Searching for GOD...

[torridon]

Sorry, I don't worship the god that Dawkins created.

What sort of god do you create ?

[torridon]

God grieves at such misfortune as much as any one of us.
Jesus wept when He heard of the death of Lazarus.

But whatever misfortunes we have to endure, God will help us through them if we put our faith and trust in Him.

Rubbish.  I don't think for one moment that Charlie Gard was helped at all by putting his faith and trust in god.

[SusanDoris]

God grieves at such misfortune as much as any one of us.
Jesus wept when He heard of the death of Lazarus.

But whatever misfortunes we have to endure, God will help us through them if we put our faith and trust in Him.

In my opinion, that is one of the most hand-wringing, Uriah Heep-ish posts of yours that I have read. It makes me cringe, or even shudder.

[torridon]

To effect the second we have to have the will to do this. We have arrived then at a new category, will, which is not a process resulting in a fixed law like destination. And will is what Alan's opponents have shelved and overlooked here, preferring the inexorable determinism of physical processes such as gravity, death and disease.

I think this hints at the nub of Alan's problem.  Many people think of of 'Will' as if it were effectively a fundamental force of nature, like electomagnetism, or weak nuclear; something that can operate to change the state of the cosmos.  Seeing that Newton revealed a deterministic universe Alan has to invent a new realm of reality not constrained by the other laws of nature, the spiritual realm,  where this primary force of Will can be located, and impact on our reality in an interventionist way.

Mr Ockham would be horrified at the spurious reams of unnecessary invention here.  Thinking of Will as a primary force is the nub of the problem,  it is merely a complex derivative, a consequence of the forces that are truly fundamental as they interact and play out through the messy and unimaginably complex pathways of organic brains.

[Nearly Sane]

God grieves at such misfortune as much as any one of us.
Jesus wept when He heard of the death of Lazarus.

But whatever misfortunes we have to endure, God will help us through them if we put our faith and trust in Him.

Your version of Jesus knew Lazarus was going to die, let him do so, and wept crocodile tears to ramp up the drama of the magic trick.

Just as you god chose to either create or allow to exist the hereditary disease Charlie Gard died of, and watched while he suffered and died when he could stop it. Your god is a god of willed torture and murder of children.

[floo]

God grieves at such misfortune as much as any one of us.
Jesus wept when He heard of the death of Lazarus.

But whatever misfortunes we have to endure, God will help us through them if we put our faith and trust in Him.

AB you don't even KNOW for a fact that god exists, let alone what it thinks or feels.

[floo]

Your version of Jesus knew Lazarus was going to die, let him do so, and wept crocodile tears to ramp up the drama of the magic trick.

Just as you god chose to either create or allow to exist the hereditary disease Charlie Gard died of, and watched while he suffered and died when he could stop it. Your god is a god of willed torture and murder of children.

AB has no answer to any of that.

[Shaker]

Oh, I'm sure he'll think of something. Probably involving 'faith', I'll wager.

[floo]

Oh, I'm sure he'll think of something. Probably involving 'faith', I'll wager.

Most likely.

[Alan Burns]

Again, and for the same reasons, the freedom to indulge your bias is not really a freedom.  If you have a bias that inclines you to one way rather than another, that bias is a pre-existing state.  You are merely following your biases, not choosing them.  How can your actions be free if they are predetermined as in your example ?

Not pre determined, but determined (in real time - to use the technical expression).
All our thoughts, words and actions are determined in real time by the conscious will of the human soul.  Can you not see that our will has conscious override over whatever our historical events suggest to us?  Our freedom to make consciously driven choices is the reality - it does not just feel that way, that is the way it is.  Get real.  Accept your God given freedom for what it is.
You are free to change your mind whenever you want 

[Shaker]

Not pre determined, but determined (in real time - to use the technical expression).
All our thoughts, words and actions are determined in real time by the conscious will of the human soul.  Can you not see that our will has conscious override over whatever our historical events suggest to us?  Our freedom to make consciously driven choices is the reality - it does not just feel that way, that is the way it is.  Get real.

The irony, it Burns.

[Alan Burns]

The irony, it Burns.

The irony is in your consciously driven response.

[Shaker]

... he asserted with zero evidence (again).

[floo]

The irony is in your consciously driven response.

