perfectly normal.
Aye, it is normal. Slightly less normal: posting terrible arguments about kittens and rocks instead of just admitting he hasn't thought much about it and bowing out gracefully.

I begrudge no one for deciding not to think of these things too much. But I'll begrudge them plenty for not thinking of them, and then talking a whole bunch about them anyway.

[planet news]

What you're describing sounds identical to "soft" determinism, which tries to get around the problem by subtly admitting free will doesn't exist in the way we often use the term, and then just saying that the illusion of choice we have can be called free will. That's reasonable, but it's not an argument against determinism.There is no argument 'against' determinism if you accept deterministic grounds: cause and effect are exhaustive of the possibilities of being. Soft determinists already accept deterministic grounds, so they have to revise the object of consideration in order to say anything at all more than the postulates of determinism already say. This ultimately, as we both know, amounts to them saying nothing at all.

Clearly, I don't think the concepts of cause and effect express anything necessary about being, and I'm not so sure any 'atheist' actually does. Here's why. Almost all atheists will have the following view of science: science is constantly revising itself. When atheists state "I believe in science," they are talking about a process, not a body of facts. That statement alone expresses perfectly an intuitive grasp of 'supplement to being.'

The fact that science has to 'move' in order to grasp Truth, shows that Truth exists on 'different dimension' than science. It follows that it is the very movement itself of science that we can call Truth. What else supplements the granted Truth of science but its willingness to move?

It is in this space of movement, the utterly indeterminate space of the Multiple, that h a r d c o r e freedom exists absolutely.

The passage from one object (molecule) to another (consciousness).

[will.15]

Tell these guys there is no such thing as free will.

http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/physics/

[Yoda]

Yeah, Gol and I talked about that a few pages back. Quantum indeterminacy poses an interesting potential challenge to determinacy, but it doesn't suggest free will.

Since I figure there is an extremely small chance that you actually read that before posting it, I'll let you down easy: it doesn't back you up. It suggests the same thing Gol and I concluded: that quantum indeterminacy may mean some things are really random, but that also means we can't control them.

Also, I can't help but point out that a few posts ago you were harping on about what "a scientist" would say (nevermind what this hypothetical scientist would say about your magic brain matter, apparently), and now you've posted a link full of scientists who said the exact same thing.

[Powderfinger]

I'm not sure if you have the Girl Guides in American, probably not!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl_Guides

Anyway, they're dropping the motto...for God and the Queen (something like that)

[planet news]

That's an odd question; indeed, why not some other unknown, material basis? That's entirely possible. It might be an illusion that results from a known process, or an unknown process. I make no claim either way, I just claim that it's an illusion. Again, from a materialist's point of view.As I've repeated tried to explain, materialism states that all objects are illusions with respect to being. What needs to be accounted for is the One-effect. To say it is an illusion does nothing at all but to give the existent Thing the name "illusion." How then does that illusion come about? That's what I'm interested in, the genesis of a singular, comprehending will from pure multiplicitious being.

Your argument is flawed, because it's not even an argument. It's just one result of the key postulate in the materialist framework: that all objects are illusions, that only the Multiple is. The illusion is failure to perceive the gap between existence and being. Existence is an illusion. That's all fun and good, but like Sedai once said, then how do you explain that we eat sandwiches?

The One-effect can't be accounted for by other Ones (i.e. molecules, motivations, drives), it can only be accounted for by the passage from Multipe to One.

I'm sorry, but it's time for you to drop this cliched view of 'materialism' that hasn't made sense to anyone since Newtonian mechanics was overturned.

Being is not a machine. We only understand between in mechanical terms.

[Yoda]

There is no argument 'against' determinism if you accept deterministic grounds: cause and effect are exhaustive of the possibilities of being. Soft determinists already accept deterministic grounds, so they have to revise the object of consideration in order to say anything at all more than the postulates of determinism already say. This ultimately, as we both know, amounts to them saying nothing at all.
Yup.

Clearly, I don't think the concepts of cause and effect express anything necessary about being, and I'm not so sure any 'atheist' actually does. Here's why. Almost all atheists will have the following view of science: science is constantly revising itself. When atheists state "I believe in science," they are talking about a process, not a body of facts. That statement alone expresses perfectly an intuitive grasp of 'supplement to being.'
Correct. They believe in the process of science to yield empirical observations about the physical world. But they also believe there is nothing beyond the physical. Which means everything is either measurable, or would be measurable if we were better at measuring. Anything that defies this sort of observation or measure, not just in practice but even in theory, would have to be what we would call supernatural, I think.

The fact that science has to 'move' in order to grasp Truth, shows that Truth exists on 'different dimension' than science. It follows that it is the very movement itself of science that we can call Truth. What else supplements the granted Truth of science but its willingness to move?

It is in this space of movement, the utterly indeterminate space of the Multiple, that h a r d c o r e freedom exists absolutely.

The passage from one object (molecule) to another (consciousness).
Why would the process of trying to glean truth through science create any kind of space for choice to exist? I don't see the connection. Also, the fact that science has to "move" to get at the truth just means we guess wrong. There's nothing necessarily metaphysical about this that implies the two are on different "planes." Again, to a materialist.

Also, the last sentence kind of assumes the point of contention; the whole idea is that consciousness is just an emergent phenomena, not a material thing in and of itself. The fact that we've named it doesn't mean anything.

[will.15]

Well, what I posted is not definite scientific fact; it is what some scientists think, because, like economists, sociologists, and the rest, they are not in perfect agreement, and that article argues, if you like it or not, that it is explaining free will. It also says many scientists disagree. You can say they are not really explaining the physics of free will. They say they are. I am not saying I accept what they say either. Like I said, I ain't no scientist, but I believe a rational explanation must always take precedence over other explanations. Evolution makes more sense than God created Adam and Eve after he made the world in seven days. Just because you reject an explanation, or someone else does, doesn't invalidate it anymore than your belief free will is supernatural.

[Yoda]

Well, what I posted is not definite scientific fact; it is what some scientists think, because, like economists, sociologists, and the rest, they are not in perfect agreement, and that article argues, if you like it or not, that it is explaining free will. It also says many scientists disagree. You can say they are not really explaining the physics of free will. They say they are.
Where do they say that? I only see them saying that things may be random. It's not choice if you brain is making decisions randomly.

I am not saying I accept what they say either. Like I said, I ain't no scientist, but I believe a rational explanation must always take precedence over other explanations.
A fine position. The problem is, the simpler, more rational explanation would not lead you to believe in free will, because there's no evidence of it, and plenty of evidence to contradict it.

So how about you confirm the following: you're saying that the stuff that makes up your brain is special and not subject to the same physical laws as other stuff, right? I've asked this a few times but you seem to avoid actually answering it. I dunno if you don't like how it sounds when it's actually presented to you, but that's what you have, in fact, been saying.

Just because you reject an explanation, or someone else does, doesn't invalidate it anymore than your belief free will is supernatural.
Yup. Which is why at no point in this argument I've said "you should reject this idea because I do." I'm giving you reasons you should reject it based on what you say you believe. You want to hang on to empirical scientific data and believe something with no empirical scientific data to support it. That doesn't fly.

[planet news]

Correct. They believe in the process of science to yield empirical observations about the physical world. But they also believe there is nothing beyond the physical. Which means everything is either measurable, or would be measurable if we were better at measuring. Anything that defies this sort of observation or measure, not just in practice but even in theory, would have to be what we would call supernatural, I think.You're talking about the One. The thing you keep calling the 'physical world' is just realm of the One. I keep saying that the One is not, that only the Multiple is, and that the movement of science above all demonstrates this, and you keep saying that this suggests God.

It's all very strange, since if the One is not, then the remainder -- the 'unmeasurable' -- is simply Multiple.

This is your major confusion: to be outside existence (the realm of the One) is not to be supernatural. To be outside existence is to remain inside being (the realm of the Multiple).

To be outside being is to be supernatural (the realm of God).

The Materialist position says that the nature of being (the realm of the Multiple) implies there is no possible 'outside.'

[Yoda]

You're talking about the One. The thing you keep calling the 'physical world' is just realm of the One. I keep saying that the One is not, that only the Multiple is, and that the movement of science above all demonstrates this, and you keep saying that this suggests God.

It's all very strange, since if the One is not, then the remainder -- the 'unmeasurable' -- is simply Multiple.
This is weird. First you tell me that the thing I'm describing--the "physical world"--is the One. Then you say that the One is not physical. But I didn't say it was. In one fell swoop you're telling me what word I should be using, and then telling me that that word is wrong. I'm sure this is unintentional, but re-read the above and you'll see what I mean.

Which leads me to a question that probably sounds more adversarial than I mean for it to sound: why do we need these terms? I understand that sometimes we need new terms in philosophical discussions to define new ideas. But the purposes of this are always clarity, and I don't think these terms are adding to clarity. Moreover, I think they might be superfluous. Why not "Metaphysical" and "Physical" instead of "One" and "Multiple"?

This is your major confusion: to be outside existence (the realm of the One) is not to be supernatural. To be outside existence is to remain inside being (the realm of the Multiple).
I think you really need to define "supernatural," then.

If I'm understanding you correctly, things like abstract concepts are not physical, but neither are they supernatural. If that's what you're saying, I'd say: to a materialist, yeah, they are physical. Not in a way we can easily detect, but ultimately they are the byproduct of physical interactions.

To be outside being is to be supernatural (the realm of God).
Meaning, something is supernatural if it can exist without any physical basis whatsoever?

The Materialist position says that the nature of being (the realm of the Multiple) implies there is no possible 'outside.'
Right. They don't believe in anything outside of the physical. So, what are you trying to accomplish? Are you trying to say they should? Are you trying to show how they can not believe in anything outside of the physical, but still have free will (if so, how?)? I'm not at all clear on what you're arguing for, except that you seem to always be arguing that people are not using these terms correctly. But to what end, I can't tell.

[will.15]

Where do they say that? I only see them saying that things may be random. It's not choice if you brain is making decisions randomly.

That is not what it said at all, that is what you want it to say. And they had a link at the end of the page that discusses what they are saying in more detail.

http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/cogito/


A fine position. The problem is, the simpler, more rational explanation would not lead you to believe in free will, because there's no evidence of it, and plenty of evidence to contradict it.

No, the simpler explanation is there is some form of free will because the notion free will is just an illusion is just another form of existentialism like life itself is an illusion, which is what Mark Twain claimed in his later years.

So how about you confirm the following: you're saying that the stuff that makes up your brain is special and not subject to the same physical laws as other stuff, right? I've asked this a few times but you seem to avoid actually answering it. I dunno if you don't like how it sounds when it's actually presented to you, but that's what you have, in fact, been saying.

I keep answering it and you keep not hearing it. The physical laws that applies to how our brain functions are not identicle to the formation of a rock.


Yup. Which is why at no point in this argument I've said "you should reject this idea because I do." I'm giving you reasons you should reject it based on what you say you believe. You want to hang on to empirical scientific data and believe something with no empirical scientific data to support it. That doesn't fly.
You haven't given me anything to even remotely question there is free will. Free will is an illusion? I am supposed to find that persuasive?

[Yoda]

That is not what it said at all, that is what you want it to say. And they had a link at the end of the page that discusses what they are saying in more detail.

http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/cogito/
Oy, again with the links that don't say the things you say they do. That doesn't purport to explain the physics of free will. Not even abstractly. In fact, it says the opposite. Even after going on about randomness and the idea of changing your mind, it concludes with this:

"Note that the evaluation and selection of one of these possibilities by the will is as deterministic and causal a process as anything that a determinist or compatibilist could ask for, consistent with our current knowledge of the physical world."

If you go on to read their definition of "adequate determinism," (I assume you haven't) you'll see that the whole thing is just a form of compatibilism.

No, the simpler explanation is there is some form of free will because the notion free will is just an illusion is just another form of existentialism like life itself is an illusion, which is what Mark Twain claimed in his later years.
It's simpler to believe in something there's absolutely no empirical evidence for, as opposed to the explanation there's reams of empirical evidence for? Say what?

There is literally as much evidence for your belief in free will as there is for someone who claims they can psychically sense an animal's emotions. Their argument is exactly as valid; it has no empirical evidence to support it, their only evidence is in how it feels to them, and it contradicts many things we can observe through physical experimentation.

I keep answering it and you keep not hearing it. The physical laws that applies to how our brain functions are not identicle to the formation of a rock.
No, you're not paying attention to the question. My question assumes what you just said is correct, and then it asks: BECAUSE you believe the "functions" are different, that means you think that the stuff that makes up your brain is special and not subject to the same physical laws as other stuff, right? That's what it means to say it "functions" differently. Your brain gets special rules, either through what it's made of or how it's arranged. There's no way around this conclusion, even though you really seem to want to avoid it.

