[andyt]

Don't know about that, but sounds like you have a problem with history. Actually I bet most Christians agree with this interpretation, since they themselves don't take the bible literally.

[ShepherdsDog]

andyt andyt:

You can't have good without evil, I agree. But that means that we have little kids dying of leukemia and all kinds of other undeserved suffering in the world. Why? And for God to be good, does that mean he has to be evil as well?

And, the monotheists have a problem with the afterlife as well. Lots of people do all kinds of evil and live a long a fruitful life. So apparently they get their just desserts in the afterlife - unending torment. Why would a loving God set up a system like that? It sounds very sadistic to me.

Funny, the Jews(Israelites/Hebrews weren't always, they were polytheists who became henotheistic - Thou shalt have no other gods BEFORE Me.) were among the first monotheists, yet they don't dwell on the idea of an afterlife.

$1:

renounced the Nicene Creed and by their own words they have made the case that they are not Christians.

Well in a sense that would make most Orthodox churches non Christian, as they follow the original Nicene Creed. The Churches in the West(originally the Frankish theologians) altered it under Charlemagne's rule. The Orthodox follow the belief that the Holy Spirit flows only from the Father, while the West added 'and the Son'. The Orthodox rite believes the Father is the unoriginate source of the Trinity(a concept I had trouble accepting when I did consider myself a 'believer' and a reason why I can't see Christianity as being monotheistic), with the Son and the Holy Spirit proceeding solely from the Father.
edit:
had to look up the term: it's Filioque. there's a whole whack of doctrinal differences between the Western Rite(Rome and the subsequent protestant churches)and the Eastern Rite Churches, and it's interesting how one or two words make such a huge difference in interpretation.

[Zipperfish]

andyt andyt:

ShepherdsDog ShepherdsDog:

From a Deist perspective, God made it and said, 'now you're on your own!'. Sort of the watchmaker god that deism advocates.....by Crom

That means this demiurge created evil and suffering. Why? The Gnostics would have it that he is himself evil.

With what science has revealed about the universe, I think a concept like Brahman makes much more sense. Not as much fun tho, you can't give him thanks when you score a touchdown in football. Or claim he saved you from a disaster.

Evil would be a necessary consequence of free will.

[andyt]

So the watchmaker set his little machine in motion, allows it to tick away, and just sit's back and watches all the evil in the world, does his best Trudeau shrug and says "it's out of my hands"? Not the nicest guy, is he?

[Zipperfish]

andyt andyt:

So the watchmaker set his little machine in motion, allows it to tick away, and just sit's back and watches all the evil in the world, does his best Trudeau shrug and says "it's out of my hands"? Not the nicest guy, is he?

Well I suppose it could have simply done away with evil, and then we wouldn't have free will. As a matter of fact, if you could only take actions that resulted only in pure good, chances are you'd be a rock.

[ShepherdsDog]

It's a fairer version than a deity who constantly interferes, negating free will.

[Zipperfish]

andyt andyt:

So the watchmaker set his little machine in motion, allows it to tick away, and just sit's back and watches all the evil in the world, does his best Trudeau shrug and says "it's out of my hands"? Not the nicest guy, is he?

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[andyt]

ShepherdsDog ShepherdsDog:

It's a fairer version than a deity who constantly interferes, negating free will.

you guys are ignoring all the suffering that goes with free will. If the guy who killed Tori Stafford used free will, how did she deserve it? How is that "fair?" What kind of God sets up a system where Tori Stafford is raped and murdered, with a time out in between to allow her to pee?

Then there's all the suffering from disease and dying.

Not a very nice God you guys are positing. Many innocent suffer, just so He can watch his little experiment ticking away.

[peck420]

Andyt,

Would you rather have 'good' and slavery or 'evil' and free will?

I know my choice.

[andyt]

Slavery to what or whom? You don't think you're a slave to your biological makeup? People have discussed free will forever, the consensus is still out about how much free will we really have.

Did God really need to create us with such a strong drive for power and dominating others? Greed and fear? Can you really not imagine a world where people are much more loving and co-operative? God's son certainly could, he kept preaching about it. If God had made a world where things are more peaceful, do you think the inhabitants would complain they didn't have free will to be as evil as they want to be, they were slaves to peace?

[BartSimpson]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

andyt andyt:

So the watchmaker set his little machine in motion, allows it to tick away, and just sit's back and watches all the evil in the world, does his best Trudeau shrug and says "it's out of my hands"? Not the nicest guy, is he?

0:

Slide1.jpg

Hey, Zip, I've had the same avatar for probably six years since Mario gave it to me. I hope that doesn't make me scorn-worthy, does it?

[Zipperfish]

andyt andyt:

ShepherdsDog ShepherdsDog:

It's a fairer version than a deity who constantly interferes, negating free will.

you guys are ignoring all the suffering that goes with free will. If the guy who killed Tori Stafford used free will, how did she deserve it? How is that "fair?" What kind of God sets up a system where Tori Stafford is raped and murdered, with a time out in between to allow her to pee?

Then there's all the suffering from disease and dying.

Not a very nice God you guys are positing. Many innocent suffer, just so He can watch his little experiment ticking away.

Be that as it may, your universe of no possible evil would mean that there is no free will, and we'd be essentially automatons. Depending o your definition of evil, it may negate independent action completely. A rock does no evil. From that point of view it is much more evolved than we are.

