Searching for GOD...

[Stranger]

I know I have asked this before, but I do not recall getting any feasible answer:

What can possibly invoke the conscious act of "trying" within endless chains of unavoidable cause and effect?
What is it within me that is capable of "trying"?

Evasion noted.

You've been given far, far more coherent answers to this question than self-contradictory magic. Matthew 7:5.

[Alan Burns]

So how do you choose ?  This is what you aren't addressing.

It is all defined by the source of conscious choice.
You seem to claim the source disappears back to the beginning of time through endless chains of events entirely determined by previous events.
I claim the source of choice is within you.

[Gordon]

Of course you can't change your own personal likes and dislikes.  This has nothing to do with the power of free will.
You are consciously aware of your likes and dislikes, and they can influence your conscious choices, but they do not dictate your conscious choices.  You still have the power to choose.

You're waffling, and indulging in equivocation, but you still have the problem that I can't use this 'power.' to override my revulsion. I may be aware of my revulsion but what produces that response clearly isn't under my conscious control, so that even if I can choose to avoid mayonnaise I don't have the 'power' to choose not to react to that noxious substance as I do and decide that I like mayonnaise.

In other words, my food choices are dictated by a personal trait that is outwith my conscious control (or awareness, or whatever your term du jour is) so that the food choices I am free to make are determined/constrained/dictated by a prior condition involving a personal trait that I can't consciously overcome.

As such, my food choices aren't quite as free as you contend, and I'd say this routine example kicks your pet theory into touch. 

[Alan Burns]

Why not? Why according to your scheme don't we have the "free" will to like Marmite one day and dislike it the next?

You seem confused about the Christian view of human free will as defined in scripture.
It allows us to choose between good and evil.
It has nothing at all to do with your personal like or dislike of Marmite.

[Stranger]

It is all defined by the source of conscious choice.
You seem to claim the source disappears back to the beginning of time through endless chains of events entirely determined by previous events.
I claim the source of choice is within you.

More mindless mantras. Of course the choice is made within you but either you make that choice entirely because of reasons that go back to your nature, nurture, and experience (that is, the things that made you the person you are) or some part of it wasn't anything to do with you at all (random).

[Gordon]

You seem confused about the Christian view of human free will as defined in scripture.

Which, based on your contributions here, is where you are going wrong: trying ditching the Christian view/scripture and doing a bit of critical thinking.

It allows us to choose between good and evil.

Again, maybe it is time to ditch the childish superstitions

It has nothing at all to do with your personal like or dislike of Marmite.

Of course it does, silly, unless your like or dislike of something is always a random reaction.

[Alan Burns]

More mindless mantras. Of course the choice is made within you but either you make that choice entirely because of reasons that go back to your nature, nurture, and experience (that is, the things that made you the person you are) or some part of it wasn't anything to do with you at all (random).

Then it is not a conscious choice - just an unavoidable reaction to past events beyond my conscious control.
So I ask again -
What is it within me that can possibly invoke an action to "try" within chains of unavoidable reactions?

[Sebastian Toe]

So I ask again -
What is it within me that can possibly invoke an action to "try" within chains of unavoidable reactions?

Let's say the answer is....don't know.

Your answer to how your soul works is also...don't know.

Now what?

[Stranger]

Then it is not a conscious choice...

Both a false dilemma and an appeal to consequences fallacies (illogical thinking). Why can't it be both? If the entire contents of your mind (conscious and unconscious) is the result of the past, then there is no conflict at all.

The only logical alternative is that part of your mind is random.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

You seem confused about the Christian view of human free will as defined in scripture.

You do this a lot – you’re asked how you would justify your belief “god”, and instead you tell us what this supposed god thinks or wants. Why on earth would I care what “the Christian view of human free will as defined in scripture” is when we’re trying to get whether there’s any reason to take it seriously in the first place?
 

It allows us to choose between good and evil.

So you assert.

It has nothing at all to do with your personal like or dislike of Marmite.

Why not? You’ve asserted into existence a “soul” that apparently needs to consult our “memory banks” (sic) and is “influenced” by what it finds there, but which by some entirely unknown process outwith all spatial, temporal and logical constraints also makes executive decisions of its own nonetheless. Why then would it not be able to change our minds about what we think of Marmite just as much as it supposedly dictates what we think about everything else?       