By the way, it's incredibly telling that, while you argue for these ideas, you strongly resist actually confirming them when I read them back to you in simple terms.

You haven't given me anything to even remotely question there is free will. Free will is an illusion? I am supposed to find that persuasive?
No. You're supposed to find the fact that you're positing special molecules in your brain that don't react like other molecules to be persuasive.

[mark f]

I think that planet news is presenting his mini masses in a New Latin to keep the "faithful" (including his own) unenlightened.

[planet news]

This is weird. First you tell me that the thing I'm describing--the "physical world"--is the One. Then you say that the One is not physical. But I didn't say it was. In one fell swoop you're telling me what word I should be using, and then telling me that that word is wrong. I'm sure this is unintentional, but re-read the above and you'll see what I mean.What you understand or possibly could understand about the physical world is the realm of the One. The physical world is a world composed of objects. One-ness is equivalent to object-hood.

When we speak about existence, we speak about the physical world. When we speak about being, we speak about both the physical world and that which is not the physical world.

Lemme draw a couple pictures.

Which leads me to a question that probably sounds more adversarial than I mean for it to sound: why do we need these terms? I understand that sometimes we need new terms in philosophical discussions to define new ideas. But the purposes of this are always clarity, and I don't think these terms are adding to clarity. Moreover, I think they might be superfluous. Why not "Metaphysical" and "Physical" instead of "One" and "Multiple"?"Metaphysical" means what exactly? What does it mean to you? It means different things to different philosophers. For example, if you mean metaphysics what Heidegger meant by metaphysics, then you are still talking about objects, so you are still in the realm of the One. Honestly, I don't really care what it means, because there's no need for it. It could be called "Bob" for all I care.

The reason why "One" is used to stand for the World of physical objects is because it relates existence to the number one. Again, I could call it "Hubert" if I wanted. It brings mathematics into fold as a discourse on being. Your guy Nash totally understands the centrality of the concept of One in talking about being, but what exactly he means by it is a different story.

Anyways, One-ness is as simple a concept as you can get. For me, it's the primordial concept of existence. To exist is to have One-ness. To be is to be Multiple. If you exist, you can be counted. Like counting... one, two, three. It's a very intuitive name for what the realm of existence is.

I think you really need to define "supernatural," then.I can't define it in any terms or ideas I subscribe to, because it makes no sense. It's impossible. There is only the Multiple and the illusion of the One. There are no other configurations of being or existence. 'Outside' is an inherently contradictory idea. Even giving you a definition of it would force me to use senseless notions like 'outside' or 'transcendent.' Only immanence is possible for the materialist. That's why it's a truly atheist view. It's not agnostic about God like, say, science is. It totally prevents any concievable notion of God.

If I'm understanding you correctly, things like abstract concepts are not physical, but neither are they supernatural. If that's what you're saying, I'd say: to a materialist, yeah, they are physical. Not in a way we can easily detect, but ultimately they are the byproduct of physical interactions.Can you count concepts? Like, can you count the number of concepts that you use? Yeah. So they are One. Can you count the number of abstract concepts you know? Can you say "this thing here is an abstract concept that I am articulating to you right now?" Then it is One. It's that simple.

The Multiple is that which breaks down the One so that it no longer exists. The materialist claim is that any One can be broken down into Multiple, so that, in the end, only the Multiple is. Amazingly, you seem to be open to the idea that everything can be broken down into the Multiple (definitely an attribute of someone who's rigorously considered a lot of things philosophically!), so it simply follows from this property of existence (it's destructibility) that only the Multiple is.

NEVERTHELESS, as you know, we can concieve of a lot of things as One. This is not just because they are 'useful,' unless you mean useful in a very strong sense in that we could not really have any thoughts or activity at all in a world that recognizes the Multiple. In some sense, the fact that the Multiple is 'unusable' makes the emergence of the One a given. The One is simply that orientation within the Multiple that makes the Multiple 'usable.'

All you need to explain then is the One-effect, and the materialist explanation is that you can find the One-effect as a property of any so-called object.

Plato's explanation for the One-effect is the transcedent Ideas. Aristotle's explanation for the One-effect is the hylomorphic model of form and matter.

These are all valiant attempts, but they aren't really necessary. All you need is the Multiple. The Multiple sustains its own illusions. This is the materialist stance.

At this point, you need to stop saying 'to the materialist.' You can just say 'what I think a materialist is,' and the moment those two match up, then you get my view.

Right. They don't believe in anything outside of the physical. So, what are you trying to accomplish? Are you trying to say they should? Are you trying to show how they can not believe in anything outside of the physical, but still have free will (if so, how?)? I'm not at all clear on what you're arguing for, except that you seem to always be arguing that people are not using these terms correctly. But to what end, I can't tell.... no

The physical is the realm of the One. The Multiple is ALWAYS outside the realm of the One. The One, the physical, is not exhaustive of being.

Free will is simply that will (will is an object, a One) which acts from its own Multiple supplement. The reason why I insist on maintaining the legitimacy of the ideas of Truth, Beauty, the Good, Freedom, etc. is precisley because you think these can only be justified by God.

To be totally vulgar I can just say THE MULTIPLE IS GOD, but this is totally misleading, because it's nothing like God. It merely encompasses the OUTSIDE where you think God is.

The feeling that there is 'something more' to physical existence is TOTALLY JUSTIFIED. There's just no need to go to God. The Multiple is already there. There's no room for God.

[will.15]

Oy, again with the links that don't say the things you say they do. That doesn't purport to explain the physics of free will. Not even abstractly. In fact, it says the opposite. Even after going on about randomness and the idea of changing your mind, it concludes with this:
"Note that the evaluation and selection of one of these possibilities by the will is as deterministic and causal a process as anything that a determinist or compatibilist could ask for, consistent with our current knowledge of the physical world."
If you go on to read their definition of "adequate determinism," (I assume you haven't) you'll see that the whole thing is just a form of compatibilism.

Well, I don't believe free will is absolute. I believe, for example, it is pretty clear the ability of gay men in particular to convert to heterosexuality is pretty much a myth. People with addictive tendencies can modify, but not completely change their behavior. An alcoholic cannot drink less, they have to abstain. Free will in absolute terms would say a person can do anything they want. I suspect you are more absolute in your definition of free will, so I don't have a problem with believing in free will, but not the notion the human will can overcome all obstacles. It is not an illusion because changes can be permanently made, though the type of change comes with possible limitations and many are not easily accomplished.


It's simpler to believe in something there's absolutely no empirical evidence for, as opposed to the explanation there's reams of empirical evidence for? Say what?

Where is the empirical evidence free will is an illusion? There is none. You have presented zero empiracle evidence. Saying it exists does not make it so.

There is literally as much evidence for your belief in free will as there is for someone who claims they can psychically sense an animal's emotions. Their argument is exactly as valid; it has no empirical evidence to support it, their only evidence is in how it feels to them, and it contradicts many things we can observe through physical experimentation.

I am merely saying free will exists to the extent we make decisions through independent thought. The evidence is all around us. To say free will is an illusion, we think we are making decisions but our nature is unchangeable, contradicts comment sense and observation. Where is the empirical evidence to support what you are saying? You have not presented any. To say free will, which is simply man making choices and not being completely ruled by impulses and instinct, is comparable to people claiming to be animal psychics (those people are ridiculous) is absurd.


No, you're not paying attention to the question. My question assumes what you just said is correct, and then it asks: BECAUSE you believe the "functions" are different, that means you think that the stuff that makes up your brain is special and not subject to the same physical laws as other stuff, right? That's what it means to say it "functions" differently. Your brain gets special rules, either through what it's made of or how it's arranged. There's no way around this conclusion, even though you really seem to want to avoid it.

There is not just one physical law. There are many. The laws that determine rock formation are different for intelligent life.

By the way, it's incredibly telling that, while you argue for these ideas, you strongly resist actually confirming them when I read them back to you in simple terms.

You just keep repeating the same old hoo. You have made no attempt present actual proof. Empirical evidence to back what you say? Your only empirical evidence is to say there is empirical evidence.


No. You're supposed to find the fact that you're positing special molecules in your brain that don't react like other molecules to be persuasive.
So you want to say all molecules are the same? The molecules in the grass are just like the molecules in the human brain?

[Powderfinger]

The molecules in the grass are just like the molecules in the human brain?

What about Titanium in your brain? lol! :D

[planet news]

So check this out, it'll probably help. Let's call the entire space of the picture "being." Thus existence is just a formatting of this Multiple into Ones (objects). Everything in a circle is One, but as the picture shows, the One isn't really there. It's just like a bunch of Multiples NAMED One. So, the One is an 'illusion.' Science is a (One) discourse in existence. It is totally within existence, but not all things (Ones, objects) in existance are subsumed by science, although most are, since science tries to formalize existence. Pizza, for example, can partially be understood by science, but of course there are other things that make up pizza like subjective tastes (also One -- one flavor, two flavors).

The supplement is merely that which 'groups' the One. Every One has a supplement, so everything line represents the supplement.

So you don't get existence for free. You have a supplement. The supplement is just on the edge of existence. It's a slicing of the Multiple into existences. The Multiple is still all there is. Like legos. You have six legos and you assemble them into a tower, but realy there are still six legos. This logic works all the way down for being.

You can give, like, six legos a different name, but they're still what they are, six multiple legos. The supplement acts like the proper name of objects, grouping them into Ones without actually doing anything to it to justify the grouping.

Human understanding begins in existence, but of course we can implicitly experience the Multiple: for example, something might taste sweet, then sweet-sour, then sweet-sour-bitter...

Like how unexperienced wine tasters taste One flavor but experienced wine tasters taste dozens.

[planet news]

there are six legos

you first call them each by different names

then you call them all by one name

this is how objects are made

the name is supplement to existence

the name is also a thing

we don't need transcendent ideas or god to justify grouping the legos one way or another

it's that easy

[Yoda]

Well, I don't believe free will is absolute. I believe, for example, it is pretty clear the ability of gay men in particular to convert to heterosexuality is pretty much a myth. People with addictive tendencies can modify, but not completely change their behavior. An alcoholic cannot drink less, they have to abstain. Free will in absolute terms would say a person can do anything they want. I suspect you are more absolute in your definition of free will, so I don't have a problem with believing in free will, but not the notion the human will can overcome all obstacles. It is not an illusion because changes can be permanently made, though the type of change comes with possible limitations and many are not easily accomplished.
Okay, but...what part of that links says what you said it did? Where's the physical model for free will? You said it was there, and I don't see it.

Where is the empirical evidence free will is an illusion? There is none. You have presented zero empiracle evidence. Saying it exists does not make it so.
The fact that we have never observed any molecule in any experiment that exhibited choice about how to react, ever. We have never observed an object of any size that, when colliding with another, simply refuses to react to it in accordance with the physical laws we have codified. That's not just empirical evidence, it's a ton of empirical evidence.

The closest we've ever come to an exception is the famous "double slit" quantum experiment, where (I'm heavily simplifying) a particle was either traveling as a particle or a wave depending on whether or not we observed it beforehand. That's it. And even that has only led scientists to believe that such things may be random; it presents no mechanism for control.

I am merely saying free will exists to the extent we make decisions through independent thought. The evidence is all around us. To say free will is an illusion, we think we are making decisions but our nature is unchangeable, contradicts comment sense and observation.
Ugh, this is deeply discouraging. Amazingly, improbably, after all this back and forth, you still have no idea what the argument is about. Please take special note of this next paragraph:

Determinism says that whatever you did, you were going to do. That doesn't mean people don't change. Of course people change. It just means they were always going to change. Their habits were predetermined, and so were the changes they made later. If you thought about doing one thing, then did another, determinism says that you were always going to think about the one thing and then do the other. If someone says "but I almost chose the other way!," a determinist says "yes, and you were always going to almost choose the other thing." And they say this because they think your mind is just more physical matter, and therefore isn't special or magical and is governed by causality, the same as all other matter.

Even suggesting there is "evidence" against this idea suggests confusion. It's not possible to have hard evidence against this idea, because it's literally impossible to show that anyone could have made a different choice than they did.

Where is the empirical evidence to support what you are saying? You have not presented any. To say free will, which is simply man making choices and not being completely rued by impulses and instinct, is comparable to people claiming to be animal psychics (those people are ridiculous) is absurd.
No, determinism does not say we are ruled by instinct. It says our actions are predetermined. Whether someone makes a choice on a lark or by sitting and thinking about it for hours first makes no difference. The only idea is that, whatever you ended up doing, you were going to do.

Have you really been arguing against determinism this entire time thinking it's about people not being able to change and being ruled by instinct?

