Author Topic: Searching for GOD...  (Read 3906529 times)

Alan Burns

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10216
  • I lay it down of my own free will. John 10:18
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #35375 on: March 20, 2019, 01:43:26 PM »
Of course they do: according to you we are born with the 'God' given gift of 'free will', so you most definitely start with 'God' and proceed on that basis.

No.
I start with the realisation that I have freewill.
I then look at the consequences of this reality.
The truth will set you free  - John 8:32
Truth is not an abstraction, but a person - Edith Stein
Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. - CS Lewis
Joy is the Gigantic Secret of Christians - GK Chesterton

wigginhall

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 17730
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #35376 on: March 20, 2019, 01:44:55 PM »
Just observing what you deem to be evidence of perception in other living creatures does not offer any explanation of what comprises perception or how it works.  Perception is not reaction.  It is simply an awareness of the data produced by our physical senses.  Out brains can be programmed to physically react to this data, but this reaction will not require (or indicate) conscious awareness of the data.

This is getting quite close to Descartes' idea that animals are machines, which don't think or feel.  I assume that this was tied up with his view of souls, which animals lack.   I suppose this was essential to Christians of the time, who saw humans as specially endowed.   Ah well, only 300 years out of date.
They were the footprints of a gigantic hound!

Gordon

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 18277
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #35377 on: March 20, 2019, 01:49:31 PM »
I start with the realisation that I have freewill.

So you start from what you describe as a 'gift' from 'God': even then your version of 'freewill' is an illogical mess, so if that it your start point no wonder you're as mixed up as you are.

Quote
I then look at the consequences of this reality.

Then your judgment of reality is highly suspect.

Alan Burns

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10216
  • I lay it down of my own free will. John 10:18
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #35378 on: March 20, 2019, 03:00:20 PM »
So you start from what you describe as a 'gift' from 'God': even then your version of 'freewill' is an illogical mess, so if that it your start point no wonder you're as mixed up as you are.

Then your judgment of reality is highly suspect.
No.
I start with the realisation that I have freewill - the freedom to choose my own thoughts, words and actions.  This is reality.

I claim it to be a gift from God because there is no possible way that my freedom choose my own thoughts, words and actions can exist within a material world where every event is either physically predetermined by other events, or is a spontaneous random event.
The truth will set you free  - John 8:32
Truth is not an abstraction, but a person - Edith Stein
Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. - CS Lewis
Joy is the Gigantic Secret of Christians - GK Chesterton

Roses

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 7990
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #35379 on: March 20, 2019, 03:05:48 PM »
No.
I start with the realisation that I have freewill - the freedom to choose my own thoughts, words and actions.  This is reality.

I claim it to be a gift from God because there is no possible way that my freedom choose my own thoughts, words and actions can exist within a material world where every event is either physically predetermined by other events, or is a spontaneous random event.


In your opinion, although you can't provide any evidence to substantiate your claim.
« Last Edit: March 20, 2019, 03:31:34 PM by Littleroses »
"At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them."

bluehillside Retd.

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 19492
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #35380 on: March 20, 2019, 03:27:00 PM »
AB,

Quote
I start with the realisation that I have freewill - the freedom to choose my own thoughts, words and actions.  This is reality.

No, it's just a reality - the one you get if you rely just on your perception for your explanatory model and don't investigate that claim. When people do investigate though using the tools of reason and evidence that perception alone cannot provide the only logically coherent explanatory model is a different one.   
"Don't make me come down there."

God

BeRational

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 8645
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #35381 on: March 20, 2019, 03:27:47 PM »
No.
I start with the realisation that I have freewill - the freedom to choose my own thoughts, words and actions.  This is reality.

I claim it to be a gift from God because there is no possible way that my freedom choose my own thoughts, words and actions can exist within a material world where every event is either physically predetermined by other events, or is a spontaneous random event.

Argument from personal incredulity. Logic fail in your argument, so your argument needs changing.
I see gullible people, everywhere!

wigginhall

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 17730
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #35382 on: March 20, 2019, 03:30:46 PM »
It's a fake argument in any case.   AB is obviously starting with God, and looking for some God of the gaps argument, working backwards. .
They were the footprints of a gigantic hound!