[torridon]

It is all defined by the source of conscious choice.
You seem to claim the source disappears back to the beginning of time through endless chains of events entirely determined by previous events.
I claim the source of choice is within you.

Typical Burns evasion, you answered a question I didn't ask - I didn't ask who or what makes a choice, I asked you, how you resolve choice.  Try again, this time without evasion.

[Alan Burns]

Both a false dilemma and an appeal to consequences fallacies (illogical thinking). Why can't it be both? If the entire contents of your mind (conscious and unconscious) is the result of the past, then there is no conflict at all.

The only logical alternative is that part of your mind is random.

Or part of me is capable of conscious interaction as oppose to reaction.
The fact that you can't explain it using your own limited knowledge can't take away the reality of my conscious ability to determine my thoughts, words and actions.

[Alan Burns]

Let's say the answer is....don't know.

Your answer to how your soul works is also...don't know.

Now what?

So let us stick to what I do know, which is my own conscious ability to control what I do, think or say.

[torridon]

Or part of me is capable of conscious interaction as oppose to reaction.
The fact that you can't explain it using your own limited knowledge can't take away the reality of my conscious ability to determine my thoughts, words and actions.

But your words and actions derive from your thoughts and you cannot determine which thoughts to have.

[Nearly Sane]

So let us stick to what I do know, which is my own conscious ability to control what I do, think or say.

You've created your usualunfiniteregress here. To control what you think requires a thought which would need to be controlled by a thought which would need to be contolled by a thought etc etc.

[Alan Burns]

Both a false dilemma and an appeal to consequences fallacies (illogical thinking). Why can't it be both? If the entire contents of your mind (conscious and unconscious) is the result of the past, then there is no conflict at all.

The conflict is this:
You claim that everything must be defined by events that have already occurred.
Your conscious awareness has no control over past events.
There can be no conscious influence over the past events which determine a choice.
Therefore no possibility of conscious choice

[Alan Burns]

You've created your usualunfiniteregress here. To control what you think requires a thought which would need to be controlled by a thought which would need to be contolled by a thought etc etc.

No.
The regress stops with the power of my human soul to invoke a conscious act of will, rather than an unavoidable reaction to the past.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

So let us stick to what I do know, which is my own conscious ability to control what I do, think or say.

You don't "know" that at all - you only perceive it. To claim knowledge you need some justifying reasoning to get from subjective perception to objective reality - you know, the question you keep avoiding. 

[Nearly Sane]

No.
The regress stops with the power of my human soul to invoke a conscious act of will, rather than an unavoidable reaction to the past.

That's just gibberish.

[Alan Burns]

But your words and actions derive from your thoughts and you cannot determine which thoughts to have.

So you keep saying.
So what invokes my determination to repeatedly point out that your own posts show clear evidence of your own ability to think up your own replies?

[Stranger]

The conflict is this:
You claim that everything must be defined by events that have already occurred.
Your conscious awareness has no control over past events.
There can be no conscious influence over the past events which determine a choice.
Therefore no possibility of conscious choice

This is just begging the question - your "conscious awareness" itself is either the result of the past or it is, in part, random. You are just assuming your conclusion that "conscious awareness" is something separate from chains cause and effect  that go back to the past.

[Stranger]

So what invokes my determination to repeatedly point out that your own posts show clear evidence of your own ability to think up your own replies?

Who do you think is claiming that anybody doesn't think up their replies?

What is absolutely clear (to anybody thinking logically about it), however, is that nobody's posts can possibility be evidence that they could have done differently (let alone without randomness).

[torridon]

So you keep saying.
So what invokes my determination to repeatedly point out that your own posts show clear evidence of your own ability to think up your own replies?

Cause and effect.  Your intention to reply derives from having read a previous post. You cannot just choose to form an intention for no reason, out of thin air, that would be random, and we aren't random. You cannot just choose which thought to think next - all thoughts that we have happen due to a cause.

[torridon]

No.
The regress stops with the power of my human soul to invoke a conscious act of will, rather than an unavoidable reaction to the past.

If the regress stops with human mind, that would define human mind as random.  You're just dancing around rather facing straightforward logic.

[SusanDoris]

The conflict is this:
You claim that everything must be defined by events that have already occurred.
Your conscious awareness has no control over past events.
There can be no conscious influence over the past events which determine a choice.
Therefore no possibility of conscious choice

And in my opinion you persist in defining the word define incorrectly most of the time.