[quote]forlife wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
I am for mine. You are for yours.
So who made “I” and “You”? What part of “I” and “You” didn’t come from god? If that core quality to “I” and “You”, which ultimately drives the decisions we make, was created by god, then how is god not directly responsible for those decisions?[/quote]
God made “I” and “you” - and God endowed that “I” and “you” with the capacity for free will.
[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
Nice try. This commitment of yours is precisely an example of dogma. Fervent belief PLUS the total absence of proof = dogma.[/quote]
Actually, that is faith. Look up dogma, it doesn’t mean what you think it means.
I have the same set of demands for all claims. Sentience is an observable phenomenon. We are sentient and we all know other sentient beings. A soul is not an observable phenomena. No one has ever seen one or been able to demonstrate that such a thing exists.
So, while I cannot explain sentience, I have no problem with accepting it’s existence, and claiming that it occurs/happens/manifests in the brain is the logical conclusion from the knowledge that all mental activity is situated in the brain.
The soul is not self-evident and has no standing whatsoever for people to accept it, except through faith (ie, belief without evidence. What you call dogma now, but won’t after you learn what that word means.)
Well my paragraph mentions sentience and brains. Two things we can experience directly and test for. Yours speaks of souls and divinities, both of which have never been seen or heard and are completely undetectable. In other words, your soul and divinity have the exact same attribute as all the other non-existent concepts we have.
If you can’t see the difference, that’s your problem. I don’t cure delusions.
What is grace? Can you prove it’s existence? Can you show an effect of grace that cannot be explained otherwise and more simply?
I “believe” in that concept because what the word “sentience” describes is easily observable. I assert it is a function of matter because as far as I can tell, there doesn’t exist a supernatural world outside of our matter and energy universe.
You don’t observe sentience in other beings? You don’t feel sentient yourself? (Although that would explain much).
As for matter, do you claim that it doesn’t exist? You see not a shred of evidence for it?
I don’t think I’ve ever come upon an argument so stupidly retarded than “there is not a single shred of evidence for matter or sentience.” Written by a semi-sentient being on a material keyboard.
Religion might be good for the soul, but man, does it ever fuck up the brain.
Right.
Sentience might be a wonderful mystery, but there’s nothing magical about it.
[quote]IrishSteel wrote:
I am offered multiple choices and I freely choose the one I choose - there is no constraining cause, I could choose A as easily as B as easily as C. That is free will.
[/quote]
You said “I freely choose the one I choose”. I’m asking why you make that particular choice, while somebody else would make a different choice?
[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
God made “I” and “you” - and God endowed that “I” and “you” with the capacity for free will. [/quote]
So you’re saying that the exercise of free will is entirely random? Or is it a reflection of “I” and “you”?
[quote]forlife wrote:
IrishSteel wrote:
I am offered multiple choices and I freely choose the one I choose - there is no constraining cause, I could choose A as easily as B as easily as C. That is free will.
You said “I freely choose the one I choose”. I’m asking why you make that particular choice, while somebody else would make a different choice?[/quote]
Because we do - that’s it. It isn’t any more complicated than that. You see A and B and choose to take A - I see A and B and choose B.
Am I missing something here? How many times do I have to say it. There is no cause for your choice - there is simply your choice.
If something or someone caused you to make that choice - it is not a choice - it is a predetermined action forced upon you by someone or something else - that is not free will.
I do not know how much plainer I can make this.
Free will means that you get to choose without a constraining cause.
[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
forlife wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
So now: if we choose not to exercise our free will, it’s God’s fault?
How could it be our own fault when the underlying attributes causing us to make one choice vs. another choice were themselves given to us by god? Do you see what I’m saying?
I see exactly what your saying. This is just a roundabout way of saying that you don’t think free will exists. [/quote]
“If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” ~ Rush.
[quote]pat wrote:
Pook, are thoughts not immaterial as well, what about love? What about concepts and premonitions? Are not all these things immaterial, yet they can all have an influence on how we behave.[/quote]
Feelings and emotions are quite real; they also are a function of the brain. Unless you claim that Love and other abstract concepts exist on their own, in a physical way?
Or to put it another way: The idea of the soul is a concept that exists. Just like the idea of a perfect circle. But none of those things have actual independent existence in forms other than ideas.
You can look up “The Standard Model” for our current best understanding of all those questions. You can look up String Theory is you prefer the mathematical masturbation view.
They’re made up of gravitational energy. Since mass and energy can convert to one another, the atom break down to component quarks and electrons and then to energy. Something like that. It’s been a while since I read up on black hole physics.
[quote]Science is always more questions than answers.
