Searching for GOD...

[Alan Burns]

Stranger, I think and of course I could be wrong but I think that you'll find that Alan has been brought up in a strongly believing catholic family and as usual most catholics make sure that their children don't stray outside of the mould.

Wrong
My mother was not RC, and only attended church on special occasions.
My father went to Sunday Mass, but did not receive the sacraments.

It was a huge joy to me that when my father was in hospital following a heart attack, he proudly announced to me that he had been to confession and received holy communion whilst in hospital, and after his recovery we attended the sacraments together.   

And my mother was attended to by a Catholic priest as she died.

I hope I played an active part in sharing my faith with my parents and look forward to meeting up with them in Heaven

[Alan Burns]

And how would that prayed-for opportunity arise, as opposed to it arising without your prayer?

Witness to a miraculous event perhaps?

[Alan Burns]

Only if you dishonestly redefined the word "choice" to mean "god-magic intervention". Here in the real world, choices are being made by humans, animals, and machines all the time.

Machines certainly do not make conscious choices, because they have no self awareness.
It is debatable whether animals are capable of making conscious choices as opposed to predictable reactions based upon biological instinct and learnt  behaviour.
Humans however are capable of consciously choosing to override their programmed instinct and learnt behaviour patterns.

We are not machines.

We are free to choose.

[Shaker]

... he asserted without evidence.

Again.

[Gordon]

We are not machines.

We are free to choose.

Hooray for brains!

[SteveH]

... he asserted without evidence.

Again.

If I said "2+2=4", and you demanded evidence, you'd look pretty silly. Some things just are self-evidently true, such as that humans have free-will. "We know our wills are free, and there's an end on't." Dr Johnson.

[Shaker]

If I said "2+2=4", and you demanded evidence, you'd look pretty silly. Some things just are self-evidently true, such as that humans have free-will. "We know our wills are free, and there's an end on't." Dr Johnson.

Your memory must be going. You've posted this philosophically illiterate used cat litter before* and been thoroughly schooled.**

Bertrand Russell and A. N. Whitehead took some 300-odd pages of the Principia Mathematica to prove, in a rigorously formal way, that 1 + 1 = 2 - thus demonstrating it's rather more complex a matter than your "Well, it just is, innit? Here's my bike" approach. And it's a laughable travesty of anything resembling rational thought to say that free will is "self-evidently true." It's nothing of the kind.

* Last November: http://www.religionethics.co.uk/index.php?topic=14800.msg703870#msg703870

** Nearly Sane's #25 and bluehillside's #28 deserve honourable mentions.

[Stranger]

The point I am making is that in a physically pre determined system there is no mechanism for choice to exist.

Only if you dishonestly redefined the word "choice" to mean "god-magic intervention". Here in the real world, choices are being made by humans, animals, and machines all the time.

Machines certainly do not make conscious choices, because they have no self awareness.

I didn't say that they did make conscious choices and you said that "in a physically pre determined system there is no mechanism for choice to exist" - note the absence of the word "conscious".

We are free to choose.

Yes we are but we are not "free" to choose who we are or how we make choices - that wouldn't even make sense, there would be nothing left to be 'free'. As Dennett says (from memory) "if you make yourself small enough you can externalise anything" but then there is no 'you' left to make the choice.

Your magical, self-contradictory version of 'freedom' is just nonsense. See #30071 for more detail.

[Stranger]

If I said "2+2=4", and you demanded evidence, you'd look pretty silly. Some things just are self-evidently true, such as that humans have free-will. "We know our wills are free, and there's an end on't." Dr Johnson.

What does "free-will" mean?

[ippy]

Wrong
My mother was not RC, and only attended church on special occasions.
My father went to Sunday Mass, but did not receive the sacraments.

It was a huge joy to me that when my father was in hospital following a heart attack, he proudly announced to me that he had been to confession and received holy communion whilst in hospital, and after his recovery we attended the sacraments together.   

And my mother was attended to by a Catholic priest as she died.

I hope I played an active part in sharing my faith with my parents and look forward to meeting up with them in Heaven

How absolutly amazing, all I didn't have were the details.

It looks like my last post stands well then other than the s on the end of the word parents.

Commiserations to you Alan, ippy.

[Sebastian Toe]

Witness to a miraculous event perhaps?

What would cause her to witness this event, that she wouldn't have witnessed had it not been for  your prayer and what would be the source of the miracle?

[torridon]

So what precisely do you consider we have any choice in?

It goes back to Schopenhaur, we are free to act on what we want, but we aren't free to choose what to want.  Our feeling of freedom derives from the lack of external constraints stopping us from getting what we want. If I wanted, I could go to Luton today, the govt has not passed any law banning travel to Luton, so my feeling of freedom remains intact.  However I am not free to choose which desires to have, to claim so is nonsensical, and I don't feel that my freedom is constrained in that sense because those constraints are internal.

Living in the UK, you are free to follow your Catholic faith; you are also free to convert to Islam; but are you 'free' to form a desire to convert ?  How do you explain why some people want to convert whereas others such as yourself do not ?

[Alan Burns]

I didn't say that they did make conscious choices and you said that "in a physically pre determined system there is no mechanism for choice to exist" - note the absence of the word "conscious".

The word "choice" surely infers conscious choice.

Otherwise it is just a mechanistic reaction.

[Stranger]

The word "choice" surely infers conscious choice.

No, it doesn't, it's (obviously) a more general term. An if-then-else programming construct clearly makes a choice (based on the contents of the if statement.

Otherwise it is just a mechanistic reaction.