[Zipperfish]

andyt andyt:

Slavery to what or whom? You don't think you're a slave to your biological makeup? People have discussed free will forever, the consensus is still out about how much free will we really have.

Did God really need to create us with such a strong drive for power and dominating others? Greed and fear? Can you really not imagine a world where people are much more loving and co-operative? God's son certainly could, he kept preaching about it. If God had made a world where things are more peaceful, do you think the inhabitants would complain they didn't have free will to be as evil as they want to be, they were slaves to peace?

No I don't think I'm a slave to my biological make up. A lot of smart people do, though. Sam Harris, in his book, Free Will argues that exact case fairly convincingly. Famed neurologist Oliver Sacks agrees. As does Owen Flanagan, Prof of Philosophy at Duke. And many, many others. According to physics the universe is either deterministic (in which case we are automatons) or dependent on inherently unpredictable quantum probability (in which case our "decisions" are a product of chance). Neural scientists can predict with 80% accuracy when someone is going to move about 700 milliseconds before they "decide" to move. How are we the only things that we know of in creation capable of changing the course of the universe as we will?

I don't happen to agree myself.

[andyt]

One minute you throw shit about my avatar, next you posit a reasonable question. Way to use that free will of yours.

1. Free will has nothing to do with old age, sickness and death.

2. I repeat my question. What kind of God sets up a system where free will rapes and murders Tori Stafford. It's nice in theory, not so much in the application. If you are suffering under someone else's free will, are you going to say "thanks God for not making me an automaton." And I think you have sufficient knowledge of biology to know how much of a slave we are to it, don't have that much free will at all. Eden didn't sound all that bad to me. But God sure threw a shitfit when Adam and Eve exercised their free will. Going by the bible we're actually being punished for exercising free will. It's a bad thing.


Here's an argument against free will that makes sense to me:

$1:

The contemporary philosopher Galen Strawson agrees with Locke that the truth or falsity of determinism is irrelevant to the problem.[28] He argues that the notion of free will leads to an infinite regress and is therefore senseless. According to Strawson, if one is responsible for what one does in a given situation, then one must be responsible for the way one is in certain mental respects. But it is impossible for one to be responsible for the way one is in any respect. This is because to be responsible in some situation "S", one must have been responsible for the way one was at "S−1". To be responsible for the way one was at "S−1", one must have been responsible for the way one was at "S−2", and so on. At some point in the chain, there must have been an act of origination of a new causal chain. But this is impossible. Man cannot create himself or his mental states ex nihilo. This argument entails that free will itself is absurd, but not that it is incompatible with determinism. Strawson calls his own view "pessimism" but it can be classified as hard incompatibilism.[28]

And some more:

$1:

David Hume discussed the possibility that the entire debate about free will is nothing more than a merely "verbal" issue. He suggested that it might be accounted for by "a false sensation or seeming experience" (a velleity), which is associated with many of our actions when we perform them. On reflection, we realize that they were necessary and determined all along.[37]


Much of Arthur Schopenhauer's writing is focused on the notion of will and its relation to freedom.
Arthur Schopenhauer put the puzzle of free will and moral responsibility in these terms:
Everyone believes himself a priori to be perfectly free, even in his individual actions, and thinks that at every moment he can commence another manner of life. ... But a posteriori, through experience, he finds to his astonishment that he is not free, but subjected to necessity, that in spite of all his resolutions and reflections he does not change his conduct, and that from the beginning of his life to the end of it, he must carry out the very character which he himself condemns...[38]

And this:

$1:

Wegner has applied this principle to the inferences people make about their own conscious will. People typically experience a thought that is consistent with a behavior, and then they observe themselves performing this behavior. As a result, people infer that their thoughts must have caused the observed behavior. However, Wegner has been able to manipulate people's thoughts and behaviors so as to conform to or violate the two requirements for causal inference.[74][75] Through such work, Wegner has been able to show that people will often experience conscious will over behaviors that they have in fact not caused, and conversely, that people can be led to experience a lack of will over behaviors that they did cause.

Don't know if it's Wegner, but in my reading about consciousness I came across a famous experiment where people were asked to move their hand at will. The experiment demonstrated that the movement was initiated before they became aware of it consciously, ie their unconscious was controlling the behavior. Psychology tells us that most behavior is unconscious, no free will there.

And this argument:

$1:

Moses Maimonides formulated an argument regarding a person's free will, in traditional terms of good and evil actions, as follows:[4]
… "Does God know or does He not know that a certain individual will be good or bad? If thou sayest 'He knows', then it necessarily follows that [that] man is compelled to act as God knew beforehand he would act, otherwise God's knowledge would be imperfect.…"[5]

If God is not omniscient, what kind of God is that - we're all just part of one huge experiment.

[Zipperfish]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

andyt andyt:

So the watchmaker set his little machine in motion, allows it to tick away, and just sit's back and watches all the evil in the world, does his best Trudeau shrug and says "it's out of my hands"? Not the nicest guy, is he?

0:

Slide1.jpg

Hey, Zip, I've had the same avatar for probably six years since Mario gave it to me. I hope that doesn't make me scorn-worthy, does it?

Probably because you don't have an avatar of of a psycho with a staring problem.