| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Ultra" |
| Date: |
04 Jan 2008 09:50:43 PM |
| Object: |
Evil - outweighed by free will |
Subject line says it all.
People claim God does not exist because he/she/it would not allow evil in
the world. The fact of the matter is that if there is any evil, it is
outweighed by the fact the we have free will.
That there is evil in the world does not mean there is no God.
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| User: "Fred Stone" |
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| Title: Re: Evil - outweighed by free will |
15 Jan 2008 06:41:12 AM |
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David Schwartz <davids@webmaster.com> wrote in news:7a80544c-93be-45c4-
8145-23a48c1ccea7@z17g2000hsg.googlegroups.com:
On Jan 15, 3:56 am, Fred Stone <fston...@earthling.com> wrote:
I don't see how we could even define a "mechanism" that doesn't involved
energy inputs.
And yet, it does seem we have such things. Google "strange
entanglement" or "spooky action at a distance" sometime.
I'm taking those into account. Google "decoherence".
--
Fred Stone
aa# 1369
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is
largely a waste of time.
H. L. Mencken
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| User: "Barry OGrady" |
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| Title: Re: Evil - outweighed by free will |
21 Jan 2008 09:01:20 PM |
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On Mon, 14 Jan 2008 23:11:58 -0800 (PST), Dag Yo <sir_roko2@yahoo.com> wrote:
Okay that question of mine was barely in english (sorry about that).
And you top posted, again.
http://www.caliburn.nl/topposting
But i'm not convinced that we could measure mechanisms that do not
involve external energy inputs it as you suggest - since apparently
its impossible to see what these things are doing without stopping
whatever it is they are doing - and it is certainly a possibility that
these particles behave a lot different than any other example you
could think of; so the statement that "we can measure that" might not
be an applicable one to this scale. [and just so you know the
"mechanism" i'm guessing about, would probably best be described as a
"property" rather than an event]
On Jan 14, 10:23 pm, "Denis Loubet" <dlou...@io.com> wrote:
"Dag Yo" <sir_ro...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1b2c4708-e153-432b-a364-d6b395398761@d4g2000prg.googlegroups.com...
And possible mechanisms do not involve that involves external energy
inputs?
No, because we can measure that.
--
Denis Loubet
dlou...@io.comhttp://www.io.com/~dloubethttp://www.ashenempires.com
On Jan 14, 8:01 pm, Fred Stone <fston...@earthling.com> wrote:
Dag Yo <sir_ro...@yahoo.com> wrote
innews:e90006fd-dd19-4dc8-9909-1eafebfc84b0@p69g2000hsa.googlegroups.com:
If we assume that causation involves some sort of energy input to a
quantum system, then yes, we can prove that quantum events are
acausal.
Can you also illustrate that their is neither a possible mechanism
that might explain the observations, nor any specific reason for why
things happen the way they do? Because energy conversions aside, I
don't think I could call it "acausal" unless such quantum events have
neither a pattern to them (which they do) nor a potential explanation
behind them (which should be the case even if it is unknowable).
Well, yes, conservation of mass-energy eliminates any possible mechanism
that involves external energy inputs.
And just because there's a "pattern" (such as the half-life of
radioactive decay) doesn't imply that there must be a cause of each
individual decay event.
--
Fred Stone
aa# 1369
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is
largely a waste of time.
H. L. Mencken
Barry
=====
Home page
http://members.iinet.net.au/~barry.og
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| User: "David Schwartz" |
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| Title: Re: Evil - outweighed by free will |
14 Jan 2008 08:13:11 PM |
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On Jan 14, 4:10 pm, Fred Stone <fston...@earthling.com> wrote:
If we assume that causation involves some sort of energy input to a
quantum system, then yes, we can prove that quantum events are acausal.
I think that's true if and only if you rule out action at a distance
and reverse causality. So long as you allow those, I don't think you
can rule out causation. The energy input could come later or come
elsewhere.
You might argue that reverse causality and action at a distance are
preposterous. Personally, I find them so. But the unfortunate reality
is that if you reject those, you get some things that are at least as
preposterous.
In any event, it's not really clear what "acausal" would mean in that
context. The fact is, we simply don't know an awful lot about how
causation actually works.
What we do know is that previous states constrain, but not fully
determine, future states.
