Searching for GOD...

[ProfessorDavey]

There are many reasons.
A personal relationship exists in prayer.
Many answers to prayer - some truly miraculous.
Many, many personal witness stories about God in other people's lives.
Profound revelations found in scripture.
Discovery of my own spiritual nature.
The miracle of free will, (which many choose to deny).
The miracle of life itself.
The knowledge that none of the above could possibly come into my awareness through deterministic material reactions alone.

Which many people who hold completely different faith positions to you might also opine with equal (or greater vigour).

None of this proves anything beyond the fact that you have a strongly held person belief - good for you. If you want to take it beyond personal belief (in other words beyond true for you) then you'll need to provide some objective evidence. A good starting point would be objective evidence that god actually exists.

[Gordon]

There are many reasons.
A personal relationship exists in prayer.
Many answers to prayer - some truly miraculous.
Many, many personal witness stories about God in other people's lives.
Profound revelations found in scripture.
Discovery of my own spiritual nature.
The miracle of free will, (which many choose to deny).
The miracle of life itself.
The knowledge that none of the above could possibly come into my awareness through deterministic material reactions alone.

The above is just you wallowing about in your trademark incredulity, Alan.

[Stranger]

There are many reasons.
A personal relationship exists in prayer.
Many answers to prayer - some truly miraculous.
Many, many personal witness stories about God in other people's lives.

Just the same sort of thing as every other faith, then. At least most of the people who claim such things are wrong.

Profound revelations found in scripture.

A joke?

Discovery of my own spiritual nature.

More blind faith.

The miracle of free will, (which many choose to deny).

Your self-contradictory, baseless nonsense, that you can't explain, let alone provide any evidence or reasoning for, you mean?

The miracle of life itself.

Other explanations are available - both superstitious like yours and scientific. The latter have the benefit of actual evidence.

The knowledge that none of the above could possibly come into my awareness through deterministic material reactions alone.

Baseless assertion.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

There are many reasons.

Excellent! OK, I’ve got the Tizer and Twiglets in so let’s have a look at them shall we?

A personal relationship exists in prayer.

Yikes. You can think you have “a personal relationship” with anything you like I suppose but that’s not a reason to think there’s anyone on the other end of the line. Fail one.

Many answers to prayer - some truly miraculous.

Big claim, so now show how you’d reason your way to a prayer being answered rather than to a naturalistic explanation. Fail two.

Many, many personal witness stories about God in other people's lives.

What you mean is that many people have believed that the faith beliefs of others have been well-founded. Funnily enough, the same is true though of any faith belief in anything. Fail three.

Profound revelations found in scripture.

Profundity is a subjective response, not evidence of anything. Others find as much profundity (or more) in literature or philosophy or poetry too. Fail four.

Discovery of my own spiritual nature.

See above. Fail five.

The miracle of free will, (which many choose to deny).

Explained away many times, even though you just ignore the explanations. Fail six.

The miracle of life itself.

Except you have no argument at all to suggest that it is a “miracle” rather than a natural phenomenon. Fail seven.

The knowledge that none of the above could possibly come into my awareness through deterministic material reactions alone.

That’s not knowledge though – it’s just a badly though out faith claim contradicted by reason and evidence. Fail eight.

(Quietly puts the cap back on the Tizer and re-seals the bag of Twiglets.)Not looking good is it?

[ippy]

There are many reasons.
A personal relationship exists in prayer.
Many answers to prayer - some truly miraculous.
Many, many personal witness stories about God in other people's lives.
Profound revelations found in scripture.
Discovery of my own spiritual nature.
The miracle of free will, (which many choose to deny).
The miracle of life itself.
The knowledge that none of the above could possibly come into my awareness through deterministic material reactions alone.

Puts me in mind of the South Sea Islanders 'Cargo Cultists' where they fashion some pieces of wood to look like a desktop microphone etc etc and on and on.

I suppose there'll always be a few that for various reasons can't let go, no matter how much reason gets thrown at them.

Commiserations Alan, ippy.

[Outrider]

There is only one truth.

Probably.

There is only one God.

A possibility - you've not offered enough for that to be the logical conclusion, though.

There is ample evidence of mankind's need to search.

I think you're confusing a drive or tendency to search and a need.

Many may think they have found it, but they can't all be right.

And, though you don't directly identify it, they may all be wrong.

Those of us who have discovered it can never renounce it.

It's almost like you aren't free to choose....

O.

[Outrider]

There are many reasons.

Excellent.

A personal relationship exists in prayer.

You feel there is a 'personal relationship', but there's  nothing objective or externally validatable to support that claim.

Many answers to prayer - some truly miraculous.

And many, many, many more unanswered prayers.  That some events do not have current rational explanations is not evidence a god did it, it's evidence we don't know how it happened.  In many, many instances we do know how it happened, it's entirely natural if rare, and to ascribe it to 'miracle' is to manifestly fail to understand how rare things eventually happen with enough iterations.

Many, many personal witness stories about God in other people's lives.

All just as unverifiable as your 'personal relationship'.

