Searching for GOD...

[Alan Burns]

So can I repeat my last question - what defines freedom in a universe entirely driven by the deterministic rules of physical cause and effect events?

dictionary definition:
Freedom
noun:
    1.
    the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants.
    "we do have some freedom of choice"

[Shaker]

Repeat it as many times as you like. But since you see fit to ignore umpteen questions put to you, we reserve the right to do the same. Seems fair.

[Alan Burns]

Repeat it as many times as you like. But since you see fit to ignore umpteen questions put to you, we reserve the right to do the same. Seems fair.

I freely admit that there are some questions I am not capable of answering.
Is this the case with your response to my last question?

[Alan Burns]

AB,

1. Whether or not you like the idea of no ultimate freedom tells you nothing about the facts of the matter.

2. Lots of "forms" of freedom can exist – just not "ultimate" freedom.

So can you explain what forms of freedom do exist?

[Shaker]

I freely admit that there are some questions I am not capable of answering.

No problem; simply say so when the case arises. Staying shtum merely looks like evasion.

Is one of those aforementioned questions: "How would you rate the success (or not) of your efforts at getting the membership of this forum to take your beliefs seriously?"?

Is this the case with your response to my last question?

No.

[Maeght]

I thought I had previously explained that it is the God given power from the conscious will of the human soul.  Without this there can be no freedom of choice.

You are not understanding what I am asking so I'll try again.

What does the conscious will of the human soul base its decision on?

The last sentance is just circular wishful thinking.

[torridon]

So how can any form of freedom exist in a universe entirely driven by deterministic rules of physically driven cause and effect events?

Simple answer, it can't, really.  We feel free, and that suffices.

[Alan Burns]

No problem; simply say so when the case arises. Staying shtum merely looks like evasion.

Is one of those aforementioned questions: "How would you rate the success (or not) of your efforts at getting the membership of this forum to take your beliefs seriously?"

I believe I am taken seriously when I get a thoughtful, constructive response - even though the responder may not agree with my beliefs.

[Shaker]

I believe I am taken seriously when I get a thoughtful, constructive response - even though the responder may not agree with my beliefs.

But your mission here is, by your own testimony, to get others to agree with your beliefs. Not to get, or just to get, a "thoughtful, constructive response" (most people I think reply in kind, and provide such responses to thoughtful and constructive posts) but for to have others believe as you do. It was, IIRC, only yesterday that you said you wanted people to take seriously not only the possibility but the probability of your god's existence, despite your never once having furnished us with the slightest smidgin of a scintilla of an iota of a reason for so doing - not in the almost 20,000 posts on this epic thread of several years or indeed anywhere else I'm aware of.

How is that faring?

[Alan Burns]

But your mission here is, by your own testimony, to get others to agree with your beliefs. Not to get, or just to get, a "thoughtful, constructive response" (most people I think reply in kind, and provide such responses to thoughtful and constructive posts) but for to have others believe as you do. It was, IIRC, only yesterday that you said you wanted people to take seriously not only the possibility but the probability of your god's existence, despite your never once having furnished us with the slightest smidgin of a scintilla of an iota of a reason for so doing - not in the almost 20,000 posts on this epic thread of several years or indeed anywhere else I'm aware of.

How is that faring?

The fact that in response to my question, Torri has had to admit that from his viewpoint, real freedom does not exist, should give food for thought to all on this forum.

[Shaker]

Why? At least some of us have picked up on as much from the way neuroscience has been going the past few years. What of it?

[Rhiannon]

Alan, you aren't free. The choices you make are dictated by what you think will or won't please your god in conjunction with your own wants and needs.

We all have choices. And life will throw random things out way. How we react to them is determined by so many things we can't get our head round it. It feels free when we choose to reframe our past or make a change in a new direction, but it's determined by who or what shows up and what they remind us of in terms of what we want to avoid but also what we need.

It's fun. I like it.

[Shaker]

As intimated in Alan's post of 11:40 this morning, with all this blather about free will and souls and what have you the dorsal fin of the argumentum ad consequentiam is always just about to break the surface. Alan desperately wants there to be such a thing as free will since, although it's a stonking gert fallacy, in his head "I don't like the consequences of there being no free will; therefore free will has to be a reality, because if it wasn't I would be all cross and miserable and stuff, and I might even write bum on the wall and smack it" is a valid argument.

[floo]

I thought I had previously explained that it is the God given power from the conscious will of the human soul.  Without this there can be no freedom of choice.

Just your opinion, with nothing to back it up.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

So can you explain what forms of freedom do exist?

Torri had a nice analogy for this a while ago – it’s the same freedom a prisoner might have when the prison walls are so far away he’s barely aware of them, if at all.

The fact that in response to my question, Torri has had to admit that from his viewpoint, real freedom does not exist, should give food for thought to all on this forum.

First, it’s not “admit” it’s explain, and it’s not “from his point of view” but from the point of view of the available reasoning and evidence.

Second, why would your mistakes about something well-known to those who think rationally about these things anyway give food for thought?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Simple answer, it can't, really.  We feel free, and that suffices.

We seem to be leaping from neuroscientific speculation to what is true for the universe while missing that emergence is being slyly denied or at least relegated to a reductionist pastiche of it.

Also the same old science v religion thing is trotted out by those to whom it means that Einstein's theory of relativity is a better book than Tolstoy's war and peace.

Again....consciousness explained away.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

We seem to be leaping from neuroscientific speculation to what is true for the universe while missing that emergence is being slyly denied or at least relegated to a reductionist pastiche of it.

Also the same old science v religion thing is trotted out by those to whom it means that Einstein's theory of relativity is a better book than Tolstoy's war and peace.

Again....consciousness explained away.