BeRational

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 8645
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #35383 on: March 20, 2019, 03:37:36 PM »
No.
I start with the realisation that I have freewill - the freedom to choose my own thoughts, words and actions.  This is reality.

I claim it to be a gift from God because there is no possible way that my freedom choose my own thoughts, words and actions can exist within a material world where every event is either physically predetermined by other events, or is a spontaneous random event.

How do you know it is not a gift from Pixies or Leprechauns, or advanced Aliens or Thor or Zeus or Wotan or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

How did you decide which go gave the gift?
I see gullible people, everywhere!

Sebastian Toe

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 7719
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #35384 on: March 20, 2019, 03:47:03 PM »
No.
I start with the realisation that I have freewill - the freedom to choose my own thoughts, words and actions.  This is reality.

I claim it to be a gift from God because there is no possible way that my freedom choose my own thoughts, words and actions can exist within a material world where every event is either physically predetermined by other events, or is a spontaneous random event.
Thank you for demonstrating  the workings of a biological brain making choices entirely under deterministic principles with no magic, logic free, fantasy ridden soul required.
"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends.'
Albert Einstein

bluehillside Retd.

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 19492
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #35385 on: March 20, 2019, 04:11:34 PM »
Wiggs,

Quote
It's a fake argument in any case.   AB is obviously starting with God, and looking for some God of the gaps argument, working backwards. .

Yes, but he could never be honest about that because it'd blow his evangelising out of the window. Instead he has to pretend that assertions, false arguments, personal incredulity etc are "logical deductions" that lead inexorably to his (but only his) god. It's fundamentally dishonest, but he seems determined to cling to the ship even as it's fatally holed below the waterline.   
« Last Edit: March 20, 2019, 04:26:25 PM by bluehillside Retd. »
"Don't make me come down there."

God

torridon

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10210
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #35386 on: March 20, 2019, 04:21:21 PM »
No.
I start with the realisation that I have freewill - the freedom to choose my own thoughts, words and actions.  This is reality.

I claim it to be a gift from God because there is no possible way that my freedom choose my own thoughts, words and actions can exist within a material world where every event is either physically predetermined by other events, or is a spontaneous random event.

See #35372.

We cannot, at base, choose our thoughts.  It's not like we've got a wardrobe full of thoughts we can open up and select one to think.  it doesn't work like that.  Thoughts occur, they are not chosen, controlled or manipulated.  Thoughts cross our minds, and they are usually triggered by prior thoughts, sometimes by new events.

wigginhall

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 17730
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #35387 on: March 20, 2019, 04:53:21 PM »
Wiggs,

Yes, but he could never be honest about that because it'd blow his evangelising out of the window. Instead he has to pretend that assertions, false arguments, personal incredulity etc are "logical deductions" that lead inexorably to his (but only his) god. It's fundamentally dishonest, but he seems determined to cling to the ship even as it's fatally holed below the waterline.

At first, the dishonesty is startling, as it's so transparent, like the kid denying eating the chocolate, with it all over his face.  But I suppose you start to get used to it.  What a weird upside down world. 
They were the footprints of a gigantic hound!

Alan Burns

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10216
  • I lay it down of my own free will. John 10:18
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #35388 on: March 20, 2019, 04:57:35 PM »
AB,

No, it's just a reality - the one you get if you rely just on your perception for your explanatory model and don't investigate that claim. When people do investigate though using the tools of reason and evidence that perception alone cannot provide the only logically coherent explanatory model is a different one.
I think of an action.
I choose to do it
I think of a word.
I choose to write it.
This is reality.

How can anyone choose to start an investigation into the reality of their freedom to choose if they have no freedom to choose? What processes initiate and drive this investigation?  If, as you claim, such investigation must be predetermined in our subconscious before we are aware of it - what takes responsibility for the workings of our subconscious?  How can we possibly verify it to be correct within an environment which comprises nothing but inevitable physically defined reactions?

Your so called explanation poses far more questions that it explains.
The truth will set you free  - John 8:32
Truth is not an abstraction, but a person - Edith Stein
Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. - CS Lewis
Joy is the Gigantic Secret of Christians - GK Chesterton

Alan Burns

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10216
  • I lay it down of my own free will. John 10:18
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #35389 on: March 20, 2019, 05:05:36 PM »
See #35372.