There is not just one physical law. There are many. The laws that determine rock formation are different for intelligent life
Really? What laws are those? Please tell me which law governs what happens when one molecule hits another, and why it doesn't apply inside your skull.

You just keep repeating the same old hoo. You have made no attempt present actual proof. Empirical evidence to back what you say? Your only empirical evidence is to say there is empirical evidence.
No, my empirical evidence is us never observing anything like you're talking about in any controlled setting, ever.

So you want to say all molecules are the same? The molecules in the grass are just like the molecules in the human brain?
Nope. You keep trying to shift this question, and it's not going to work. Saying all molecules react to things is not the same thing as saying all molecules are identical. There are different types of molecules. But none of them get to decide whether or not to react to a force set upon it.

Here's a helpful analogy: if I say everything is subject to gravity, it's not a counterargument to say "I'm not subject to gravity because I'm way more complicated than something like a rock. We're made of different stuff." That would be nonsense, because both complicated and uncomplicated objects are all subject to gravity. As a physical law it makes no distinction based on complexity. The fact that you're made of different stuff doesn't mean the individual parts of that stuff gets to react differently to the physical laws of the universe.

So what you're positing is that there's some other physical law (which one?) that isn't like gravity, because a rock has to obey it and your brain doesn't. So what is this law, and why does your brain get special treatment from it? I've been asking this question for an entire week, and you can't give me an answer.

[Yoda]

So check this out, it'll probably help.
Okay, first off...that image is hilarious. I actu-laughed when I saw it. I think it was the "pizza" circle that did it. I showed it to my wife. So good job, even if nothing else comes from this.

Onto the stuffs:


Let's call the entire space of the picture "being." Thus existence is just a formatting of this Multiple into Ones (objects). Everything in a circle is One, but as the picture shows, the One isn't really there. It's just like a bunch of Multiples NAMED One. So, the One is an 'illusion.' Science is a (One) discourse in existence. It is totally within existence, but not all things (Ones, objects) in existance are subsumed by science, although most are, since science tries to formalize existence. Pizza, for example, can partially be understood by science, but of course there are other things that make up pizza like subjective tastes (also One -- one flavor, two flavors).

The supplement is merely that which 'groups' the One. Every One has a supplement, so everything line represents the supplement.
So far, I'm pretty sure I'm with you. But in the sense of understanding what you mean and more or less agreeing with it.


So you don't get existence for free. You have a supplement. The supplement is just on the edge of existence. It's a slicing of the Multiple into existences. The Multiple is still all there is. Like legos. You have six legos and you assemble them into a tower, but realy there are still six legos. This logic works all the way down for being.

You can give, like, six legos a different name, but they're still what they are, six multiple legos. The supplement acts like the proper name of objects, grouping them into Ones without actually doing anything to it to justify the grouping.
Great analogy. I'm still with you, with the tiny caveat of wanting to clarify "you don't get existence for free." Being human means inevitably categorizing things, recognizing patterns, grouping things according to a sense of their "essence," etc., but I wonder why you would call this a "price." It's something we do, but that's about all we know for sure, yeah?

[Yoda]

there are six legos
Got it.

you first call them each by different names
Greg, Cornelius, etc.

then you call them all by one name
UberLego.

this is how objects are made
It's also how cool towers are made.

the name is supplement to existence
Ruh-roh. We're losing the signal...

the name is also a thing
...and it's gone. Why is the name a "thing"? Isn't the underlying assumption that the mere idea of categorization is some kind of thing in and of itself? That concepts are as real as physical objects? If so, that seems like a leap. I don't think a materialist has to posit any kind of significance to our use of concepts. Just a smart animal trying to grapple with a whole lot of data points.

we don't need transcendent ideas or god to justify grouping the legos one way or another
Of course we don't. But who suggested we did? I think I would've remembered an argument as insane and awesome as "this lego is called Cornelius, which proves there's a God."

Are you not arguing for free will here? Are you saying you want to transfer this logical structure onto, I dunno, morality or something?

[planet news]

Great analogy. I'm still with you, with the tiny caveat of wanting to clarify "you don't get existence for free." Being human means inevitably categorizing things, recognizing patterns, grouping things according to a sense of their "essence," etc., but I wonder why you would call this a "price." It's something we do, but that's about all we know for sure, yeah?Yeah exactly. It doesn't matter what the supplement is. It's different for pretty much every object. It has to be, why else would they be distinct objects?

The reason why I say "price" is because the materialist says that, 'in actuality,' everything is meaningless, formless, etc. Yet, as we come into the world in which we find ourselves, we get all kinds of forms, meanings, etc. How? From where? The materialist MUST explain this.

Deconstruction, for example, is the materialist move of decomposing the One into Multiple, but it never answers the question, how was it we ever experienced meaning that was NOT deconstructed? How is it that, despite your deconstructions, we continue to experience it, even if you've shown that our meaning really is, deep down, meaningless.

So we pay the 'price' of 'sacrificing' a Multiple for the SOLE TASK of counting the thing in question. It's like Christ paying for our sins. The sin in question is existence. Existence is an illusion. That's a sin. Existence is finitude, and Augustine said that all sins are derived from our finitude. So maybe there is Christian wisdom in this.

Still, in this way, God is a way of getting meaning for free. We dont have to pay anything. God stands outside, like the Fed, and just imposes meaning. The same is said for Plato. Being sacrifices nothing to get the One. The Ideas do all the work.

Again, it doesn't matter what processes we're talking about --- pattern recognition, optical illusion, bias, etc. -- the point is there is a supplement to every object.

When you talk about human beings EXISTING, it merely means we've woken up in the World that is already CUT UP. Multiples are the things that DO the cutting, and there are Multiples that do EVERY CUT. Why else would a Multiple be Multiple?

So the fact that we woke up in one cut is rather unextraordinary. It does make it rather hard for us to comprehent what DOES the cutting, since everything is already cut, but the materialist says it's just the Multiple we call supplement.

That's it, really. We get pizza and science, and I'm fine with that. All the beauty and truth is found when we want to break out of the cut in which we find ourselves. That's much more complicated.

[planet news]

...and it's gone. Why is the name a "thing"? Isn't the underlying assumption that the mere idea of categorization is some kind of thing in and of itself? That concepts are as real as physical objects? If so, that seems like a leap. I don't think a materialist has to posit any kind of significance to our use of concepts. Just a smart animal trying to grapple with a whole lot of data points.DUDE, now I know we're singing the same song, because I haven't at all justified WHY THE NAME IS A THING.

Concepts are not what we're talking about though. They really aren't. Concepts are already One. One concept, two concepts... yep, they are definitely One. Same with names. Yoda is One name, so is Chris. It's just an analogy that I can make WITHIN existence. What the supplement is is not a concept or a name, though it is a name by analogy.

So, what is the supplement? The supplement is WHAT (a Multiple that) DESTROYS THE OBJECT, what reduces it to Multiple.

It is the 'realization' that the name is just a name, to make an analogy with name.

Now, I don't mean it's a bomb or a hammer. I just mean, the supplement is whatever OBJECT(S) make it possible to REALIZE that the object is just it's Multiples. The supplement is that which an Object cannot 'account' for. It is that within the object that the object cannot address in any way. That's why I say supplement lies at the edge of an object.

The object itself cannot 'address' the supplement, yet the supplement realizes the object as it is. Can you see yet how this is free will at its finest? There is this STUFF in (or around, or whatever) every object that the object is TOTALLY INDIFFERENT to. Whatever this STUFF is (and it's different for each object), that stuff is the space for its freedom?



What more do I need to say except that freedom is the freedom of an object to RENAME itself.

Do you instantly also see the political implications of this? How the proletariat are the unaccounted for class that 'renames' the regime of capitalism into a different object, namely, communism?

[planet news]

If an object is just a multiple with a proper name, then it cannot pronounce its own name without realizing that it is just a multiple.

When the object does pronounce its own name, the object is destroyed and, until it takes on a different name, is under the influence of no other object.

This space of movement is the space of Truth.

Science can destroy and rebuild itself. The process of science is one in which science discovers its own name, the Truth of its existence, becomes utterly multiple, and reconstitutes itself.

The same is said of will. Our self-reflexivity allows us to constantly pronounce the name of our will, constantly destroy it, throw it into the free space of the multiple, and reconstitute it.

[TheUsualSuspect]

Is anybody but Yoda and PN reading all this? :p

[TheUsualSuspect]

Science can't explain everything. And that is where God comes in. Just a thought us Christians have.

Okay, but what about the stuff that science DOES explain....mainly the stuff that disproves things in the bible. Where does that come in?

[Yoda]

I'm not sure how anyone can be expected to answer that if you don't outline what you think science has disproved in the Bible.

[DexterRiley]

I'm not sure how anyone can be expected to answer that if you don't outline what you think science has disproved in the Bible.

Profound Apologies Yodes, you walked into this one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IF9Xn5m2OGg

[Golgot]

Soz, been busy, and replying to this accurately needed me to dig into my bag of sci articles. I'll try and stay quantumly coherent :D...

We sort of already had this discussion, I think. They must believe that if they believe that all physical matter responds to cause and effect. And if they say they don't, I'll have some pointed questions for them. And if they try to hedge and say it probably does, but they're not positive, that's fine, but at that point they're exhibiting a level of skepticism towards empirical data that's probably going to have some troublesome implications for lots of other beliefs.

*EDIT* I think the conversation will go more smoothly if i put this bit first:

If you were to start with "The universe seems to be mainly deterministic" and to end with "and so free will is very possibly an illusion" I'd be totally with you :)

But...

The problem here is that your first principle is over-stated. It is contentious to insist that "all physical matter responds to cause and effect". Yet you assert it as a 100% fait accompli. Not only do scientific exceptions & doubts concerning your statement exist, but many could feasibly impinge on our human realm. To ignore the facts and inferences contained in these schools of science, without valid justification, would truly be to exhibit 'a level of skepticism of empirical data' etc.

To keep things compact, here are two brief examples:

(NB I'm linking to norty reproductions of New Sci articles here. I'd encourage interested parties to pay for the original (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18524891.000-higher-laws-and-the-mindboggling-complexity-of-life.html) content (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19325951.900-the-illusion-of-reality-in-a-quantum-world.html) tho, as it's a great publication :))


The Landauer-Lloyd limit (http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/paleopsych/2005-April/002721.html) strongly suggests "a fundamental limit to the precision of physics" on a universal scale - a 'fuzziness' that applies to deterministic laws. It also counters known impediments to the possiblity of 'strong emergence' - IE as yet unknown "organising principles that come into play beyond a certain threshold of complexity". In combination, this apparent physics norm, and the latter theory, open new avenues of investigation into complex systems, such as the biological, and the quantum/classical threshhold. On the former they say, with some predictive strength, that complex amino acids couldn't be derived from the universal first principles as we understand them, but may be explained by 'emergent' laws. And on the quantum threshold, they posit a (as yet untestable) possibility that "the transition from quantum to classical might occur... at about 400 particles".


Researchers Kofler and Brukner are among those investigating 'bigger Schrödinger cats' (http://www.classicalmusicguide.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=17791) - IE nigh-'classical' physics objects exhibiting quantum behaviour. They have gone a step further by seemingly demonstrating that there is no quantum/classical threshold as such - IE "that what we perceive as classical reality can emerge gradually from quantum law" & "Reality is fundamentally quantum but looks classical to us".

I think these two alone are reasonable challenges to 100% assertions that "all physical matter responds to cause and effect". *EDIT* The 'fuzziness' of deterministic laws over deep time and the necessity of further laws to explain known phenomena are reasonable grounds for questioning assertions of their absolute primacy. And furthermore (on a perhaps dangerously new-age note ;)), surely a world where quantum effects can be observed macroscopically (http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2010/mar/18/quantum-effect-spotted-in-a-visible-object) gives one pause for thought in terms of the classical/quantum boundary.

(PS you should stop saying 'particles' obey deterministic laws stringently, as you have elsewhere, as that's precisely the realm where things get a bit 'fuzzy' ;)).

---

There are aspects of the above studies & theories that I find dubious, but the fact is they are part of ongoing scientific investigation and have many testable elements. Ignoring their implications, at least without providing grounds for rebuttle, would be unwise. (And besides, I've got more if you don't like these ones ;))

Amongst the varied questions they evoke, my favourite is the one about whether quantum effects could feasibly be active in some way at a particulate level in the way consciousness is formed, adding an indeterministic spin to otherwise deterministic processes. I have no idea, but it seems difficult to preclude the possiblity. (And as we've mentioned on other free will threads, even if we had freedom to decide, but no freedom to act on said decisions, that would still constitute a form of free will).


It's also worth noting that this observation is ultimately unfalsifiable. One can explain away any contradiction or hold at bay any level of cognitive dissonance if one is willing to believe in some future discovery that will turn our sense of the universe on its head, no?

