Searching for GOD...

[ippy]

God's love manifests through people.  We are all God's creation made in God's image with the freedom to love as He loves.  Love exists through the gift of free will which enables us to resist the temptations of self centred preservation and use our talents for the good of those who need it more than we do.

Yes Alan, so those are your directions given to you at your indoctrination classes back in the day, try, I know it must be difficult for you, but try to tell what you really think? What you really think in ordinary, in away from dogma common sense terms Alan?

Commiserations.

ippy.

[Alan Burns]

You've had plenty of explanations ...

But none of them come close to explaining the unexplainable - how our consciously driven freedom can exist within the predetermined physical reactions of material elements.

[Stranger]

But none of them come close to explaining the unexplainable - how our consciously driven freedom can exist within the predetermined physical reactions of material elements.

If you mean "freedom" in the sense you use the word, that's because it's impossible and doesn't actually exist at all.

If you mean "consciously driven freedom" in the sense of what we can actually do, then we have a far, far better (if incomplete) explanation than self-contradictory magic.

Also, that wasn't actually the question you asked for an answer to, and you're still misrepresenting the objections to your total nonsense, as being to do with "physical reactions".

Where is the logic you said you had?

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

But none of them come close to explaining the unexplainable - how our consciously driven freedom can exist within the predetermined physical reactions of material elements.

Stop lying. It's readily "explainable" when you grasp that "our consciously driven freedom" doesn't mean what you think it means. You know this already because it's been explained to you countless times, only for you to do your infantile, fingers-in-the-ears "I'm not listening" schtick in response.   

[Alan Burns]

AB,

Stop lying. It's readily "explainable" when you grasp that "our consciously driven freedom" doesn't mean what you think it means. You know this already because it's been explained to you countless times, only for you to do your infantile, fingers-in-the-ears "I'm not listening" schtick in response.   

I can accept no personal responsibility or accountability for the outcome of physically driven chains of cause and effect reactions taking place in a material brain.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

I can accept no personal responsibility or accountability for the outcome of physically driven chains of cause and effect reactions taking place in a material brain.

Yes you can because at the experiential level of abstraction it gives us all a lived experience that includes personal responsibility, but as an explanation for the phenomenon of “free” will it’s hopeless. It’s also an argumentum ad consequentium – one of your favourite fallacies. Why don’t you care about relying on fallacies to justify your claims?

[Gordon]

I can accept no personal responsibility or accountability for the outcome of physically driven chains of cause and effect reactions taking place in a material brain.

Well the brain in question is yours, Alan, so it does seem irresponsible (not to mention fallacious) for you to so effortlessly chicken out of your responsibilities like this.

Anyhow, how is the explanation for your not determined but not random notion coming along?

[Alan Burns]

Well the brain in question is yours, Alan, so it does seem irresponsible (not to mention fallacious) for you to so effortlessly chicken out of your responsibilities like this.

The brain may be mine, but the laws of physics driving physical reactions within it are not mine.

Anyhow, how is the explanation for your not determined but not random notion coming along?

Determined by the conscious will of the human soul of course.  How else can I possibly be personally responsible for my actions

[ippy]

The brain may be mine, but the laws of physics driving physical reactions within it are not mine.Determined by the conscious will of the human soul of course.  How else can I possibly be personally responsible for my actions

Just had a quick look before turning in, gone to bed with a smile, cheers Alan, an ironic smile just in case you may have misunderstood Alan.

Many commiserations.

ippy.

[torridon]

The brain may be mine, but the laws of physics driving physical reactions within it are not mine. Determined by the conscious will of the human soul of course.  How else can I possibly be personally responsible for my actions

Well something that does not exist cannot be responsible, so if you want to locate responsibility with some invisible unevidenced incorporeal being inhabiting your body, you'd need to set about justifying that.  Let us know if you ever find any evidence for such, no doubt a Nobel prize would be on offer for such a remarkable discovery.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, people who are motivated to build an honest understanding of things accept that a sense of responsibility emerges in a healthy working conscious human mind.  Just because atoms do not exhibit a sense of responsibility is a poor reason for denying all the higher emergent phenomena that arise from their underlying arrangement.

[Stranger]

I can accept no personal responsibility or accountability for the outcome of physically driven chains of cause and effect reactions taking place in a material brain.

