Searching for GOD...

[Enki]

I would hope that some of the million plus views of this topic will have seen through the shallow materialist view which reduces all human endeavours to nothing more than the unavoidable physical deterministic reactions in their brain cells, and come to appreciate God's reality through the amazing gift of consciously driven will of the human soul.

"Math . . . music .. . starry nights . . . These are secular ways of achieving transcendence, of feeling lifted into a grand perspective. It’s a sense of being awed by existence that almost obliterates the self. Religious people think of it as an essentially religious experience but it’s not. It’s an essentially human experience."  – Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, philosopher and novelist

"If you trace back all those links in the chain that had to be in place for me to be here, the laws of probability maintain that my very existence is miraculous. But then after however many decades, less than a hundred years, they disburse and I cease to be. So while they’re all congregated and coordinated to make me, then—and I speak her on behalf of all those trillions of atoms—I should really make the most of things." – Jim Al-Khalili, professor of physics

"For me the meaning of life, or the meaning  in life, is helping people and loving people . . . The real joy for me is when someone comes up to me and they want to just sit down and share their struggle."  –Teresa MacBain, former minister

What a pity that your essentially limited, small minded, shallow arrogance can't encompass and respect the myriad of ways in which people find meaning in their lives.

[Gordon]

I would hope that some of the million plus views of this topic will have seen through the shallow materialist view which reduces all human endeavours to nothing more than the unavoidable physical deterministic reactions in their brain cells, and come to appreciate God's reality through the amazing gift of consciously driven will of the human soul.

I suspect it is more likely they would have seen your fallacy-laden proselytising for what it is.

[bluehillside Retd.]

enki,

Quite so. AB doesn't "do" irony, but the huge one here I think is his fondness for characterising the evidence that undoes his assertions with terms like "shallow", "just", "reduced" etc when the reality is that it's his alternative that's so desperately impoverished, so unambitious - essentially nursery stories over science. Better a burning bush than the Large Hadron Collider, better suicidal pigs than the majesty of the TofE.

Painful stuff.

[Alan Burns]

enki,

Quite so. AB doesn't "do" irony, but the huge one here I think is his fondness for characterising the evidence that undoes his assertions with terms like "shallow", "just", "reduced" etc when the reality is that it's his alternative that's so desperately impoverished, so unambitious - essentially nursery stories over science. Better a burning bush than the Large Hadron Collider, better suicidal pigs than the majesty of the TofE.

Painful stuff.

Dear Blue,

I have never quoted a burning bush or suicidal pigs in any of my posts.  I have quoted the human attribute of consciously driven will as evidence of God's creative power.  Your alternative materialist explanation of "free will is just the way it seems" is what could be labelled as "desperately impoverished" because it does not come close to fully explaining the origins of all our human endeavours.  And neither the TofE or Large Hadron Collider give any real insights into what facilitates our conscious awareness and freedom to choose.

[torridon]

Dear Blue,

I have never quoted a burning bush or suicidal pigs in any of my posts.  I have quoted the human attribute of consciously driven will as evidence of God's creative power.  Your alternative materialist explanation of "free will is just the way it seems" is what could be labelled as "desperately impoverished" because it does not come close to fully explaining the origins of all our human endeavours.  And neither the TofE or Large Hadron Collider give any real insights into what facilitates our conscious awareness and freedom to choose.

Au contraire it is your position that choices do not need any deeper rationale than a simple 'just because I want to'. In reality, all choices have roots stretching way back in time, and it is only you that resists this deeper insight in favour of a superficial understanding.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

I have never quoted a burning bush or suicidal pigs in any of my posts.

You have a very literal mind Alan – which is presumably why you find simplistic ancient myths so persuasive. Even most theists these days as I understand it concede that, when biblical explanations collapse under the weight of falsifying evidence, they must be only allegorical. I didn’t say that you did quote those things – and nor in case you’re wondering if I suggest that looking for logic in your posts is like looking for a needle in a haystack will I be suggesting that there’s an actual needle. Or a haystack.

What I was actually saying is that you have a conviction about essentially naïve explanatory narratives (“soul” etc) that suited the ancient peoples who came up with them, but that have long been superseded by more robust - ie, investigable – reasoning and evidence.     

I have quoted the human attribute of consciously driven will as evidence of God's creative power.

You haven’t “quoted” that – you’ve just asserted it as a personal faith belief you happen to hold despite the total absence of sound reasoning or evidence to support it.

Your alternative materialist explanation…

Why do I sense yet another argumentum ad consequentiam and attendant false premise coming along?

…of "free will is just the way it seems" is what could be labelled as "desperately impoverished" because it does not come close to fully explaining the origins of all our human endeavours.

Bingo! Even if that was true it wouldn’t change the basic point that determinism is the only rational show in town and that your experience of “free” will would be exactly as you find it to be with that underlying reality in place in any case.

I have no idea what you’re trying to say with that “does not come close to fully explaining the origins of all our human endeavours” but however close it comes to that must be an awful lot closer I’d have though than just making up stuff (“god”, “soul” etc) and relying on the equivalent of “it’s magic” in response to any question about them. White noise in other words explains nothing – it’s just white noise.     