Empiricism is intrinsically weak as can do no more that show correlation not cause and effect. Since you cannot test all cases of all events science will remain for ever flawed. It is useful and interesting as hell mind you, but it can only tell you a part of the universe.[/quote]
It’s far from done explaining things, though. It’s also pretty arrogant to claim now what science will or won’t be able to explain in the future.
But out of curiosity: What part of the universe won’t science be able to tell us about? Please don’t reply with a “make-believe” part like spirits or Heaven or God.
That’s just a lot of nonsensical mumbo-jumbo. My initial question came after someone said: “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.” That implies, to me at least, that the soul is separate - the actual person - and the body some sort of physical vehicle.
Your view of the soul has it so tightly binded with the body, that it’s basically indistinguishable from it. Why invent another concept, if it explain nothing that can’t be explained more simply without it?
In Catholic catechism, it is taught that animals don’t have souls. If souls are what distinguish you from the non-alive, then, by your definition, animals are not alive.
The opposite view has ameoba and bacteria with souls. Do virii have souls too? Could my soul get infected by a flu soul?
Rubbish.
Pookiepoo, I’m not going to respond to your entire series of misreprentations and red herrings.
However, here’s an example of your utter douchebaggery:
You quote me here out of context:
And then respond thusly:
What I actually said:
Please do present any evidence that sentience is a function of matter.
Of course, you can’t. It’s embarrassing, I know. And so you resort to the above tactics.
The rest of your post is similarly misleading.
[quote]IrishSteel wrote:
Free will means that you get to choose without a constraining cause.[/quote]
Exactly, YOU are making the choice. And who made YOU?
Logically, there are only two possibilities:
So which is it? I think both of us agree that choices have a cause.
So what is that cause? It is YOU, consisting of the personal characteristics, values, beliefs, and other qualities that ultimately determine which choice you make.
And where do all of those qualities and characteristics come from, if not from god?
[quote]IrishSteel wrote:
forlife wrote:
IrishSteel wrote:
I am offered multiple choices and I freely choose the one I choose - there is no constraining cause, I could choose A as easily as B as easily as C. That is free will.
You said “I freely choose the one I choose”. I’m asking why you make that particular choice, while somebody else would make a different choice?
Because we do - that’s it. It isn’t any more complicated than that. You see A and B and choose to take A - I see A and B and choose B.
Am I missing something here? How many times do I have to say it. There is no cause for your choice - there is simply your choice.
If something or someone caused you to make that choice - it is not a choice - it is a predetermined action forced upon you by someone or something else - that is not free will.
I do not know how much plainer I can make this.
Free will means that you get to choose without a constraining cause.[/quote]
I think the basis of the confusion is that Forlife doesn’t believe in the ontological reality of the person.
[quote]forlife wrote:
IrishSteel wrote:
Free will means that you get to choose without a constraining cause.
Exactly, YOU are making the choice. And who made YOU?
Logically, there are only two possibilities:
So which is it? I think both of us agree that choices have a cause.
So what is that cause? It is YOU, consisting of the personal characteristics, values, beliefs, and other qualities that ultimately determine which choice you make.
And where do all of those qualities and characteristics come from, if not from god?[/quote]
and again - you miss my point entirely . . . is it fun just ignoring me altogether so you can reiterate your same view over and over?
No - I do not agree with you that choices have a cause. Choices are not predetermined, they are entirely open to every possibility and the agent of free will - namely the person - is ENTIRELY free to choose any of the available choices. We are agents of free will, open to choose any option WITHOUT CONSTRAINING CAUSES!
You do not believe in free will, you believe in pre-determinism - and as I said earlier, that is the source of the problem.
For me the choice is primary - for you it is secondary.
[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
IrishSteel wrote:
forlife wrote:
IrishSteel wrote:
I am offered multiple choices and I freely choose the one I choose - there is no constraining cause, I could choose A as easily as B as easily as C. That is free will.
You said “I freely choose the one I choose”. I’m asking why you make that particular choice, while somebody else would make a different choice?
Because we do - that’s it. It isn’t any more complicated than that. You see A and B and choose to take A - I see A and B and choose B.
Am I missing something here? How many times do I have to say it. There is no cause for your choice - there is simply your choice.
If something or someone caused you to make that choice - it is not a choice - it is a predetermined action forced upon you by someone or something else - that is not free will.
I do not know how much plainer I can make this.
Free will means that you get to choose without a constraining cause.
I think the basis of the confusion is that Forlife doesn’t believe in the ontological reality of the person.
[/quote]
I have to agree with you on that, Katz.
It is so symptomatic of people today to look outside of themselves for a cause for what they have chosen to do and to become so that they can escape consequence/responsibility of those choices.
