You can ask them what “free will” means. I ask them when they make mention of it. They seem to only have a vague notion that it means that you are free to make your own decisions.
I disagree. You aren’t free. You are limited by your biological components. Your hormones, your entire chemical makeup controls who you are.
There is a reason why men are more violent than women. There is a reason why some people hate arguing, they hate stress and some are not bothered by stress.
There is a reason why I like chocolate. I don’t have free will as to what I like. It has to do with how the brain functions.
Christians seem to think that all humans are equal and we just all have our “free will”. Nope. There are differences between us. Reality is complicated.
I think that a lack of education comes into play. When you learn about how a CPU works, how to write a program, you understand that a program does make decisions. A simple if else statement is a decision maker. A simple light bulb and a switch is a decision maker (if switch is on, turn lightbulb on, else turn light bulb off).
The human brain is just a very sophisticated software/hardware and it can handle certain tasks well and others not so well. People are working on software/hardware that mimics it to a certain degree.
Here is a short article on the subject:
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/32...neural-net
Right now, such things are at the baby stage. Imagine what they’ll have in 1000 y, 5000 y, 10,000+ y.
On top of that, it is pretty clear that the intelligence of an animal depends very much on the frontal cortex of that animal.
For example, a worms brain is quite different than ours and very limited.
Compare that to chimpanzees who are capable of playing games with humans, they play with each other and laugh and they solve basic problems. There was one case where they thought a chimp american sign language and this chimp thought another chimp.
“The will to choose whether to believe in God”
==I don’t think I can just choose to believe in X. X would have to make sense, have good enough evidence and then I would be convinced.
Also, the jewish god plays a role in that. He chooses not to provide evidence.
“Things that happen are by "God's will". If a natural disaster happens, that's God's will. If there is a drought and all your crops die, it's God's will.”
==Yes, it is the classical view that when there is a weather problem or disease problem, that the gods are angry.
They seem to think that all natural disasters are caused by gods.
I think this notion is at the very heart of all religions. It might be 50,000 y old. Ancient man didn’t understand weather, they didn’t see the cause for disease and so, they presumed that some personality was upset and was trying to harm them. I think they figured that if the priest tries to communicate with him, or give a gift, that the personality would give them peace.
Conversely, I think when something good happens, the believer ends up believing that the personality gave him good luck (blessing).
In modern times, I think most of us just take acetylsalicyclic acid, paracetamol, ibuprofen if we have a fever, pain or headache. We don’t go to the priest anymore.
If we have a tooth ache, just go to the dentist and he’ll numb you and fix or pull the teeth. I think nobody prays over that.
If you have cancer ..... a lot of people get scared since there is a relatively high chance of death, so they call their priests and family to pray non stop.
“The woman in the story clearly was not born again or recently come to God, so how she managed to "extract herself from Satan" without coming to Jesus is anyone's guess, or why God would save her when she clearly does not give him any credit!”
==There are many possibilities. let’s explore them:
1. The woman in the story believed in the jewish god/Jesus combo and these guys helped her.
2. The woman in the story believed in satan and satan helped her.
3. The woman in the story believed in the aliens and they reprogrammed her brain and made her super intelligent.
4. The women is not aware of the aliens. The aliens decided to experiment on her and made her super intelligent.
5. Other examples involving invisible personalities........
6. Nature. There aren’t hidden gods, no hidden fairies, aliens. The woman did her best and things worked out.
Personally, I am not able to tell which of those 6 possibilities is the right explanation. There is no evidence either way.
So, what we do in science is use Occam’s razor.
Occam’s razor states that the most mundane explanation is probably the correct one. So, we remove gods, fairies, demons, aliens from our explanations and just assume nature (#6).
The same applies to other cases as well, such as the building of the Pyramids of Egypt, the hundreds of megalith sites (Stonehenge), Easter Island scuptures + plenty more.
Was it done by aliens, gods, satans, fairies or was it just humans being humany?
Ever heard of Eric Von Danicken? Christians are like Eric Von Danicken.