DS
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| User: "Fred Stone" |
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| Title: Re: Evil - outweighed by free will |
14 Jan 2008 09:55:47 PM |
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David Schwartz <davids@webmaster.com> wrote in
news:41530766-74ef-4560-b107-7d15cd391167@m34g2000hsf.googlegroups.com:
On Jan 14, 4:10 pm, Fred Stone <fston...@earthling.com> wrote:
If we assume that causation involves some sort of energy input to a
quantum system, then yes, we can prove that quantum events are
acausal.
I think that's true if and only if you rule out action at a distance
and reverse causality. So long as you allow those, I don't think you
can rule out causation. The energy input could come later or come
elsewhere.
You might argue that reverse causality and action at a distance are
preposterous. Personally, I find them so. But the unfortunate reality
is that if you reject those, you get some things that are at least as
preposterous.
In any event, it's not really clear what "acausal" would mean in that
context. The fact is, we simply don't know an awful lot about how
causation actually works.
What we do know is that previous states constrain, but not fully
determine, future states.
"Reverse causality" that wasn't simply a time-reversed version of
"forward causality" would be a violation of symmetry with respect to
time, as well as of conservation of energy.
"Spooky action at a distance" is a whole other can of worms.
--
Fred Stone
aa# 1369
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is
largely a waste of time. H. L. Mencken
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| User: "David Schwartz" |
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| Title: Re: Evil - outweighed by free will |
15 Jan 2008 12:03:35 AM |
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On Jan 14, 7:55 pm, Fred Stone <fston...@earthling.com> wrote:
"Reverse causality" that wasn't simply a time-reversed version of
"forward causality" would be a violation of symmetry with respect to
time, as well as of conservation of energy.
"Spooky action at a distance" is a whole other can of worms.
The problem is, while QM interpretations presently permit you to chose
your worms, it is not available worm-free. Unfortunately, *none* of
the presently-known interpretations (at least so far as I know)
preserve all of our commonsense notions of time, distance, and
causality.
So you can't make an argument that X is impossible because it implies
reverse causality or action at a distance. We *have* to accept at
least some reverse causality, I'm afraid.
What's amazing is how all the cases where we have what seems to be
reverse causality or action at a distance, the rules are carefully
arrange so that you can't communicate faster than the speed of light.
In many areas, the jury is still out.
The important thing is that you can't rule out free will as violating
causality. We know as sure as we can know almost anything that there
can be cases where more than one macro-outcome can be in perfect
accord with all known laws of physical causality, and we have good
reason to believe this will hold up for all unknown laws as well. (Or,
at least, that if that's not so, we'll have to accept something at
least as odd.)
DS
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| User: "Fred Stone" |
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| Title: Re: Evil - outweighed by free will |
15 Jan 2008 06:08:36 AM |
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David Schwartz <davids@webmaster.com> wrote in news:7aab011e-24ac-449a-
ae73-9f7be7e91d37@s12g2000prg.googlegroups.com:
On Jan 14, 7:55 pm, Fred Stone <fston...@earthling.com> wrote:
"Reverse causality" that wasn't simply a time-reversed version of
"forward causality" would be a violation of symmetry with respect to
time, as well as of conservation of energy.
"Spooky action at a distance" is a whole other can of worms.
The problem is, while QM interpretations presently permit you to chose
your worms, it is not available worm-free. Unfortunately, *none* of
the presently-known interpretations (at least so far as I know)
preserve all of our commonsense notions of time, distance, and
causality.
So you can't make an argument that X is impossible because it implies
reverse causality or action at a distance. We *have* to accept at
least some reverse causality, I'm afraid.
I understand "reverse causality" as a consequence of symmetry with
respect to time. What I'm getting at is that because of that symmetry,
you can't have "reverse causality" without an equivalent "forward
causality". And regardless of "forward" or "reverse" you can't violate
conservation of mass-energy.
What's amazing is how all the cases where we have what seems to be
reverse causality or action at a distance, the rules are carefully
arrange so that you can't communicate faster than the speed of light.
In many areas, the jury is still out.
The important thing is that you can't rule out free will as violating
causality. We know as sure as we can know almost anything that there
can be cases where more than one macro-outcome can be in perfect
accord with all known laws of physical causality, and we have good
reason to believe this will hold up for all unknown laws as well. (Or,
at least, that if that's not so, we'll have to accept something at
least as odd.)
With regards to free will, I would argue that it doesn't have to violate
causality, and I would go further and argue that notions of quantum
"weirdness" aren't even required to make "free will" work even in a
"deterministic" universe.
--
Fred Stone
aa# 1369
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is
largely a waste of time.
