Searching for GOD...

[jeremyp]

The soul is that which invokes my choices in my present.

OK so when your soul makes a choice between (say) alternative A and alternative B, does it just pick an alternative at random? Or does it base the choice on information and experience?

In the former case, the choice is not determined but you'd hardly call making random decisions "free will" - there's no will involved. In the latter case, the choice is your will, but it is not free because it is constrained by everything you know about the World and yourself.

[Alan Burns]

I'm free to do so, after using my experience and background to assess the logic and the evidence.

The process of assessing is carried out within your conscious awareness by driving your own thoughts.  It is not a predetermined process, but a consciously driven process.  Driven by you.

[Alan Burns]

OK so when your soul makes a choice between (say) alternative A and alternative B, does it just pick an alternative at random? Or does it base the choice on information and experience?

In the former case, the choice is not determined but you'd hardly call making random decisions "free will" - there's no will involved. In the latter case, the choice is your will, but it is not free because it is constrained by everything you know about the World and yourself.

I would say influenced rather than constrained.  You still have freedom to choose.

[jeremyp]

I would say influenced rather than constrained.  You still have freedom to choose.

But why does the soul make the choice that it does? Either it's based on the information it has at its disposal, or it is random.

[Stranger]

I have never claimed that our choices are free from cause and effect.
In order to enable freedom, they must be free from physical cause and effect.

Then, as people have tired to explain to you many, many times before, it makes no functional difference.

If your choices are entirely due to cause and effect, they are just as predetermined by the past chains of said cause and effect, whether they are physical, spiritual, magical, or whatever else, or any combination of them.

Or are you about to try to sidestep the whole issue again by claiming that "conscious choice" is a cause that isn't due entirely due to past causes (which would mean you would be claiming choices are free from cause and effect after all)? I hope not, that mistake has been corrected so very often...

[Stranger]

The process of assessing is carried out within your conscious awareness by driving your own thoughts.  It is not a predetermined process, but a consciously driven process.  Driven by you.

Same old false dichotomy and baseless assertion... 

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

It is you who have declared my arguments to be logically false.

Of course it isn’t. I don’t “declare” any such thing. Logical fallacies (formal and informal) are documented. You can look them up on various sites, Wikipedia for example.

When you try an argument that’s precisely aligned with one or several of them (which you do routinely despite being endlessly corrected), then by definition your argument is wrong.

At some level I think you perceive this, at least dimly. If I attempted any of the fallacious arguments you attempt for “god”, “soul” etc to validate my belief in, say, leprechauns, you would at least sometimes have the wit to say something like, “no, that’s a false argument because….”. Yet when you attempt exactly the same arguments for your faith beliefs for some reason you seem to think they should get a free pass.   

I do not see this.

I don’t believe you – if you can see a false argument attempted to validate a belief other than your own, why can you not recognise that it’s also a false argument when you attempt it to validate your faith beliefs?

For you actually not to see it you'd have to be entirely unaware of what logical fallacies actually entail regardless of what they're supposed to validate.

What I see is that I have the freedom to consciously choose, and no amount of so called logical argument can take away this freedom.  I do see that my freedom to choose can't be explained in any physical sense, because any physical explanation would take away this freedom.  So it is logical to presume that my freedom to choose emanates from a source which is not physically predetermined.  My logical conclusion is simply that my ability to make consciously driven choices emanates from the entity which is me.  This entity has freedom to make conscious choices which are not entirely predetermined by the past, but determined by my conscious self which exists in the present.  This is not a logical impossibility, just a feasible explanation of reality.

But you know already that that’s stupid – for reasons that you have been given may times already but that you just ignore. Essentially you’re privileging your superficial experience of things over the coherent, logical, demonstrable explanations for those things.

I don’t know why you do this, but my guess is that you’re so terrified of being wrong that you cannot allow anything to jeopardise your certainties no matter how irrational they are.   

[Stranger]

What I see is that I have the freedom to consciously choose, and no amount of so called logical argument can take away this freedom.  I do see that my freedom to choose can't be explained in any physical sense, because any physical explanation would take away this freedom.  So it is logical to presume that my freedom to choose emanates from a source which is not physically predetermined.

One of your problems is inconsistent definitions: freedom is our experience of being able to do as we want (dictionary definition), freedom is a choice that is not deterministic ("predetermined") and involves no randomness (a contradiction), and freedom is ambiguous.