But that's not what I'm doing. I'm talking about current theories, and reasonable extrapolations. As part of the process of 'falsifying' your first premise a touch :)

But now... onto the other stuff...

-----


Well, they can posit its existence, but never hope to realize it. But that's not what I mean. What I meant is that a materialist has no grounds from which to claim that truth is inherently good. It is only good insofar as it is useful for some other end. I think a lot of atheists completely miss this, particularly when they take it upon themselves to convert believers. The atheist has an added burden of proof: not only truth, but utility.

I was with you up until you said utility. A materliaist would struggle to claim objective morality exists, sure. But objective utility? In terms of the biological world, that's practically a building block of darwinistic thought etc.

Careful with that "statistical unlikeliness" stuff...you're veering dangerously close to design. ;D

Indeed :D. Although there are many areas of complexity-from-'simplicity' & 'survival against the odds' that could be marvelled at without immediately bring Anthropic Principles lolloping into view. Meteors etc have plastered many of God's creatures into the geological furniture - the very fact that biological life keeps dancing it's evolving dance is astounding enough. You could call it God, I could call it lucky-ish odds. (*SINGS* Let's call the whole thing off ;))

But no, I don't think there are any logical grounds for wonder. What do you think wonder is other than pure instinct? You may find it useful for the purposes of human evolution (though even that seems kinda sketchy to me), but how is it logical? What's rational about a sunset?

What's funny here is, by this logic, none of my logic is logic. You think I should believe all logic is instinct. So why are we even having this discussion? (PS you can't predicate my mid-argument reasoning with your pre-argument conclusion. Just coz you think I shouldn't believe in logic, doesn't mean I should ;))

As I've mentioned, there are logical reasons to marvel at existence in statistical / complexity terms. We could even apply them to the sunset if you like, layering in to the experience the added knowledge about the sun's staggering distance / vital role in our existence etc etc.

On the actual sensation of wonder, that's a different issue. As much as we've just mentioned Darwinistic 'utility', it's worth mentioning that is also embraces 'free rider' adaptions that might no longer play a role, or never played one at all. I've no idea if the sensation of wonder is a vestige of something that helped us survive in the past, a 'free rider' aspect of some other useful adaption, or whatever. Frankly it wasn't an argument I was making ;)

Actually, I'm in the "there is no reason to trust any evolved thought" camp. If humans are the result of an ultimately undesigned, arbitrary process, there's no reason to believe the thoughts that result from this process are reliable, and no way of testing the idea.

This strikes me as an argument for another thread. You could call it "There is no reason to trust evolved thought". And I would respond to it :D

I'm pretty sure it applies whether you have free will or not. Meaning implies a purpose or standard outside of ourselves; if it's just something we make up, then it's just another random neuron firing. If meaning is something we can give to any activity with no more or less validity, then it ceases to be a meaningful designation.

I'm going to do a 'will' here, as I'm not sure what you mean. So I'll just say...

'Meaning has many meanings' ;)

There's no probability in a question like that.

Nope, but there are a lot of significant assumptions.

Not least of which being the one about 'conscience' having no potential role or importance in a 'materlialistic' world. One for the 'evolved thought' thread perhaps :D

[Yoda]

Profound Apologies Yodes, you walked into this one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IF9Xn5m2OGg
Ah yes, famed theologian Joe Rogan. ;)

99% of these arguments are going to merit the same response: not everything in the Bible is literal. Some of it is quite obviously not. When the Bible says His Word has "lighted" upon Israel in the Book of Isiah, it doesn't mean he put a giant light in the sky, either.

There are some good questions to ask about how to interpret the Bible, but in my experience almost all of the arguments trying to "disprove" it are really just people going way out of their way to interpret it in whatever way allows them to make it look most ridiculous.

And if it seems like Christians use "it's a metaphor" as a defense a lot, it's because skeptics like to interpret things in staggeringly literal ways in order to attack it a lot.

EDIT: I wanted to add something else. The idea that science has disproved the Bible is almost invariably based on something we didn't know then, that we do know now, which would indicate the Bible was just written by some dudes who were subject to the ignorance of their time. But that's not the case here. You didn't need any modern scientific advancements to know that elephants ate a lot of food, or that you couldn't fit a billion animals on a boat. This is not an example of some ancient story where sheer ignorance made it believable. It was never literally believable, even back then. Which means the people who believed it were not gullible; they either took it as metaphor, or they took it as a miracle.

[TheUsualSuspect]

Yoda - You claim that most Christians don't believe Hell as a place that it use to be depicted and that most Christians say the stories in the bible are metaphors, but you are in the minority. 2/3 out of everyone I've talked to believe Hell is where you go when you sin and it's full of fire and torment and that the stories in the bible are true. TRUE. When I was a kid I took them as metaphors, but I kept having people tell me, no, it really happened.

You basically try to disprove an argument, simply by stating that you know the argument exists. I can't believe you are saying that the story was never believable when a lot of people believe it. People back then are more gullible than they are now. I find it hilarious that their excuse for believing such a story is the same word you just used, Miracle. Try to sit down and talk to these people, I'm sure flimmaker can substitute for us.

Q: How Noah's Ark happen?
A: Miracle

Q: How can a fire bush talk to someone
A: Miracle

Q: How can someone part the sea?
A: Miracle

Q: How can someone raise someone else from the dead?
A: He's Jesus / Miracle


It seems to be the same answer for everything when in reality they don't have an answer. Science looks for answers and constantly changes their answers based on what we find. Religion says this happened, when it has been disproven, they say NOPE. This happened because it says so in this book a bunch of dude wrote in thousands of years ago. It's ignorance.

The Bible itself is a book with huge edits. How many scriptures did not go in? More than the ones that did and which ones didn't? The ones that id not jive with what the guys putting it together wanted it to say. So now we have a book that claims to speak the truth, with edits. Why not give everything to us and let us decide? Give us the whole "truth", not what certain people claim it to be. Control. I allude back to why it was all created in the beginning, but like I said before, it's quite different today, so don't try to debate about religion in our generation to that statement.

My favourite parts of the bible are when it either contradicts itself, or it doesn't explain itself. I understand the bible is NOT a scientific book trying to explain the mechanics of it all, but if that's the case, people need to stop preaching it as fact.

As for science disproving the bible....did we not already cover this? I don't want to go read about how old the earth is.

These are two statements thrown around A LOT, that I hear.

God is infallible. The Bible is the true word of God.

So if the bible is inaccurate, then God is fallible. Therefore....does he exist?

I want flim to answer....:p

[Powderfinger]

Yoda - You claim that most Christians don't believe Hell as a place that it use to be depicted and that most Christians say the stories in the bible are metaphors, but you are in the minority. 2/3 out of everyone I've talked to believe Hell is where you go when you sin and it's full of fire and torment and that the stories in the bible are true.

Hell is something Catholics believe in, most anyway. Purgatory also!

[planet news]

Science can't explain everything (Multiple), but it can explain every object (One). It's even created a few objects in its time. Furthermore, science is always undergoing the process of revising its objects and therefore itself. So, at one point in time, that which science cannot explain might be explained at a future point in time or has already been explained in the past but is explained no longer.

If God comes in just where science ends, then God is equivalent to the Multiple, and that's pretty odd, because then God is just this indeterminate noise of differences from which we cut out different configurations of existence.

Like I said, there might be a beautiful religious analogy here, though it remains firmly on the level of poetry.

[Yoda]

Yoda - You claim that most Christians don't believe Hell as a place that it use to be depicted and that most Christians say the stories in the bible are metaphors, but you are in the minority. 2/3 out of everyone I've talked to believe Hell is where you go when you sin and it's full of fire and torment and that the stories in the bible are true. TRUE. When I was a kid I took them as metaphors, but I kept having people tell me, no, it really happened.
Well, first of all, I didn't say "most." My exact words were "I don't think it's a hugely rare idea," and it isn't, even by your own estimations. Also, my experience simply differs from yours; most of the Christians I knew didn't think so literally, or at least were more nuanced about it. I don't really care, for the purposes of this argument, whether or not this interpretation is believed by 15% of Christians or 85%. The point is the merit of the idea itself. The Bible is vague, so we don't know. Maybe that's why you can get all sorts of crazy interpretations: people are free to fill Hell in with their own ideas about sin, and those ideas aren't always very nice or very forgiving. Good thing they're not the ones who do the judging then, huh?

That said, you've made a number of arguments that basically amount to "well, here's what Christians I know said." But why? Do you think it poses a problem for the Bible itself if someone takes part of it literally? Do you think it poses a problem for me and whatever I'm saying if you grew up with people who preached a certain way to you? What relevance do you think this has? I don't wait for you to say The Usual Suspects is awesome and then tell you some story about some guy I knew who totally misunderstood it and says it sucks.

I'm not averse to hearing your experiences, mind you, but you present them as counterarguments, and I don't see why. Did I make an argument somewhere that Christians are uniformly awesome people, and then just forget?

You basically try to disprove an argument, simply by stating that you know the argument exists.
Not at all. I said that it's not really finding contradictions in the Bible if you only find them by trying to deliberately misread it. If you decide to blithely take it completely literally, yeah, you'll find problems. You can make lots of things sound silly that way, because it's impossible to write about metaphysical things without analogies, parables, or symbolism.

I can't believe you are saying that the story was never believable when a lot of people believe it. People back then are more gullible than they are now.
People back then were ignorant of many things, which is not the same thing as being gullible. And what part can't you believe? Do you think people 2,000 years ago had no idea big animals ate lots of food? Or had no sense of how many animals could fit into a space? There's no scientific advance that makes these things seem more plausible now than they did then. It was always an incredible claim.

I find it hilarious that their excuse for believing such a story is the same word you just used, Miracle. Try to sit down and talk to these people, I'm sure flimmaker can substitute for us.

Q: How Noah's Ark happen?
A: Miracle

Q: How can a fire bush talk to someone
A: Miracle

Q: How can someone part the sea?
A: Miracle

Q: How can someone raise someone else from the dead?
A: He's Jesus / Miracle
So your argument is...what? That God can't perform miracles? These are not separate claims, they are one claim: they are the claim that God performs miracles. It's not as if it's easy to believe He would perform one, but hard to believe He would perform 100. The Bible has miracles in it; ya' got me there. I don't deny it. I'm not sure what listing them has to do with anything. Either you find the idea that there's a God that performs miracles plausible, and they're all plausible, or you don't find it plausible, in which case you really only need one.

It seems to be the same answer for everything when in reality they don't have an answer. Science looks for answers and constantly changes their answers based on what we find. Religion says this happened, when it has been disproven, they say NOPE. This happened because it says so in this book a bunch of dude wrote in thousands of years ago. It's ignorance.
Science is for studying the physical world. But it has literally nothing to do with whether or not there's a God, and if so, what that God might be like. I'm not sure why you keep juxtaposing the two, as if they had any direct relationship.

The only way I can make sense of this is that you're simply describing the way religious thought can encourage people to become intellectually lazy. Which is entirely true. It carries that danger with it, even if you think it's true. And empiricism has its own pitfalls and dangers, too. But both are either true or false regardless of the certain types of vices they may lend themselves to.

The Bible itself is a book with huge edits. How many scriptures did not go in? More than the ones that did and which ones didn't? The ones that id not jive with what the guys putting it together wanted it to say. So now we have a book that claims to speak the truth, with edits. Why not give everything to us and let us decide? Give us the whole "truth", not what certain people claim it to be. Control. I allude back to why it was all created in the beginning, but like I said before, it's quite different today, so don't try to debate about religion in our generation to that statement.
Control to what end? You keep saying control, but there are any number of ways in which Christianity is ill-suited for controlling people, which I explained in my earlier response to the claim (http://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=822970). It's sure used to control people, but not by the people who allegedly created it.

And I don't know what "don't try to debate about religion in our generation to that statement" means.

My favourite parts of the bible are when it either contradicts itself, or it doesn't explain itself. I understand the bible is NOT a scientific book trying to explain the mechanics of it all, but if that's the case, people need to stop preaching it as fact.
As literal fact? Yeah, absolutely, they do need to stop that. I agree completely. Not only because it's wrong and silly, but because apparently atheists will gladly use it to discredit the entire text, rather than the people taking it literally.

God is infallible. The Bible is the true word of God.

So if the bible is inaccurate, then God is fallible. Therefore....does he exist?
A perfectly logical argument...if you accept all the premises listed. Obviously, the point of dispute is whether or not the Bible is inaccurate.

[will.15]

Okay, but...what part of that links says what you said it did? Where's the physical model for free will? You said it was there, and I don't see it.

You don't see it in an article that is titled The Physics of Free Will and says in its opening paragraph that previous analysis it doesn't exist is flawed and show according to the author how it happens. Well, that is your right.


