In your opinion what causes christians to believe in Jesus

[Nay_Sayer]

Or he did, and just doesn't understand it very well. 

Like someone constantly quoting Aristotle, while using known common logical fallacies. 

It's kind of cute when they try though. 

Lets not forget, we're talking about someone who has claimed to believe the earth is a few thousand years old, and becomes very reticent when you ask about miracles.

There is depth, and nuanced thinking, and then there is bullshit and word salad.

In this forum, John is largely playing the role of Christian apologist.

However, I do enjoy (and much prefer) him talking more about psychology.  I think of most of Christianity as being uninformed about psychology, so I am still looking forward to how he tries to reconcile them.

John is also playing the role of coward

[The Grand Nudger]

Yes, we do build such systems. We build them explicitly for automation. It's called model based control. As far as illusions of free will go, sure. Magicians pull rabbits out of hats, this is an illusion..but that doesn't mean it's nothing. Somethings happening, and there's a reason that it looks the way it does. We can, as before, accept that free will exists and there will still be more content claimed to be freely willed than content that actually is so.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

The tricky bit about the free will debate is that the universe would look exactly the same whether or not free will exists. Let’s say you had eggs for breakfast. How could you possibly know if that was a free choice or if it was a necessary consequence of the universe unraveling in a particular way?

I think the absence of free will heavily implies complete capture by external stimuli. I would expect to see nothing but cascades of reflexive behavior from top to bottom. And what's telling here is that we do have such systems in limited quantities. In a typical reflex arc, if you grab a hot plate the sensory signal travels to the spinal cord and bounces back as a motor signal prompting your hand to let go. The behavior is mostly on a closed circuit, and there's no reason why all behaviors can't be on train tracks like this, with nothing but inputs and outputs as the behaviorists used to theorize. However, I said mostly because even in such reflexive loops, there is still veto power coming from another source: the brain. You can voluntarily inhibit the reflex circuit for whatever reason, like not wanting to drop and break the plate. And if you've ever been in that situation, you can feel the push and pull between your volition and the impulse to let go.

As I mentioned much earlier, autonomy is one of our most fundamental motivational needs. If you want to predict how intrinsically motivated a person will be at doing anything, measuring how much autonomy is involved is a great predictor. In other words, the brain wants to be in control and avoid external capture. Conversations like this just don't make sense without free will. You don’t build a system obsessed with agency and self-regulation if all behavior is passive output.

But of course, the problem with those who oppose free will is that they just handwave things like this as illusions.

But that’s just kicking the can down the road. How can we be sure that what feels like volition or motivation or autonomy actually is so? If I hold onto the plate, mayn’t it be that I was always going to hold on to the plate? Likewise if I drop it and let it shatter?

It’s no use, mate - it’s turtles all the way down.

Boru

[John 6IX Breezy]

But that’s just kicking the can down the road. How can we be sure that what feels like volition or motivation or autonomy actually is so? If I hold onto the plate, mayn’t it be that I was always going to hold on to the plate? Likewise if I drop it and let it shatter?

Well, the short answer is that turtles all the way down is unscientific. If we cannot falsify determinism because determinism predicts that anything that looks like free will is itself determinism, you basically have two options: either you amputate the excess repetitions with Occam's razor and make the theory falsifiable or you abandon the question as a scientific one altogether.

[The Grand Nudger]

There's a meaningful distinction between fatalism and determinism. In a fatalistic universe things will always turn out whatever way they were going to even if we have free wills and those free wills are opposed to that outcome. In a deterministic universe there may be many different ways for things to turn out depending on an ever growing tree of prior circumstances even if we don't have free wills.

We're jumping the gun if we're talking about falsifying or confirming determinism. The question is far smaller than "how universe work"...it's just "how we work". I don't know if everything that looks like free will is itself determinism, but the examples you've offered so far demonstrably could be, both in theory and in actual practice. I'm not personally motivated towards either proposition. I don't have other beliefs which depend on it which would compel me to privilege one or the other because it fit my overall web of belief to "make sense" or gave me satisfaction. Do you think a genuine christian could say the same?

[John 6IX Breezy]

There's just no psychological term for the opposite of free will, so we gotta pick one and determinism is the closest one to it. But if you got a better word make a pitch for it.

[Alan V]

But of course, the problem with those who oppose free will is that they just handwave things like this as illusions.

This is why I think the burden of proof falls on the determinists, since they have to demonstrate why appearances are incorrect.

From a neurocognitive point of view, our brains have executive functions which can pass for free will of a limited kind, and our brains are an essential part of us from a materialistic point of view. But many atheists still object to using the concept of free will, which has religious connotations to some people. So perhaps we should be talking about top-down and bottom-up causation.

And just to be clear, there are both emergent materialists and determinists within atheistic ranks. Atheists don't agree with each other on a number of issues.

[The Grand Nudger]

Free will of a limited kind is a profound contradiction in terms. Limits are exactly what people skeptical of free will are talking about. Limit being a damned good antonym for freedom in the first place.

@John 6IX Breezy

I agree, and I genuinely enjoy agreements like these. There really is no good opposite for free will (fatalism would be, but for whatever good reason or no reason at all I'm physically incapable of believing or even conceiving of it being true, lol)- but that doesn't make determinism a good candidate. The whole point of compatibilism is that they may coexist. I like bioautomata...but hey, maybe plants freely will the things they do. For the record. I like the idea. I have the same experience of life as anyone else..minus a few really troubling months. I wouldn't wager someone else's life or wellbeing on my affinity for the idea or my personal experience of what seems to be so-and-so, is all. That's kind of my metric for everything.

[Nay_Sayer]

Over/Under on this thread, somehow also including IKEA furniture instructions?

Seems everything else has ended up in it.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

But that’s just kicking the can down the road. How can we be sure that what feels like volition or motivation or autonomy actually is so? If I hold onto the plate, mayn’t it be that I was always going to hold on to the plate? Likewise if I drop it and let it shatter?

Well, the short answer is that turtles all the way down is unscientific. If we cannot falsify determinism because determinism predicts that anything that looks like free will is itself determinism, you basically have two options: either you amputate the excess repetitions with Occam's razor and make the theory falsifiable or you abandon the question as a scientific one altogether.

It’s not a scientific question, but a philosophical one.

Boru