Lord_Gareth
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Joined: Feb 21, 2012
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 Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 4:33 pm Post subject: |
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| techstepgenr8tion wrote: | | I still can't get my head around the idea of 'free will' for those who suggest it. Even if we now know that our universe from the ground up is not Newtonian, not mechanistic, even if we feel like we have a very big rising tide of evidence for mind/body dualism, to me it stops being simple reductive/materialistic determinism and simply becomes complex determinism. |
Honestly, for me, it pretty much goes like this: "Life is simpler when I live it under the assumption that free will exists." Whether or not the universe is deterministic is a question that drives people nuts, so I arbitrarily picked a side and stuck with it. It's worked out for me so far.
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Et in Arcadia ego. - "Even in Arcadia, there am I." |
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simon_says
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| Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 5:10 pm Post subject: |
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A world without (or with arrested) plate tectonics would have gone a long way toward limiting natural disaster casualties. That would give more time for people to choose their destiny under the christian scheme.
There is no answer to that. faithniks will just say that the mind of god is a mystery. |
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techstepgenr8tion
that chatty American
Joined: Feb 07, 2005
Posts: 14856
Location: A beautiful vector among many
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| Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 5:59 pm Post subject: |
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| Lord_Gareth wrote: |
Honestly, for me, it pretty much goes like this: "Life is simpler when I live it under the assumption that free will exists." Whether or not the universe is deterministic is a question that drives people nuts, so I arbitrarily picked a side and stuck with it. It's worked out for me so far. |
I don't know that the complexities of a deterministic universe need to drive someone 'nuts' but, if it works and gives you inner peace go with it. |
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donnie_darko
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| Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 6:03 pm Post subject: |
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Because he's an idiot.
Free will isn't an excuse since God apparently also knows every choice a person can make. So really, he could create people with free will and just not create those he knows would choose evil. |
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Mike1
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Joined: Jul 13, 2010
Posts: 447
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| Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 6:06 pm Post subject: |
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| American wrote: | | Mike1, God, being all powerful, can indeed create a world with free will and no evil. That's what all-powerful means, right? He can do whatever "he" wants. |
If God is a being, that doesn't necessarily mean that his intent was to create a world without suffering. A world without suffering would be finite, and God and the omniverse are infinite. If the omniverse and everything within it are creations of a God that existed before everything else, then everything within it must be made of the same substance as himself. If everything within it is made of the same substance as himself, then the collective conscience of every soul in the omniverse must be part of God, therefore God has all traits including the one's that are considered to be evil, though good and evil are only man-made concepts. Only pleasure and suffering exist naturally. Good and evil are just terms we equate to what causes these things and what they result in. In an objective sense, perfection isn't the absence of suffering, but the presence of infinite. In this sense, this world is perfect. Imperfection is only subjective and a result of perception. This world is objective and its properties don't change with the perception of the consciences that inhabit it. |
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YippySkippy
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Posts: 1555
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| Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 10:40 pm Post subject: |
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IF there's a God, here's what I think:
This world/reality is a training ground for us, God's children. We are child gods (aliens?). Some of us will graduate and become adult gods some day, the rest will be destroyed (maybe, unless it's an empty threat).
I know this is a weirdo position, but I have arrived at it after pondering the Bible more than is healthy for an agnostic. Jesus actually tells the disciples that people are gods, and references a passage in the OT that says the same thing. In Genesis, the snake tells Eve that if she eats from the Tree of Life (in addition to the one she DID eat) then she will be just like God. And what does God promise if we have faith in Jesus? Eternal life. Knowledge of good and evil + eternal life = god. |
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Ilka
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Joined: May 08, 2011
Age: 41
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Location: Panama City, Republic of Panama
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| Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2012 8:18 am Post subject: |
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| God is all loving. We are not. We have free will, and we choose to be mean. God is not to blame for all the suffering in the world. We are. Besides, remember "The matrix": we cannot live in a "perfect" world. We long for suffering. It is from wars that our greatest achievements come. We must bear the caterpillars (and thus suffering) to see the buttlerflies (and thus beauty). |
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01001011
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Joined: Mar 04, 2010
Posts: 874
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| Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2012 9:34 am Post subject: |
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| The whole evil vs god thing is just nonsense. There is no basis whatever to determine what is evil or what 'god' should do or not. All is there is just asserting / uttering 'X is evil', 'X is not evil'... |
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vampresstcullen
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker
Joined: Jul 24, 2010
Posts: 59
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| Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2012 9:01 pm Post subject: |
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| scubasteve wrote: | I imagine, probably the same reason we don't write stories with no bad guy.