Just putting "it is logical to presume" doesn't actually make something logical. You can't logically go from being unable to accommodate a self-contradictory process in the physical world to assuming that it must therefore be not "physically predetermined".

Self-contradictory is self-contradictory and the physical world is not the problem.

Then it all goes down hill...

My logical conclusion is simply that my ability to make consciously driven choices emanates from the entity which is me.

That isn't a conclusion, it's a rather pointless truism.

This entity has freedom to make conscious choices which are not entirely predetermined by the past, but determined by my conscious self which exists in the present.

Once again sidestepping the "how" question (deterministic or not) by answering a "what" question (determined by). How many times have you ignored that?

This is not a logical impossibility, just a feasible explanation of reality.

But it is logically impossible for the reasons that have been explained to you and continue to completely ignore...

[SusanDoris]

But despite all your claims to have explained it, you have not explained it at all.

I am free to choose.
You admit this by asking me asking me to make a conscious choice to reply to your posts.
Yet my freedom to choose has been declared a logical impossibility.
That is not an explantation.  It is a logical contradiction.

As your posts -  which cannot be called replies - are becoming, if that is possible, more and more bizarre, I shall ask you what 'explantation' means. It might be a good idea to do a bit more previewing and then I suppose there is a faint possibility that you might see the confusion in them, although I doubt it.

[Nearly Sane]

As your posts -  which cannot be called replies - are becoming, if that is possible, more and more bizarre, I shall ask you what 'explantation' means. It might be a good idea to do a bit more previewing and then I suppose there is a faint possibility that you might see the confusion in them, although I doubt it.

It's just a typo for explanation.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

…no amount of so called logical argument can take away this freedom

Just thinking about this – it’s something you’ve said before. Essentially it’s, “if logic, reasoning, evidence, anything contradicts my faith beliefs then those things must be wrong because my faith beliefs cannot be”.

It’s irrational to its core because it privileges your faith beliefs over everything else with no supporting argument to justify it. 

It’s also though practically unsustainable I’d have thought because it requires a huge double standard. To function in the world you have to accept that some arguments are necessarily wrong – you wouldn’t for example buy an investment from me if I said it’s my “faith” that it would come good, and attempted to validate that with the same arguments you attempt for your faith beliefs (“lots of other people have believed me”, “I really, really think I’m right”, “you can’t disprove my claim”, “if you don’t agree that would mean that my beliefs are wrong” etc.)

So what that means is that you must think that reason and logic are fine when they concern issues other than you faith beliefs, but they must be wrong when they do concern your faith beliefs even though they’re exactly the same in both cases. That requires cognitive dissonance on an epic scale yet apparently with a straight face that’s what you posit here.

How so?     

[Alan Burns]

But why does the soul make the choice that it does? Either it's based on the information it has at its disposal, or it is random.

But it is not driven by the past.
It is aware of the past, but exists and acts in the present.
You need to appreciate the nature and power which emanates from our conscious awareness.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

But it is not driven by the past.
It is aware of the past, but exists and acts in the present.
You need to appreciate the nature and power which emanates from our conscious awareness.

No, what he needs to appreciate is that by coming up with the label "spiritual" you can populate that space with anything that pops into your head, however undefined, however unqualified, however irrational. It doesn't matter because it's all "it's magic innit".

And the problem with deploying that Get Out of Jail Free card (apart that is from its idiocy) is that you cannot then deny "it's magic innit" to anyone else, about anything else. You don't believe in leprechauns? That's because your flawed logic and limited acceptance of evidence can't grasp that they're magic too. Job done!   

[Stranger]

Here we go round and round again...

But it is not driven by the past.

To the extent a choice is not entirely due to the past, it is not due to the past and is therefore due to nothing (random).

It is aware of the past, but exists and acts in the present.

The present is strictly non-existent, and colloquially irrelevant.

You need to appreciate the nature and power which emanates from our conscious awareness.

"It's magic, innit?"

[ekim]

But it is not driven by the past.
It is aware of the past, but exists and acts in the present.
You need to appreciate the nature and power which emanates from our conscious awareness.