And round and round and round we go and the AB assertion generator never stops...

Once again you are ignoring all the logic that has been presented to you time and time again. If a conscious choice is not a "mechanistic reaction" to all the factors that influence it, including all of the chooser's nature, nurture, and experience, applied to the current situation, then to the extent that it isn't, it is based on no influence (reason to make one choice or another) at all, and a choice for no reason is random.

As I said in #30082 (which you were supposedly replying to but ignored most of), if you try and make all the factors that go into a choice external to the chooser (including its own character), then there is nothing left to make the choice.

You cannot be 'free' from yourself - it doesn't even make sense.

[ippy]

No, it doesn't, it's (obviously) a more general term. An if-then-else programming construct clearly makes a choice (based on the contents of the if statement.

And round and round and round we go and the AB assertion generator never stops...

Once again you are ignoring all the logic that has been presented to you time and time again. If a conscious choice is not a "mechanistic reaction" to all the factors that influence it, including all of the chooser's nature, nurture, and experience, applied to the current situation, then to the extent that it isn't, it is based on no influence (reason to make one choice or another) at all, and a choice for no reason is random.

As I said in #30082 (which you were supposedly replying to but ignored most of), if you try and make all the factors that go into a choice external to the chooser (including its own character), then there is nothing left to make the choice.

You cannot be 'free' from yourself - it doesn't even make sense.

Stranger, he can't help it he's a slave to his fully indoctrinated past, a past that has nothing to do with reason.

Regards ippy.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Stranger, he can't help it he's a slave to his fully indoctrinated past, a past that has nothing to do with reason.

Regards ippy.

Fully indoctrinated past?

I'm intrigued, tell on.

[Nearly Sane]

Stranger, he can't help it he's a slave to his fully indoctrinated past, a past that has nothing to do with reason.

Regards ippy.

Just to point out that if you agree with Stranger as regards free will then we are all in a sense indoctrinated. We cannot choose our beliefs.

[Stranger]

Just to point out that if you agree with Stranger as regards free will then we are all in a sense indoctrinated. We cannot choose our beliefs.

Indoctrination is about accepting beliefs uncritically, so no, we aren't all indoctrinated in any sense I can see.

In fact, as I've probably said before, the godlike point of view of the details of our brains being (probably) deterministic is all but irrelevant unless you actually think there is a god that can access it.

[Alan Burns]

Bertrand Russell and A. N. Whitehead took some 300-odd pages of the Principia Mathematica to prove, in a rigorously formal way, that 1 + 1 = 2

I am quite certain that the vast majority of the human population would not need to read a 300 page thesis to verify the fact that 1 + 1 = 2

In a similar vein, can our obvious ability to make conscious choices be disproved by misguided  attempts to redefine reality to fit in with limited human knowledge?

[SusanDoris]

Just to point out that if you agree with Stranger as regards free will then we are all in a sense indoctrinated. We cannot choose our beliefs.

The word indoctrinated implies an agency. Since to the best of our knowledge and evidence, such an agency does not exist, we know a very great deal about how our brains work, so we have learnt about them ourselves, not been indoctrinated.
If the agency implied is part of the education system, then if we happen to feel we have been indoctrinated, we can investigate for ourselves and decide not to be if we choose.

[Alan Burns]

What would cause her to witness this event, that she wouldn't have witnessed had it not been for  your prayer and what would be the source of the miracle?

The source of a miracle could be the prayer itself.

[Nearly Sane]

The word indoctrinated implies an agency. Since to the best of our knowledge and evidence, such an agency does not exist, we know a very great deal about how our brains work, so we have learnt about them ourselves, not been indoctrinated.
If the agency implied is part of the education system, then if we happen to feel we have been indoctrinated, we can investigate for ourselves and decide not to be if we choose.

It implies an agency in the same way Alan says choice implies free will. Language isn't prescriptive. The point here is that you don't chose your beliefs any more than Alan does. You can't chose for yourself in any free sense if you agree with Stranger's points against him. Here you seem to be agreeing with Alan.

[Alan Burns]

It goes back to Schopenhaur, we are free to act on what we want, but we aren't free to choose what to want.  Our feeling of freedom derives from the lack of external constraints stopping us from getting what we want. If I wanted, I could go to Luton today, the govt has not passed any law banning travel to Luton, so my feeling of freedom remains intact.  However I am not free to choose which desires to have, to claim so is nonsensical, and I don't feel that my freedom is constrained in that sense because those constraints are internal.

Living in the UK, you are free to follow your Catholic faith; you are also free to convert to Islam; but are you 'free' to form a desire to convert ?  How do you explain why some people want to convert whereas others such as yourself do not ?

Conversion is not a free choice.  We can only convert to what we sincerely believe to be the true faith after making the effort to discern it.  Our freedom can be used to guide our thought processes to discern the truth.  And having found it we are free to choose how to indulge our faith.

[Nearly Sane]

Indoctrination is about accepting beliefs uncritically, so no, we aren't all indoctrinated in any sense I can see.

In fact, as I've probably said before, the godlike point of view of the details of our brains being (probably) deterministic is all but irrelevant unless you actually think there is a god that can access it.

See my reply to Susan. You are using the same approach as Alan used choice as prescriptive rather than descriptive. It's why I phrased it as in a sense indictrinated. We no more chose our beliefs than Alan.

[Sebastian Toe]

The source of a miracle could be the prayer itself.

Source because it directly caused the miracle?

What would cause her to witness this event, that she wouldn't have witnessed had it not been for  your prayer.