Atheistic Materialism Automatically Disqualifies Free Will

The only person I feel is manipulative around here is you, Planet News. Yoda's pretty damn confident.

Nothing wrong with manipulating someone into the right place intellectually. But it shouldn't be just about exercising that kind of power over someone. If you're gonna make an argument, it just is a manipulation of someone's words and thoughts into a different place than they originally meant. It's only malicious when the goal of that is not Truth.

Well, you have no Truth. Goodbye.

i don't think you even understand what it means to think through a thought. i wonder if you've ever even done it. all you seem to like to do is get emotionally attached to things like they were people. anything intelligible you might say during this time is easily overshadowed by the haphazard way you go about interacting with the slightest rebuttal. you are so out of line of any conception of thinking, i wouldn't even know where to begin. to convince you takes some kind of emotional moment in your life or something...

some people are just beyond the style of reasoning that is best suited to philosophy. your attitude to free will isn't the attitude that philosophers of free will take to their positions, even if they roughly believe the things you do.

It would be fabulous to do a movie commentary with you, Planet. I'd definitely be interested. I'm sure you wouldn't, but I might enjoy it and I'm sure others would like reading it.

The fact that you feel there's some deeper contradiction at play might be a worthwhile thing to explore, but you purport to be finding a flaw in the argument when you're really questioning some fundamental premise underneath it. If you were really about trying to provoke "deeper thinking," this is a highly disingenuous (and you should realize by now, highly ineffective) way of going about it. And you should be able to acknowledge the value of exposing inconsistent thinking, even if you think there's some larger error underneath. You don't have to believe in standardized testing to talk about whether or not someone got a math problem wrong.

And if I really had a "lack of openness to the slightest possibility of an escape," then I certainly wouldn't have probed the idea and indulged it for literally hours as we exchanged messages about it. I've made a good faith effort to understand what you mean, even as you made your meaning needlessly opaque. I've assumed this opacity was unintentional, but given how callously you're tossing around accusations of motive, I wonder if I've been too charitable.

I don't think these arguments are pretend, because I don't agree with you about materialism. And it's not for lack of exposure to your argument, either. I think your attempt to undermine materialism ultimately undermines all knowledge and reason. I'm pretty sure I've said this to you, and if you came back with a meaningful response, I don't recall it offhand.

But hey, I'm more than willing to keep listening and keep talking about it, provided you make the distinction between this argument and that one clear. And provided you not respond to the frustration of not being understood (or agreed with) by questioning motives, which I've really given you no reason to do, and which clearly isn't going to lead the discussion anywhere fruitful. If you actually think I'm uninterested in argument for the purposes of Truth, that's a shame, but you shouldn't waste your time on such people.

This is kind of what I was thinking when I said it would be great to have a commentary with two people where one loves the movie and the other hates it. I think people who disagree would make for a very interesting commentary.

Who said it would be a movie where one hated it and one loved it? We are just, like, enemies on this site now, I suppose. That's the draw. It would be two bitchy queens watching a movie together.

when i read this i literally threw my hands up in the air with great violence. so i'm gonna make a big deal about this.

what the hell is this? what the hell is this supposed to be? i'm not making this a paragraph in order to get you to take a second longer than normal.

!!! (for emphasis)

what the hell is that even supposed to mean?

!!!

like you said it one time and i explained it. my whole last post explained it. and then your reply begins with this thing.

it has two parts. check it:

1) purport to be finding a flaw in the argument

and

2) you're really questioning some fundamental premise underneath it

what the actual f*ck, dood? !

!!!

...

F*CK.

Every time I tried to write something i just thought, "f*ck."

F*CK.









that is a flaw in the argument buddy. an argument with false premises is gonna be false no matter what happens... there's no truth in there anywhere...

Man, this thread is entertaining!