H. L. Mencken
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| User: "Michael" |
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| Title: Re: Evil - outweighed by free will |
12 Jan 2008 02:37:49 PM |
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On Fri, 11 Jan 2008 23:14:05 -0800, David Schwartz wrote:
On Jan 10, 1:45 pm, "Denis Loubet" <dlou...@io.com> wrote:
How do you get unforced choices from an utterly mechanical brain forced to
operate according to strict physical law? That would mean you should be able
to get free will from a computer.
The same way you get unforced behavior from an electron in a double-
slit experiment.
I cannot understand how you agree that the brain is a machine, and then turn
around and claim it has free will. It makes no sense.
I'm sorry that you can't understand it, but I don't know how I can be
any clearer than I have been.
DS
An interesting discussion that usually goes nowhere. In fact, it really
doesn't matter whether one invokes religion; the "free will" argument is
hotly debated in religion, maybe more so than among scientists.
It is not reasonable to invoke Quantum Mechanics to describe the behavior
of machines, who by their nature are deterministic. In your other message
you cite the possibility of all the air molecules suddenly NOT being where
you are, making breathing difficult. I do not believe this can happen.
They may WANT to be somewhere else, but the fact is that random collisions
keep any particular molecule from traveling very far, and as they start to
leave your vicinity, it increases the density of air surrounding your
body, which has the effect of reducing obstacles for air molecules that
just happen to be traveling toward your body. Unsurprisingly, this
adjustment takes place at approximately the speed of sound, and in fact
establishes the speed of sound which varies somewhat according to density
and temperature (which affect the rate at which molecules discover each
other and decide to go some other way).
I do not know if the brain has "free will". In fact, I don't know what
"free will" means to any particular person.
I HAVE decided, however, that if you *seem* to have a choice, and a
reasonable chance of actually choosing from among choices, then whether or
not your choice is predestined or known in advance is irrelevant; it is a
test of your character. I had a roommate once declare that we didn't
exist, we were all in God's dream. That may be so, says I, but in that
dream we can act honorably and receive honorable dream rewards, or we can
behave dishonorably, and received dreamworld punishment and shunning from
other dreamworld characters. In other words, whether or not we have
discovered the ultimate answers to the question of life, the universe and
everything; we can *act* on what we know and thereby demonstrate our real,
or virtual, or dreamworld qualities to whomever may be observing.
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| User: "thomas p." |
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| Title: Re: Evil - outweighed by free will |
13 Jan 2008 03:34:06 AM |
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"Michael" <newsuser2@orneveien.org> skrev i en meddelelse
news:pan.2008.01.12.20.37.48.394143@orneveien.org...
On Fri, 11 Jan 2008 23:14:05 -0800, David Schwartz wrote:
On Jan 10, 1:45 pm, "Denis Loubet" <dlou...@io.com> wrote:
How do you get unforced choices from an utterly mechanical brain forced
to
operate according to strict physical law? That would mean you should be
able
to get free will from a computer.
The same way you get unforced behavior from an electron in a double-
slit experiment.
I cannot understand how you agree that the brain is a machine, and then
turn
around and claim it has free will. It makes no sense.
I'm sorry that you can't understand it, but I don't know how I can be
any clearer than I have been.
DS
An interesting discussion that usually goes nowhere. In fact, it really
doesn't matter whether one invokes religion; the "free will" argument is
hotly debated in religion, maybe more so than among scientists.
It only has importance within certain religions. It is not a question
scientists can answer.
It is not reasonable to invoke Quantum Mechanics to describe the behavior
of machines, who by their nature are deterministic. In your other message
you cite the possibility of all the air molecules suddenly NOT being where
you are, making breathing difficult. I do not believe this can happen.
That is irrelevant. Scientists know it can happen. Whether or not it has
any relevance to the question of free will is something else again.
They may WANT to be somewhere else, but the fact is that random collisions
keep any particular molecule from traveling very far, and as they start to
leave your vicinity, it increases the density of air surrounding your
body, which has the effect of reducing obstacles for air molecules that
just happen to be traveling toward your body. Unsurprisingly, this
adjustment takes place at approximately the speed of sound, and in fact
establishes the speed of sound which varies somewhat according to density
and temperature (which affect the rate at which molecules discover each
other and decide to go some other way).
I do not know if the brain has "free will". In fact, I don't know what
"free will" means to any particular person.
I HAVE decided, however, that if you *seem* to have a choice, and a
reasonable chance of actually choosing from among choices, then whether or
not your choice is predestined or known in advance is irrelevant; it is a
test of your character.
