there’s been alot of discussion over free will lately, and I’d thought I’d change the semantics to get across the actuallity of it being possible and the problems of the atheistic/deterministic logic.
First let’s start with the word will. What is will?
but the obvious argument against that is that even if you choose a different action predetermination is still choosing the effect. That’s why it’s necessary to change the semantics. Instead of having the will to act against the doctrine of predetermination, you use ‘cause’ to choose a different ‘effect’. We humans have the ability to step ouside of the predetermined line of events and to see where our choices (yes you still make choices) will lead.
We can choose to cause something else to happen!
Now for the problem with predetermination (which really almost needs a topic of it’s own.)
Atheists and Deists and Theists all believe that all effects lead back to one great cause. The fundamentalist theist believes literally in the words of their holy book. The deist believes that god was the first cause. The atheist (which a majority of predeterminists are.) believes that the first cause was nothing.
This is an important clause, because they believe that NOTHING, is guiding their actions and that they have no control over those actions. They choose the easy path in life instead of pondering which choices to make that will cause mankind to have the best outcome in life.
Atheists believe that the first cause is nothing? It does not make sense to me. Materialists (most of atheists) may believe in an infinite regress of causes. Each phenomenon is conditioned by previous phenomena, and so on ad infinitum. This is consistent with the belief in the eternity of the world, brought to sidestep the principle that what has a beginning has a cause.
materialists don’t believe in the infinite regression of all things, because even material things wither away, so must the earth. Therefore if the earth has an end it must have a beginning.
For the materialist like the atheist since god is not the first cause, nothing is the first cause.
“what is the nothing?”
“It’s the emptiness that’s left. It’s like a despair, destroying this world.”
I am an a-theist (a person who doesn’t believe in gods – one, two, three or more gods, roman gods, hindu gods, christain gods, muslim gods, half man; half gods, son of gods etc, etc.). To be an a-theist does not mean anything more than that.
I do believe in something… it just doesn’t have anything to do with man-made, anthropomorphic creators.
An a-theists can have many different scientific, philosophical or imaginary answers to the creation question. To say atheists blelieve ‘nothing’ created the universe is incorrect.
PS: I don’t want the topic to go astray… but I did want to correct the ‘atheists believe in nothing’ comment.
U don’t have to “Be” “Nothing”, just be yourself, find who, why, when and where U are, and you will be Free and feel Eternal, because you will not feel
Time. You are born in One day, when Yesterday’ve never happened, and
Tomorrow is just new Today. Your Life is One day, and You will Live
Thousend years, or more .
Or U Die .
Do you believe in a processual steady state universe? that it had no beginning?
If you believe the universe had a beginning and god wasn’t there to start the spark of the beginning than the whole of existance was caused by nothing.
The real atheist dilemma relies on your belief in the non-existance of god though. Some (like Dr. S) say that you can “know” there is no god, but your just pulling your own leg, you can’t know there’s no god, like you can’t know whether other planetoids (even within our own solar system) contain life. ( I realize one day we will know that but right now we don’t.)
I don’t want to sidetrack this discussion, but for all of the ____ists, there is an implied external and linear concept of time with the need to describe a causal universe with beginning and end. In a processual universe beginning and end is unknowable and therefore an irrelevent question. Coming into being and time arise mutually and are interdependent. Thus, even in a processual universe, there is beginning and ending of all that is known, but only from a point of perspective. That which is the unknowable source of coming into being/returning both stands outside of time (beginning/end) and includes it.
There is no such thing as nothingness, merely presence or absence.
I was trying to make the argument for the flaw of deterministic thinking that even if our world were causal we would be “free to cause”, that we can ponder and meditate the effects of our actions and take the cause that has the best effect.
So the absence of something is not equal to nothing?
--------> to everyone
and what is present and what is absent? is it only present or absent from one’s POV? For example let’s say you and a friend are standing in a forest about 10 feet apart he tells you “look over there a large elephant!”, you look and look and can’t see it because from where you stand it is blocked by trees.