The fact that we have never observed any molecule in any experiment that exhibited choice about how to react, ever. We have never observed an object of any size that, when colliding with another, simply refuses to react to it in accordance with the physical laws we have codified. That's not just empirical evidence, it's a ton of empirical evidence.

The closest we've ever come to an exception is the famous "double slit" quantum experiment, where (I'm heavily simplifying) a particle was either traveling as a particle or a wave depending on whether or not we observed it beforehand. That's it. And even that has only led scientists to believe that such things may be random; it presents no mechanism for control.
Molecules are building blocks. They made us. At some point we stop being just molecules. Molecules that create a breathing being with an advanced brain has created something far more sophisticated than grass and rocks. The human brain is too complex to merely be instincts and urges. That implies free will. To assume that because scientific observation cannot identify free will in molecules, then if free will exists it is supernatural based, then why isn't the opposite also true? If free will is supernatural, then why isn't all existence supernatural? Why does the law of physics exist at all for anything? It would be so much easier for a supernatural being to create a universe through magic than scientific principal. And if this being could pick and choose, why did it use scientific principal for everything except free will? isn't it more logical to believe free will would have come out of the same scientific process?

Ugh, this is deeply discouraging. Amazingly, improbably, after all this back and forth, you still have no idea what the argument is about. Please take special note of this next paragraph:

Determinism says that whatever you did, you were going to do. That doesn't mean people don't change. Of course people change. It just means they were always going to change. Their habits were predetermined, and so were the changes they made later. If you thought about doing one thing, then did another, determinism says that you were always going to think about the one thing and then do the other. If someone says "but I almost chose the other way!," a determinist says "yes, and you were always going to almost choose the other thing." And they say this because they think your mind is just more physical matter, and therefore isn't special or magical and is governed by causality, the same as all other matter.

Yeah, well, that is the theory and it makes no sense to me. And I am not arguing the brain is magical. That is what you keep saying. The thinking process changes the equation of how casualty operates for matter. If you are talking and walking and breathing, that is a whole lot different than an inanimate object. It is irrational, not more logical, to believe the thinking process does not create independent decision making to some degree. And interacting with the environment influences the choices. If Mozart was alive today instead of a few centuries back it is doubtful he would have composed The Magic Flute.

Even suggesting there is "evidence" against this idea suggests confusion. It's not possible to have hard evidence against this idea, because it's literally impossible to show that anyone could have made a different choice than they did.

If you want to check your brain at the door, yeah, you can say it makes perfect sense to say our brains are not capable of independent thought. But the nature of a complex brain by itself would say otherwise. How can mere molecules create something so complex as a thinking brain and if it did, how by its very existence could it not be capable of making independent decisions?


No, determinism does not say we are ruled by instinct. It says our actions are predetermined. Whether someone makes a choice on a lark or by sitting and thinking about it for hours first makes no difference. The only idea is that, whatever you ended up doing, you were going to do.

And if our actions are predetermined, then we are operating on instinct than thought. Because that is what instinct is, something we are destined to do because of the way we are made. If we are going to do something no matter what, then thought is an illusion masking instinct.

Have you really been arguing against determinism this entire time thinking it's about people not being able to change and being ruled by instinct?

The way you describe it is all the same thing because if we immediately react to something and act, which is instinct, or if we think about it for days, we will do the same thing, so thought is irrelevant and no different than instinct.


Really? What laws are those? Please tell me which law governs what happens when one molecule hits another, and why it doesn't apply inside your skull.

The thought process is different than molecules hitting each other.


No, my empirical evidence is us never observing anything like you're talking about in any controlled setting, ever.

Has there been any observation of molecules creating advanced life? No.

Nope. You keep trying to shift this question, and it's not going to work. Saying all molecules react to things is not the same thing as saying all molecules are identical. There are different types of molecules. But none of them get to decide whether or not to react to a force set upon it.

Fine. But trying to argue if something hasn't been observed, it doesn't happen is pretty unimpressive. Nobody was around to observe how the universe was created and to study it under a microscope.

Here's a helpful analogy: if I say everything is subject to gravity, it's not a counterargument to say "I'm not subject to gravity because I'm way more complicated than something like a rock. We're made of different stuff." That would be nonsense, because both complicated and uncomplicated objects are all subject to gravity. As a physical law it makes no distinction based on complexity. The fact that you're made of different stuff doesn't mean the individual parts of that stuff gets to react differently to the physical laws of the universe.

Me and rocks are subject to the laws of gravity. But you can't compare my thinking process and how it works with a rock because a rock doesn't think at all. Rocks can't make choices, real or illusory. So saying one size fits all with regard to the laws of physics to me and rocks is pretty simplistic.

So what you're positing is that there's some other physical law (which one?) that isn't like gravity, because a rock has to obey it and your brain doesn't. So what is this law, and why does your brain get special treatment from it? I've been asking this question for an entire week, and you can't give me an answer.
I guess I answered this in the previous question.. But if rocks and I are so much alike, let's make them citizens and give them the right to vote.

[Yoda]

If you were to start with "The universe seems to be mainly deterministic" and to end with "and so free will is very possibly an illusion" I'd be totally with you :)
Understood. Which means a materialist believing in free will is at least a very sketchy proposition. You're just not sure it's literally impossible or completely contradictory. Doesn't bode much better for anyone trying to have it both ways, but I understand the scope of your criticism. :)

The problem here is that your first principle is over-stated. It is contentious to insist that "all physical matter responds to cause and effect". Yet you assert it as a 100% fait accompli. Not only do scientific exceptions & doubts concerning your statement exist, but many could feasibly impinge on our human realm. To ignore the facts and inferences contained in these schools of science, without valid justification, would truly be to exhibit 'a level of skepticism of empirical data' etc.
But it's not my premise. The argument is "if you believe these three things, there's a contradiction." If they hedge a little, okay, the argument changes a bit. I think it presents them with entirely different hurdles, but the degree to which they can bend on that proposition is the degree to which they can avoid contradicting themselves outright.

Which is just fine. Because then the conversation shifts towards what evidence they actually have for the belief, and that's really just out of the frying pan and into the fire.


To keep things compact, here are two brief examples:

(NB I'm linking to norty reproductions of New Sci articles here. I'd encourage interested parties to pay for the original (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18524891.000-higher-laws-and-the-mindboggling-complexity-of-life.html) content (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19325951.900-the-illusion-of-reality-in-a-quantum-world.html) tho, as it's a great publication :))


The Landauer-Lloyd limit (http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/paleopsych/2005-April/002721.html) strongly suggests "a fundamental limit to the precision of physics" on a universal scale - a 'fuzziness' that applies to deterministic laws. It also counters known impediments to the possiblity of 'strong emergence' - IE as yet unknown "organising principles that come into play beyond a certain threshold of complexity". In combination, this apparent physics norm, and the latter theory, open new avenues of investigation into complex systems, such as the biological, and the quantum/classical threshhold. On the former they say, with some predictive strength, that complex amino acids couldn't be derived from the universal first principles as we understand them, but may be explained by 'emergent' laws. And on the quantum threshold, they posit a (as yet untestable) possibility that "the transition from quantum to classical might occur... at about 400 particles".


Researchers Kofler and Brukner are among those investigating 'bigger Schrödinger cats' (http://www.classicalmusicguide.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=17791) - IE nigh-'classical' physics objects exhibiting quantum behaviour. They have gone a step further by seemingly demonstrating that there is no quantum/classical threshold as such - IE "that what we perceive as classical reality can emerge gradually from quantum law" & "Reality is fundamentally quantum but looks classical to us".

I think these two alone are reasonable challenges to 100% assertions that "all physical matter responds to cause and effect". *EDIT* The 'fuzziness' of deterministic laws over deep time and the necessity of further laws to explain known phenomena are reasonable grounds for questioning assertions of their absolute primacy. And furthermore (on a perhaps dangerously new-age note ;)), surely a world where quantum effects can be observed macroscopically (http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2010/mar/18/quantum-effect-spotted-in-a-visible-object) gives one pause for thought in terms of the classical/quantum boundary.
A lot to take in here, but some observations:

1) I love that after all the stuff with will about how he's made of different stuff than rocks, and how silly claiming otherwise would sound to a scientist, the very first bit of text in the very first link says this:

"TAKE a bucketful of subatomic particles. Put them together one way, and you get a baby. Put them together another way and you'll get a rock."
Gee, how about that?

2) The things that may "kick in" at certain levels of complexity may be so, but it just barely rises to the level of hypothesis, let alone theory, let alone empirical evidence. And even then, it only posits an "organizing principle," which is more like an additional physical law, and not the absence of a physical law that is required to create the possibility of choice. Like every attempt to talk about free will scientifically, it focuses almost entirely on whether or not behavior is theoretically predictable, not predetermined. That's why he starts talking about bits and entropy and what kind of calculations are even feasible.

3) It cuts both ways, too: if someone says we could discover something next that makes X seem possible, I could say we'll discover something after that that makes X seem impossible again. It's kind of a futile exercise. The only way to defend will's specific position, then, which seems to be based on mere conjecture about what could maybe happen at some point, is to admit that you don't form your beliefs based on the weight of their evidence; you just sort of arbitrarily decide what feels right and if the evidence doesn't line up, you'll just say you're holding out for more evidence. It will have avoided literal contradiction at the expense of some other absurdity.

4) While the first link is great and fascinating (and I thank you for linking me to it), I don't think it adds to the conclusion we've already reached on this topic. We're still back where we started, talking about randomness and unpredictability, but nothing that implies choice.


Also, there's a bit of a catch 22 here, because free will can't be scientific, by definition. The only way to make it seem scientific/materialistic is to explain it scientifically. And if we can do that, that means we've found a cause and effect: a repeatable experiment that predicts an outcome. And once we've done that, we've disproven free will. QED. There's no way around it. That's why I keep saying that the question is as much a logical one as a scientific one.

(PS you should stop saying 'particles' obey deterministic laws stringently, as you have elsewhere, as that's precisely the realm where things get a bit 'fuzzy' ;)).
I plead guilty on the terminology. Sometimes I say particles, sometimes molecules. There's no one good term for this, I'm really just looking for "very small element that reacts to other elements." Sometimes I even say "stuff" or "something" just to avoid confusion.

It sounds like "subatomic particles" is what I'm looking for, though. I believe that's the level where the basic blocks don't differ, they're just arranged differently, yeah? Regardless, please pardon me if I name the wrong Russian nesting doll. ;)

I was with you up until you said utility. A materliaist would struggle to claim objective morality exists, sure. But objective utility? In terms of the biological world, that's practically a building block of darwinistic thought etc.
We're not quite on the same page. I didn't say a materialist would struggle with utility; I said utility would be something they would have to demonstrate to sell an idea. Most of us will say "it's true" as a defense for arguing something, as if truth itself were intrinsically valuable and needs no added utility to be worth finding out and perpetuating. Which I believe. But in amoral, uncaring universe, truth has no inherent value. It is only valuable as a means to some other ends.

This is particularly relevant when talking to an atheist who's trying really, really hard to convince believers not to believe. The unstated assumption behind the entire argument is that they shouldn't believe in God because it isn't true, as if that's reason enough. But by abolishing the idea of God they abolish the idea that truth is valuable in and of itself, so they actually need to go further and explain why believing in God is both false and detrimental to some other ends that both parties believe is necessary. But they usually don't. The value of truth is assumed, even though its basis has already been discarded; it's an ideological vestige, sort of the way wonder may be an evolutionary one.

What's funny here is, by this logic, none of my logic is logic. You think I should believe all logic is instinct. So why are we even having this discussion? (PS you can't predicate my mid-argument reasoning with your pre-argument conclusion. Just coz you think I shouldn't believe in logic, doesn't mean I should ;))
I wouldn't go that far. Anyone--materialist, Christian, Gaia-worshipper, whatever--can exhibit logic once they assume some ends. They can always say "in order to get X, you do Y." Whether or not they can say "we ought to be trying to get X" is the thorny part.

As I've mentioned, there are logical reasons to marvel at existence in statistical / complexity terms. We could even apply them to the sunset if you like, layering in to the experience the added knowledge about the sun's staggering distance / vital role in our existence etc etc.
This just sort of goes in circles, doesn't it? Saying it's logical to feel wonder looking at the sunset because it's so grand and complex and important is just listing the things that make us experience wonder.