And neither the TofE or Large Hadron Collider give any real insights into what facilitates our conscious awareness and freedom to choose.

FFS! And nor do they claim to – those insights come from different disciplines (neuroscience especially), which is why thinking people have long since abandoned the nursery story “explanations” you cling to that actually explain nothing at all.   

Give it up Alan. Seriously, just give it up. Your attempts to make arguments to justify your faith beliefs crash and burn time after time, and convince no-one possessed of critical faculties. If you want to do the digital equivalent of wandering Oxford Street wearing a sandwich board proclaiming “THE END IS NIGH!” then knock yourself out – head over to the faith sharing area where you can do that to your heart’s content. Here though you’ll just find your errors will be detonated every time you make them.

Sorry, but there it is.

[Alan Burns]

Au contraire it is your position that choices do not need any deeper rationale than a simple 'just because I want to'. In reality, all choices have roots stretching way back in time, and it is only you that resists this deeper insight in favour of a superficial understanding.

But in your defining of the roots of human choice, they amount to nothing more than unavoidable inevitable reactions defined entirely by past events.  So you are effectively saying that choice does not exist, since we have no means of being able to consciously choose what we want to do.  So do you propose that we obliterate the word "choice" from the English language?

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

But in your defining of the roots of human choice, they amount to nothing more than unavoidable inevitable reactions defined entirely by past events.  So you are effectively saying that choice does not exist, since we have no means of being able to consciously choose what we want to do.  So do you propose that we obliterate the word "choice" from the English language?

I have no freedom not to die. Should we therefore eliminate the word "freedom" from dictionaries?

Even for you Alan this is desperate, desperate stuff.

[torridon]

But in your defining of the roots of human choice, they amount to nothing more than unavoidable inevitable reactions defined entirely by past events.  So you are effectively saying that choice does not exist, since we have no means of being able to consciously choose what we want to do.  So do you propose that we obliterate the word "choice" from the English language?

No, it is a useful word.  Should we eliminate the word 'touch' from the English language, now we understand that we cannot ever really touch things ? Shall we get rid of 'now', given that since Einstein we have had to abandon the simplistic notions of universal time ? These words are useful to us, we do not abandon them simply because we have scratched the surface and gained a deeper understanding in which we find they are really just handy approximations for something more complex. It is still useful to talk of 'choice' but we can do so in the knowledge that 'free' choice is really a misnomer; it might be more accurate to talk about humans having 'wide' choice, this more accurately alludes to the real difference in human choice as opposed to that enjoyed by other animals.  The neurobiological mechanisms for resolving competing desires at some level are the same across all species.

[Alan Burns]

AB,

I have no freedom not to die. Should we therefore eliminate the word "freedom" from dictionaries?

Even for you Alan this is desperate, desperate stuff.

But I do have freedom to choose to reply to you.
So does the concept of choice exist anywhere in your take on human life?

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

But I do have freedom to choose to reply to you.
So does the concept of choice exist anywhere in your take on human life?

Of course "you" - do, only "you" is itself essentially a series of interacting processes that perceives itself as Alan Burns. The deeper, underlying reality of "you" however cannot be other than determinative because there's no other option that isn't random, chaotic, incoherent. Deciding that you don't like that and inventing a little man at the controls you call "soul" that apparently works by magic doesn't get you out of that cleft stick however much you may wish it to be otherwise.

[Alan Burns]

.... The neurobiological mechanisms for resolving competing desires at some level are the same across all species.

The mechanistic scenario certainly fits well with animal behaviour, but it provides very poor explanation for our human behaviour.  Our conscious freedom to choose is a demonstrable reality - not an illusion.

[Alan Burns]

AB,

Of course "you" - do, only "you" is itself essentially a series of interacting processes that perceives itself as Alan Burns. The deeper, underlying reality of "you" however cannot be other than determinative because there's no other option that isn't random, chaotic, incoherent. Deciding that you don't like that and inventing a little man at the controls you call "soul" that apparently works by magic doesn't get you out of that cleft stick however much you may wish it to be otherwise.

But it is not that I don't like your deterministic scenario - I just can't force myself to believe something I know is not true.  There certainly is an underlying "me", but it does not have its roots in the physically determinate behaviour of unavoidable electro chemical activity.  It goes deeper and beyond this physically determined scenario to give me the freedom to choose to write these words.

[torridon]

The mechanistic scenario certainly fits well with animal behaviour, but it provides very poor explanation for our human behaviour.  Our conscious freedom to choose is a demonstrable reality - not an illusion.

The limbic system, which mediates desires, is a core function of the mammalian brain.  We can choose between alternatives because all mammals do this in the same basic manner in which the emotional content of rival courses of action are weighed against each other.  At this level humans are not doing anything fundamentally different. What is different, is that our choices are vastly more varied and we have many more ways to obtain what we want, but it still comes down to identifying the course with the greatest emotional attachment or appeal in the moment of choice.  This isn't really freedom, it is sophistication, nuance, complexity in the line of getting what we want and the core insight underlying all that is that we do not, cannot, choose what to want or how much to want it.  Choice really could not work like that, and it doesn't.