If it only seems to be free, it can only seem to be a test of character, and
that ignores the question of why our characters should be tested.
I had a roommate once declare that we didn't
exist, we were all in God's dream. That may be so, says I, but in that
dream we can act honorably and receive honorable dream rewards, or we can
behave dishonorably, and received dreamworld punishment and shunning from
other dreamworld characters. In other words, whether or not we have
discovered the ultimate answers to the question of life, the universe and
everything; we can *act* on what we know and thereby demonstrate our real,
or virtual, or dreamworld qualities to whomever may be observing.
And if Aladdin's lamp exists the finder can have whatever he wants.
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| User: "David Schwartz" |
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| Title: Re: Evil - outweighed by free will |
14 Jan 2008 10:43:39 AM |
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On Jan 12, 12:37 pm, Michael <newsus...@orneveien.org> wrote:
It is not reasonable to invoke Quantum Mechanics to describe the behavior
of machines, who by their nature are deterministic.
Is an electron a machine? An electron is not, by its nature,
deterministic.
One can easily create a non-deterministic "machine" if you want to.
There are commercially-available sources of true random number
generators that are based on radioactive decay. Are these devices
"machines"?
Humans generally construct deterministic machines because this is what
they have historically found to be most useful. But there is no
inherent contradiction in a non-deterministic machine.
You can, of course, add "deterministic" to the definition of a
machine. But then all sorts of things are no longer machines (such as
the physical random number generators) and it becomes an open question
whether a human being is a "machine" or not.
DS
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Evil - outweighed by free will |
14 Jan 2008 10:52:32 AM |
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Is an electron a machine? An electron is not, by its nature,
deterministic.
Well, you definitely cannot know in any way if an electron is
probabilistic in its nature, or just seems probabilistic due to the
limits of measuring phenomena at the quantum level.
An electron might very well be deterministic in itself, and probably
is so.
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| User: "David Schwartz" |
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| Title: Re: Evil - outweighed by free will |
14 Jan 2008 04:20:15 PM |
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On Jan 14, 8:52 am, wrote:
Is an electron a machine? An electron is not, by its nature,
deterministic.
Well, you definitely cannot know in any way if an electron is
probabilistic in its nature, or just seems probabilistic due to the
limits of measuring phenomena at the quantum level.
Really? Do you have some proof that this is so? I mean, can you know
whether or not they'll find Noah's Ark someday? Should we keep open
the possibility that there might be such a thing?
An electron might very well be deterministic in itself, and probably
is so.
All of the evidence we have so far suggests the opposite. You are
welcome to ignore modern science to preserve your a priori beliefs,
but you should be honest enough to admit that this is what you're
doing.
Do you understand the consequences of the "hidden variable" view that
you (knowingly or not) espousing?
DS
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Evil - outweighed by free will |
15 Jan 2008 02:41:52 AM |
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All of the evidence we have so far suggests the opposite.
Evidence? The only evidence you have, suggest that you are limited to
measure phenomena at the quantum level in a probabilistic way. It
doesn't say anything about the nature of the quantum level.
What makes you think quantum mechanics is complete? Why hasn't quantum
mechanics been unified with general relativity? And why did Einstein
disagree with the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics?
Here is a table of a whole lot of interpretations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretation_of_quantum_mechanics#Comparison
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| User: "Dag Yo" |
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| Title: Re: Evil - outweighed by free will |
14 Jan 2008 06:38:31 PM |
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Do you understand the consequences of the "hidden variable" view that
you (knowingly or not) espousing?
I don't, perhaps you could explain these "consequences" to me.
On Jan 14, 2:20 pm, David Schwartz <dav...@webmaster.com> wrote:
On Jan 14, 8:52 am, wrote:
Is an electron a machine? An electron is not, by its nature,
deterministic.
Well, you definitely cannot know in any way if an electron is
probabilistic in its nature, or just seems probabilistic due to the
limits of measuring phenomena at the quantum level.
Really? Do you have some proof that this is so? I mean, can you know
whether or not they'll find Noah's Ark someday? Should we keep open
the possibility that there might be such a thing?
An electron might very well be deterministic in itself, and probably
is so.
All of the evidence we have so far suggests the opposite. You are
welcome to ignore modern science to preserve your a priori beliefs,
but you should be honest enough to admit that this is what you're
doing.
Do you understand the consequences of the "hidden variable" view that
you (knowingly or not) espousing?
