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Post by Dragon*of*Heaven on Dec 28, 2005 1:39:37 GMT -5
I have asked some of my class mates and the resident priest at my college on this same subject and finally got them to see the contradiction. However as it was reexplain to me the contradiction doesn't matter. To them God gives free will so the choices you make are your own (hence free will). God being God though Knowing all and seeing all knows what your inevitable decision will be. So yes there is a contradiction but it doesn't matter. Of course to any reasonable person we all know that an actual contradiction cannot exist in this reality so whether it actually matters or not the contradiction exists so it falsifies the argument.
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Post by vertigo on Dec 28, 2005 7:47:00 GMT -5
You are wrong, a supernatural being knowing all wouldn't contradict free will, for two reasons. Firstly, supernatural beings would be out-of-time with us. They could simply look ahead at the results. Secondly, free will exists even in a deterministic universe.
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Post by necroshine on Dec 29, 2005 17:04:24 GMT -5
Dragon of Heaven,
Free will isn't the question, you do have free to a point even with or without a god. Although I don't believe we have complete free will. Nature and nurture controls all lot of what you choose in life. Why would god give us free will if he's going to tell us what to do? Also the punishment does not fit the crime. Why would you punish me for being a good man and not believing in him while you reward evil men for believing in him? If god knows our hearts and he knows what we think then we should not Have to jump through hoops for him. Why should a man be punished for believing in another god when he was raised to believe that way. if he's a good man in every other part of his life he still going to hell while murderers own death row asked for forgiveness and every body knows they are going to Heaven. I find that question more disturbing than free will. Why do good men deserve hell over a belief while evil men get into Heaven from asking for forgiveness. The best census tells us the Earth is about one third Christian.
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eugen43
Maverick's Chew Toy
Posts: 12
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Post by eugen43 on Dec 29, 2005 18:41:28 GMT -5
Destiny, we are just cogs in a very big machine. We have no control over anything . We say nothing, we do nothing that isn't controlled by physics. Ever since the big bang everything has occurred the one way that it could have. There is no such thing as random or chaos.
Everything is ordered. I'm sure many others have stated this but this conclusion I came to by logic. My argument - Lets imagine a leaf in a brook. It's floating down the brook and there is no way we could calculate its location and velocity and temperature one minute from now, but all the forces that are acting on that leaf now and during the next minute are all in motion. Everything that will effect that leaf is just waiting it's turn. As I'm watching it I toss a stone at it, did things change? No, because I was just one of the forces that was already and waiting to contribute my part to the leaf's history.
Free will only exists if we have a choice and we don't. The chemical signals fire in our brain based on all the forces that effect them, just as the leaf floats down the brook our thoughts and actions float in time, precisely.
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Post by vertigo on Dec 30, 2005 7:56:38 GMT -5
Eugen, from the point of view of the agent, how much more free can will become? Will is only not free from an outside perspective. Your ontological argument goes against common sense. I experience free will.
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eugen43
Maverick's Chew Toy
Posts: 12
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Post by eugen43 on Dec 31, 2005 0:57:36 GMT -5
Hi vertigo, We are, our brains are chemical factories which produce response to stimuli. If we think about something and then react we are following the course that was destined to happen. Our response wasn't just approximate, but it was precise. You react to stimuli, in this case Eugen, but without choice. You and I are just leaves in the brook. Our destiny is fixed. The destiny of the universe is fixed.
I just realized how similar this message is to the original. The concept is simple so it is difficult to add further argument to it. I guess why it is difficult to accept is that this whole thing, life and the universe and everything is nothing more than one big robotic toy carrying out it's instructions. Why did it create life? It's just one of those things. Matter and energy doin stuff. Maybe Mother Nature is an exhibitionist and she needed someone to watch her act. Whoa, that almost sounds like God. Na it's just a big toy robot. I just found the spell checker. Neat!
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Post by vertigo on Dec 31, 2005 9:23:26 GMT -5
I experience the world from my own point of view, not from God's viewpoint. From my point of view, I experience free will. That is the point. You are arguing from ontology and it is not relevant. Whether the world is deterministic or not, I experience free will.
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eugen43
Maverick's Chew Toy
Posts: 12
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Post by eugen43 on Dec 31, 2005 9:45:13 GMT -5
Vertigo, what we all sense is free will but it is just an illusion. Imagine a domino standing upright on a table. The table is shook. The domino will fall. It appears that the domino has two main directions to fall, dots up, dots down. The domino is sort of a model of free will. It seems it can go either way, but in realty the forces imparted on that domino will cause it to go in one direction only. If I ask you to call heads or tails regardless of what you chose the choice was predestined by the physics of your brain. About now you may prefer not to read anything I write for a while and that's OK because I think I'm finished on this subject. Time will tell.
