Searching for GOD...

[ekim]

The same way a person might 'want' to believe in God, and sets about 'searching' for God. People might want to believe in God and after life for all sorts of fairly obvious reasons; likewise people like to believe in free will because it is flattering, as if we are not products of nature, but something independent of it.

The point I was making is that the word 'want' can't really apply if free will does not exist.  To want something, you need to excercise free will.

Another way of looking at it, though, is that 'want' is another word for 'desire'.  If you are driven by desire then your will isn't free.  Also wasn't it Jesus who advocated obeying the 'Will of God' ?  If you are surrendered to the Will of God and driven by that, this doesn't sound very free either.  Perhaps it is better to say 'free choice' (which is what intelligence was once considered to be).  At least you then have the choice between 'self will' and 'God's Will'.
As regards 'soul', if my memory serves me correctly (and it may not), it is a word that has been used in the Old Testament to translate several Hebrew words of different meaning.  One of them is 'nephesh', instincts, appetites and drives which we share with the animal world, an animal soul if you like.  Another is 'neshama' which appears to be associated with the human mind and an ability for inspiration.  I believe the word 'soul' has a Germanic origin and is associated with 'life' or a life principal.  Then there is 'ruwach' translated as 'spirit', perhaps associated with the idea of an immaterial part of man.

[wigginhall]

Your thinking is all over the place. Earlier today you were happy to accept that a goose has conscious perception (when it is awake) but no soul.  Now you are denying it again.   All higher animals, like us, have a consciouness stream, that is, unless you are a solipsist. Any creature without a stream of conscious experience would be dead in no time at all. You need to make your mind up.

I did not accept that a goose has conscious perception (at least not consciously!).  I was inferring that a goose can easily behave in a goose like way by just reacting to outside stimulae without need of conscious perception.  It is conscious perception which allows us to override our natural instinctive reactions by invoking free will.  A goose can perceive and react as in a biological robot with no need for conscious perception.

I can see that while a goose has a stream of experience, and probably feels things like fear, they don't have as much a mental space as we do, where we can think about fear, and also discuss it with others.   Geese presumably are more subject to a fight/flight mechanism (although humans can get into that also).

What's puzzling is that (as I think torridon has said), if we accept that humans are more sophisticated mentally than geese, and perhaps geese more sophisticated than ants, say, this appears to be explicable in terms of evolution.   But I suppose you are saying that God intervenes and gives humans a soul, and therefore a rich mental space, whereas geese and ants have to struggle on with their more limited mental capacity. 

But wow, you seem to get into a tangle over this.  You seem to be trying to match soul up with other things such as free will, inner experience, consciousness, and it starts to resemble one of those awful string games that we were always being shown as kids.   

[floo]

Your thinking is all over the place. Earlier today you were happy to accept that a goose has conscious perception (when it is awake) but no soul.  Now you are denying it again.   All higher animals, like us, have a consciouness stream, that is, unless you are a solipsist. Any creature without a stream of conscious experience would be dead in no time at all. You need to make your mind up.

I did not accept that a goose has conscious perception (at least not consciously!).  I was inferring that a goose can easily behave in a goose like way by just reacting to outside stimulae without need of conscious perception.  It is conscious perception which allows us to override our natural instinctive reactions by invoking free will.  A goose can perceive and react as in a biological robot with no need for conscious perception.

I think a goose might challenge you on that one!

[BashfulAnthony]

Surely Alan by coming here is opening his statements to challenge?

Of course he is - R & E is not Alan's own private and personal echo chamber no matter how much he treats it as such. But you forget Bashful Anthony Syndrome, where challenge is a no-no.

Ask him.  I haven't noticed anyone failing to challenge me!!  There's a difference between challengs and abuse and derision.  You fail to pappreciate that, and always have.

[Shaker]

Ask him.

Do I need to? He would say, wouldn't he?

I haven't noticed anyone failing to challenge me!!

Well, quite.

There's a difference between challengs and abuse and derision.  You fail to pappreciate that, and always have.

If anybody feels that they are being abused - actually abused, and not your version which consists merely of having ideas and beliefs challenged - they would either speak up for themselves or take their complaint to the mods. Alan has done neither as far as I'm aware and keeps on coming back again and again and again, daily. As, for that matter, do you.

[BashfulAnthony]

Ask him.

Do I need to? He would say, wouldn't he?

I haven't noticed anyone failing to challenge me!!

Well, quite.

There's a difference between challengs and abuse and derision.  You fail to pappreciate that, and always have.

If anybody feels that they are being abused - actually abused, and not your version which consists merely of having ideas and beliefs challenged - they would either speak up for themselves or take their complaint to the mods. Alan has done neither as far as I'm aware and keeps on coming back again and again and again, daily. As, for that matter, do you.

Alan seems not to be bothered by the constant jibes;  I'm no prepared to allow myself to be an Aunt Sally.

You only do it to harass and ridicule:  I do it to answer such.

[Maeght]

We've gone over this many times with Alan it won't make any difference because Alan has to believe that we have soul's and free will to fit in with his theology.

And atheists have to believe that free will is an illusion in order to fit in with the deterministic nature of science.

Since you haven't denied it can we take it that what I said was correct?

[Shaker]

Alan seems not to be bothered by the constant jibes

Alan has as good as admitted that his visits here amount to being on an errand for his god. I haven't seen any jibes; what I do see, daily, are intelligent people making answerless rebuttals to his seemingly unstoppable parade of bald assertions and sloppy thinking, which he deals with by blithely ignoring almost all of it.