DS
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Evil - outweighed by free will |
14 Jan 2008 11:01:36 AM |
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One can easily create a non-deterministic "machine" if you want to.
There are commercially-available sources of true random number
generators that are based on radioactive decay. Are these devices
"machines"?
Just because of the limits of measuring phenomena at the quantum
level, it doesn't necessarily mean that radioactive decay is random in
itself.
Just because you are limited to measure phenomena at the quantum level
in a probabilistic way, it doesn't necessarily mean that the quantum
level isn't deterministic.
.
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| User: "Dag Yo" |
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| Title: Re: Evil - outweighed by free will |
14 Jan 2008 11:10:05 AM |
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It does annoy me that just about everyone can say what I want to say
more clearly, simply, and poetically.
On Jan 14, 9:01 am, wrote:
One can easily create a non-deterministic "machine" if you want to.
There are commercially-available sources of true random number
generators that are based on radioactive decay. Are these devices
"machines"?
Just because of the limits of measuring phenomena at the quantum
level, it doesn't necessarily mean that radioactive decay is random in
itself.
Just because you are limited to measure phenomena at the quantum level
in a probabilistic way, it doesn't necessarily mean that the quantum
level isn't deterministic.
.
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| User: "David Schwartz" |
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| Title: Re: Evil - outweighed by free will |
14 Jan 2008 04:18:50 PM |
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On Jan 14, 9:01 am, wrote:
One can easily create a non-deterministic "machine" if you want to.
There are commercially-available sources of true random number
generators that are based on radioactive decay. Are these devices
"machines"?
Just because of the limits of measuring phenomena at the quantum
level, it doesn't necessarily mean that radioactive decay is random in
itself.
That's a scientific claim that currently has been rejected.
Just because you are limited to measure phenomena at the quantum level
in a probabilistic way, it doesn't necessarily mean that the quantum
level isn't deterministic.
As I said, you are welcome to join the flat earthers and the
creationists and assume that the evidence that supports you view might
turn up some day and might gain some traction. But the current view is
that these things are fundamentally unpredictable and that there are
consequences to this view (such as Bell's Inequality).
DS
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| User: "Barry OGrady" |
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| Title: Re: Evil - outweighed by free will |
21 Jan 2008 09:01:19 PM |
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On Mon, 14 Jan 2008 14:18:50 -0800 (PST), David Schwartz <davids@webmaster.com> wrote:
On Jan 14, 9:01 am, wrote:
One can easily create a non-deterministic "machine" if you want to.
There are commercially-available sources of true random number
generators that are based on radioactive decay. Are these devices
"machines"?
Just because of the limits of measuring phenomena at the quantum
level, it doesn't necessarily mean that radioactive decay is random in
itself.
That's a scientific claim that currently has been rejected.
Just because you are limited to measure phenomena at the quantum level
in a probabilistic way, it doesn't necessarily mean that the quantum
level isn't deterministic.
As I said, you are welcome to join the flat earthers and the
creationists and assume that the evidence that supports you view might
turn up some day and might gain some traction. But the current view is
that these things are fundamentally unpredictable and that there are
consequences to this view (such as Bell's Inequality).
They are said to be unpredictable because we don't see everything.
DS
Barry
=====
Home page
http://members.iinet.net.au/~barry.og
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| User: "Jeckyl" |
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| Title: Re: Evil - outweighed by free will |
21 Jan 2008 09:47:55 PM |
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"Barry OGrady" <god_free_jones@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:qlg7p3hm884nuk199d84djm6t3eg70cka2@4ax.com...
On Mon, 14 Jan 2008 14:18:50 -0800 (PST), David Schwartz
<davids@webmaster.com> wrote:
On Jan 14, 9:01 am, wrote:
One can easily create a non-deterministic "machine" if you want to.
There are commercially-available sources of true random number
generators that are based on radioactive decay. Are these devices
"machines"?
Just because of the limits of measuring phenomena at the quantum
level, it doesn't necessarily mean that radioactive decay is random in
itself.
That's a scientific claim that currently has been rejected.
Just because you are limited to measure phenomena at the quantum level
in a probabilistic way, it doesn't necessarily mean that the quantum
level isn't deterministic.
As I said, you are welcome to join the flat earthers and the
creationists and assume that the evidence that supports you view might
turn up some day and might gain some traction. But the current view is
that these things are fundamentally unpredictable and that there are
consequences to this view (such as Bell's Inequality).
They are said to be unpredictable because we don't see everything.