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Post by Hilly on Dec 31, 2005 12:56:01 GMT -5
You and I are just leaves in the brook. Our destiny is fixed. Sorry I'm not buyin it. We humans, unlike the leaves in your analogy, can make decisions. We can make plans and alter them at the last second if we so desire. We can also use our free will to have affects on others. I do understand your premise and I've heard it before. It has even been suggested that if man does indeed not have free will as in the theory you propose, murderer's are not really responsible for their actions. I don't think anyone would accept that. I think sometimes we can get mired down in some abstract philosophical problems. However thats not to say we shouldn't stop thinking and exploring ideas. I think the universe and human brain is far to complicated and incredible to accept that were merely just "cogs in a machine" with "no control over anything" I wonder eugen43, does this philosophy you hold affect how you lead your life? If so how? |
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Post by vertigo on Dec 31, 2005 13:16:22 GMT -5
You are wrong about me. I will put it down to that you haven't met someone like me yet.
Let's try a thought experiment. Considering we see the world from our point of view, imagine for a second we found ourselves in a nondeterministic universe. How could we tell the difference? From our point of view, would there be any difference? If not, your whole argument is pointless and irrelevant, which is what I have said.
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eugen43
Maverick's Chew Toy
Posts: 12
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Post by eugen43 on Dec 31, 2005 17:56:25 GMT -5
Hi Hilly, I think I am the kind of cog that has been hard wired and programmed to care about others to be considerate of other's feeling and needs. That said, due to complexity of everything, this cog screws up from time to time. When something does go wrong I don't just shrug my shoulders. It becomes a lesson learned and hopefully improve me. My personal goal is that I can finish out my life without hurting good people. The other day I hurt the feelings of a medical doctor while attempting to assure that my treatment was adequate. She finally realized that I had been short changed, figuratively speaking.
Vertigo, I don't think I have made any kind of decison regarding you, except that you are an atheist like me. To answers your question I would have to concede that the universe would have formed the way it has. I can't do that. If a world was nondeterministic it would not follow the rules of physics. Our very existence depends on that all that has come before has strictly followed the laws of physics.
A world without a deterministic nature is a world of the super-natural.
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Post by vertigo on Dec 31, 2005 18:26:24 GMT -5
You are appealing to ignorance. Saying "the world would be different otherwise" doesn't cut it. What is a world of the supernatural?
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eugen43
Maverick's Chew Toy
Posts: 12
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Post by eugen43 on Dec 31, 2005 20:14:02 GMT -5
The world of the supernatural is an imaginary world that theist believe in.
I just thought of an interesting visualization which may help you understand my perspective. Imagine we have the opportunity to go into the future and take a snap shot of something, maybe the skyline of New York City in the year 2500 on January 1st at noon. We examine it. We wait a year and we go back and take the snapshot again on January 1st at noon in the year 2500. I would expect the pictures to be exactly the same down to cloud formations. If you are correct everyone in the world, during this next year, has made a huge number of decisions that would ultimately change the appearance of the second picture and in fact the picture would be a blur or empty because there would be an infinite number of possibilities.
This is what gets the parallel worlds people going. They get government grants for studying this stuff. That's destiny for you.
I think this describes what they contend: If an atomic particle such as an electron is moving in space and comes to a knife edge which means the particle must go around one way or the other, the result is a random action. To them if the electron went left then there must be another universe where it went right. (how stupid can they get?) Of course they are getting paid. There are other physicists out there who think electrons have free will and that they play jokes on human beings. So getting back to the electron I think the forces that were being exerted on the electron caused it to go one way. Nothing random about it.
My inability to argue what would make it apparent that we were in a world where things were not predestined is based on the idea that we are here today because the laws of physics have always applied and nothing has been random except my typos.
I almost forgot a very important point. Do you or do you not believe that the universe is a physical place and that the laws of physics applies to matter - planets revolving around a star, cars crashing into walls, planes flying in the sky?
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Post by vertigo on Jan 1, 2006 8:49:28 GMT -5
I said you were wrong about me, yet you continue on the same lines. You say 'if I am correct' but if you look over what I've said you'll see I didn't express an opinion on the matter.
The fact is we can't go into the future and take a picture of the skyline. If that's your test of a nondeterministic world, we don't have access to it. What test do we have access to by which to tell the difference? If we have no such test, it is irrelevant.
The issue goes deeper than this, I'll not shortcut it. Answer my questions please.
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eugen43
Maverick's Chew Toy
Posts: 12
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Post by eugen43 on Jan 1, 2006 15:32:25 GMT -5
I contend that if we were in a world that was nondeterministic, then we would be in a world where the laws of physics are not followed. I would think that world would be very much different than we have observed. i hope that answers the question.
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