So your keep on claiming. However, according to you, you have a magic soul, so you are responsible for your dishonesty, and what's more, you're responsible for this transparent attempt to avoid facing up to that responsibility. This is just another of your dishonest tactics; when you're accused of dishonesty and you cannot really deny it, you suddenly adopt a straw man version of the opposing argument in order to avoid ever facing it.

You do what you do because of who you are, your motivations, how you feel at the time, and so on, all of which come from the past, if you could have done differently - which is the only logically significant way (in this context) in which Planet Alan differs from the real world - but for no possible reason, how does that somehow make you more responsible?

How about finally being honest about your claim to have logic and either produce it or admit you have none?

[Stranger]

Determined by the conscious will of the human soul of course.

As has been explained to you countless times, this thought-free mantra doesn't answer the question, which is about how a choice is resolved, not what does it.

How can a member of MENSA not understand the difference between "how" and "what"?

[Gordon]

The brain may be mine, but the laws of physics driving physical reactions within it are not mine.

I see you are giving the fallacy of composition an airing.

Determined by the conscious will of the human soul of course.

I'll play along with the silliness for a moment: how does the "conscious will of the human soul" arise?

How else can I possibly be personally responsible for my actions

Should you ever find yourself in the dock, and I sincerely hope not, I'm not sure a plea of 'it wasn't me m'lud - it was my 'soul' that done it' would sound convincing.

Your insights, such as they are, seem to be operating at an infantile level of understanding: I'm sure there is something somewhere in your holy book about putting away childish things - it might be worth giving it a try.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Determined by the conscious will of the human soul of course.  How else can I possibly be personally responsible for my actions

I just told you how (Reply 40105).

I also asked you why you don't care about relying on fallacies to justify your claims, though predictably I see that you've just ignored that problem. Again.

[Enki]

......Determined by the conscious will of the human soul of course.  How else can I possibly be personally responsible for my actions

Yet again you show clearly the flaws in your thinking. Remember, I said(Post40098) this:

If your thinking process rejects or ignores logic and evidence without coming up with any viable, well reasoned alternative....then I would also suggest that your thinking is flawed.

And, true to form, your response to Gordon's question of 'how is the explanation for your not determined but not random notion coming along?' was to simply suggest that it is 'by the conscious will of the human soul' completely ignoring the question asked, which was HOW these choices are made. It is as if your mind deliberately switches off when such questions are asked, so that you aren't put in such a position that you have to try to explain something which you can't explain and just wish it would go away. I would call that a flaw in your thinking processes, Alan, and one that the 'conscious will of your human soul', as you would put it, needs to be aware of and correct, if it has any integrity, that is.

[Alan Burns]

Should you ever find yourself in the dock, and I sincerely hope not, I'm not sure a plea of 'it wasn't me m'lud - it was my 'soul' that done it' would sound convincing.

Your insights, such as they are, seem to be operating at an infantile level of understanding: I'm sure there is something somewhere in your holy book about putting away childish things - it might be worth giving it a try.

Or perhaps you could try:
 'it wasn't me m'lud - it was the laws of physics that done it'

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Or perhaps you could try:
 'it wasn't me m'lud - it was the laws of physics that done it'

You'd probably have better luck than if you tried "it wasn't me m'lud - it was my soul wot done it".

Why don't you care about relying on logical fallacies to justify your beliefs? 

[Alan Burns]

AB,

What is this contemptible fucking idiocy? So your god decided that global warming was a bad thing, and that the best way to take the edge off would be to have 50,000-odd people in this country alone who were no more polluting then anyone else die very unpleasantly?

What kind of scientifically illiterate, genocidal psychopath of a god would do a thing like that when presumably he could just magic up some non-polluting fuel instead if he wanted to?

This’ll be lost on you, but you’ve just shown the morally disgusting conclusions casuists can arrive at when they dream up anything at all to justify the evidence that flatly contradicts the mindless bollocks they belch about a loving god. Shame on you.     

You seem to be implying that our Christian faith must presume God is in control of this earth.
The Christian bible makes it quite clear that God is not in control.
In the Lord's prayer we pray:
"Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven"
If God's will was in control, we would not need to pray for His will to be done on earth.
The fact that we as a nation do not unite to pray for this means we must accept the consequences that what happens is not God's will.
The words of the Lord's prayer implies that the power of God's will can be invoked by using the power of our human will in choosing to request that God's will be done. 
Faith is the key to unlock God's power here on earth.

