Free will

[Pegasus]

^Who is that directed at, and what is OmniOrder? I'm a bit confused...

 

[Mentalhead]

Don't dismiss Christianity so easily. In fact the life of Marin Luther took its dramatic change away from Catholicism precisely because of the question of free will. And he came to almost the exact conclusion as you. You can read his debate with Erasmus in "Bondage of the Will" over whether free will exists. On his death bed, Luther suggested that all of his literary work be burned except for Bondage of the Will. He believed that a healthy skepticism of free will was needed for correct understanding of Scripture. The essence of "reformed" protestant theology is rooted in Luthers understanding of free will. You can buy Bondage of the Will at any bookstore or read it here . . .

http://www.truecovenanter.com/truelutheran/luther_bow.html

Mike

Well, here's the contradiction that I see. Since God is the creator, and is omnipotent, He would have control over all of the factors that lead to my choice. So, if one were to choose to denoucne Christianity, wouldn't it be God who made the choice for them? And if that's the case, how can He possibly justify sending anyone to Hell? Surely He wouldn't punish someone for something that He (God) caused.

 

[Tr6ai0ls4]

Doesnt' determinism remove all responsibility from any murder, rapist, etc? After all, they have no choice in the matter.

Also, as we discussed in another thread before it got deleted, the problem with determinism is that it ignores downward causation. Determinism seems to postulate that smaller particles effect the larger particles that they make up.. To quote manifespo ..

Your mental apparati are made of organ systems.
Your mental apparati are made of organs.
Your mental apparati are made of tissues.
Your mental apparati are made of cells.
Your mental apparati are made of molecules.
Your mental apparati are made of atoms.
Your mental apparati are composed of quarks and gluons.

Determinism states that causation occurs starting at the bottom of this list and working its way up completely ignoring that it may be possible to start at the top and work its way to the bottom.

 

[Pegasus]

Doesnt' determinism remove all responsibility from any murder, rapist, etc? After all, they have no choice in the matter.

Whether or not they had control over it doesn't change the fact that the person who did it needs to be dealt with.

Also, as we discussed in another thread before it got deleted, the problem with determinism is that it ignores downward causation. Determinism seems to postulate that smaller particles effect the larger particles that they make up.. To quote manifespo ..

Your mental apparati are made of organ systems.
Your mental apparati are made of organs.
Your mental apparati are made of tissues.
Your mental apparati are made of cells.
Your mental apparati are made of molecules.
Your mental apparati are made of atoms.
Your mental apparati are composed of quarks and gluons.

Determinism states that causation occurs starting at the bottom of this list and working its way up completely ignoring that it may be possible to start at the top and work its way to the bottom.

I don't see how determinism disagrees here. There can be causes going both ways...

 

[Tokey-tokerson]

Seeing as how there is only one present, I would say that things that are going to happen will happen, and whatever you do is what you were meant to do.

After all, there is only 1 past, and 1 present. Anyone see what I'm saying?

 

[Tr6ai0ls4]

^^

Yes, but it isn't necessarily true. I think there are actually theories out there which suggest that there may be infinite amounts of different timelines.

 

[Mentalhead]

Doesnt' determinism remove all responsibility from any murder, rapist, etc? After all, they have no choice in the matter.

I personally don't believe that anyone is responsible for anything like that. However, the fact is that I don't want it to happen, and people are less likely to do it if there are harsh punishments. So even though they can't control it, punishing them for it will still cut down on it.

 

[Revrent_mike]

Well, here's the contradiction that I see. Since God is the creator, and is omnipotent, He would have control over all of the factors that lead to my choice. So, if one were to choose to denoucne Christianity, wouldn't it be God who made the choice for them? And if that's the case, how can He possibly justify sending anyone to Hell? Surely He wouldn't punish someone for something that He (God) caused.

Luther and his followers believed strongly in the absolute "sovereignty" of God over the doings of Kings and Nations, and over redemption, and even hinted at sovereignty over all the affairs of men. But this stance was later questioned by "religious" types who wanted to return to their Catholic ways. And so began the enumerable branches of Protestantism that waver over the free will question . . . basically saying you have to do something to earn salvation . . . get baptized, or feel real bad over your bad behavior, or be good from now on, or say 3 Hail Maries, or do good works, or at least walk down for the altar call at a Billy Graham Crusade.

For a modern interpretation of "Bondage of the Will", by a living author, see . . .

