On the question of free will - the sort of 'free will' that Alan is talking about is logically impossible. Despite Alan's repeated insistence about his 'perception' and his ability to post what he wants, there is no relevant evidence.
I have seen no objective evidence, or sound arguments for the existence of any gods or the supernatural (both of which are rather vague terms anyway).
The legal evidence approach falls down on three counts.
Firstly, it's quite possible to believe most of the 'testimony' without believing the conclusions people have draw from it. For example, I don't doubt that many religious people have had what they refer to as 'spiritual' experiences but that does not necessarily mean they have encountered an objectively real, external entity.
Secondly, inconsistency between 'witnesses'. There is simply no agreement amongst those who claim to have knowledge of god(s). Instead we have endless religions, sects, cults, and denominations that all disagree. They can't all be true. That's without considering that we have similar 'evidence' for ghosts, horoscopes, alien abductions, homeopathy, and so on, and so on.
Thirdly, many of the claims are self-contradictory. For example, Alan claims his god is has an important message for us and that we need to make an important choice but, at the same time, this god is apparently hidden, so we are supposed to go looking. This is simply incompatible with a just and loving god. If the message and our choice was important, it would need to be made plain to everybody.
But (again) he claims to have logic and evidence to back up these claims...
But (again) he claims to have logic and evidence to back up these claims. Testimony falls down for the reasons given above and subjective experience (by itself) cannot be distinguished from guessing (and doesn't help with the contradictions).
He claimed in #27413 to have "overwhelming evidence". He also claimed in #24676 that the evidence for the soul and his view of free will was based on a "logical analysis". Yet he has produced no objective evidence and no logic.
If he doesn't want to use science, that's fine (although he seems to want to sometimes, see for example #26627) but he does need to provide some way to distinguish his claims from guessing or admit that he doens't actually have any objective evidence or logic.
He will not admit that he's only sharing personal beliefs. For example, I've invited him on several occasions to just admit that he cannot see any flaw in the argument that his kind of "free will" is logically impossible but that he rejects in anyway on the grounds of his personal beliefs - but he won't do so. Instead he's indulged in transparent evasion and avoidance.
Why are you so keen on telling us what Alan thinks anyway? Do you think he cannot put his point of view himself? Do you have anything of your own to add?
No big mystery- I'm "keen" on giving my opinion on what I think AB is saying because that's one of things that people on forums do. AB is obviously also free to put his points across or respond to mine. That's how a forum works. It would be boring if everyone just agreed on everything.
I agree about AB's concept of free-will having lots of gaps and being incomprehensible - for example AB never did explain what was free about your decisions and choices being influenced by inputs you happen to have encountered in your life, even though he seemed to be trying to make a distinction between choices being "determined by" and "influenced by". But like I have said before, this isn't necessarily a religious thing - plenty of non-religious people have a belief in the concept free will - I remember Leonard was convinced it exists, and his belief could not be shaken because his perception of his personal experience was more persuasive than the science.
What do you mean by the legal evidence approach falls down? Falls down from doing what? AB's evidence seems to consist of testimony. Testimony can be taken or discarded as evidence by the people hearing it. I agree some people believe testimony but not conclusions, some believe testimony and conclusions and some disbelieve both and we never know for sure what is true. That seems to be what AB is inviting us to do - look at various people's testimonies and his conclusions and draw our own individual conclusions by forming our own opinions on how credible they appear to us. You're free to discard it for lack of objective evidence creating too much doubt and someone else might see his testimony as credible due to their own experiences.
Given you can't have objective evidence for a supernatural claim, as science doesn't do supernatural, just wondering why you are asking for it? He seems to have explained that he thinks his conclusions are true because he has faith on the basis of testimony and experience. Which sums up what religion is about. Pointing out there is no objective evidence isn't likely to change his conclusions or his belief they are true, since his conclusions were never dependent on objective evidence.
And I would expect there to be different interpretations of religious messages, ideas and concepts over thousands of years. Morality, messages, ideas and concepts do lend themselves to interpretation - people's thoughts determined by their individual nature/nurture or random events over thousands of years will lead to various people at various points in time hearing a message and seeing metaphorical moral stories that they individually interpret, and/or literal instructions (again as they interpret them) and/or superstitious nonsense. People aren't going to agree on this supernatural/ philosophical stuff because it's based on testimony and subjective experience.