No .. because it is not possible to see everything. Please read up on
Quantum physics
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| User: "Barry OGrady" |
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| Title: Re: Evil - outweighed by free will |
21 Jan 2008 09:01:18 PM |
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On Mon, 14 Jan 2008 08:43:39 -0800 (PST), David Schwartz <davids@webmaster.com> wrote:
On Jan 12, 12:37 pm, Michael <newsus...@orneveien.org> wrote:
It is not reasonable to invoke Quantum Mechanics to describe the behavior
of machines, who by their nature are deterministic.
Is an electron a machine? An electron is not, by its nature,
deterministic.
Yes, it is.
One can easily create a non-deterministic "machine" if you want to.
There are commercially-available sources of true random number
generators that are based on radioactive decay. Are these devices
"machines"?
Humans generally construct deterministic machines because this is what
they have historically found to be most useful. But there is no
inherent contradiction in a non-deterministic machine.
You can, of course, add "deterministic" to the definition of a
machine. But then all sorts of things are no longer machines (such as
the physical random number generators) and it becomes an open question
whether a human being is a "machine" or not.
You seem to think something is not determined because you can't see
how it was determined. That is arrogant.
There is no true randomness.
DS
Barry
=====
Home page
http://members.iinet.net.au/~barry.og
.
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| User: "Jeckyl" |
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| Title: Re: Evil - outweighed by free will |
21 Jan 2008 09:47:24 PM |
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"Barry OGrady" <god_free_jones@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:8cg7p356h1r8kvnsrtd8vvq0de6vj9611a@4ax.com...
You seem to think something is not determined because you can't see
how it was determined. That is arrogant.
There is no true randomness.
Please take some time to study Quantum physics.
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| User: "David Schwartz" |
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| Title: Re: Evil - outweighed by free will |
22 Jan 2008 04:05:08 PM |
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On Jan 21, 7:01 pm, Barry OGrady <god_free_jo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
You seem to think something is not determined because you can't see
how it was determined.
That is not my position. That is your stereotype of my position.
That is arrogant.
Nonsense.
There is no true randomness.
You are welcome to hold this belief on the basis of faith against the
weight of modern science, and there is nothing I can do. You will be
kept in good company by the creationists and the flat earthers.
However, if science contradicts your beliefs, you should work to
adjust your beliefs.
DS
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| User: "Barry OGrady" |
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| Title: Re: Evil - outweighed by free will |
24 Jan 2008 10:02:11 PM |
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On Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:05:08 -0800 (PST), David Schwartz <davids@webmaster.com> wrote:
On Jan 21, 7:01 pm, Barry OGrady <god_free_jo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
You seem to think something is not determined because you can't see
how it was determined.
That is not my position. That is your stereotype of my position.
Is it possible there are things you can't see?
That is arrogant.
Nonsense.
You appear to be making assumptions based on lack of knowledge.
There is no true randomness.
You are welcome to hold this belief on the basis of faith against the
weight of modern science, and there is nothing I can do. You will be
kept in good company by the creationists and the flat earthers.
There is an argument sometimes advanced by God promoters that
the only way to prove there is no God is to look in every place and in
every dimension. You can't say there is randomness unless you have
looked everywhere to show that it's not determined, and you can't do
that. Everything we know points to determinism.
However, if science contradicts your beliefs, you should work to
adjust your beliefs.
Science can't show that something is random.
DS
Barry
=====
Home page
http://members.iinet.net.au/~barry.og
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| User: "David Schwartz" |
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| Title: Re: Evil - outweighed by free will |
25 Jan 2008 05:45:12 PM |
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On Jan 24, 8:02 pm, Barry OGrady <god_free_jo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
On Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:05:08 -0800 (PST), David Schwartz <dav...@webmaster.com> wrote:
On Jan 21, 7:01 pm, Barry OGrady <god_free_jo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
You seem to think something is not determined because you can't see
how it was determined.
That is not my position. That is your stereotype of my position.
Is it possible there are things you can't see?
Yes.
That is arrogant.
Nonsense.
You appear to be making assumptions based on lack of knowledge.
No.
There is no true randomness.
You are welcome to hold this belief on the basis of faith against the
weight of modern science, and there is nothing I can do. You will be
kept in good company by the creationists and the flat earthers.
There is an argument sometimes advanced by God promoters that
the only way to prove there is no God is to look in every place and in
every dimension.
And that's what you're doing here.
You can't say there is randomness unless you have
looked everywhere to show that it's not determined, and you can't do
that. Everything we know points to determinism.
