are accepting intuition as a source of knowledge?
No. I define knowledge as the collection of demonstrably correct ideas, which only comes from experience (empiricism) or pure reason (mathematical knowledge, where demonstration is in the form of proof, not sensory experience).
Other paths to belief include intuition and faith. I don't consider the ideas arrived at by those methods knowledge.
are you granting “free will” on the basis of intuition?
I'm not granting libertarian free will at all. The belief that one has it may be an illusion, but so powerful and compelling an illusion to most that they accept it as knowledge. But that is just intuition.
Here's a test for whether to call something intuition: "I just know it's true but I can't demonstrate it to be such." We can call that faith as well, but that word covers beliefs simply accepted uncritically such as all of the stuff here I've just been reading about Satan.
Or are you claiming the opposite?
Neither. The question of free will is unanswerable unless it is actually not free and that that is eventually demonstrated. There's some evidence to support that (Libet experiment), but it is not considered enough to draw that conclusion.
I have to put you on "ignore". It is impossible to communicate with anyone who refuses to communicate.
No problem.
I don't know if you'll see these words, but in case you do, I'll explain how I'll proceed from here. My answers won't be for you, which will cut down considerably on which comments I reply to. Several that I had lined up to answer now can be deleted without answers, because I can't imagine anybody else being interested in my responses to any of the following (but they might be interested in this response):
- "what is it with the word "metaphysics" (basis of science)? Do you disagree, not understand, or is it useless?"
- "YOU don't get to decide how I use any word AT ALL"
- "IT IS NOT AWARENESS AS WE DEFINE IT. Am I supposed to write a 4000 word essay for every little point or definition because believers will otherwise REFUSE to parse my words as intended?"
- "If I said it is "awareness" you'd tell me an acorn is not self aware."
- "Ancient people didn't experience thought."
- "No animal experiences thought which we believe makes us self aware."
- "Being self aware makes you and me sleep walkers."
- "Most of these people still think that I believe magic is the basis of science."
Those were all areas in which I had hoped to say something helpful to you, but which answers wouldn't be useful or interesting to anybody else, so, I deleted them.
At last, something that didn't get deleted:
I have no doubt some of the problem is me. I believe most of the problem is that the ideas I'm trying to communicate are alien to most individuals.
All of the problem is you, and you have all the evidence you need to conclude that. There are over a half dozen articulate posters participating in this thread. I can understand them all, and they seem to understand me despite my lazy editing. All of them have expressed difficulty understanding you. If you don't see the implications of that, you're fated to forever not recognize what the problem is - the first step in correcting it.
You write about others only seeing what they have concluded in advance, but that's what you're doing. You have decided that it's a them problem despite giving a bit of lip service above to being some of the problem before immediately reverting to it's a them problem again.
The irony here is that i could be wrong about everything without people showing me where I'm wrong despite the fact I can delineate numerous things they have wrong and state specifics of how they went wrong.
There is no evidence that anybody has been able to teach you anything. Nobody can show you that you are wrong without your cooperation. There is no burden of "proof" with somebody who can't or won't examine an argument dispassionately, have the critical thinking skills to determine if it's sound, and be ready to change his mind if shown he is wrong by that method. Whenever I write to you, nothing changes for you.
Faith is a very reasonable course of action
Faith is an alternative to reason. If your reasoning is valid, you don't need faith to believe and neither does any other critical thinker. If you need faith to believe, then you have no reasoned argument to present.
That's because you still don't understand it and you never will because you are an atheist true believer.
I understand faith perfectly. I used to indulge in it myself. That worked out badly, and I learned a better way to make decisions about what is true. There's nothing to understand about faith apart from it being a path to unjustified belief.
For you, theism is wrong. Theism is false. Theism is bad. You truly believe this. and you will not doubt it. Ever.
For me, faith is a mistake and theism is unnecessary. I don't call it false, just unjustified and for me, unnecessary.
And you're probably right that I will never change my mind about faith. Ever. Why should I? I know better now.
You have no idea what faith in a wisdom and power greater than ourselves does for those who choose it
Sure, I do. Why would you think I don't? I saw what it did to me. I see what it's done to you. And I see what it's done to another theist currently active on this thread. None of it is something I want for myself again.
Of course they do. They know they can't back it up
That was an answer to, "Most atheists deny you[r] claim that they claim no gods exist."
This is what faith has done to you:
ME: I neither believe that gods do or don't exist because I have no means to rule them in or out. That describes an agnostic atheist.
YOU: You're an atheist, so you deny that gods exist.
ME: I just told you otherwise.
YOU: You're lying. You have to because you can't support the claim that there are no gods.
That's either a cognitive defect or trolling. Or maybe you have a third possibility to suggest.
Like I said, you don't post like that about politics, government, or economics.
You have no idea what you might have accomplished if you had.
Been there, done that.
So you are in no position to pass judgment on anyone else's faith choices.
Sure I am. Those choices are irrational (not arrived at by applying valid reason to true premises or knowledge gained through prior experience) and generate unfalsifiable beliefs. If that were incorrect, you could successfully rebut it. But you can't and won't try. You might dismiss it or repeat yourself, but you won't falsify it with counterargument.
I'm also able to pass judgment on how faith affects people that indulge in it. In the best case, it gives a little psychological comfort. In the worst, it results in incarceration for storming the Capitol, needless Covid morbidity and mortality, refusal to take climate change seriously and insist on immediate action, and dead bodies at Jonestown and Waco.
The last climate deniers will lose their uninsurable homes to wildfire, tornado, or hurricane, homes that they can't sell due to everybody else realizing before they did that their location was no longer habitable. That's what faith can do to one.