We cannot, at base, choose our thoughts.  It's not like we've got a wardrobe full of thoughts we can open up and select one to think.  it doesn't work like that.  Thoughts occur, they are not chosen, controlled or manipulated.  Thoughts cross our minds, and they are usually triggered by prior thoughts, sometimes by new events.
Do you honestly believe that you had no conscious control over the choice of words used in your post?

Can you not see that you are consciously trying to distort reality to fit in with your concept of everything being predetermined by physical reactions to previous events?
The truth will set you free  - John 8:32
Truth is not an abstraction, but a person - Edith Stein
Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. - CS Lewis
Joy is the Gigantic Secret of Christians - GK Chesterton

Alan Burns

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10216
  • I lay it down of my own free will. John 10:18
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #35390 on: March 20, 2019, 05:14:07 PM »
How do you know it is not a gift from Pixies or Leprechauns, or advanced Aliens or Thor or Zeus or Wotan or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

How did you decide which go gave the gift?
I presume that the gift of our consciously driven freedom must come from a source which also has consciously driven freedom to creatively interact with this material universe.  I presume this source to be God, the Creator of our universe.
« Last Edit: March 20, 2019, 05:20:13 PM by Alan Burns »
The truth will set you free  - John 8:32
Truth is not an abstraction, but a person - Edith Stein
Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. - CS Lewis
Joy is the Gigantic Secret of Christians - GK Chesterton

bluehillside Retd.

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 19492
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #35391 on: March 20, 2019, 05:16:55 PM »
AB,

Quote
I think of an action.
I choose to do it
I think of a word.
I choose to write it.
This is reality.

How can anyone choose to start an investigation into the reality of their freedom to choose if they have no freedom to choose? What processes initiate and drive this investigation?  If, as you claim, such investigation must be predetermined in our subconscious before we are aware of it - what takes responsibility for the workings of our subconscious?  How can we possibly verify it to be correct within an environment which comprises nothing but inevitable physically defined reactions?

More bilge. As torri says, choice isn't like a box of options that you open and then select from by some unknown process. For that to be the case you'd have to invent a separate "you" to do the choosing, and then you'd have to find a way to get this separate you off the hook of itself acting neither deterministically nor randomly. You know, the problem you always just ignore. 

Quote
Your so called explanation poses far more questions that it explains.

But your option of "it's magic" opens by magnitudes countless more problems than the gaps in the incomplete answer we do have. Do you not think that having some answers is a better bet than having no answers at all?

As you just ignored it last time, here's a basic question for you: can you see that you would perceive a separate "you" doing the choosing in exactly the same way you would perceive an integrated you that's a self-aware naturalistic organism?

And if you can see that the two perceptions would be identical at an experiential level, why then opt for the explanatory model that's relies on magic over the one that relies on reason and evidence?   

 

 
« Last Edit: March 20, 2019, 05:27:13 PM by bluehillside Retd. »
"Don't make me come down there."

God

Gordon

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 18277
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #35392 on: March 20, 2019, 05:21:22 PM »
I presume that the gift of our consciously driven freedom must come from a source which also has consciously driven freedom to creatively interact with this material universe.  I presume this source to be God.

I presume that it is your presumption of 'God' that is screwing up your thinking.

torridon

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10210
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #35393 on: March 20, 2019, 05:37:41 PM »
Do you honestly believe that you had no conscious control over the choice of words used in your post?

Can you not see that you are consciously trying to distort reality to fit in with your concept of everything being predetermined by physical reactions to previous events?

Your understanding of how mind works lacks subtlety and insight.  I know tens of thousands of English words, but I cannot keep them in my conscious mind all the time; such an approach would be debilitating. I summon words from memory as needed, I do not consciously choose which particular word to recall from memory next, as that would imply that the word is already in conscious mind.  This is the subtle reality of how minds work, although we do not need to understand this in order to speak or write, it all goes on without any noticeable awkwardness or lag.  What you need to remember is conscious mind is tiny and subconscious mind is vast and particular information is pushed from the subconscious more than it is pulled from conscious.