This is both a confusion and a lie. It's a confusion because it
ignores the fact that determinism has testable consequences. It's a
lie because it is not true that everything we know points to
determinism.
However, if science contradicts your beliefs, you should work to
adjust your beliefs.
Science can't show that something is random.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you do not
understand a significant fraction of modern science, starting with
Bell's Inequality.
Obviously it can't if you don't understand it.
DS
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| User: "Eris" |
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| Title: Re: Evil - outweighed by free will |
12 Jan 2008 07:17:58 PM |
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On Jan 12, 3:37 pm, Michael <newsus...@orneveien.org> wrote:
On Fri, 11 Jan 2008 23:14:05 -0800, David Schwartz wrote:
On Jan 10, 1:45 pm, "Denis Loubet" <dlou...@io.com> wrote:
How do you get unforced choices from an utterly mechanical brain forced to
operate according to strict physical law? That would mean you should be able
to get free will from a computer.
The same way you get unforced behavior from an electron in a double-
slit experiment.
I cannot understand how you agree that the brain is a machine, and then turn
around and claim it has free will. It makes no sense.
I'm sorry that you can't understand it, but I don't know how I can be
any clearer than I have been.
DS
An interesting discussion that usually goes nowhere. In fact, it really
doesn't matter whether one invokes religion; the "free will" argument is
hotly debated in religion, maybe more so than among scientists.
It is not reasonable to invoke Quantum Mechanics to describe the behavior
of machines, who by their nature are deterministic. In your other message
you cite the possibility of all the air molecules suddenly NOT being where
you are, making breathing difficult. I do not believe this can happen.
They may WANT to be somewhere else, but the fact is that random collisions
keep any particular molecule from traveling very far, and as they start to
leave your vicinity, it increases the density of air surrounding your
body, which has the effect of reducing obstacles for air molecules that
just happen to be traveling toward your body. Unsurprisingly, this
adjustment takes place at approximately the speed of sound, and in fact
establishes the speed of sound which varies somewhat according to density
and temperature (which affect the rate at which molecules discover each
other and decide to go some other way).
I do not know if the brain has "free will". In fact, I don't know what
"free will" means to any particular person.
I HAVE decided, however, that if you *seem* to have a choice, and a
reasonable chance of actually choosing from among choices, then whether or
not your choice is predestined or known in advance is irrelevant; it is a
test of your character. I had a roommate once declare that we didn't
exist, we were all in God's dream. That may be so, says I, but in that
dream we can act honorably and receive honorable dream rewards, or we can
behave dishonorably, and received dreamworld punishment and shunning from
other dreamworld characters. In other words, whether or not we have
discovered the ultimate answers to the question of life, the universe and
everything; we can *act* on what we know and thereby demonstrate our real,
or virtual, or dreamworld qualities to whomever may be observing.
The BBC's series The Century of Self discourage me about whether we
have free will or not.
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| User: "David Schwartz" |
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| Title: Re: Evil - outweighed by free will |
08 Jan 2008 11:39:39 PM |
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On Jan 8, 4:41 pm, "Denis Loubet" <dlou...@io.com> wrote:
I can't choose today to believe that Jesus Christ is my Lord and
Savior because of other choices I've made throughout my life.
And those choices were likewise based on other choices, and those on other
choices, etc. An entire chain of physical determinism going back to your
development in the womb and beyond, right to the initial conditions of the
big bang.
Precisely. Free will is a thousand tiny little choices, not a few big
ones. Big choices are to some extent constrained by thousands of tiny
prior little choices.
Free will does not work by you being able to choose to kill an
innocent person today. It works by you being a self-made person due to
thousands of tiny prior decisions. Over the short term, people can be
very predictable.
It may
now be physically impossible for me to come to that decision of my own
free will. This does not make me a robot.
If we apply the same logic to the rest of your decisions -- and there's no
reason not to -- yes, it does make you a robot.
No, because what I am today is already of my own making.
DS
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| User: "Denis Loubet" |
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| Title: Re: Evil - outweighed by free will |
09 Jan 2008 01:36:13 AM |
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"David Schwartz" <davids@webmaster.com> wrote in message
news:8e696680-de31-483b-983d-4e319b36e616@q77g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...
On Jan 8, 4:41 pm, "Denis Loubet" <dlou...@io.com> wrote:
I can't choose today to believe that Jesus Christ is my Lord and
Savior because of other choices I've made throughout my life.
And those choices were likewise based on other choices, and those on
other
choices, etc. An entire chain of physical determinism going back to your
development in the womb and beyond, right to the initial conditions of
the
big bang.
