(June 11, 2021 at 10:42 am)Klorophyll Wrote: Did I mention before that free will actually requires God? It is under your worldview that free will is impossible, not mine. If there is no god, there is nothing other than matter and chemical reactions in our brain, which all happen independently of our will. You are the product of completely mechanical processes and of the input you get from your senses, there is simply no room for choice or freedom. Let's see how you get out of that.
I searched some entries of atheist activists on Youtube, I admit I was shocked that the founders of Rationality Rules, Cosmic Skeptic, The atheist experience, etc all seem to share the same conclusion, there can't be free will under your godless worldview. Under mine ,there are possibilites of reconciliation, such as the one I tried to present above.
Free will is like God only in one way -- they both are so ill-defined that a rational discussion about them is impossible.
Definitions:
Free-Will = uncaused action
This one is likely impossible, but even if it were possible, it would be a purely random event. It would not imply agency of any type. If a god makes uncaused choices, it is literally tossing unknowable dice for a living.
Free-Will = ability for agency
This one I will accept, but what is agency?
Agency = the ability to recognize the self and the world, and make purposeful choices. One can argue that even plants have agency, but I am going to focus on human agency.
Under this definition, we all have free will, but it is not uncaused. Uncaused actions are merely random. Agency seems to require a higher-order state than simple input->output. It seems to require a re-entrant state.
Re-entrant states are interesting because their behavior over time cannot be predicted perfectly. They become, to some degree, their own cause. Logic and mathematics become incomplete when they allow self-reference (Godel's incompleteness theorem). Chaos theory is based on re-entrant states. I read an article about a Quantum Mechanics paper that says that re-entrant states become resistant to quantum noise -- essentially partially sustaining their own causality.
So, no, I don't need a God to have Free Will, and I don't need freedom from causality to have Free Will.