On the actual sensation of wonder, that's a different issue. As much as we've just mentioned Darwinistic 'utility', it's worth mentioning that is also embraces 'free rider' adaptions that might no longer play a role, or never played one at all. I've no idea if the sensation of wonder is a vestige of something that helped us survive in the past, a 'free rider' aspect of some other useful adaption, or whatever. Frankly it wasn't an argument I was making ;)
Right, it might just be a remnant that served some purpose then and doesn't now. I'm not saying there's no materialist explanation for wonder, I'm just saying there's no materialist explanation as to how it has any purpose beyond utility. Throw love into there, too. The difference is not that there's no materialistic reason to have love, the difference is that, to the materialist, it's just a high-level instinct and/or evolutionary trait, not a thing in and of itself that has any significance outside of merely experiencing it. Even though it absolutely feels like it must.

This strikes me as an argument for another thread. You could call it "There is no reason to trust evolved thought". And I would respond to it :D
My thought has evolved enough that I know better than to start a fifth simultaneous argument. But it hasn't evolved enough that I can resist jumping in when it gets started by someone else. So the only question is whether or not you're going to inflict it on me. :D

I'm going to do a 'will' here, as I'm not sure what you mean. So I'll just say...

'Meaning has many meanings' ;)
Aye. But you know what I mean. ;) We can define meaning however we want, but then, we can define "charismatic" so that dull people get included under it, too.

All a materialist can say to notions of duty or meaning or purpose is that they don't care if it doesn't exist in the religious/metaphysical sense, because they have some substitute that they're okay with. But I see no serious argument that there's an actual materialist equivalent. There's just your own neurons, choosing to care about X. They could have just as easily chosen to make Y the purpose of their entire life, and there would be no outside standard to mediate between them. Which means it's just another arbitrary choice. And I don't think there's any normal conception of purpose or meaning that is also arbitrary.

You know what I'm on about here. It's compatibilism, but with morality: conceding the idea that the thing doesn't exist, but then saying we can define it differently, then voila!--it does.

Nope, but there are a lot of significant assumptions.

Not least of which being the one about 'conscience' having no potential role or importance in a 'materlialistic' world. One for the 'evolved thought' thread perhaps :D
Ah, but again: I'm talking about whether or not these things have a higher meaning, or whether or not they're just incidental. I'm not saying they have no reason to evolve. I'm saying we have no reason to treat them like they're special, or mean anything rationally, or have any significance external to us.

[planet news]

You can interpret quantum mechanics to be deterministic if you really want to like Bohm did. The fact that you interpret something as being non-deterministic doesn't really say anything about being. It just means you've stopped trying to dig deeper into the underlying mechanisms or your entire conceptual apparatus has failed.

We assume slot machines to be nondeterministic, even though their parts are all very far past the classical threshold in which we are most familiar. We assume this, because it's as good as nondeterministic according to our standards and tolerances -- even if the house always wins.

But again, all this talk of 'particles' and 'molecules' really has nothing to do with free will anyway. Free will is the act of self-determination. It needs self-consciousness, desire, and commitment, all of which are objects in their own right.

[Powderfinger]

We assume slot machines to be nondeterministic, even though their parts are all very far past the classical threshold in which we are most familiar. We assume this, because it's as good as nondeterministic according to our standards and tolerances -- even if the house always wins.



A politician In Australia wanted to regulate pokies (slot machines) though, the clubs and the Prime Minister couldn't bare the cost lol! Though, they do help and hinder people. For example...clubs do a lot for sporting clubs, though if the Father or Mother are degelient gamblers, well, they're f*****!

[Yoda]

You don't see it in an article that is titled The Physics of Free Will and says in its opening paragraph that previous analysis it doesn't exist is flawed and show according to the author how it happens. Well, that is your right.
C'mon. Your argument is based on the title, and not anything it actually says? If you read a little more of it it becomes obvious that it's a fine title, anyway, because they describe the challenges that physics pose for the idea of free will, and they talk about what conceptions of free will (because as you said before, it can mean a few different things) are consistent with physics.

But it simply does not back up what you're saying. If you think it does, show me where. I see it saying the opposite of what you're saying more than once, and I quoted it to that effect a couple of posts back.

Molecules are building blocks. They made us. At some point we stop being just molecules. Molecules that create a breathing being with an advanced brain has created something far more sophisticated than grass and rocks. The human brain is too complex to merely be instincts and urges. That implies free will.
Why does it imply free will? Why can't it be complex instincts, or complex urges? Love seems an awful lot like a complex version of lust, for example. Conscience seems like a complex version of group survival. Obviously, I happen to think both mean a lot more, but I don't see why a materialist would regard these things as anything more than high-level instincts.

To assume that because scientific observation cannot identify free will in molecules, then if free will exists it is supernatural based, then why isn't the opposite also true? If free will is supernatural, then why isn't all existence supernatural? Why does the law of physics exist at all for anything? It would be so much easier for a supernatural being to create a universe through magic than scientific principal. And if this being could pick and choose, why did it use scientific principal for everything except free will? isn't it more logical to believe free will would have come out of the same scientific process?
Simple: we know the law of physics exists because we can observe them acting upon things consistently and predictably.

I don't really need to provide the "why" because I'm not pretending to have it; I only say that we can observe certain physical laws, and we can deduce what idea are and are not consistent with those laws. But I'll take a guess anyway: the Universe would be pretty chaotic without reliable rules, and human beings wouldn't seem to serve a lot of purposes if they had no choice about what they said or did. Thus, we get lots of physical laws, but minds that can make independent choices. Any other combination looks pretty pointless.

Yeah, well, that is the theory and it makes no sense to me. And I am not arguing the brain is magical. That is what you keep saying. The thinking process changes the equation of how casualty operates for matter. If you are talking and walking and breathing, that is a whole lot different than an inanimate object. It is irrational, not more logical, to believe the thinking process does not create independent decision making to some degree. And interacting with the environment influences the choices. If Mozart was alive today instead of a few centuries back it is doubtful he would have composed The Magic Flute.
Correct, he would've done something else because he'd be reacting to completely different forces. He'd also be a different person to begin with. So I'm not sure I see your point.

Re: the brain being magical. The thing is, that is what you're saying, even if you're not saying it. You're saying that something about the brain means it doesn't have to react the way other types of matter do. I see only two ways this could be true: either the "stuff" is different (and on a subatomic level, it isn't), or there's a way to arrange matter that suddenly makes it immune from causality. Can you think of any other conceptual way? If not, do you believe that second one? That you can put subatomic particles into a certain structure that renders it immune to causality? I see no other option, even on a broad conceptual level, but feel free to enlighten me.

If you want to check your brain at the door, yeah, you can say it makes perfect sense to say our brains are not capable of independent thought. But the nature of a complex brain by itself would say otherwise. How can mere molecules create something so complex as a thinking brain and if it did, how by its very existence could it not be capable of making independent decisions?
But again, how would you know? You talk about the brain as being this mystifying, complicated, incredible thing, which is fine. But then you try to turn around and say that you understand it, and it gives you choice. It can't be an utter enigma when you want to talk about how it's physically constructed, but suddenly open up and become clear when you want to talk about what it can and cannot do. If it's complicated enough to be such a mystery, it's complicated enough that you have no way of knowing how thought is really formed, or what degree of control you have over it.

Also, your entire premise seems to be that free will must exist because you feel like you have it. That is the extent of the "evidence" you provide. Do you realize how much like blind faith that sounds? Lots of people say they believe in God because they "feel" His presence. So how about this: you have as much evidence for your belief as a church lady who believes in God because she says she feels the Holy Spirit.

And if our actions are predetermined, then we are operating on instinct than thought. Because that is what instinct is, something we are destined to do because of the way we are made. If we are going to do something no matter what, then thought is an illusion masking instinct.
If you define instinct that way, then yes, it's instinct. But the reason I disputed the idea is because that type of "instinct" is not some primal, overwhelming urge that overtakes our reason. That's not what determinism says, just to be clear.

The way you describe it is all the same thing because if we immediately react to something and act, which is instinct, or if we think about it for days, we will do the same thing, so thought is irrelevant and no different than instinct.
I think instinct implies an impulsiveness and a different feeling than other types of decisions, but again, sure: if you define instinct merely as something we must do, then it's instinct.

The thought process is different than molecules hitting each other.
Meaning your brain has some law that doesn't apply to it, or doesn't apply to it normally, right?

Has there been any observation of molecules creating advanced life? No.
Okay, but you asked for empirical evidence, and I explained why there's a ton of empirical evidence. It's not just that we haven't seen some magic choice-having subatomic particles, it's that we've specifically seen the same "stuff" reacting every time we do something to it. It all has to react. Even the double-slit experiment was just a particle reacting in a surprising way. We have not found anything in this universe that is indifferent to any force; everything reacts to everything, somehow. It never has the option of just sitting there, as if nothing had happened, yet that's what's necessary, on some level, to create the circumstances necessary for choice.

Fine. But trying to argue if something hasn't been observed, it doesn't happen is pretty unimpressive.
I'd say it's a good deal more impressive than saying that something can exist because we might find some way to explain it someday. But that's not my whole argument, either. This is just the part where I explain why there's no empirical evidence that suggests you should believe in free will. That your entire position is based on a feeling that is heavily contradicted by our observations and what we can currently deduce from them.

I guess I answered this in the previous question.. But if rocks and I are so much alike, let's make them citizens and give them the right to vote.
God knows they'd probably make better decisions.

[Yoda]

I'm gonna be selective about what I'm responding to in your posts, PN. Which is probably best, because it seems like most of it is just fleshing out the idea and not even meant to be an argument, necessarily. I'll try to focus on what I think are the pivot points. Here goes.

DUDE, now I know we're singing the same song, because I haven't at all justified WHY THE NAME IS A THING.
Cool. :) Let's see if you do!

So, what is the supplement? The supplement is WHAT (a Multiple that) DESTROYS THE OBJECT, what reduces it to Multiple.

It is the 'realization' that the name is just a name, to make an analogy with name.
With you so far.

Now, I don't mean it's a bomb or a hammer. I just mean, the supplement is whatever OBJECT(S) make it possible to REALIZE that the object is just it's Multiples. The supplement is that which an Object cannot 'account' for. It is that within the object that the object cannot address in any way. That's why I say supplement lies at the edge of an object.
Still with you. Exciting!

The object itself cannot 'address' the supplement, yet the supplement realizes the object as it is. Can you see yet how this is free will at its finest? There is this STUFF in (or around, or whatever) every object that the object is TOTALLY INDIFFERENT to. Whatever this STUFF is (and it's different for each object), that stuff is the space for its freedom?
Well, that "stuff" is just imperfect pattern recognition, or the limits of categorization itself. The fact that we perceive imperfectly does not create a space for freedom for objects. I don't know why it would imply anything at all, really. That's kind of like saying objects are even freer if we have terrible eyesight, because then we're even worse at describing each one and they could be anything. But at some point you have to posit a reality independent of our perceptions. And our failure to make our thoughts and words correspond to that reality doesn't mean that reality has choice. It just means we're not perfect. Make sense?

Also, it feels like there might be a bait-and-switch (maybe not intentional) wherein you acknowledge the "supplement" is just a name for our categorization of things, but then you talk about the supplement doing things, and segue over into talking about it as if it had agency. I'm not sure how you get from one to the other.

What more do I need to say except that freedom is the freedom of an object to RENAME itself.
This sounds like you're saying that an object exerts "freedom" but defying the category its placed in and refusing to fit comfortably within it. We certainly learn this when we examine objects closely, but that's something we learn, not something the object does. And it's not an expression of freedom, it's just a revelation of our own finite ability to categorize.

[Flimmaker1473]

At this point the atheists are just trolling.

[will.15]

Takes one to know one.

[Yoda]

He's got you there.

I think.

[will.15]

It was predetermined I would say that.

[Yoda]

Re: trolling. In all seriousness, I don't think anyone's doing that. I do think some people are just taking shots at religion and not really trying to have a serious discussion about it, but I don't think it's just for kicks or anything.

[planet news]

At this point, I really feel like we're getting somewhere at this point.

I'm gonna be selective about what I'm responding to in your posts, PN. Which is probably best, because it seems like most of it is just fleshing out the idea and not even meant to be an argument, necessarily. I'll try to focus on what I think are the pivot points. Here goes.That's totes the right attitude. I think the real 'argument' starts from a different place -- looking at what mathematics has to say about what the One is, so right now it is pretty randumb.

Well, that "stuff" is just imperfect pattern recognition, or the limits of categorization itself.I'm pumped, because you're definitely close to getting me, but you're still stuck in some older ways of thinking -- namely, the Kantian mode that centers everything on humans. This constant anthrocentrism might also come from your religion.

If I am talking about being, I am talking about each and every One that is, was, or ever could be. I'm talking about us, sure -- since we know most about us -- but I'm also talking about rocks, zebras, and galaxies.