Put it this way: if you find yourself being sharply and pointedly criticised, very regularly, by a poster such as wigginhall - formerly always sympathetic to religion but who by his own admission has adopted a far keener and more sceptical edge of late -, you need to be taking a good long hard look at your pronouncements. People aren't jibing at Alan; they're showing, with reasons, why so much of what he comes out with is fallacious.

You only do it to harass and ridicule.

I do it to expose everything that's inimical to clear, rational thought.

[BashfulAnthony]

Shaker;

"I do it to expose everything that's inimical to clear, rational thought."  As you perceive it.

Because Alan does not indulge in the "rougher" side of comment here, does not mean that it is not hurtful to him:  he's as human as the next.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Alan seems not to be bothered by the constant jibes

Alan has as good as admitted that his visits here amount to being on an errand for his god. I haven't seen any jibes; what I do see, daily, are intelligent people making answerless rebuttals to his seemingly unstoppable parade of bald assertions and sloppy thinking, which he deals with by blithely ignoring almost all of it.

Put it this way: if you find yourself being sharply and pointedly criticised, very regularly, by a poster such as wigginhall - formerly always sympathetic to religion but who by his own admission has adopted a far keener and more sceptical edge of late -, you need to be taking a good long hard look at your pronouncements. People aren't jibing at Alan; they're showing, with reasons, why so much of what he comes out with is fallacious.

An interesting ''heroic'' reinterpretation of what might alternatively be due to non optimal sugar level maintenance and/or prostate problems among board antitheists.

[Alan Burns]

So just explain to me how I could want to believe in free will if I don't have it?

I didn't say you don't have it. I don't know whether you do or you don't. Neither does anybody else. But your very obvious desperation to cling to the idea that you definitely do have it (which is something that nobody should claim to know) betrays a pretty clear fear on your part that if it could be shown to be an illusion, your world-view will be in absolute tatters.

I can assure you that I am not clinging on to "free will" in desparation.  I invoke actions of free will during most of my conscious life - I am not a robot driven solely by events which have already been determined.  Every conscious decision I make is an act of free will, because it is my conscious awareness that drives it.  If I deny free will, I deny my own existence because it is at the very heart of my reality.  My world view will never be in tatters because as St Paul says, there is nothing in heaven or on earth that can separate me from God's love.

[savillerow]

". . . . that can seperate me from gods love" I hope in the very near future historians will pick over phrases like this (and many others) and conclude that at one time the world was a bit deluded for a few hundred years, a worldwide mass deception of the mind in all its religious forms was at play.

[Alan Burns]

We've gone over this many times with Alan it won't make any difference because Alan has to believe that we have soul's and free will to fit in with his theology.

And atheists have to believe that free will is an illusion in order to fit in with the deterministic nature of science.

Since you haven't denied it can we take it that what I said was correct?

Of course our soul and its free will is absolutely central to our humanity.  Without it there could be no love, because love not freely given is worth nothing at all.  And the most important love of all is my love for Jesus Christ.

[Alan Burns]

". . . . that can seperate me from gods love" I hope in the very near future historians will pick over phrases like this (and many others) and conclude that at one time the world was a bit deluded for a few hundred years, a worldwide mass deception of the mind in all its religious forms was at play.

This phrase describes what Christians have known for the last two thousand years, and it will endure until the end of time.

[Shaker]

Believed.

Not known.

Believed.

[Alan Burns]

Believed.

Not known.

Believed.

Most of the Christians I meet know God's love.  Once you experience it, you will know it too.

[Shaker]

It's a belief, Alan, and has never been anything but, so don't insult the intelligence of the rest of us by claiming otherwise.

[Alan Burns]

It's a belief, Alan, and has never been anything but, so don't insult the intelligence of the rest of us by claiming otherwise.

You underestimate the power of God to make Himself known

[Shaker]

Yes, completely and entirely.

[Shaker]

I can assure you that I am not clinging on to "free will" in desparation.

You can't assure me when the evidence to the contrary is so clear and so frequently reiterated.

I invoke actions of free will during most of my conscious life - I am not a robot driven solely by events which have already been determined.

If you were, would you know it?

Every conscious decision I make is an act of free will, because it is my conscious awareness that drives it.

More assertion.

If I deny free will, I deny my own existence because it is at the very heart of my reality.

Proving my point perfectly.

My world view will never be in tatters because as St Paul says, there is nothing in heaven or on earth that can separate me from God's love.

There's more than one poster right here on this forum - I'm thinking of one in particular - who used to have beliefs just like yours only to find them disappear almost literally overnight.

[Nearly Sane]

Oh come on, Shaker, Alan put know in bold, that makes it true!

[Shaker]

Good point 

[Walt Zingmatilder]

It's a belief, Alan, and has never been anything but, so don't insult the intelligence of the rest of us by claiming otherwise.

It's an experience Shaker which your philosophy has no answer to nor erasure over.

[savillerow]

AB "once you experience it, you will know it too" Just sounds bloody daft and a tad leaning towards the dodgy "uncle in the family" scenario. Just watch 3 episodes of The Atheist Experience(any 3) and that should do the trick of dimantling these ideas you have. Go on give it a go.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

AB "once you experience it, you will know it too" Just sounds bloody daft and a tad leaning towards the dodgy "uncle in the family" scenario. Just watch 3 episodes of The Atheist Experience(any 3) and that should do the trick of dimantling these ideas you have. Go on give it a go.

Why three episodes? What part of ''there is no God'' is compelling.
I shall watch if only to rip the shit out of it.