AB you might be taken more seriously if you could provide us with verifiable evidence to support your assertions, but you don't appear to have any.

[Sebastian Toe]

The irony is in your consciously driven response.

....or............the irony is in your response, subconsciously driven and emerging as an illusion of 'free will'!

[torridon]

Not pre determined, but determined (in real time - to use the technical expression).
All our thoughts, words and actions are determined in real time by the conscious will of the human soul.  Can you not see that our will has conscious override over whatever our historical events suggest to us?  Our freedom to make consciously driven choices is the reality - it does not just feel that way, that is the way it is.  Get real.  Accept your God given freedom for what it is.
You are free to change your mind whenever you want 

But we cannot choose our wants, any more than we can choose our beliefs; so we are not really free to change our mind.

Apart from which, you ought to know by now that consciousness does not operate in 'real time'.  Conscious awareness takes time to construct, so what feels like 'now' already happened about a half second ago.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Can you not see that…

You try this a lot. Can you not see what’s wrong with it? You have your arguments rebutted but, instead of addressing those rebuttals, you just repeat your mantra laden with another fallacy – the fallacy of reification. No-one can “see” something that you’ve given no cogent reason to think to be true in the first place.

What you actually mean to say is, “Can you not see that I have a personal faith belief that…?” etc, to which the answer is ‘yes” – we can all see that.

The more relevant question though is, “Can you not see that any arguments you’ve attempted for a “true for you too God, soul etc” have, so far at least, been hopeless?”   

[Nearly Sane]

But we cannot choose our wants, any more than we can choose our beliefs; so we are not really free to change our mind.

Apart from which, you ought to know by now that consciousness does not operate in 'real time'.  Conscious awareness takes time to fabricate, so what feels like 'now' already happened about a half second ago.

Wants are beliefs, again AB is creating distinction with no justification, and creating the usual infinite regress.

[ippy]

In my opinion, that is one of the most hand-wringing, Uriah Heep-ish posts of yours that I have read. It makes me cringe, or even shudder.

Yes Doris it smells of creep, yuk, says all of the words and he is still no better than any of us, I should think if Mr/Mrs, whichever, 'make all good' did exist and was listening, I'll bet Alan gave it the creeps when he came out with that lot.

ippy

[bluehillside Retd.]

Floo,

AB you might be taken more seriously if you could provide us with verifiable evidence to support your assertions, but you don't appear to have any.

I dealt with AB's mistake when he attempts to use the term "evidence" back in 21010. Predictably, he just ignored it.

[Alan Burns]

Floo,

I dealt with AB's mistake when he attempts to use the term "evidence" back in 21010. Predictably, he just ignored it.

But the evidence is in you.  And in my conscious choice to not reply to your previous post.   

[Nearly Sane]

But the evidence is in you.  And in my conscious choice to not reply to your previous post.   

Repeating assertions isn't evidence. Your model is logically incoherent.

[Alan Burns]

AB,

You try this a lot. Can you not see what’s wrong with it? You have your arguments rebutted but, instead of addressing those rebuttals, you just repeat your mantra laden with another fallacy – the fallacy of reification. No-one can “see” something that you’ve given no cogent reason to think to be true in the first place.

What you actually mean to say is, “Can you not see that I have a personal faith belief that…?” etc, to which the answer is ‘yes” – we can all see that.

The more relevant question though is, “Can you not see that any arguments you’ve attempted for a “true for you too God, soul etc” have, so far at least, been hopeless?”

I suspect that you see the reality of your freedom to choose just as much as I do, but you are consciously overriding this perception in order to comply with your false idealism of a non spiritual "you".

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

But the evidence is in you.

Whatever evidence you think to be “in you” – ie, faith – is personal to you. If you want to build a logical path from that to “true for me too” though then you’ll have to find some way of doing it that isn’t broken.

And in my conscious choice to not reply to your previous post.

But not in the sense that that “choice” is somehow floating free from cause and effect, for reasons that have been explained to you countless times and that you refuse to engage with.     

[Alan Burns]

Repeating assertions isn't evidence. Your model is logically incoherent.

They are not assertions, just perceived evidence of our conscious ability to choose.  The fact that science can't be used to explain our perception of conscious choice does not mean that it does not exist.  It just means there must be another explanation.