[quote]pookie wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
Nice try. This commitment of yours is precisely an example of dogma. Fervent belief PLUS the total absence of proof = dogma.
Actually, that is faith. Look up dogma, it doesn’t mean what you think it means.
I am merely pointing out that you seem to have one set of set of evidentiary standards for religious concepts, and another set for concepts that are dear to you, such as sentience.
I have the same set of demands for all claims. Sentience is an observable phenomenon. We are sentient and we all know other sentient beings. A soul is not an observable phenomena. No one has ever seen one or been able to demonstrate that such a thing exists.
So, while I cannot explain sentience, I have no problem with accepting it’s existence, and claiming that it occurs/happens/manifests in the brain is the logical conclusion from the knowledge that all mental activity is situated in the brain.
The soul is not self-evident and has no standing whatsoever for people to accept it, except through faith (ie, belief without evidence. What you call dogma now, but won’t after you learn what that word means.)
The claim that soul is a gift of God is a pretty run-of-the-mill one. There’s a concept we call soul, and we know that soul and flesh are in a mutual embrace, and that soul is a bit of divinity. To conclude that soul comes from that same divinity requires no big leap.
…sounds a little different to your ears now doesn’t it? Too bad there’s no more proof for your paragraph than mine.
Well my paragraph mentions sentience and brains. Two things we can experience directly and test for. Yours speaks of souls and divinities, both of which have never been seen or heard and are completely undetectable. In other words, your soul and divinity have the exact same attribute as all the other non-existent concepts we have.
If you can’t see the difference, that’s your problem. I don’t cure delusions.
Who told you that grace doesn’t and cannot operate through nature?
What is grace? Can you prove it’s existence? Can you show an effect of grace that cannot be explained otherwise and more simply?
And YOU have need of the concept “sentience” - a concept you fervently believe in and moreover assert is a function of matter.
I “believe” in that concept because what the word “sentience” describes is easily observable. I assert it is a function of matter because as far as I can tell, there doesn’t exist a supernatural world outside of our matter and energy universe.
These are commitments you hold in the absence of a single shred of evidence.
You don’t observe sentience in other beings? You don’t feel sentient yourself? (Although that would explain much).
As for matter, do you claim that it doesn’t exist? You see not a shred of evidence for it?
I don’t think I’ve ever come upon an argument so stupidly retarded than “there is not a single shred of evidence for matter or sentience.” Written by a semi-sentient being on a material keyboard.
Religion might be good for the soul, but man, does it ever fuck up the brain.
I am simply holding up a mirror to your self-deception. I am sorry if that is the cause of your cognitive dissonance.
Right.
If you don’t see magic and wonder and mystery in the existence of sentience, then you haven’t thought about it enough.
Sentience might be a wonderful mystery, but there’s nothing magical about it.
[/quote]
So youâ??re just an empiricist. Thatâ??s all, if itâ??s not observable or measurable it does not exist. Thatâ??s why science will be forever flawed. The problem with science alone is that all it can really do is measure correlation; it cannot determine cause and effect. It can make those assumptions based on repeatable phenomenon, but unless you know the every single event of that, that is being measured, you cannot be certain of the causal chain. The second limitation is that it has to measure that, which is measurable. For physical matter that posses mass is fine. But how would you measure the breadth of an idea, or the length of love. What is the volume of a thought? Or how much does a political ideal weigh. You can try to say that itâ??s all electro-chemical reactions in the brain, but an electo-chemical reaction in the brain is not the thought, it may require the elecro-chemical reaction to produce a thought, but it is not a thought in itself.
As far as matter is concerned, you could not even know all the properties of a single solitary simple object, because the properties it posses are far greater than you can count. Itâ??s not infinite, but it would sure seem like it.
And there is not a single person here who could actually make a convincing argument that they themselves exist, much less God.
[quote]forlife wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
God made “I” and “you” - and God endowed that “I” and “you” with the capacity for free will.
So you’re saying that the exercise of free will is entirely random? Or is it a reflection of “I” and “you”?[/quote]
I am endowed with the capacity for free will. My choices are my responsibility. You are similarly endowed with the capacity for free will. Your choices are your responsibility.
[quote]pat wrote:
And there is not a single person here who could actually make a convincing argument that they themselves exist, much less God.
[/quote]
Cogito ergo sum. Quod erat demonstrandum, et stercorem pro cerebro habes. Die dulci fruere! 
[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
I think the basis of the confusion is that Forlife doesn’t believe in the ontological reality of the person.
[/quote]
No, I’m arguing that the ontological reality of the person is created by god (according to my understanding of your view), and thus god is ultimately responsible for it.