Profound revelations found in scripture.

Third hand accounts poetically translated through several languages and selectively edited by vested interests at several stages since their unclear initial writing... questionable, at best.

Discovery of my own spiritual nature.

Unverifiable, again.

The miracle of free will, (which many choose to deny).

Not only unverifiable, but questionably just inaccurate.

The miracle of life itself.

Again, the lack of current proof of any of the various hypotheses for an entirely natural origin of life on Earth is not evidence for god, it's evidence for a need for a better science budget.

The knowledge that none of the above could possibly come into my awareness through deterministic material reactions alone.

You're conflating profound belief with knowledge.

O.

[Alan Burns]

Explained away many times, even though you just ignore the explanations. Fail six.

I have not ignored these so called explanations.
I have previously pointed out that such explanations would mean that your entire, well thought out, detailed reply to my post would be completely defined in your sub conscious brain activity before you were consciously aware of what you responded.
I rest my case.

[Stranger]

I have not ignored these so called explanations.
I have previously pointed out that such explanations would mean that your entire, well thought out, detailed reply to my post would be completely defined in your sub conscious brain activity before you were consciously aware of what you responded.
I rest my case.

Your "case" consists entirely of misunderstanding and fallacies.

Firstly it's either an argumentum ad consequentiam or just incredulity. Secondly (as has been pointed out many times and you keep on ignoring), the exact role of consciousness, is totally irrelevant to the impossibility of your contradictory assertions about how "freedom" works (no randomness and not entirely defined by its antecedents).

Even if a choice happened entirely in this "conscious awareness" you keep gibbering on about, with no subconscious element at all, your assertions would still contradict each other and your notion of "freedom" would still be impossible.

The fact that you link other people's explanations of why your notion of "freedom" is impossible to conscious or subconscious processes proves beyond doubt that you're not actually paying attention.

[torridon]

I have not ignored these so called explanations.
I have previously pointed out that such explanations would mean that your entire, well thought out, detailed reply to my post would be completely defined in your sub conscious brain activity before you were consciously aware of what you responded.
I rest my case.

So ?  Does that render the explanations incorrect ? What you refer to is simply the way conscious mental processes work in general.  Should I reject my GP's diagnosis on the basis that he gave my symptoms some thought ?

[Alan Burns]

So ?  Does that render the explanations incorrect ?

They just fail to explain how human freedom works.
Freedom cannot exist in a scenario where causes comprise entirely of pre defined reactions.
You cannot explain our freedom to consciously choose thoughts, words and actions by claiming such freedom to be a logical impossibility.

What you refer to is simply the way conscious mental processes work in general.

We know very little about how conscious mental processes work.
What defines conscious awareness?
What defines a thought?
What triggers a conscious choice?
What guides our thoughts?

Should I reject my GP's diagnosis on the basis that he gave my symptoms some thought ?

I would certainly reject any diagnosis which did not involve a GP's freedom to consciously drive his own thought processes.

[Stranger]

They just fail to explain how human freedom works.

You keep on asserting this but never offer anything to back it up.

Freedom cannot exist in a scenario where causes comprise entirely of pre defined reactions.

Not if you define "freedom" by contradictory assertions about how it works.

You cannot explain our freedom to consciously choose thoughts, words and actions by claiming such freedom to be a logical impossibility.

Nobody is claiming that our abilities to choose are logically impossible. What is logically impossible is your assertions about how such choices are made.

You have still provided not one hint of an argument that takes us from our abilities to think and choose to your contradictory assertions about it.

We know very little about how conscious mental processes work.

Yet you make contradictory assertions about how it works without even a hint of justification...

[torridon]

We know very little about how conscious mental processes work.
What defines conscious awareness?
What defines a thought?
What triggers a conscious choice?

It's not as if we have zero insight into these things.  The fact that we do not understand everything should not be an excuse for perpetuating a little circle of ignorance around our lives, as if ignoring pointers from research were some kind of virtue necessary to maintaining an outlook based on magic and myth.  It's not an adult thing to do, it is an anti-learning attitude, fostering and preserving the backward ignorance of earlier times when we could be assimilating new insights into a richer fabric of understanding.

[Alan Burns]

Yet you make contradictory assertions about how it works without even a hint of justification...

I do not claim to know how the human mind works.
I witness to what the human mind does.
It has freedom to make choices driven by conscious human will - not by the entirely predetermined reactions which would exist in a physically controlled material brain.
My contention is in what comprises this human will which is accountable for choosing our thoughts, words and actions.
You seem to be entirely caught up in presuming that human will must comply with the endless chains of cause and effect we observe in material reactions.  You are in denial of the possibility that human will is capable of generating a definitive cause from its conscious state.  The conscious state being an awareness of past events, present events and possible future consequences.  From this awareness, the mind has freedom to choose a course of action.  This is the reality.

