Richard Dawkins' Faith In Free Will Is As Blind As A Christians To God

[Cecco]

your attitude toward debate is narrow minded, instead of saying 'i don't quite understand you, what do you mean?' you prefer 'i don't quite understand you, so you are a moron, for I am the superman who surfs the pseudo intellectual forums of the interweb between acts of onanism to bully anonymous avatars with my everything in it's right place mentality'.

Of course it's paraphrasing! I did it, I should know. What are you debating there? Thought I was talking about Dawkins doing the paraphrasing? That's because that's the answer you wanted to hear.

All i'm saying is that as far as determinism goes, there is no evidence for it or against, yet dawkins believes we can change the human animal by conscious will. he says religion can be educated out of us. i need not get a quote, we all know this. religion is part of what it is to be the human animal, the human animal is biologically retarded. get used to it. i imagine you may know this well anyway.

[Purple Rabbit]

you're attitude toward debate is narrow minded, instead of saying 'i don't quite understand you, what do you mean?' you prefer 'i don't quite understand you, so you are a moron, for I am the superman who surfs the pseudo intellectual forums of the interweb between acts of onanism to bully anonymous avatars with my everything in it's right place mentality'.

So asking for your argument is narrow minded and labeling Dawkins as an endorser of free will without a referenced quote isn't? Get a life. You are the one asserting here that determinism implies a fixed state for religion. If you don't understand what determinism means YOU should have asked the question how determinism reconciles with the phenomenon of religion instead of labeling Dawkins up front.

Of course it's paraphrasing! I did it, I should know. What are you debating there? Thought I was talking about Dawkins doing the paraphrasing? That's because that's the answer you wanted to hear.

It seemed to me you were "paraphrasing" words of Dawkins into something that he did not say. Paraphrasing means restating without loss of meaning. You can't paraphrase his words into a belief in free will.

All i'm saying is that as far as determinism goes, there is no evidence for it or against,...

What?? Am I reading this right? Now you say that there is no evidence for determinism. Please explain to me.

yet dawkins believes we can change the human animal by conscious will. he says religion can be educated out of us. i need not get a quote, we all know this. religion is part of what it is to be the human animal, the human animal is biologically retarded. get used to it. i imagine you may know this well anyway.

You don't seem to register the difference between
a) how education influences people (btw, you did have some kind of education I presume?) within a fully deterministic reality, and
b) the inevitability of future events should we know them

I don't have any objection that you label yourself as a retarded animal, but son I'm sorry, you DO need quotes here for the bold assertions you're making. So, again, please give a referenced quote in which Richard Dawkins is endorsing acausal free will.

[Cecco]

who cares who said what? you are obsessed with quotes. the meaning is all that matters, not who it's attributed to. focus on the idea. you are burdened by etiquette and tradition.

forget everything apart from this: it cannot be proven that humans can change their destiny, yet dawkins has faith that they can.

stop yabbering on about determinism. nobody knows the answer!

[Purple Rabbit]

who cares who said what? you are obsessed with quotes. the meaning is all that matters, not who it's attributed to. focus on the idea. you are burdened by etiquette and tradition.

The idea is this: your attribution of contra-causal free will to Dawkins is as lame as a dead dick.
Focus that.

forget everything apart from this: it cannot be proven that humans can change their destiny, yet dawkins has faith that they can.

So you did not learn a thing from education? Figures.

stop yabbering on about determinism. nobody knows the answer!

Go fuck yourself. You started this thread on free will and determinism

[Scented Nectar]

who cares who said what? you are obsessed with quotes. the meaning is all that matters, not who it's attributed to.

If you are going to claim that someone meant a certain thing because of them saying a different certain thing, then of course it should be cared about as to who said what. If you are not going to show the original quote, then how can anyone know what you are talking about? If you show the quote, you can show why you think it means something about free will rather than whatever it was that Dawkins actually said.

[Purple Rabbit]

Interview with Dicky boy from http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/

QUESTION: If you do not explain free will in a religious sense, how do you explain the ontology, the coming into being of free will?

MR. DAWKINS: The question of free will is a profound philosophical problem. And, as I said before, nothing is changed by adding the word "genes." So you could ask a question about how do you explain free will in a non-religious way -- not just to a Darwinian or somebody who believes that we are gene machines, but to anybody who takes a philosophically deterministic position.

So forget all about genes and think entirely about the philosophy of determinism. Now, everybody who calls themselves a determinist knows subjectively that they have the sensation of free will. We all know what it feels like to feel free. The only argument is whether fundamentally we are determined. That's one position which I wouldn't mind taking up. I don't find any difficulty with that position. I am quite prepared to believe that when I think I've taken the decision -- when I feel that I, with my own free will, have exercised a free choice, I've decided to do one thing rather than another -- I've decided to immigrate or decided not to immigrate, or to buy this house rather than that house -- it feels like free will. But it's perfectly possible that actually my decision to immigrate or not to immigrate was influenced by events in the brains which were influenced by other events, influenced by other events, which fundamentally all have a definite physical cause.

But it doesn't matter. There is no difference between the way it feels to have free will if there is this kind of fundamentally illusory free will that I've been talking about, or if in some other sense (which actually I can't quite imagine what it would like) we really did have free will. It wouldn't feel any different. It certainly wouldn't affect any of the arguments we ever have in selfish genery, when we ask whether we are free to depart from the dictates of the selfish genes and practice some anti-Darwinian behavior, such as contraception. Clearly that's no more difficult to imagine than deciding whether to immigrate or not to immigrate. The facts are that we do make such decisions. The facts are that we do take a decision to use contraception. And the -- contraception the mere existence of contraception -- something as mundane as that -- or the mere existence of the fact that one could take a decision to immigrate -- is not going to solve one of the great philosophical problems of all time. That's going to be there in any case. It doesn't actually affect how we feel or what we do.

That's clear enough. Dawkins does not believe in contra-causal free will, but the feeling of free will in a deterministic world.

Still wondering why quotes are important when attributing a position to someone? Than you might be pre-determined to stay a bigot just the same.

[Cecco]

yes yes he says that but at the same time he says other things. i am saying there is a contradiction between your quote and the reality of his philosophy.

should never have even mentioned dawkins name, my fault.

---

and i didn't start this thread on free will and determinism, that was made the subject of discussion by others. i didn't want to debate that. i was using determinism as a constant value of 'unknowable' because speculating on whether it exists or not is as much of an intellectual dead-end as speculating whether god exists.

like god, the only 3 answers to the human created conundrum of determinism, are: I agree, I disagree, I don't know. Like with god, 'i don't know' is the only answer.

[Purple Rabbit]

Let me get this straight. Notwithstanding the title of this thread you are not debating on Richard Dawkins, you are not debating on free will and finally you are not debating on determinism. LMFAO

Please decide on what you're actually debating and return in some coherent way that will somehow impress the universe.

[Cecco]

i am comparing faith in god to faith in free will, just as the title suggests. if i could serve the meaning up to you in a plastic spoon i would. impress the universe? why impress the universe when i have you to impress? far more of a challenge.

[Scented Nectar]

I guess we were supposed to take it on faith that Dawkins believes in free will and that he uses faith to come to that belief. Huhhhhh? My brain hurts.