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A 'proof' of God's existence - free will
#11
RE: A 'proof' of God's existence - free will
(April 28, 2020 at 10:38 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote:
(April 28, 2020 at 10:19 am)mrj Wrote: Which still leads me to WHY do we believe we have free will?
Yup.
Quote:What evolutionary benefit is there to thinking my actions are willful when they are not? 

There's evolutionary benefit to superstition, privately held or socially organized.

The two things are entirely unrelated.  The evolutionary benefit of an imaginary organ or ability is a non starter..but superstition and tradition are not imaginary organs or abilities.

Not in any real sense. The Ancient Egyptians were successful for 3,000 years grouping round belief in gods that were never real. 

My cat has a ritual of jumping on my side and digging his nose into my ear to wake me up to feed him in the morning. That benefits him in a survival sense and a social sense, but Tony the Tiger nor Tigger are real cats.

I wouldn't call it a "benefit" as much as I would call it a flaw in our evolution that has the side effect of causing social structures.
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#12
RE: A 'proof' of God's existence - free will
In a very real sense. If, for example, superstition can effect solidarity....would we be asking ourselves what the evolutionary benefit of solidarity was?
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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#13
RE: A 'proof' of God's existence - free will
(April 28, 2020 at 11:07 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: In a very real sense.  If, for example, superstition can effect solidarity....would we be asking ourselves what the evolutionary benefit of solidarity was?

Again, solidarity is what works in reality, not the superstition. If any god belief or superstition were universal and scientifically provable, those beliefs would be taught in science classes.

It is still a flaw in our species perceptions. 

If a kid is taught Santa is real, and they will get presents if they are good, the prospect can induce electrochemical reactions in the brain that can make them feel good. That still does not make Santa real.


The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins can explain this better than I can.
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#14
RE: A 'proof' of God's existence - free will
I suspect that an evolutionary advantage of believing in free will would be motivation.

If Oog is sitting in his cave and feeling a bit peckish, he might want to go out and eviscerate a rabbit. If he’s convinced himself that his prospects are predestined, what’s the point of going out at all? He can sit in the cave and starve to death, or he can go out and get all sweaty NOT catching the rabbit. And still starve to death.

But if he can trick himself into believing that the outcome of Project Rabbit is decided by his free will, he might get to eat.

Boru
‘But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods or no gods. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.’ - Thomas Jefferson
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#15
RE: A 'proof' of God's existence - free will
(April 27, 2020 at 9:58 pm)mrj Wrote: Just to ground the discussion - I find very little justification to believe in a theistic entity.  However, I do not consider myself an atheist.  At least not yet.  And I continue to search for logical and scientific justification for such belief in the name of intellectual honesty.  I will readily admit to and even argue for atheist-like arguments, and I have been banned from religious forums many times simply because, as I was told, my arguments were depressing the believers.  That being said, there are a few interesting philosophical points that I don;t think atheists can answer.  Here's one:

Consider free will.  No matter how you look at it, I can't for the life of me see how there is ANY possibility free will exists, whether there is a God or not.  Clearly, if you take the deterministic side of things, there is no free will.  But even if you subscribe to Liberatarianism, you STILL have to allow for randomness in your actions.  In other words, even if we agree that there is a 50% chance I eat that cheeseburger, the execution of that choice cannot be mine and mine alone.  WHY did I eat the cheeseburger (if I did so)?  The concept of 'choice' is nothing more than the random selection of certain probabilities.  In other words, there is NO free will.  Randomness does not equal choice.  Determinism does not equal choice.  No free will either way.

The above would widely be considered as points against Theism - and rightly so.  So here is the question then.  If there is no free will, WHY then do we have the ILLUSION of free will?  There is no evolutionary benefit to our minds thinking we act freely.  Procreation of species would not be dependent upon such an illusion.  An automaton would act the way it would act, and would react the way it would react - an internal understanding of WHY it did so is irrelevant.  So WHY then do we BELIEVE we act freely?  Could, perhaps, such illusion be 'provided' by a supernatural being?  Could we thus have a soul that encapsulates this illusion? 