[torridon]

I do not claim to know how the human mind works.
I witness to what the human mind does.
It has freedom to make choices driven by conscious human will - not by the entirely predetermined reactions which would exist in a physically controlled material brain.
My contention is in what comprises this human will which is accountable for choosing our thoughts, words and actions.
You seem to be entirely caught up in presuming that human will must comply with the endless chains of cause and effect we observe in material reactions.  You are in denial of the possibility that human will is capable of generating a definitive cause from its conscious state.  The conscious state being an awareness of past events, present events and possible future consequences.  From this awareness, the mind has freedom to choose a course of action.  This is the reality.

The notion that conscious will can be its own cause is a nonsense.  Can you really not understand the circularity in that position ?  If we want to do things, it is for a reason.

[Stranger]

I do not claim to know how the human mind works.
I witness to what the human mind does.

This is simply untrue. You are making baseless and contradictory claims about how it works.

It has freedom to make choices driven by conscious human will - not by the entirely predetermined reactions which would exist in a physically controlled material brain.

This is just a baseless assertion about how human choice works. You have established no logical connection whatsoever between what we experience and this assertion.

And once again you are dishonesty misrepresenting the logical argument against you as being to do with the physical brain.

My contention is in what comprises this human will which is accountable for choosing our thoughts, words and actions.

It is, but this is not the same thing as your silly and contradictory assertions about how it works.

You are in denial of the possibility that human will is capable of generating a definitive cause from its conscious state.

That's because it's nonsensical gibberish.

The conscious state being an awareness of past events, present events and possible future consequences.  From this awareness, the mind has freedom to choose a course of action.  This is the reality.

Once again, there is nothing particularly wrong with this description but there is no logical link between this and how the choice is actually resolved, and it is logically impossible for it to be resolved in a way that is both not fully defined by its antecedents and involves no randomness. That isn't something we experience, it isn't obvious and it isn't demonstrable - it's nonsensical and impossible.

Just to summerise: there is massive hole in what passes for your 'reasoning' that takes us from "we consciously think about stuff and decide" to "our choices are not entirely the result of cause and effect (and involve no randomness)".

Why does the one imply the other - where is the reasoning?

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

I have not ignored these so called explanations.

Yes you have - generally by attempting replies that fail to engage wit the arguments that undo you.

I have previously pointed out that such explanations would mean that...

Like that. What they would mean is neither here nor there as a response to whether or not they're sound. What you're trying here is called the argumentum ad consequentiam - you wrongly think that when the consequence of an argument is to undo a belief you hold a priori then the argument must be wrong. You've had this mistake explained many, many times yet you repeat it over and over again.

Why?

[ippy]

I do not claim to know how the human mind works.
I witness to what the human mind does.
It has freedom to make choices driven by conscious human will - not by the entirely predetermined reactions which would exist in a physically controlled material brain.
My contention is in what comprises this human will which is accountable for choosing our thoughts, words and actions.
You seem to be entirely caught up in presuming that human will must comply with the endless chains of cause and effect we observe in material reactions.  You are in denial of the possibility that human will is capable of generating a definitive cause from its conscious state.  The conscious state being an awareness of past events, present events and possible future consequences.  From this awareness, the mind has freedom to choose a course of action.  This is the reality.

I see you are still totally unable to throw off the indoctrination you've so obviously been subjected to.

Commiserations.

[Alan Burns]

The notion that conscious will can be its own cause is a nonsense.  Can you really not understand the circularity in that position ?  If we want to do things, it is for a reason.

And the reason is conscious human will.

[Alan Burns]

AB,

Yes you have - generally by attempting replies that fail to engage wit the arguments that undo you.

Like that. What they would mean is neither here nor there as a response to whether or not they're sound. What you're trying here is called the argumentum ad consequentiam - you wrongly think that when the consequence of an argument is to undo a belief you hold a priori then the argument must be wrong.

But the obvious conscious effort you put into making this reply proves beyond any doubt that you are not controlled by the inevitable uncontrollable physically predetermined reactions in a material brain.

[Stranger]

But the obvious conscious effort you put into making this reply proves beyond any doubt that you are not controlled by the inevitable uncontrollable physically predetermined reactions in a material brain.

How? You keep on asserting that conscious contemplation and choice making cannot also be the result of cause and effect but you have never once given any reason why it can't.

Where is the reasoning? Where is the first hint of the "sound logic" you keep on saying you have? What are your premisses? What are the logical steps?

Did you look up what sound means in the context of logical arguments? Have a look at this: Validity and Soundness - then tell us again that you have a "sound" argument...

[Gordon]

But the obvious conscious effort you put into making this reply proves beyond any doubt that you are not controlled by the inevitable uncontrollable physically predetermined reactions in a material brain.

Says who?

[Alan Burns]

Says who?

LOGIC

[Alan Burns]

How? You keep on asserting that conscious contemplation and choice making cannot also be the result of cause and effect but you have never once given any reason why it can't.

I have never denied the concept of cause and effect.
My contention is about ultimate cause.
Does an ultimate cause trace back all the way to the singularity of the Big Bang? (physical)
Or does it derive from a conscious act of human will? (non physical)

[Gordon]

LOGIC

From which you are clearly estranged.