Torri merely explained that feeling free does not mean that we're actually free of cause and effect.

I have no idea how you got from that to references to neuroscience, emergence, "science vs religion" (one of your favourite straw men that one) etc, and nor can I even guess at what you're trying to say here.

It would serve you better if you responded in a way that's connected to what was actually said, and if you really want to talk about something else then try to set out what it might be in comprehensible and cogent terms.     

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

Torri merely explained that feeling free does not mean that we're actually free of cause and effect.

I have no idea how you got from that to references to neuroscience, emergence, "science vs religion" (one of your favourite straw men that one) etc, and nor can I even guess at what you're trying to say here.

It would serve you better if you responded in a way that's connected to what was actually said, and if you really want to talk about something else then try to set out what it might be in comprehensible and cogent terms.   

Torri's argument and arguments against AB read like the reductionist approach.
Therefore with him a reduced, mechanistic and predetermined universe (which renders us as automata ) informs his neuroscience in a way which bolsters his reductionism.

This is so tight that the mechanistic preprogramming would go against environmental updating of the brain, mind, consciousness and an unknown mechanism allowing the same to handle novelty. I'm not saying what that mechanism the fact is no one does is but the fact Torri seems to rule it out because it doesn't fit with his brand of reductionism. In other words he does a Dennett. Things effectively ignored, his model of the universe is therefore
preserved.

Finally his approach demands higher definition of terms such as illusion and free from him.
I have given prompt questions for him to firm his definitions up on but am awaiting response.

I wonder if Torridon shuns definition because he would then be unable to appropriate swathes of holistically arrived at definition.

[wigginhall]

I thought torridon's phrase was pretty good - that we feel free (well, sometimes), yet we are still subject to cause and effect.   Neat.

[torridon]

...
This is so tight that the mechanistic preprogramming would go against environmental updating of the brain, mind, consciousness and an unknown mechanism allowing the same to handle novelty. I'm not saying what that mechanism the fact is no one does is but the fact Torri seems to rule it out because it doesn't fit with his brand of reductionism. In other words he does a Dennett. Things effectively ignored, his model of the universe is therefore
preserved....

Not sure I follow you.  Firstly, true and absolute novelty is quite rare; if I come across a purple elephant, something I've never seen before, its not like my visual processing system is not going to be able to cope; it is already familiar with purpleness and the shapes and textures of elephants and so the visual system of the brain constructs an image from the bottom up. Don't mistake the brain for some hard wired programming system, it is in a constant state of update, a learning system.  There will always be some degree of novelty to process and the brain makes the best response it can in the circumstances and retains memory of it, subject to competing constraints.

[wigginhall]

The brain has amazing plasticity.  I remember this from working in a stroke clinic, for here there were people whose speech and language was damaged by a stroke, but they were working to improve it, and many of them were succeeding. 

[floo]

The brain has amazing plasticity.  I remember this from working in a stroke clinic, for here there were people whose speech and language was damaged by a stroke, but they were working to improve it, and many of them were succeeding.

My husband, as I have mentioned boringly often, has only half a functioning brain after his brain haemorrhage, following a burst aneurysm in 2006. As soon as he came out of the coma a few weeks later he was determined to improve things as much as he could. Some people, who didn't know him before his illness, don't even realise he is brain damaged he has worked so hard to right things. Obviously he will never be able to be as he was before as the damage is so great, he is very frustrated he can't do anything of an academic nature anymore.

A bit off topic, but it is worth mentioning as it is so incredible. My husband has just walked in having had lunch at his favourite café about half a mile or so away. He managed to walk down there wondering why his right foot was feeling uncomfortable. It was only when he took his trainer off on arrival he discovered he had left a small red plastic shoehorn inside it. He lacks sensitivity on his right side after the paralysis he sustained! I have taken a photo of the shoehorn inside the trainer, to send to people. It is a pity I can't display it on this forum.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Not sure I follow you.  Firstly, true and absolute novelty is quite rare; if I come across a purple elephant, something I've never seen before, its not like my visual processing system is not going to be able to cope; it is already familiar with purpleness and the shapes and textures of elephants and so the visual system of the brain constructs an image from the bottom up. Don't mistake the brain for some hard wired programming system, it is in a constant state of update, a learning system.  There will always be some degree of novelty to process and the brain makes the best response it can in the circumstances and retains memory of it, subject to competing constraints.

What is your definition of novelty?
No matter how rare absolute novelty is it should not be discounted to the subsequent reductionist mood music of 'now we have discounted that we now have the complete picture".

I know the brain is in a constant state of update, I pointed it out.

You need to explain how your deterministic model covers novelty.

[Alan Burns]

So how can any form of freedom exist in a universe entirely driven by deterministic rules of physically driven cause and effect events?

Simple answer, it can't, really.  We feel free, and that suffices.

If it feels like freedom, if it looks like freedom, if it sounds like freedom ... then it most likely is freedom, and the neuroscientists' findings may well be applicable to animals, but they have not been able to see the bigger picture regarding humans.
So I rejoice in my freedom to post on this forum.
I rejoice in my freedom to invite God into my life.
I rejoice in my freedom to accept Jesus Christ as my Saviour.
For this is why we have been given this amazing gift.
And the truth certainly does set us free.

[floo]

If it feels like freedom, if it looks like freedom, if it sounds like freedom ... then it most likely is freedom, and the neuroscientists' findings may well be applicable to animals, but they have not been able to see the bigger picture regarding humans.
So I rejoice in my freedom to post on this forum.
I rejoice in my freedom to invite God into my life.
I rejoice in my freedom to accept Jesus Christ as my Saviour.
For this is why we have been given this amazing gift.
And the truth certainly does set us free.

Your 'truth' might do it for you, it didn't do it for me when I was a believer.