I may not be the best person to answer though, because I tend to agree with your conclusions. |
You don't make something terrible for entertainment. And we wrote those stories being in this world already, if there was no bad, we could write conflict about animals or natural evil. |
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UnLoser
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| Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2012 10:51 pm Post subject: |
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| donnie_darko wrote: | | Free will isn't an excuse since God apparently also knows every choice a person can make. So really, he could create people with free will and just not create those he knows would choose evil. |
That doesn't make sense. Even if God were to know every choice a person could make, that would not mean he knows what choice they will make. That obviously goes against the idea of an all-knowing God, but "all-knowing" could be taken to mean just knowing everything within the present time. |
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Joker
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Age: 24
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Location: North Carolina The Tar Heel State :)
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| Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2012 12:10 am Post subject: |
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| Good and Evil must both exist it is the natural order of things one cannot exist with out the other. |
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Lord_Gareth
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Joined: Feb 21, 2012
Posts: 440
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| Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2012 3:29 am Post subject: |
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| Joker wrote: | | Good and Evil must both exist it is the natural order of things one cannot exist with out the other. |
Why is dualism a logical necessity? After all, you can have light without darkness; if you filled every nook and cranny in the universe with light there would be no more shadow. Same thing re: heat/cold, pain/pleasure, etc. You can argue that these things do not have as much meaning without their opposites, but that doesn't mean that both must be present.
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Lord_Gareth
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| Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2012 3:31 am Post subject: |
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| techstepgenr8tion wrote: | | Lord_Gareth wrote: |
Honestly, for me, it pretty much goes like this: "Life is simpler when I live it under the assumption that free will exists." Whether or not the universe is deterministic is a question that drives people nuts, so I arbitrarily picked a side and stuck with it. It's worked out for me so far. |
I don't know that the complexities of a deterministic universe need to drive someone 'nuts' but, if it works and gives you inner peace go with it. |
After my eighth 'free will vs. illusion of free will' debate the solution above is what I went with so I could avoid beating my face against the wall arguing about something that's currently impossible to determine (but sadly not impossible to have a shouting match about). I do recognize that my anecdotes do not form a body of evidence, though.
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Et in Arcadia ego. - "Even in Arcadia, there am I." |
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techstepgenr8tion
that chatty American
Joined: Feb 07, 2005
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| Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2012 4:41 am Post subject: |
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| Lord_Gareth wrote: |
After my eighth 'free will vs. illusion of free will' debate the solution above is what I went with so I could avoid beating my face against the wall arguing about something that's currently impossible to determine (but sadly not impossible to have a shouting match about). I do recognize that my anecdotes do not form a body of evidence, though. |
I just leave it at "I don't know for certain" and much like even the strongest atheist is only perhaps 99% certain at best and 1% agnostic, I just admit that I have incredibly strong reason to believe that free will is an illusion in any mechanical sense and anything much past that is a game of shifting definitions and goal posts. One thing has changed in a big way for me, my atheism got obliterated, but even with a complex theistic model it seems to me that determinism just gets more depth, layers, and complexity added - main reason being; no matter how much oddity there is in space time, eternal universes (univii?), or how much I could possibly create my own world - information is still king and its impossible for one to make choices that they haven't conceived or been touched by any incoming information or internal synthesis to the point of being aware of a possibility or a more beneficial course of action.
Not meaning at all to start any sort of debate - just wanted to highlight that I think it can be boiled down to some rather simplistic principles. |
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