From your perspective the elephant isn’t there, does that mean that it doesn’t exist?
Who is to say the very act of ‘stepping outside the predetermined line of events’ (which is impossible anyway, you may be able to observe cause and effect but you are also at the same time subject to it)) isn’t just another caused event? Why would you assume it is not?
Who exactly made the case for all atheists everywhere that the first ‘cause’ was ‘nothing’?
I’ve certainly never heard it, and if I did I would laugh, because it is ridiculous.
I think intelligent atheists realize sometimes a lack of data is better than making shit up. I don’t pretend to know how the universe started…
I think there is a seemingly infinite amount of external factors guiding my actions. Nothing? Seriously where do you get this crap…
You seem to be trying to connect free will and altruism, by saying determinists reject altruism? How exactly did you come to that conclusion?
If a person is in prison are they free to cause? One could say that when the guards aren’t around they are boss of their prison and make decisions in accordance with the confines of prison life.
However, from the point of view of a free person, being in prison denies them the ability to cause as would be normal for freedom and are subject to the determinism of restricted prison life.
So the question for me becomes if we perceive freedom to cause from a conception of human freedom or our conditioned habitual psychological prison.
who’s to say something’s impossible unless you’ve tried it? maybe you just need to eat your wheaties so you can build yourself up to choosing something else?
the argument lies on the first cause, if you don’t know the cause you can no more claim determinsm from then on then can the theist or deist claim the first cause was god with absolute certaintity.
Well I’ve seen atheists claim that (Or maybe I just chose to see that )
well not all determinists for sure, I was perhaps over generalizing.
How do you expect me to come up with a good argument against determinism when you change what determinism and atheism means? both you and KM have different views of “atheism” and “determinism”, somewhere we have to just say “screw it, it’s like this.” If we try defining all the exclusions to the rule, we can’t argue the rule, perhaps I’m looking at the wrong rule and the majority of determinists don’t believe that the universe started at nothing, if so enlighten me on the views of determinstic cause.
if you would good Dr., and KM, answer my previous pointings?
Nothingness is only possible in a causal universe. There are discrete ‘things’ separated by nothingness, and nothingness also implies no-thing. In a processual universe, all is all, and the lack of a particularness simply means absence, not no-thingness.
Any awareness is always from a point of view, it cannot be otherwise. That from my field of experiencing there is no elephant, doesn’t mean that the elephant doesn’t exist, it is merely absent from my field of experiencing. Just another version of the Zen koan, If a tree falls in the forest…
Yeah I admit it was another version of that, I was thinking that maybe some of the people here could relate to it if I made it visual. I’d like to see some other responses to it before extrapolating that the trees are put up by your mind and not by your surroundings.
But I think I will anyways incorporate all the 5 senses:
I am standing by the river, you are standing in the forest.
I see a bird in the sky looking down at the river looking for food.
The bird in the sky sees both of us and the fish in the water.
You search the skies but the limbs of the trees block your sight.
The bird dives making a screeching sound of attack.
I cover my ears because the sound is so loud…
All you hear, are sounds of the forest. The trees cracking, the squirzels laughing, and the monkeys eating.
What does this tell us? I can’t hear the sounds of the forest, because I’ve removed the forest, you can’t see or hear the sounds of the sky because your stuck in the forest.
In hindsight, everything seems subject to cause and effect. The claim that there is ‘something’ that isn’t is a very big claim. It is reasonable to assume the very act of observing causality and trying to make the right ‘choices’ based on said observations would itself be caused by a multitude of factors.
Sure I can. I can look back on the last 5 minutes and observe cause and effect in action. I just don’t see why knowing how it ‘started’ is important.
5 minutes is more than enough to verify the causal nature of the universe.