Precisely. Free will is a thousand tiny little choices, not a few big
ones.
How the hell does THAT follow? I just described how all our decisions are a
direct and inevitable result of the initial conditions of the big bang, and
you say "precisely" and talk about free will as if its a given? That doesn't
make any sense.
If what I described is correct, then we're all just robots following strict
physical law. We're just hitting our marks and saying our lines. That is the
antithesis of free will.
I cannot begin to fathom why you wrote "precisely".
Big choices are to some extent constrained by thousands of tiny
prior little choices.
And the source of the little choices would be what...littler choices?
Littler choices that are the result of even littler choices? Unless you're
suggesting an infinite regress, at some point the choosing ends, and brute
circumstance begins.
Free will does not work by you being able to choose to kill an
innocent person today. It works by you being a self-made person due to
thousands of tiny prior decisions. Over the short term, people can be
very predictable.
But those prior decisions are based on arbitrary circumstance. So arbitrary
circumstance should get the credit.
It may
now be physically impossible for me to come to that decision of my own
free will. This does not make me a robot.
If we apply the same logic to the rest of your decisions -- and there's
no
reason not to -- yes, it does make you a robot.
No, because what I am today is already of my own making.
No. It's a result of the initial conditions of the big bang. something over
which you had no control. The big bang gets the credit, not you.
--
Denis Loubet
dloubet@io.com
http://www.io.com/~dloubet
http://www.ashenempires.com
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| User: "Dag Yo" |
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| Title: Re: Evil - outweighed by free will |
09 Jan 2008 02:13:55 AM |
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And the source of the little choices would be what...littler
choices?
Littler choices that are the result of even littler choices? Unless you're
suggesting an infinite regress, at some point the choosing ends, and brute
circumstance begins.
I was e-mailing a friend today who makes that very claim actually. I
have no idea how he reached that conclusion myself.
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| User: "David Schwartz" |
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| Title: Re: Evil - outweighed by free will |
09 Jan 2008 01:54:25 PM |
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On Jan 9, 12:13 am, Dag Yo <sir_ro...@yahoo.com> wrote:
And the source of the little choices would be what...littler
choices?
Littler choices that are the result of even littler choices? Unless you're
suggesting an infinite regress, at some point the choosing ends, and brute
circumstance begins.
There is no infinite regress. But at the end of the regress is not
brute circumstance but brute choice.
I was e-mailing a friend today who makes that very claim actually. I
have no idea how he reached that conclusion myself.
It's directly perceived by anyone who has free will when they make a
hard decision. They directly observe that choices they have made in
the past and brute circumstance constrain their choice but do not
always compel one particular outcome.
DS
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| User: "thomas p." |
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| Title: Re: Evil - outweighed by free will |
10 Jan 2008 02:14:45 AM |
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"David Schwartz" <davids@webmaster.com> skrev i en meddelelse
news:96cb414a-47d0-423f-8104-b73cc6ed15c1@l1g2000hsa.googlegroups.com...
On Jan 9, 12:13 am, Dag Yo <sir_ro...@yahoo.com> wrote:
And the source of the little choices would be what...littler
choices?
Littler choices that are the result of even littler choices? Unless
you're
suggesting an infinite regress, at some point the choosing ends, and
brute
circumstance begins.
There is no infinite regress. But at the end of the regress is not
brute circumstance but brute choice.
Who makes that choice?
I was e-mailing a friend today who makes that very claim actually. I
have no idea how he reached that conclusion myself.
It's directly perceived by anyone who has free will when they make a
hard decision. They directly observe that choices they have made in
the past and brute circumstance constrain their choice but do not
always compel one particular outcome.
DS
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| User: "David Schwartz" |
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| Title: Re: Evil - outweighed by free will |
10 Jan 2008 05:59:53 AM |
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On Jan 10, 12:14 am, "thomas p." <gudl...@yahoo.com> wrote:
There is no infinite regress. But at the end of the regress is not
brute circumstance but brute choice.
Who makes that choice?
Probably in the very beginning not much. Just as we build our body up
from a single cell, we build our "soul" up from a single choice. Over
time, we become self-made as the cumulative weight of all of our
pushes controls who we are.
Yes, a lot is beyond our control. But the cumulative effect of every
choice you have ever made is a lot as well.
It is an open question to what extent we are self-made and to what
extent we are responsible for who we are and what we do. Certainly
external factors over which we have no control play a very important
role.
DS
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