[Alan Burns]

The limbic system, which mediates desires, is a core function of the mammalian brain.  We can choose between alternatives because all mammals do this in the same basic manner in which the emotional content of rival courses of action are weighed against each other.  At this level humans are not doing anything fundamentally different. What is different, is that our choices are vastly more varied and we have many more ways to obtain what we want, but it still comes down to identifying the course with the greatest emotional attachment or appeal in the moment of choice.  This isn't really freedom, it is sophistication, nuance, complexity in the line of getting what we want and the core insight underlying all that is that we do not, cannot, choose what to want or how much to want it.  Choice really could not work like that, and it doesn't.

But we still have the freedom to change our minds

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

But it is not that I don't like your deterministic scenario -…

Of course it is. Engaging with the reasoned justification for it would remove a major plank of your religious belief (ie, “soul”) so you cannot possibly allow that to happen, however irrational the corner into which that forces you.

Essentially that’s what your repeated use of the argumentum ad consequentiam is – “if determinism is right, the justification for my faith belief collapses – therefore determinism is wrong”.

I just can't force myself to believe something I know is not true.

You don’t “know” that at all. You just assert it – over and over again in fact. Repetition of a mistake does not make that mistake knowledge.

There certainly is an underlying "me", but it does not have its roots in the physically determinate behaviour of unavoidable electro chemical activity.

Yes it does. Or at least it does if you follow the logic and evidence to its conclusion.

It goes deeper and beyond this physically determined scenario to enable me to consciously choose to write these words.

So you assert, but your assertions are impossible and therefore false. Just inserting a magic man to get you off the hook of chaotic randomness that is itself in some unexplained way exempt from cause and effect is just very, very bad thinking.

[torridon]

But we still have the freedom to change our minds

Of course we can change our minds if we see a better option.  That is entirely consistent with what I've been saying. We all change our minds, all animals change their minds because nothing remains fixed.  Minds are in a constant state of update, so when something changes, we realise something, we remember something we had forgotten, something new happens, then we change our minds and the same is true of every creature with a brain.  When an antelope jumps to the right it is changing it mind about how best to evade it's predator in response to new information.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

But we still have the freedom to change our minds

Not in the sense you imply, because "we" are our minds. You're using the un-argued premise of a separate "we" to argue for a separate we. It's just circular reasoning - which is more bad thinking.

[Alan Burns]

Of course we can change our minds if we see a better option.  That is entirely consistent with what I've been saying. We all change our minds, all animals change their minds because nothing remains fixed.  Minds are in a constant state of update, so when something changes, we realise something, we remember something we had forgotten, something new happens, then we change our minds and the same is true of every creature with a brain.  When an antelope jumps to the right it is changing it mind about how best to evade it's predator in response to new information.

But I have the freedom to change my mind just because ......
(I made a conscious choice not to finish that sentence!)

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

But I have the freedom to change my mind just because ......
(I made a conscious choice not to finish that sentence!)

And on what basis was that choice made? Was it:

A. Random; or

B. The expression of a want that emerged from your subconscious?

[Alan Burns]

AB,

And on what basis was that choice made? Was it:

A. Random; or

B. The expression of a want that emerged from your subconscious?

C. It came from the conscious will of my human soul

[torridon]

But I have the freedom to change my mind just because ......
(I made a conscious choice not to finish that sentence!)

There is always a reason leading to a change of mind.  If there was no reason, then it would be random.  If you change your mind just because you wanted to, then there would be a reason why your desire to change your mind just because you wanted to arose. Maybe you just wanted to make a point on a messageboard.  Just because we aren't always consciously aware of the subliminal roots of our motivations, doesn't mean they don't exist. The vast majority of mind lies below the level of our conscious experience so it's hardly surprising that we choose to do things just because we want to, seemingly.

[Gordon]

C. It came from the conscious will of my human soul

'Human soul' is an oxymoron, Alan, so your point is silly. Isn't there something in your preferred holy book along the lines of chucking out childish things?

[Enki]

But in your defining of the roots of human choice, they amount to nothing more than unavoidable inevitable reactions defined entirely by past events.  So you are effectively saying that choice does not exist, since we have no means of being able to consciously choose what we want to do.  So do you propose that we obliterate the word "choice" from the English language?

'Choice' simply means 'the act of choosing between two or more possibilities'. Nowhere does the word 'choice' actually describe how the action of choosing comes about. Why on earth then 'obliterate the word 'choice' from the English language?'

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

C. It came from the conscious will of my human soul

C. isn’t an option. Or, if you want to be exact about it, C. is an option only in the same way that the box containing pixies, Thor’s hammer, Jack Frost etc are options – ie, no evidence of any kind to justify them, and huge evidence that better explains the phenomena they purport to explain.

Why not at least have the decency now to say something like, “OK, this is just a faith belief I happen to have and there’s no good reason at all for anyone else to take it seriously” and have done with it?

Seriously though, you’d still be disastrously wrong but at least that way you’d recover some sense at least that you have some honesty left.