Basically you're stuck in the thought that the human mind is extremely central to being. But categorization is not some primoridial aspect of being. It is just another One. You can have one category, two categories -- heck, you can even have three. It's weird for me to address this sentence, because you're saying something that's totally right, but you mean it in a way that's meant to imply the One is still there.

The fact that our categories are imperfect is just more reason to think the One is not.

Lastly, categories only collect what are already objects. I'm saying that, even when looking at a single object -- any singular object -- you find its breakdown into the Multiple. You don't even have to go up to the level of languages, concepts, or categories.

The fact that we perceive imperfectly does not create a space for freedom for objects.Sure it does. The fact that we percieve imperfectly already creates a space of freedom for our perception -- the freedom of our perceptions to move about in the rough edges of its imperfection.

We don't need to percieve anything for it be evident that the One is not. Whether we look at something or not, there is no One, only Multiple.

I don't know why it would imply anything at all, really. That's kind of like saying objects are even freer if we have terrible eyesight, because then we're even worse at describing each one and they could be anything.This doesn't work as an analogy at all, and for a crucial reason.

In this discourse, we have a standard for what is good eyesight. Therefore, it is possible to actually obtain a true vision of the thing in question.

The One is impossible to obtain a vision of, because it is not there. Only the Multiple is. In fact, it is rather that the better our eyesight gets -- i.e. the more rigorously we examine the limits of the object -- the more the object eludes us.

But at some point you have to posit a reality independent of our perceptions. And our failure to make our thoughts and words correspond to that reality doesn't mean that reality has choice. It just means we're not perfect. Make sense?I posit reality as the thing which has the choice. Our perceptions are just as real as anything they percieve -- and just as imperfect and not-One.

This is not Kantianism, where the thing-in-itself is inaccessible to us through its appearances. There is no thing-in-itself. There are only its Multiple appearances grouped together as One, thus producing the illusion of some hard kernel behind the veil. There is only the veil. There is nothing behind it.

This does not admit to some ignorance, it admits to total empricism as it should be. The true empricist does not posit objects. That's why most scientists cannot be said to be empiricists. The true empiricist has no need for objects. The way Hume is typically taken is as a defeatist who argues "we will never know." But this does not imply that there is something to know.

There is nothing to know but appearances, the Multiple manifestations OF the One ARE all the One is.

Also, it feels like there might be a bait-and-switch (maybe not intentional) wherein you acknowledge the "supplement" is just a name for our categorization of things, but then you talk about the supplement doing things, and segue over into talking about it as if it had agency. I'm not sure how you get from one to the other.Agency is just a metaphor for process. You see it everywhere. For example, protons HATE to be next to one another. To be clear, the supplement does nothing. Only the object does. The object has the CHOICE to recognize the supplement or not. The object does all the work.

The object is subject to something like cause/effect, yes. But if it is pushed into the realm of the supplement, then it is free to do whatever it likes. Stay within it and bring about a self-transformation or leave and go back to its determinate existence.

This sounds like you're saying that an object exerts "freedom" but defying the category its placed in and refusing to fit comfortably within it. We certainly learn this when we examine objects closely, but that's something we learn, not something the object does. And it's not an expression of freedom, it's just a revelation of our own finite ability to categorize.We have no idea of what an object does in its spare time, as it were. Our categories aren't the issue here. Our categories is just the language by which we try to communicate with objects. We have no real idea what they're saying.

I'm not even implying they're all doing anything like thinking or speaking or that self-consciousness is what we think of as that. One needn't even go further than to ask how a deaf, dumb, blind person percieves themselves.

The only important thing is that, as an object, you are non-self-identical by definition. You have the possibility of more than what you are inside you at all times.

This goes for us, rocks, and our categories. Philosophy in particular prides itself in the task of freeing categories from themselves.

===

Anyways, we are really getting somewhere, I feel. This post mainly had to do with generalizing the domain of the One to every object that ever was, is, or could be instead of just the objects of our cognition.

Materialism as a term isn't really supposed to be contrasted with religion -- it emerges in opposition to Idealism, that everything is cut out by the mind. This is not what I'm saying. I think Idealism fails on many levels. No, it is just to say that objects find-themselves 'cut out' -- how else can one find itself? -- and that they are free because those cuts are actually parts of themselves.

[DexterRiley]

Ah yes, famed theologian Joe Rogan. ;)

99% of these arguments are going to merit the same response: not everything in the Bible is literal. Some of it is quite obviously not. When the Bible says His Word has "lighted" upon Israel in the Book of Isiah, it doesn't mean he put a giant light in the sky, either.

There are some good questions to ask about how to interpret the Bible, but in my experience almost all of the arguments trying to "disprove" it are really just people going way out of their way to interpret it in whatever way allows them to make it look most ridiculous.

And if it seems like Christians use "it's a metaphor" as a defense a lot, it's because skeptics like to interpret things in staggeringly literal ways in order to attack it a lot.

EDIT: I wanted to add something else. The idea that science has disproved the Bible is almost invariably based on something we didn't know then, that we do know now, which would indicate the Bible was just written by some dudes who were subject to the ignorance of their time. But that's not the case here. You didn't need any modern scientific advancements to know that elephants ate a lot of food, or that you couldn't fit a billion animals on a boat. This is not an example of some ancient story where sheer ignorance made it believable. It was never literally believable, even back then. Which means the people who believed it were not gullible; they either took it as metaphor, or they took it as a miracle.

Actually, the Ancient Alien Theory of Advanced technology being mistaken for magic or miracle makes alot of the bible make sense.

Take the story of Noah for instance, its plausible the cataloguing of every animal was achieved, if rather than the actual beasts loaded aboard a boat which as the retarded child noted, was absurd, what actually happened was the dna samples from each were taken. Something that we do today.

The Virgin Birth is obviously invitro fertilization.

There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare [children] to them, the same mighty men which [were] of old, men of renown. Genesis 6:4

Its my understanding that True Christians believe in their heart that non-human beings exist. They are represented by the Good guys (angels) and bad guys (Demons). They can be omniprescient, or they can occupy a physical body.

My Contention is, the entities mentioned in the bible and thousands of years earlier in other religious texts were extra-terrestrial in nature, but certainly flesh and blood.

As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind.
2 Kings 2:11


Ezekiel 1:4-28

[B]4 Then I looked, and behold, a whirlwind was coming out of the north, a great cloud with raging fire engulfing itself; and brightness was all around it and radiating out of its midst like the color of amber, out of the midst of the fire. 5 Also from within it came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance: they had the likeness of a man. 6 Each one had four faces, and each one had four wings. 7 Their legs were straight, and the soles of their feet were like the soles of calves’ feet. They sparkled like the color of burnished bronze. 8 The hands of a man were under their wings on their four sides; and each of the four had faces and wings. 9 Their wings touched one another. The creatures did not turn when they went, but each one went straight forward.

10 As for the likeness of their faces, each had the face of a man; each of the four had the face of a lion on the right side, each of the four had the face of an ox on the left side, and each of the four had the face of an eagle. 11 Thus were their faces. Their wings stretched upward; two wings of each one touched one another, and two covered their bodies. 12 And each one went straight forward; they went wherever the spirit wanted to go, and they did not turn when they went.

13 As for the likeness of the living creatures, their appearance was like burning coals of fire, like the appearance of torches going back and forth among the living creatures. The fire was bright, and out of the fire went lightning. 14 And the living creatures ran back and forth, in appearance like a flash of lightning.

15 Now as I looked at the living creatures, behold, a wheel was on the earth beside each living creature with its four faces. 16 The appearance of the wheels and their workings was like the color of beryl, and all four had the same likeness. The appearance of their workings was, as it were, a wheel in the middle of a wheel. 17 When they moved, they went toward any one of four directions; they did not turn aside when they went. 18 As for their rims, they were so high they were awesome; and their rims were full of eyes, all around the four of them. 19 When the living creatures went, the wheels went beside them; and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up. 20 Wherever the spirit wanted to go, they went, because there the spirit went; and the wheels were lifted together with them, for the spirit of the living creatures[a] was in the wheels. 21 When those went, these went; when those stood, these stood; and when those were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up together with them, for the spirit of the living creatures[b] was in the wheels.

22 The likeness of the firmament above the heads of the living creatures[c] was like the color of an awesome crystal, stretched out over their heads. 23 And under the firmament their wings spread out straight, one toward another. Each one had two which covered one side, and each one had two which covered the other side of the body. 24 When they went, I heard the noise of their wings, like the noise of many waters, like the voice of the Almighty, a tumult like the noise of an army; and when they stood still, they let down their wings. 25 A voice came from above the firmament that was over their heads; whenever they stood, they let down their wings.

26 And above the firmament over their heads was the likeness of a throne, in appearance like a sapphire stone; on the likeness of the throne was a likeness with the appearance of a man high above it. 27 Also from the appearance of His waist and upward I saw, as it were, the color of amber with the appearance of fire all around within it; and from the appearance of His waist and downward I saw, as it were, the appearance of fire with brightness all around. 28 Like the appearance of a rainbow in a cloud on a rainy day, so was the appearance of the brightness all around it. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord.

Personal Jet Packs perhaps?

[planet news]

Note:

So yeah. I'm trying to be as clear as possible here when I say that every object is decomposable, so, for now, I'm talking about individual objects as if they are isolated.

But really, most of the objects we have been talking about -- legos, trees, rocks -- don't really exist in isolation. They are clearly just members or parts of a much larger situation, carefully networked into countless other objects.

Overall, this doesn't really make a difference, since any situation is itself an object. Still, I feel it is important to point out how our world reveals itself IN BULK as it were. We get a whole lot of objects and relations that all seem to come with one another.

Again, this doesn't present any more of a difficulty for the thesis that the One is not anymore than the parts of a car all come with one another when they are presented in the situation of a car.

We can demonstrate the point just as well on levels, but it is important to realize that, for us, the principle object under consideration is the situation-object or world-object. It is an object within which we ourselves are embedded and participate in.

This is perhaps the most important property of existence that 'dethrones' us as trascendent observers/categorizers of the world. You can say the world probably 'categorizes' us as much we 'categorize' it. The same goes for any part of the world.

In the end, we are just one object among others, all embedded in a larger object... and so on...

All objects fail. All objects are free. We are free to determine our own wills and our own perceptions, but the external objects that correspond to those perceptions are also free to determine themselves.

And, of course, as always objects aren't really there, but are just groups of multiples made possible by supplement multiples.

[TheUsualSuspect]

At this point the atheists are just trolling.

Dude, say something constructive to the thread.

[Powderfinger]

Dude, say something constructive to the thread.

@TheUsualSuspect, when you say "Dude" is that literal, I woman don't want to classed in either way...I don't think that made sense, anyway! Is Flimmaker1473 is a Man?

[TheUsualSuspect]

Dudette?

[Powderfinger]

Dudette?

It's a Woman with a question-mark...that doesn't sense either...lol! I'm very confused!

[TheUsualSuspect]

Your posts confuse me on a daily basis.

[Powderfinger]

Your posts confuse me on a daily basis.

http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-snc4/50290_273336579368_7485616_n.jpg

[Flimmaker1473]

Dude, say something constructive to the thread.
Dude, I will as soon as you do.

[TheUsualSuspect]

Dude, I will as soon as you do.

At the very least my posts are asking you to think. Yours are....to antagonize?

[DexterRiley]

[IMAGE REMOVED, MALWARE WARNING].

:d

[Yoda]

There's not a lot to say. I don't think that's what happened, but obviously it's not impossible, and anything consistent with the idea of a deity is going to be somewhat consistent with the idea of highly advanced technology. I'm not sure why all the other subterfuge would be involved, though. The way people reacted to the events implies they took it differently, which means if it was aliens, the whole thing would've been some interstellar prank.

[DexterRiley]

Morgan Spurlock's reality TV show 30 days 3rd episode of first season about how it is like to live a Muslim's life in America for 30 days.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcdsABwKP-s&feature=related

[planet news]

Everyone try to keep a straight face. Look at these pairs.

One ////////////////// Multiple
Existence /////////// Being
Knowledge ////////// Truth
Intelligible ////////// Unintelligible
Determined ///////// Free
Related ///////////// Unrelated
Finite /////////////// Infinite
Order /////////////// Chaos
Stable ////////////// Unstable

Life begins on the left side. Rigorous thinking breaks down the left side, so that only the right side remains.

The question of all philosophy thus becomes: how does the left side relate to the right side?

What you find is, beautifully, everything ascribed to God is an intervention from some 'outside' so that we may get the left side for free.

Materialism is the view that the left side is nothing more than a localized manifestation of the right side, thus eliminating both the need for and the possibility of God.

Dig?

[shlomi]

Religion? i'm an Atheist.
But i see myself as a Jew in my cultural and ethnic identity.

so i pick 'jewish'.