Sebastian Toe

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 7719
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #35394 on: March 20, 2019, 05:39:44 PM »
I presume that the gift of our consciously driven freedom must come from a source which also has consciously driven freedom to creatively interact with this material universe.  I presume this source to be God, the Creator of our universe.
Is it not even possible that God created you in such a way that your biological brain makes choices entirely under deterministic principles with no magic, logic free, fantasy ridden soul required?
Not possible at all?
"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends.'
Albert Einstein

Alan Burns

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10216
  • I lay it down of my own free will. John 10:18
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #35395 on: March 20, 2019, 06:21:00 PM »
AB,

More bilge. As torri says, choice isn't like a box of options that you open and then select from by some unknown process. For that to be the case you'd have to invent a separate "you" to do the choosing, and then you'd have to find a way to get this separate you off the hook of itself acting neither deterministically nor randomly. You know, the problem you always just ignore. 

But your option of "it's magic" opens by magnitudes countless more problems than the gaps in the incomplete answer we do have. Do you not think that having some answers is a better bet than having no answers at all?

As you just ignored it last time, here's a basic question for you: can you see that you would perceive of a separate "you" doing the choosing in exactly the same way you would perceive an integrated you that's a self-aware naturalistic organism?

And if you can see that the perception would be identically at an experiential level, why then opt for the one that's relies on magic over the one that relies on reason and evidence?   

 
An entirely material "me" would be incapable of making choices.  Everything it does would be entirely predefined by past events.  The only way to introduce consciously driven choice is to provide a conscious means of control which is not shackled to physically predefined material reactions.  Such a means of control, by its nature, would not rely on any other means of conscious control because it would have the conscious power to initiate an interaction in order to carry out its choice
The truth will set you free  - John 8:32
Truth is not an abstraction, but a person - Edith Stein
Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. - CS Lewis
Joy is the Gigantic Secret of Christians - GK Chesterton

bluehillside Retd.

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 19492
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #35396 on: March 20, 2019, 06:27:58 PM »
AB,

Quote
An entirely material "me" would be incapable of making choices.  Everything it does would be entirely predefined by past events.  The only way to introduce consciously driven choice is to provide a conscious means of control which is not shackled to physically predefined material reactions.  Such a means of control, by its nature, would not rely on any other means of conscious control because it would have the conscious power to initiate an interaction in order to carry out its choice

Or, to put it another way: magic. Thing is though, your solution of magic and the rational one of determinism would be perceived in exactly the same way.   

Why then opt for magic over rationalism when all perception will give you is the same experience of each, whereas using reason to investigate the claims gives you different explanations for each? Oh, and and why do you keep running away from this question?
« Last Edit: March 20, 2019, 07:42:16 PM by bluehillside Retd. »
"Don't make me come down there."

God

wigginhall

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 17730
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #35397 on: March 20, 2019, 06:46:36 PM »
Spot on.  "Conscious means of control not shackled to material reactions", is magic.  After that, anything goes, as we have seen with AB.

The comical thing is that the magic controller could be anything, the megaliths of Titan, for example.  But now AB will tell you solemnly that it fits Christian ideas of God.  What a surprise!
« Last Edit: March 20, 2019, 06:59:03 PM by wigginhall »
They were the footprints of a gigantic hound!

jeremyp

  • Admin Support
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 32521
  • Blurb
    • Sincere Flattery: A blog about computing
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #35398 on: March 20, 2019, 08:02:03 PM »
How can you show that internal awareness can be generated by data processing?  You cannot presume internal awareness by observing physical reactions.  Awareness does not require reaction, so how can it possible be assumed to be generated by reaction?  Without any definition of what comprises an entity of awareness, you will never be able to presume what manifests awareness.

So explain to me why I should presume that you (or anybody else on this forum) have internal awareness?
This post and all of JeremyP's posts words certified 100% divinely inspired* -- signed God.
*Platinum infallibility package, terms and conditions may apply

Alan Burns

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10216
  • I lay it down of my own free will. John 10:18
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #35399 on: March 20, 2019, 08:16:22 PM »
I presume that it is your presumption of 'God' that is screwing up your thinking.
Then you presume wrong.
It is the contemplation of my ability to think which leads me to the inevitable conclusion that I comprise more than mere flesh and blood.
The truth will set you free  - John 8:32
Truth is not an abstraction, but a person - Edith Stein
Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. - CS Lewis
Joy is the Gigantic Secret of Christians - GK Chesterton