Here's another view Alan ........ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0ztlIAYTCU

[SusanDoris]

Here's another view Alan ........ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0ztlIAYTCU

I got as far as when Heisenberg was mentioned.  There are too many ifs in the film trying to be really trendy and ending up, in my opinion, losing credibility. The thing that I am sceptical about is that 'everything is information'. There was GH Author of the Month earlier this year who kept saying this, while at the same time informing us that she has been in communication with spirit beings since the age of 3. she may have some good science going on here and there, but anyone with views like that  should be heard with a large pinch of salt

[Stranger]

Here's another view Alan ........ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0ztlIAYTCU

Woo Warning

This is a video from an organisation called "Quantum Gravity Research", which sounds good until to find out that its "Research Director" and founder, one Klee Irwin, is a woo peddler and fraudster.

[jeremyp]

But it is not driven by the past.
It is aware of the past, but exists and acts in the present.

What in the present drives a soul’s decision?

The present is an instant in time. If you are aware of something, it happened in the past.

You need to appreciate the nature and power which emanates from our conscious awareness.

That’s the same as saying “it’s magic”. Concentrate on answering the questions.

I see I was ninja’d on this.

[torridon]

I have never claimed that our choices are free from cause and effect.
In order to enable freedom, they must be free from physical cause and effect.

Stop playing word games.  There is no such thing as physical cause and effect.  There is just cause and effect. Adding in 'physical' will not make something logical, illogical, or vice versa.  If we were to be free from cause and effect then our behaviours would be random.  This is simple undeniable logic.

[SusanDoris]

Woo Warning

This is a video from an organisation called "Quantum Gravity Research", which sounds good until to find out that its "Research Director" and founder, one Klee Irwin, is a woo peddler and fraudster.

I wish the woo warning had accompanied the link!! Because it was in the post it was, I listened for longer than I would have done, waiting to get past the wince-inducing, cartoony stuff for something authoritative.
I learnt, however, a little bit more than I needed to about the stuff that's on the internet. *sad shake of head*

[torridon]

What I am saying is that the soul defines what I am.
The soul is that which perceives in my present.
The soul is that which invokes my choices in my present.

You can't see the irony of someone claiming we have no 'definition' for conscious awareness happily accepting 'souls' which have zero definition and zero justification from evidence.  Talk about double standards !

[Roses]

There is no evidence that the so called 'soul' exists in the religious sense of that word. Human awareness might be more developed than that of animals of other species (Trump being an exception, of course  ), but we are still animals, a product of the evolutionary process, imo.

[ekim]

I wish the woo warning had accompanied the link!! Because it was in the post it was, I listened for longer than I would have done, waiting to get past the wince-inducing, cartoony stuff for something authoritative.
I learnt, however, a little bit more than I needed to about the stuff that's on the internet. *sad shake of head*

Sorry about that, Susan.  It was intended for Alan but Stranger gave the game away.  I was hoping to illustrate how what can appear to be superficially authentic and presented as based upon science and mathematics can hoodwink people into a belief system.  Woo and fake news is becoming a recognised feature of the Internet era and needs to be questioned.  Similarly the potential for fake news in religious scripture of some 2000 years ago needs to be questioned even more, especially as it has a long standing grip on mass mind.  The 'freedom' which should be focused upon is that which frees from mind manipulation rather than adds to it, which, to link it with this topic, is basically what Jesus probably intended to do.

[SusanDoris]

Sorry about that, Susan.  It was intended for Alan but Stranger gave the game away.  I was hoping to illustrate how what can appear to be superficially authentic and presented as based upon science and mathematics can hoodwink people into a belief system.  Woo and fake news is becoming a recognised feature of the Internet era and needs to be questioned.  Similarly the potential for fake news in religious scripture of some 2000 years ago needs to be questioned even more, especially as it has a long standing grip on mass mind.  The 'freedom' which should be focused upon is that which frees from mind manipulation rather than adds to it, which, to link it with this topic, is basically what Jesus probably intended to do.

I'm afraid AB is completely deaf to all logical and rational thinking on the subject of God/soul/beliefs/etc. An advantage I suppose of the internet is that more of us nowadays know more of the rubbish, indoctrination, manipulative videos, etc etc than in pre-internet times, but that also makes us realise how much bigger is the mountain of  misinformation available that has to be  climbed.

[bluehillside Retd.]

torri,

You can't see the irony of someone claiming we have no 'definition' for conscious awareness happily accepting 'souls' which have zero definition and zero justification from evidence.  Talk about double standards !

Something that's been pointed out to him quite often. His Get Out of Jail Free card though is this word "spiritual" (also incidentally undefined, unidentifiable, non-investigable etc), by which he means something like, "no matter how irrational my claims are they're "spiritual" so anything I assert them to be must be true cos it's magic innit!"