Willing to Believe: The Controversy over Free Will, Baker, 1997 (ISBN 0-8010-6412-0)
by
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._C._Sproul
...
http://www.amazon.com/Willing-Belie...pd_bbs_11/103-5960697-7179052?ie=UTF8&s=books

Theologians differentiate between 2 kinds of sovereignty: sovereignty over redemptiion, and sovereignty over everything down to the flavor of ice cream we select. Many will concede God's sovereignty (our lack of free will) over their salvation; few will go so far as to say every single event is preordained. Of course the other side claims God isn't even sovereign over salvation, i.e., that we must do something to be saved and if we don't, God loses. Or they redefine sovereignty to include the free will of man with some mushy play on words.

Questions:
1) denouncing God: yes, examples are Judas, Pharaoh, Peter,.... And God claims it is He who "hardens their hearts" to achieve His Purpose.

2) hell: a fiction invented by the Catholic Church. This is the best argument for unversalism (we all go to heaven in the end). How can a God Who's very definition is Love, send anyone to eternal suffering when even sinful man wouldn't be so hateful and cruel?

But here we have to start whispering or we will be run out of town with sticks and knives as was Martin Luther. Very few people are willing to even consider that they don't have ANY free will; it is just too much of a blow to their ego. But the conclusion you've come to -- that you have no free will -- is the only workable conclusion when we honestly look at what drives our choices. And Biblical theology supports it. And when all the pieces snap together we can come to no other conclusion than that God was telling the truth when He said He was not willing that any should perish. The alternative is that God is either a liar or He is too impotent to keep His Word. Though most preachers, teachers, theologians refuse to carry the logic to its natural end, the implication is that all nations, tribes, and tongues will be blessed as spoken by God to Abraham in Gen 12. So we all go to heaven.

For a 20th century theologian who comes within a cat's whisker of declaring universalism, see the works of Barth:

http://www.theology.ie/theologians/barth.htm

 

[qwedsa]

Doesnt' determinism remove all responsibility from any murder, rapist, etc? After all, they have no choice in the matter.

you're right in a way. determinism would imply that any action done by any group of matter (a person for example) is done in harmony with physical laws, there is no 'personal responsibility'

but when you look at 'responsibility' even without the deterministic paradigm, you run into all sorts of problems. you can always always find a multitude of reasons for an organism's behavior, and then find reasons for those reasons, and then find reasons for those reasons. determining true 'responsibility' winds up in a mess of tangled thoughts.

determinism does away with all this so cleanly by simply doing away with the concept of responsibility. that doesnt mean, however, that the deterministic paradigm and punishment cannot coexist, or anything like that

Determinism states that causation occurs starting at the bottom of this list and working its way up completely ignoring that it may be possible to start at the top and work its way to the bottom.

well if you think about it, if you have a large group of small particles making up a system, and that system interferes with the small particles, determism still works fine because it's STILL the small particles doing the work

basicly if it goes from top to bottom, it's also going from bottom to top at the same time, because the bigger systems are composed of the smaller systems

 

[vegan]

What chooses?

as an inherent property of this universe, free will chooses
but to answer your question, i suppose that the process of consciousness is a sequence eventually getting back to the point of random quantum fluctuations
those fluctuations, which "choose", can't be determined
only their wave functions can be
thus the universe is deterministic towards probabilities but not outcomes

 

[qwedsa]

^i believe his point was that if we cannot predict a person's actions given sufficient data (ie, universe is probabalistic instead of fully deterministic), you still cannot say that there is a free will choosing

with a probabalistic universe, instead of strict laws that govern particles choosing your decisions, you have loose laws that govern particles choosing your decisions (or, randomness chooses)

 

[SmC]

Mentalhead, you CHOSE to make this thread didn't you? You chose to ask the question. You didn't have to make this thread if you didn't want to, this proves that you do have free will imo. Although there are cases where i don't feel as though i have free will. Like for example, when drugs are around my house i feel like just doing them all even though i know i shouldn't but can't help it. In some cases we do have free will, in others we don't.

 

[Pegasus]

^SmC, the theory is that he didn't choose to make this thread, but there were factors that lead to him inevitably making this thread: factors such as coming across Bluelight, the realizations he came to, his desire to communicate these realizations, etc. How you would react in these situations is determined by solely your genetics, and how you have been trained to react by your environment (there is not "you" deciding; rather, it's your brain making connections with itself).

 

[SmC]

But he wasn't exactly forced to make this thread was he? It was his decision in the end.