I totally agree with KM on the definition of atheist…simply one who doesnt believe in god/s/fairies/imaginary friends. No other connotations. Determinism to me is simply how it is, how it can be observed to be. How logic dictates it is. The concept of freewill goes against everything that is observable. Nothing observable is causeless, free will claims that there is a ‘magical something’ that can somehow exist outside of what is essentially the known universe. Big claim! Determinism is simply the sequential nature of cause and effect, a seemingly infinite web of events apon events influencing and causing other events ad infinitum.
How it started isn’t important to me, only how it is.
Sure, the elephant exists. I’ve never seen india, and that exists. He may never know for sure that that elephant existed, but that isn’t really important.
Does evolution stop existing in southern baptist towns?
[quote=“Dr.Satanical”]
In hindsight, everything seems subject to cause and effect. The claim that there is ‘something’ that isn’t is a very big claim. It is reasonable to assume the very act of observing causality and trying to make the right ‘choices’ based on said observations would itself be caused by a multitude of factors.
unfortunately for the southern baptists it doesn’t.
You or I have never seen or heard god does that mean he/she/it doesn’t exist? Can you prove without photographs that jupiter exists?
It’s the old “cliche” that you can’t see the forest through the trees. Your down in it, and so caught up in life that you’ve put up barriers of logic to “illogic”. Why “believe” in the unbelievable? why believe we have a choice?
The alternative to choice is no-choice.
to not choose how you live is to not live.
besides that, surround yourself with logic, and you’ll miss out on all the great nonsense in life.
No…why would it? Knowing that there is six sides and assuming the die is ballanced, rolling two '5’s in a row does not imply another 5.
Maybe if you are flying a kite…
There has been nothing conclusively found in quantum physics to happen uncaused. Quantum physics is basicly just philosophy anyway.
If all factors remain the same, the ball will bounce the same.
Why not? This is impossible to dupicate, because to predict any human action you would probably need to factor in hundreds of billions or more factors. thats a little beyond our meaty brains and even our silicon machines.
But in theory it would be possible.
True, because there are a lot of genetic ‘switches’ thrown during the maturation of an embryo. These factors are not random whatsoever, but are caused by chemical ballances.
Yes, you really can. You are saying the why is more important than the how, and in fact the how is useless without first knowing the why. I just don’t agree. Also, claiming to know what started the universe, and further going on to give it properties and characteristics is a LOT different than coming to a conclusion based on logically and reasonably undeniable evidence. (every effect has a cause)
Am I to take you as an authority on QM? Just what is it that you know about Quantum Mechanics? What precisely in quantum mechanics discredits the idea of a causal universe?
What does any of that have to do with anything we are talking about?
You seem to be hinting that a causal universe implies the abbility to predict it. How did you come to that conclusion? I certainly don’t agree.
The whole idea of ‘god’ is from the bible (drawn from older religions) and based on mythology. WHY would I ‘look around’ to begin with? If there WAS a god, the bible being the closest thing to ‘evidence’ we have for him, (and by closest I mean not even close) why would I disregard it to make up my own version? Anthropomorphisized or in the shape of a giant green duck, what does it matter.
I have no reason to think any sort of god/s exist in any form.
To me this translates into “make up your own little imaginary friend and try real hard to believe in him, and don’t let clear thinking interfere”
No thanks…
No.
And when I chop his nuts off the fact that he did what he did would play a big part in determining my action.
1:the fear of punishment acts as a big deterant to crime. The fear itself is a cause.
2: ridding society of criminals (by execution/incarceration) is good for society at large. This fact is a determining factor to the effect of jails being populated.
Because nobody knows that. Unless of course the other guy is an olympic sprinter, and you are a lazy couch potato. But even then he might trip and break a leg…
No, it doesn’t.
If you knew EVERYTHING right down to the power of the throw, the vicosity of the hand, the texture and bounce of the table, ad infinitum, until EVERY possible factor of the diceroll was factored in…you could in fact predict it.