And in the same prayer we say "deliver us from evil".
Evil is not God's will.
God had to endure suffering and death through Jesus in order to free us from evil.
And in doing so, He opens up the path to Heaven, where as implied above, His will is done by default.

[Roses]

The 'will' of an entity, which probably doesn't exist, is whatever humans wish it to be, however crazy.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

You seem to be implying that our Christian faith must presume God is in control of this earth.
The Christian bible makes it quite clear that God is not in control.
In the Lord's prayer we pray:
"Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven"
If God's will was in control, we would not need to pray for His will to be done on earth.

No, mainstream Christian faith involves a god of the omnis. One of those omnis is omnipotence. Thus this god would be “in control of” anything it wanted to be in control of. That it supposedly chooses to sit on its hands rather than do the right thing until enough people ask it nicely to intervene just shows what a psychopath it would be.

If I saw your grandchild run across the road and a car was approaching should I jump in to save him, or wait until enough people had asked me to do it? What would you think of me if I did the latter? 

The fact that we as a nation do not unite to pray for this means we must accept the consequences that what happens is not God's will.

Utter fucking madness.

The words of the Lord's prayer implies that the power of God's will can be invoked by using the power of our human will in choosing to request that God's will be done.
Faith is the key to unlock God's power here on earth.

And in the same prayer we say "deliver us from evil".
Evil is not God's will.
God had to endure suffering and death through Jesus in order to free us from evil.
And in doing so, He opens up the path to Heaven, where as implied above, His will is done by default.

Mindless (and infantile) faith claims.

PS As you seem to have missed it, I'll ask you again: why don't you care about relying on logical fallacies to justify your beliefs? 

[Alan Burns]

And, true to form, your response to Gordon's question of 'how is the explanation for your not determined but not random notion coming along?' was to simply suggest that it is 'by the conscious will of the human soul' completely ignoring the question asked, which was HOW these choices are made. It is as if your mind deliberately switches off when such questions are asked, so that you aren't put in such a position that you have to try to explain something which you can't explain and just wish it would go away. I would call that a flaw in your thinking processes, Alan, and one that the 'conscious will of your human soul', as you would put it, needs to be aware of and correct, if it has any integrity, that is.

I am simply saying that the power of the conscious will of the human soul gives us the freedom to choose, rather than just react.
(Which is the power I would need to have invoked in order to "deliberately switch off" as you put it.)

The miraculous property of our conscious awareness frees us from automated biologically driven reactions, giving us the conscious freedom we all enjoy as human beings.

[Alan Burns]

AB,

No, mainstream Christian faith involves a god of the omnis.

That is what many atheists claim, but it is not backed up by scripture.

[Stranger]

I am simply saying that the power of the conscious will of the human soul gives us the freedom to choose, rather than just react.

Meaningless distinction that still doesn't answer the question about how choices are made - you know, the one you never answer because your too terrified to even admit it exists.

(Which is the power I would need to have invoked in order to "deliberately switch off" as you put it.)

The miraculous property of our conscious awareness frees us from automated biologically driven reactions, giving us the conscious freedom we all enjoy as human beings.

Baseless drivel.

Where is your logic?

[ippy]

AB,

No, mainstream Christian faith involves a god of the omnis. One of those omnis is omnipotence. Thus this god would be “in control of” anything it wanted to be in control of. That it supposedly chooses to sit on its hands rather than do the right thing until enough people ask it nicely to intervene just shows what a psychopath it would be.

If I saw your grandchild run across the road and a car was approaching should I jump in to save him, or wait until enough people had asked me to do it? What would you think of me if I did the latter? 

Utter fucking madness.
 

Mindless (and infantile) faith claims.

PS As you seem to have missed it, I'll ask you again: why don't you care about relying on logical fallacies to justify your beliefs?

Because some people are more susceptible to indoctrination than others and unfortunately for Alan he is at the extreme end which, funnily enough, has robbed him of any free will he may have had.

Regards, ippy.

[Nearly Sane]

That is what many atheists claim, but it is not backed up by scripture.

  http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s2c1p3.htm