 

[Mentalhead]

I made this thread because I wanted to. However, I did not CHOOSE to want to. Since the factor that made me choose was me wanting to, and I didn't choose that, I didn't choose to make it.

 

[qwedsa]

But he wasn't exactly forced to make this thread was he? It was his decision in the end.

no one is saying anything forces the person to decide it

physical laws don't force him to make a decision. his brain makes a decision in accord with those laws, and in his mind he has a feeling that 'he' is making the decision

who's decision was it? no one's. it just occurs necessarily. 'intelligence' is mechanical, just like a ball bouncing off the ground

 

[SmC]

I made this thread because I wanted to. However, I did not CHOOSE to want to. Since the factor that made me choose was me wanting to, and I didn't choose that, I didn't choose to make it.

What do you mean you did not chose to want to make this thread? That doesn't make much sense. No one else made it but you. There was an option not to make this thread, but you chose to make it, that is where you have free-will.

 

[SmC]

no one is saying anything forces the person to decide it

physical laws don't force him to make a decision. his brain makes a decision in accord with those laws, and in his mind he has a feeling that 'he' is making the decision

who's decision was it? no one's. it just occurs necessarily. 'intelligence' is mechanical, just like a ball bouncing off the ground

If you're saying we don't have free will then that implies that he is being forced to make a decision. The only person forcing him to make a decision(for example, creating this thread) is him. Ofcourse there are certain things influencing him to think about this question, but thats entirely different to actually making the thread and asking the question.

 

[shoe70]

If you're saying we don't have free will then that implies that he is being forced to make a decision. The only person forcing him to make a decision(for example, creating this thread) is him. Ofcourse there are certain things influencing him to think about this question, but thats entirely different to actually making the thread and asking the question.

Let me play the devil's advocate here and ask you this:

From what does free will originate? I'll answer it for you to save time: The mind. But is the mind not subject to the same physical laws as everything else? Therefore, it follows that the decisions that your mind makes also follow from these physical laws. The idea is that the 'you' that makes these decisions is nothing but an illusion created from years of conditioned behavior coupled with genetics and whatnot. So therefore you're 'deciding' but due to said conditioning and genetic predisposition, there's really only one way you could have decided.

The way around this argument would be to say that we have a soul (or whatever you want to call this 'essence of self') that is more than just conditioned behavior and is somehow outside the physical laws of the universe. Pretty ambiguous if you ask me, but if that's your thing then whatever.

Personally, I'm leaning towards indeterminate determinism (is this the term?), basically determinism with the random factor added in. But as I said earlier, it's not really something I concern myself with or keep in mind every day. When it comes down to it we probably don't have free will (at the least we have much less than we give ourselves credit for) but it really doesn't change much as far as I'm concerned.

 

[doesntmatter]

Well, here's the contradiction that I see. Since God is the creator, and is omnipotent, He would have control over all of the factors that lead to my choice. So, if one were to choose to denoucne Christianity, wouldn't it be God who made the choice for them? And if that's the case, how can He possibly justify sending anyone to Hell? Surely He wouldn't punish someone for something that He (God) caused.

God doesn't make choices for you. We have free will that is given by God. However the question is, if He knows the future and past, then it has already happened, and if you're going to hell, then you're going to hell. There's no way to get around it if God knows its going to happen. I struggle with this fact aswell. I mean how could a God create something knowing that it was forcing some beings to be condemned to an eternity of pain and suffering?

I've come the decision that just becuase God knows what you are going to do doesn't mean he's making you do it. You can see it like this. Say God put three candy bars in front of you and asked you to choose one. Just because He knows which one you're going to choose doesn't mean he forced you to choose it. It was up to you which one regardless of wheter or not God knew it. From what I understand of the Bible, free will is necessary for true love. Its necessary that we choose to obey or disobey. Otherwise we would be nothing.

Now on a stictly scientific thought process, trying to prove determinism is like trying to prove God.

You're saying that if you understand everything that there is to understand and why it is that way that you can see that its all just relative because its just atoms hitting each other and interacting and causing everything to happen. however you can't prove this. you can't know everything. you can't see everything. you can't observe everything as a human. so how can you say this is so?

no, you don't choose to choose (be alive) its a part of life. you are alive, therefor you must make choices. on the other hand you don't choose to have certain preferances, mental disorders...etc.
however most people can choose to act. i agree that there are some humans that are not able to control their actions. but it is a very small percentage that can say it and not be lying.