Is this "proof" of a God? Not really - which is why I put the term in quotes in the subject.  But I find the question very interesting.  My own rational musings have led me to consider that the "illusion" of free will is in actuality the FEEDBACK loop of how our decisions affect our future actions.  For example, if I got a stomach ache from eating that cheeseburger, my future probability of eating it would drop to 40%.  This neurological process manifests as 'free will', similar to how transfer of short-term to long-term memory manifests as a dream.

Regardless, I haven't decided yet what the answer is.   I welcome your thoughts.

The possible existence of free will would disprove the abrahamic god for definite. Because one of the attributes of said god is omnipotence. If a creature has free will then god has incomplete power over it, therefore god is not omnipotent, therefore by the rules set up by the jewish, christian and muslim religions, that god cannot exist.

I don't understand why christians constantly make out that we have free will, it breaks their whole religion.
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#16
RE: A 'proof' of God's existence - free will
We have no choice but to act like we have free will and god does not have anything to do with it.
God thinks it's fun to confuse primates. Larsen's God!






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#17
RE: A 'proof' of God's existence - free will
(April 28, 2020 at 6:02 pm)Nomad Wrote: ...one of the attributes of said god is omnipotence.  If a creature has free will then god has incomplete power over it, therefore god is not omnipotent, therefore by the rules set up by the jewish, christian and muslim religions, that god cannot exist.

If you're reading the word "omnipotence" to mean that God controls in detail everything that happens, then, yes, it rules out free will. 

I'm not sure this is what Christians mean by "omnipotent," however. 

For a lot of Christians, it seems to mean "can do anything." In that case God could control everything in complete detail, but he could also choose not to. He could choose to let us make up our own minds. This is the standard view, I think. He chooses not to make us marionettes. 

As always, the naive Christian view is not the same as the theologians' view. Thomas Aquinas, for example, is clear that there are lots of things God can't do. He can't go against his nature, he can't do evil, he can't make a four-sided triangle, etc. etc. When Thomas says "omnipotent" he means something very different. 

In the Aristotelian/Thomist view, "omnipotence" refers to the fact that God is pure act without potency. In more common terms, he is entirely actualized with nothing left to develop or accomplish. The argument is that for potencies (potentialities) in the temporal world to actualize, there must be something already actualized which causes that actualization. And at the end of the chain there has to be one thing in which all potencies are complete -- actus purus

I'm aware that most Christians don't think of it this way, but Thomas Aquinas was a Christian. And this is the philosophy section of the forum, after all. 

Quote:I don't understand why christians constantly make out that we have free will, it breaks their whole religion.

It breaks the view of people who define the word "omnipotent" in the way that you do, but I'm not aware of any Christian who does.
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#18
RE: A 'proof' of God's existence - free will
(April 28, 2020 at 6:02 pm)Nomad Wrote: The possible existence of free will would disprove the abrahamic god for definite.  Because one of the attributes of said god is omnipotence. If a creature has free will then god has incomplete power over it, therefore god is not omnipotent, therefore by the rules set up by the jewish, christian and muslim religions, that god cannot exist.

I don't understand why christians constantly make out that we have free will, it breaks their whole religion.

Bang! Right in the kisser!

I thought I'd heard all the counters to the free will argument espoused by the apologists but this one is the red dot on the forehead.
No doubt my highlighted line has been done before with much verbiage but as the man says:

Keep it simple.

(April 28, 2020 at 8:35 pm)Belacqua Wrote: I'm not sure this is what Christians mean by "omnipotent," however. 

It means right there what it says on the tin; all knowing. There is no way omnipotence can mean anything else.
Other than in philosophy of course.
Miserable Bastard.
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#19
RE: A 'proof' of God's existence - free will
(April 28, 2020 at 8:55 pm)Succubus#2 Wrote: It means right there what it says on the tin; all knowing. There is no way omnipotence can mean anything else.
Other than in philosophy of course.

"All-knowing" is "omniscient," not "omnipotent."
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#20
RE: A 'proof' of God's existence - free will
(April 28, 2020 at 9:07 pm)Belacqua Wrote:
(April 28, 2020 at 8:55 pm)Succubus#2 Wrote: It means right there what it says on the tin; all knowing. There is no way omnipotence can mean anything else.
Other than in philosophy of course.

"All-knowing" is "omniscient," not "omnipotent."

Spoken like a true philosophist.
If an entity is omnipotent then it follows that it's omniscient.
Miserable Bastard.
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