[OT] Plato's Pub and Philosophical Society

[QuarianRex]

Originally posted by Krsqk:
1)There are more efficient means to create, such as creating things the way you want them right off the bat; 2)No God who cares about His creation would use death as a means to accomplish it. That is not the God of the Bible; and if such a God is responsible for creating the world in such a manner, He may as well be a natural force. He is not interested in the plight of the puny inhabitants on the earth; we are no more than pawns to fulfill the designs of creation (and let's not be arrogant and assume we're the culmination of all life).

1) Not necessarily. One thing that we are learning right now in AI (actual AI's, not game AI's and such) creation is that it is usually more efficient to create something capable of learning what you want it to know than to just program it with that knowledge. Perhaps it is the same on the spiritual level. And perhaps god wants us to earn our destiny rather than hand it to us. Both views would allow for natural selection.

2) As has been stated before, God can be a mean s.o.b., fully capable of allowing (and instigating) large-scale rape, slaughter, slavery, etc. That is the God of the bible. However, I don't think that that was what you were refering to. I think you meant that you cannot see god as being indifferent to his own creation. Just because he doesn't directly meddle doesn't mean that he doesn't care. Think of it in the terms of being a parent. When the kids leave home you have to allow them to make their own mistakes. You can't step in every time you see danger. Childhood is over. You can provide moral support, give a houewarming plant (even if it is on fire), and leave some reminder notes (a commandment or two etched on stone) but for the most part you have to stay out of it. This is especially true when your children are not your equal, when you presence will reduce them into a state of childhood. You want them to do the right thing for their own reasons not because you are standing right behind them. Leaving things alone is the only way to allow freedom of choice, the only way to develop a sense of morality. You see, direct divine meddling, the standard creationist viewpoint, may actually be against the desires of god.

[Fyron]

Leaving things alone is the only way to allow freedom of choice...

But do we actually have freedom of choice (will)? Don't answer in religious terms, but philosophical ones (eg: don't say, "the [insert holy scripture here] says...", as that is no argument at all).

We do not have freedom of will. What happens in the future is determined by the laws of nature and what has happened in the past. I never actually chose to attend college. I am attending it because the events of my life have all added up to cause such an event to occur. There was really no choice to be made on my part. I do not ever make a conscious choice between eating food and not eating food. According to the laws of nature, the cells in my body will begin to die without a constant supply of energy (in the form of glucose). So, I eat food. I do not eat it because I actively set out to eat it. Just a few examples for contemplation.

[QuarianRex]

Not making a choice is still a choice. If that is the one you prefer then so be it. And remember, until adulthood your parents make most of your choices for you (at least the ones that matter). That doesn't mean that free will doesn't exist, just that you have not yet begun to excercise it.

[Fyron]

That is hardly a logical response to my supposition.

My point was that I have no choice. What I will do is already determined by what happened in the past and according to the laws of nature. If I make no choice, that was already determined. If I make a choice, that choice was already determined.

Even when your parents make choices for you, it is still not their free will that causes them to make those choices.

[Jack Simth]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
do we actually have freedom of choice (will)?

Why sure we do - even if you postulate that everything there is to a person is based solely on the various chemical and physical properties of that person's constituent elements, there is still the problem of Quantum Mechanics. The exact processes of the brain are poorly understood, but it is known that many of the processes run on an infintesimal scale, at which point the local randomness of QM becomes significant, which eliminates determinism as viable, leaving free will as a tenable approach.

Besides, I have to remind myself to eat. I can very easily get caught up in something and forget....

Edit: I kan't spell....

[ March 19, 2003, 23:56: Message edited by: Jack Simth ]

[Jack Simth]

Fyron:
Interesting though - if you hold to a no free will universe, you contradict an earlier post where you said true prophecy was impossible. Without free will, prophecy simply becomes a matter of calculating inevitability, a feat of information processing, information awareness, and knoweledge of the rules of the universe, but not an impossibility.

[Fyron]

Originally posted by Jack Simth:
Fyron:
Interesting though - if you hold to a no free will universe, you contradict an earlier post where you said true prophecy was impossible. Without free will, prophecy simply becomes a matter of calculating inevitability, a feat of information processing, information awareness, and knoweledge of the rules of the universe, but not an impossibility.

The problem is, you have to be outside of the universe to be able to calculate inevitability. You can not see every factor that goes into derermining what happens in the long run while you remain inside the universe. As there is no outside of the universe, you can't do that, and so prophecy remains impossible.

Why sure we do - even if you postulate that everything there is to a person is based solely on the various chemical and physical properties of that person's constituent elements, there is still the problem of Quantum Mechanics.

I did not postulate that.

Besides, I have to remind myself to eat. I can very easily get caught up in something and forget....

Yes, but you did not choose whether to eat or not. What determined whether you ate or not was what had happened to you in the past few hours/days. You do not just randomly decide to eat a meal. What makes you eat is not having eaten for a long enough period to become hungry. What you eat is determined by what you have eaten in the past, and what you have learned about foods. The food you have been exposed to as a child helps to determine your tastes. You do not make a perfectly free-willed decision devoid of any other factors on whether to eat a pizza or a hamburger.

You have the illusion of free will because you do not realize all of the factors involved in your decisions.

[ March 20, 2003, 00:38: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[Ragnarok]

Just my .02 on this matter.
You very well can have free choice. We can and we do. I chose to buy a computer. I chose which car I wanted to buy. I choose what kind of food I want to eat when I'm hungry. I choose who I talk to. I choose who I like. I choose what TV shows I want to watch. Needless to say I can keep going on, but I choose not to.

[Fyron]

Rags, you completely missed my point. And, your belief that you actually have free choice is an illusion (as illustrated prior).

[Ragnarok]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Rags, you completely missed my point. And, your belief that you actually have free choice is an illusion (as illustrated prior).

No, I didn't miss your point. And it's not an illusion that I have free choice.
Food for example: I choose what kind I want to eat once I become hungry. It has nothing to do with what happened in the past or events that just took place. I have foods I like thus I choose what kind I want to eat at any given time.

I choose who I hang out with. This also has nothing to do with events in the past. I meet someone and if I like them I'll hang out with them. If I don't, that's my choice to make.

Granted there are some choices that are decided by what events took place days prior to it but not all. There are still choices in our lives that are decided by us, not by events that took place that will help make the decision.

[ March 20, 2003, 00:52: Message edited by: Ragnarok ]