And like I said before, the very act of ‘looking at your choices and choosing the one that best suites you’ is caused. On the surface you can see a cause being self interest, past experience with ‘the desired effect’ etc…
In itself a chain of causality…
There is evidence, on a large scale, that jupiter exists. god, on the other hand, can’t even be defined, much less evidenced.
Apples and oranges.
I don’t know…you tell me.
Another alternative would be the illusion of choice.
well I’m certainly no expert but the quote from wikipedia was just one of several answers to that question.
I let go of the kite after the second lightening strike. Will lightening strike again?
If you don’t know what’s going to happen from any given cause than the universe isn’t causal in nature thus not deterministic. The whole POINT of determinism is that with any given cause there is a known effect, if there isn’t a known effect there isn’t a deterministic universe.
Chaos Theory would disagree with that… there is a certain pattern to the randomness for sure, but it still is just that… random.
your starting to construct…
A very large…
straw man.
If criminals have no control over there actions and are predetermined to take such actions even with the “causal fear” then we can’t very well blame them for doing what they can only do can we?
Stephen Hawkings should’ve just sat around the house and let determinism take over. I mean he’s just a cripple, he has no chance of going beyond those limitations.
Flaws of determinism:
Once a person’s a criminal they have no chance of ever being something else.
Once a person makes up their mind it’s impossible for them to change it.
That and it intentionally makes life pointless. Can’t you see that you are falling for the trickster? He wants you to think that life is pointless, there’s nothing you can do but given into the laws of cause and effect.
Good god you sound as bad as the predeterminist christians/theists.
Huh? Your grasp of determinism seems slippery at best…
You seem to think that a deterministic universe somehow implies that we must know all the determining factors to everything. That is just silly.
Right, so since we don’t have all the data in the universe from which to predict every little nuance, then things cannot possibly be actually locked into chains of cause and effect, but instead things just happen for ‘no reason’. uhh…ok!
Just for arguments sake, give me an example of an uncaused effect. (as anything truely ‘random’ would have to be)
Why not? Because it isn’t ‘fair’?
‘fairness’ is egalitarian crapolla, and plays no part in my model.
He is also ambitious and of very high genius intellect.
You seem to be trying to connect determinism and defeatism, and further seem to be insisting that they are mutually exclusive. I see no evidence to support this claim.
‘Criminal’ is just a label given by society. We are not what we do.
What makes you say that? Why would it be impossible to decide on a course of action and then go on to modify it based on…well…whatever?
I don’t see how that conflicts with/is a flaw of determinism.
And what is this ‘point’ that can only exist if a magical causeless force called ‘freewill’ exists?
Who exactly is this ‘trickster’? Is this some attempt at christian rhetoric? If so, spare me.
If you can’t tell the difference between a position based on logic, reason and evidence and empty claims about unicorns and gods…well…I don’t know what to tell you.
PS - any christian who thinks things are predetermined isn’t really a christian. The idea of ‘freewill’ is religious in nature, and christianity utterly collapses without it.
I like fuzzy logic. It’s kind of warm and well fuzzy.
No this is common determinism. For every cause must have an effect. If you act (or cause) than the effect SHOULD be known. If it’s not than determinism fails.
wow if this doesn’t sound familiar…
You are SO stuck in the theology of determinism that any discussion of an alternative switches on the same block that theologists (of all types) use.
Can you even see that your views are SO locked that any challenge them is met with complete illogic of logic?
If you are really willing to challenge your beliefs in determinism read up on chaos theory and quantum mechanics.
I have read about chaos theory and have also read complaints about it. They indicate that there may be an order on that level that we just aren’t equipped to understand. It does make a certain amount of sense that there is a different universe going on down there.
If you look at a smooth surface through an electron microscope it looks like a mountain range. So, how some things move across that “smooth†surface is how they would move across a mountain range! Without that kind of microscope we would only be able to hypothesize about it.
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