[nebbit]

Religion? i'm an Atheist.
But i see myself as a Jew in my cultural and ethnic identity.

so i pick 'jewish'.
Me too :yup:

[will.15]

There are Jews in Australia?

[nebbit]

Well yes :yup:

[Powderfinger]

There are Jews in Australia?

Mate!

Years ago, probably 13 years I worked for waverley council. You heard of Bondi Beach I take it? Anyway, there is a lot Jewish people there. The is a Jewish School also.

[Yoda]

Everyone try to keep a straight face. Look at these pairs.

One ////////////////// Multiple
Existence /////////// Being
Knowledge ////////// Truth
Intelligible ////////// Unintelligible
Determined ///////// Free
Related ///////////// Unrelated
Finite /////////////// Infinite
Order /////////////// Chaos
Stable ////////////// Unstable

Life begins on the left side. Rigorous thinking breaks down the left side, so that only the right side remains.

The question of all philosophy thus becomes: how does the left side relate to the right side?

What you find is, beautifully, everything ascribed to God is an intervention from some 'outside' so that we may get the left side for free.

Materialism is the view that the left side is nothing more than a localized manifestation of the right side, thus eliminating both the need for and the possibility of God.

Dig?
Seems dig-worthy to me. But what has this got to do with choice? I've been parsing the ever-loving crap out of what you're saying, and I don't see how it creates any space for this. Near as I can make out, it seems to say one of the following:

1) That the rough essence of things we recognize should be treated as proof that some "other" thing exists around them. To which I say: it could just be a trick of the mind, and even if there is some "other," we have no reason to believe this essence allows for choice.

2) The fact that our attempt to categorize objects inevitably fails on close inspection, and therefore there is uncertainty about our categories and they could be some other way. To which I say: sure, but again, why not just imperfect minds? And why does imperfect categories imply choice?

It seems like both are a) reading a lot into our mental processes, when all are easily explained as emergent byproducts of imperfect thought, and b) using our limitations to just sort of argue that maybe choice could exist, but not providing any actual evidence for the idea.

To my mind, our limitations are great reasons to doubt our conclusions and keep an open-minded. But they can't be used as evidence for a specific conclusion, independent of anything else. Make sense?

[linespalsy]

There are Jews in Australia?

Didn't you see Shine?

[donniedarko]

Religion? i'm an Atheist.
But i see myself as a Jew in my cultural and ethnic identity.

so i pick 'jewish'.

Im also athiest but from a Jewish background.
I think that Jews really never lose the traditions and culture even if they don't believe in it.

[will.15]

Me too

[Powderfinger]

I have written this before, about 2 years ago..;). My Fathers mother was Jewish, though she was a strict Catholic....sounds confusing doesn't it..;) She was a orphan, when my family did a search about her history, that's when they found out. She died she my Father was 14. He's 77 now. So, I have Jewish blood really...;)

[ChuckDee]

"I believe in science" - Esqueleto

[will.15]

I have written this before, about 2 years ago..;). My Fathers mother was Jewish, though she was a strict Catholic....sounds confusing doesn't it..;) She was a orphan, when my family did a search about her history, that's when they found out. She died she my Father was 14. He's 77 now. So, I have Jewish blood really...;)
Hey, mate, let's go to shul.

[Powderfinger]

Hey, mate, let's go to shul.

I don't know what that is, but anyway..lol! :D

[mark f]

I've decided to pretty much stay out of all the "hot-button" topics, at least for now, but I do want to say that I appreciate that we have so many threads where people can use their freedom of speech, at least as long as it doesn't violate our basic rules of civility. I just wanted to mention this because I get the feeling that sometimes I come across as telling certain people to shut up because nobody wants to hear their views on a particular subject. If you are one of those people, I want to apologize to you and reiterate what I've said before around here. "Shut up, mark!"

[nebbit]

I don't know what that is, but anyway..lol! :D
Jewish church :yup:

[nebbit]

I've decided to pretty much stay out of all the "hot-button" topics, at least for now, but I do want to say that I appreciate that we have so many threads where people can use their freedom of speech, at least as long as it doesn't violate our basic rules of civility. I just wanted to mention this because I get the feeling that sometimes I come across as telling certain people to shut up because nobody wants to hear their views on a particular subject. If you are one of those people, I want to apologize to you and reiterate what I've said before around here. "Shut up, mark!"
Aww Mark :love: ya :kiss:

[Powderfinger]

Jewish church :yup:
Cheers nebbit. I knew Synagogue, but not shul.

[Watch_Tower]

Wow, there's so much going on in this thread I'm not quite sure where to start.

Just a tiny little criticism, the term for a person who follows the religion of Islam is Muslim, not Islamic. Apart from that, I'm thinking of where to start with this discussion lol

[planet news]

1) That the rough essence of things we recognize should be treated as proof that some "other" thing exists around them. To which I say: it could just be a trick of the mind, and even if there is some "other," we have no reason to believe this essence allows for choice.Why not? There's really no other way to even begin to conceive of free will without the 'gap' in existence I'm talking about. Free will needs a free 'space' where the subject can invent and create ex nihilo.

The classic argument is that free will is impossible because the interplay of objects exhausts being. If there is a 'little bit of being' on the fringes of objects, then that's precisely the way out of that deadlock.

You could invent this result just from trying to think of 'what kind of thing' free will would be. All without even examining how our predicates fail and so forth.

2) The fact that our attempt to categorize objects inevitably fails on close inspection, and therefore there is uncertainty about our categories and they could be some other way. To which I say: sure, but again, why not just imperfect minds? And why does imperfect categories imply choice?I don't get it though. Why do you think that we fail and not objects? There are two ways of looking at things, sure. First is that objects are just an inadequate way of talking about being (though, not existence) [materialism]. Second is that our perception is inadequate. The latter can only be true by positing something outside of our perception. For example, Ideal Forms. That's how Plato does the One-effect. The materialist just asks, why bother? You can get the same thing as the Ideal Forms without positing them at all with just the supplement idea. That's good enough and it makes more sense. The main problem with Plato is questions like "what's a perfect table?" etc. It's too bulky to work. There'd have to be all these perfect forms for pretty much any kind of object ever. There's no reason to think that.

We can actually 'perceive' the supplement directly. We can actually in some sense 'see' the One-effect at work. That makes us very powerful. Like people who can see the Ideal Forms at work. But the actual 'seeing' of the One-effect is very banal. It's just predicates failing. Again, it's a form of radical empiricism.

But they can't be used as evidence for a specific conclusion, independent of anything else. Make sense?Why? That doesn't follow at all. The fact that we're limited suggests there's something more. Whatever it actually is, you know that it is more. Knowing of the more is where freedom is.

If I don't have enough to accomplish the task (comprehending being), then being must be more than what I comprehend. It's that simple. The more isn't supernatural. It's just the 'fuzziness' of objects. Nevertheless, that's where freedom and creativity, heroism, etc. all lie.

[Powderfinger]

LOST WORLDS: THE BIBLES BURIED SECRETS

(Part 1 of 2) A fascinating two-part series that explores the beginnings of modern religion and the origins of the Old Testament. This archaeological detective story tackles some of the biggest questions in biblical studies: Where did the ancient Israelites come from? Who wrote the Bible, when, and why? And how did the worship of one God - the foundation of modern Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - emerge? (From the US) (Documentary Series)

[Slimgee55]

Atheist through and through

[Powderfinger]

Atheist through and through

It is up to you and people shouldn't convince either way.

May I ask? Do you believe in Ghosts, Karma, Palm reading and so forth? Was curious that's all.

[Slimgee55]

Yeah I respect everyone's religion. I don't try to force my beliefs on people just like I don't like people to impose their beliefs on me.

I'm a big believer in energy and the power that it has. Einstein said "energy is neither created nor destroyed, it just changes forms". I wouldn't say I flat out believe in ghosts or karma but I do believe that those types of things can occur. Karma: if you're a negative person who does negative things you give off negative energy and therefore you attract negative energy (what goes around comes around). Ghosts: I believe there can be different energy forms but I don't think I'd ever fully believe in ghosts unless I had a personal dealing with one. Hope that made some what sense

How about you?

[Powderfinger]

Karma Not really. Put it this way, I have done bad things and believe God gave me 2 chances..probably 3 really.

Ghosts Years ago! My mates Father believes is Ghosts very much so. He is not a weird guy either, no were near it. He reckons a few times a Ghost attacked him...no s***! :D I don't believe in ghosts.

Einstein was a smart guy and also a Ladies Man ;)

[will.15]

If free will is an illusion, we think we have it, but we don't, then we do have it, because if we think we have it, we do.

[Powderfinger]

If free will is an illusion, we think we have it, but we don't, then we do have it, because if we think we have it, we do.

I reckon when you were younger....many, many years ago :D You took crazy classes in College...I believe that..lol! :D

[Slimgee55]

Total bind blow Will

[Flimmaker1473]

I came across this the other day. Very interesting.
http://www.clarifyingchristianity.com/b_proof.shtml

[DexterRiley]

LOST WORLDS: THE BIBLES BURIED SECRETS

(Part 1 of 2) A fascinating two-part series that explores the beginnings of modern religion and the origins of the Old Testament. This archaeological detective story tackles some of the biggest questions in biblical studies: Where did the ancient Israelites come from? Who wrote the Bible, when, and why? And how did the worship of one God - the foundation of modern Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - emerge? (From the US) (Documentary Series)

The Cliff notes version is Sumeria.

Ancient Aliens basically.

[wintertriangles]

I came across this the other day. Very interesting.
http://www.clarifyingchristianity.com/b_proof.shtml1) The "Prophecies" section can't be taken seriously because it disregards all the other prophecies that didn't come true, like, even in the first book. According to Genesis, Adam will die after eating the fruit but lives for another 900 years. It also says Cain will become a vagabond, except he ends up building a city and spawning. Also, in Kings, it says God puts a lying spirit in the mouth of his prophets, is that about Jesus too? Jesus also predicted the rapture within the lifetime of to whom he was preaching. ETCETERA

2) Science, I don't even know why I'm addressing this, but your link says "The Bible frequently refers to the great number of stars in the heavens....The Bible also says that each star is unique....The Bible describes the suspension of the Earth in space...The Bible describes the precision of movement in the universe." All of these things are visual from earth. How is it a prophecy when man wrote it down, looking up every day and night? Astronomy was a big practice. The rest is a bunch of other vague, poetic statements that Asians also claimed but they don't get credit for it I wonder why

3) How does proving the Bible existed say anything? It doesn't automatically make the crazy **** believable.

4) They use proof of historians, also known as quotes remarking at the undisputed death of jesus, but conveniently leave things out like how the word for virgin was also the word for young.

[teeter_g]

ANY BAPTISTS IN THE HOUSE.:D :D :D

Yep yep! I'm not an "other", I'm a Baptist! :)

[The Gunslinger45]

Catholic. A Big reason why I love Scorsese. The theme of guilt REALLY resonates with me.

[CelluloidChild]

^^^ See avatar for religion

[Yoda]

That post is gonna look really awkward a year from now when your avatar is, like, Alf or something.

[Sexy Celebrity]

That post is gonna look really awkward a year from now when your avatar is, like, Alf or something.

http://www.movieforums.com/community/attachment.php?attachmentid=10448&stc=1&d=1366340521

[edwardc77]

Agnostic (raised as a Catholic)

[CelluloidChild]

That post is gonna look really awkward a year from now when your avatar is, like, Alf or something.

I could handle a friendly ET as my guru.

Actually, the Jewish thing hasn't been important to me as religion per se for a long time. I've come to find spiritual inspiration mainly elsewhere.

In terms of movies and other cultural and social matters it remains an important influence.

[ashdoc]

after voting in the poll i realised that i am the only hindu here .

[MovieMad16]

Apathiest is I

[evillemachine]

I put in Protestant as I was christened one, but I am an atheist in conventional terms. I believe in Wicken.

[Smoochy]

I identify as an atheist.

[edarsenal]

I'm a sensualist by nature with a doctrine in chocolate

[Dani8]

I'm a sensualist by nature with a doctrine in chocolate

I just spontaneously combusted.

[edarsenal]

welcome to the fold ;)

[Mr Minio]

Can't decide whether I am Kinkolic, Kinku, Kinkan or Kinkist.

[The Rodent]

I'm a sensualist by nature with a doctrine in chocolate



I have a Ph.D in Banter.

[Dannii]

I have a degree in Sense Of Humour😁

[edarsenal]

I have a Ph.D in Banter.
I would have LOVED to read your dissertation for your degree :)

[Captain Steel]

I would have LOVED to read your dissertation for your degree :)

Here's the video version...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWWPk9jrvqk

[edarsenal]

"Nope, sorry, didn't get any of that."

:D

always love a bit of python after tea time