Eric Von Danicken explanation for every major archeologic find seems to involve aliens.
I disagree. You aren’t free. You are limited by your biological components. Your hormones, your entire chemical makeup controls who you are.
There is a reason why men are more violent than women. There is a reason why some people hate arguing, they hate stress and some are not bothered by stress.
There is a reason why I like chocolate. I don’t have free will as to what I like. It has to do with how the brain functions.
Christians seem to think that all humans are equal and we just all have our “free will”. Nope. There are differences between us. Reality is complicated.
I think that a lack of education comes into play. When you learn about how a CPU works, how to write a program, you understand that a program does make decisions. A simple if else statement is a decision maker. A simple light bulb and a switch is a decision maker (if switch is on, turn lightbulb on, else turn light bulb off).
The human brain is just a very sophisticated software/hardware and it can handle certain tasks well and others not so well. People are working on software/hardware that mimics it to a certain degree.
Here is a short article on the subject:
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/32...neural-net
Right now, such things are at the baby stage. Imagine what they’ll have in 1000 y, 5000 y, 10,000+ y.
On top of that, it is pretty clear that the intelligence of an animal depends very much on the frontal cortex of that animal.
For example, a worms brain is quite different than ours and very limited.
Compare that to chimpanzees who are capable of playing games with humans, they play with each other and laugh and they solve basic problems. There was one case where they thought a chimp american sign language and this chimp thought another chimp.
“The will to choose whether to believe in God”
==I don’t think I can just choose to believe in X. X would have to make sense, have good enough evidence and then I would be convinced.
Also, the jewish god plays a role in that. He chooses not to provide evidence.
“Things that happen are by "God's will". If a natural disaster happens, that's God's will. If there is a drought and all your crops die, it's God's will.”
==Yes, it is the classical view that when there is a weather problem or disease problem, that the gods are angry.
They seem to think that all natural disasters are caused by gods.
I think this notion is at the very heart of all religions. It might be 50,000 y old. Ancient man didn’t understand weather, they didn’t see the cause for disease and so, they presumed that some personality was upset and was trying to harm them. I think they figured that if the priest tries to communicate with him, or give a gift, that the personality would give them peace.
Conversely, I think when something good happens, the believer ends up believing that the personality gave him good luck (blessing).
In modern times, I think most of us just take acetylsalicyclic acid, paracetamol, ibuprofen if we have a fever, pain or headache. We don’t go to the priest anymore.
If we have a tooth ache, just go to the dentist and he’ll numb you and fix or pull the teeth. I think nobody prays over that.
If you have cancer ..... a lot of people get scared since there is a relatively high chance of death, so they call their priests and family to pray non stop.
“The woman in the story clearly was not born again or recently come to God, so how she managed to "extract herself from Satan" without coming to Jesus is anyone's guess, or why God would save her when she clearly does not give him any credit!”
==There are many possibilities. let’s explore them:
1. The woman in the story believed in the jewish god/Jesus combo and these guys helped her.
2. The woman in the story believed in satan and satan helped her.
3. The woman in the story believed in the aliens and they reprogrammed her brain and made her super intelligent.
4. The women is not aware of the aliens. The aliens decided to experiment on her and made her super intelligent.
5. Other examples involving invisible personalities........
6. Nature. There aren’t hidden gods, no hidden fairies, aliens. The woman did her best and things worked out.
Personally, I am not able to tell which of those 6 possibilities is the right explanation. There is no evidence either way.
So, what we do in science is use Occam’s razor.
Occam’s razor states that the most mundane explanation is probably the correct one. So, we remove gods, fairies, demons, aliens from our explanations and just assume nature (#6).
The same applies to other cases as well, such as the building of the Pyramids of Egypt, the hundreds of megalith sites (Stonehenge), Easter Island scuptures + plenty more.
Was it done by aliens, gods, satans, fairies or was it just humans being humany?
Ever heard of Eric Von Danicken? Christians are like Eric Von Danicken.
Eric Von Danicken explanation for every major archeologic find seems to involve aliens.