__________________
Here, if you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake, and I have a straw. There it is, that's a straw, you see? You watching?. And my straw reaches acroooooooss the room, and starts to drink your milkshake... I... drink... your... milkshake!
-Daniel, There Will Be Blood

i mean you just don't get this do you?

you're arguing about warp cores. every time i come in here, it irks me to know end to see you arguing about warp cores and calling it "materialism" or "atheism." when will someone stop the charade and point out that no matter how detailed your fanon is, warp cores don't exist.

yeah, it should be traumatic to you if this is truly your confusion. this should be a traumatic moment in your habits of reasoning if this is really the mistake you're making, and, yeah, you will not want to accept that right away. there ain't anything wrong with that attitude. i'm sure you're offended. but at least at this moment, i am completely convinced that the point above i just made you cannot understand or that you cannot understand how it is /exactly/ what you have been doing. i am NOT messing with you. either you are deeply confused or I am, but there isn't any funny business here, at least from me.

also, dammit, i know i'm being rude and stuff, but i've said tons of times how i respect your attitude greatly. it's been over a year now, and from all the people i've met since then both online and off, that respect still hasn't changed. it's a rare thing and i don't take it for granted. still, i know this more or less crosses into some kind of personal attack, but since it's motivated by the fate of an argument and not any personal grudge, i hope you can understand my tone.

If anything, you're talking about yourself.

You're the one who thinks emotionally, not me. I was able to comprehend and understand and accept all that Sam Harris was saying about the non-existence of free will even though it's a hard pill to swallow. I can deal with the facts and the analysis and the truth, while you whine and cry and shake the baby rattle and hold onto your sloppy manner of communication and closet full of philosophical emptiness and invalid ideas. You're seeking approval and acceptance through nonsense. I remain unphased by your attempts at intelligence and wisdom because nothing you do or say merits any kind of honor or fascination. You are a monkey with a bad brain. You spittle the same froth again and again and again and you've done nothing to convince me otherwise that you're onto something right. Your addiction to yourself is wasteful and tragic. You have never shown any evolution or transcendence. You're noise. You're like a traveling zoo.

In the end, every post is ******** because we are what we are and that's it. Meaningless waste of forum space.

This is silly. "We are what we are" applies to all disagreements, so by that logic every disagreement you've ever engaged in is also a waste, which you're apparently just realizing now, in this particular thread. Also, your replies are only contributing to this apparent "waste," so there's really nothing about this post that makes sense.

In the end, this topic just goes round and round. Forcing every possible notion down people's throats, hoping they will change to fit YOUR viewpoint.

The key word is "underneath." Obviously when an argument's premise is flawed, the conclusion will be flawed. But by "underneath" I mean that you're questioning a premise underneath all those in the argument. Like I'm arguing with someone about how far away a tree is, and then you saying "no, it's not 50 feet, because we're all in The Matrix so it's not really a tree." Even if that's true, it's relation to the argument is almost incidental, because you're questioning something far more basic about the nature of reality.

Well, I don't know if you're confused when you question the possibility of materialism, but I think you definitely are when you gauge how much I understand about the above, because you're selling me on something I already agree with. I agree with the idea that, if materialism isn't even possible (for example), then the discussion I'm having is like a game: theoretical, matching wits just for the sake of matching them, yadda yadda yadda. I get that, even though you keep saying it as if that's the roadblock.

The roadblock is the claim itself. So that's what we should be talking about! But it should be segregated from this discussion somewhat, because it's not a claim most people agree with and it's valuable to expose inconsistent thinking even if you think both they and I are harboring some larger delusion about reality.

Uh, yeah, of course I'm hoping they change their minds. All arguments involve hoping people change their minds. That includes your last few posts, misguided though they may be, which are either a) pointless or b) doing the same thing you're talking about now.

Kindly contribute to the discussion or refrain from polluting it. Thanks.

So, you want me to believe the same things you believe in?

That's an odd question. By definition everything we believe we believe to be true, yeah? So to not want people to agree is to either a) not really believe it or b) not want people to believe the truth. However, I want it to happen through genuine reason and persuasion, not through force.

The real point, though, is that you're trying to make wanting to convince someone of something sound sinister, which is both weird and self-contradictory.