Five Reasons to Believe in God

[St Giordano Bruno]

Five Reasons to Believe in God

1. It is highly unlikely that the material world we have access to through our senses is all that there is.

I never doubted that but I fail to see how that is a reason to believe in God. In fact quite the contrary it is only telling us there are a plethora of dead planets and vast voids of empty space that out there that evade our senses.

2. There is something, rather than nothing.

Well in a multiverse paradigm I personally subscribe to, there necessarily exists universes that exist in every possible physical combination of physical laws and other idiosyncrasies so we inevitably find ourselves observing our world in one of those lucky universes with idiosyncrasies that have a presence of mind. Besides nothingness in itself is an extremely unstable equilibrium because as soon as just one dimension is added such as the presence of time you would have something which would breaks is perfect symmetry immediately in millions of chaotic tangents. So far from requiring a God to create the universe, you would require a God from preventing any kind of universe or reality from ever happening, because "nothingness" is so inherently unstable.

3. Higher reasoning, abstract thinking (including logic), and philosphy are not rational without an objective basis outside of our sensory world.

Our level of reasoning these days is far more sophisticated than is was in ancient times, so why are people in general less likely to believe in same gods as they believed then?

4. Ethics (responsibility to others) are an illusion without an objective basis of right and wrong.

I personally believe that is more rooted in our emotions than some supernatural agent supposedly informing us. Like for instance what disgusts and pains us we usually relegate as "evil" and what pleasures us we tend to relegate as "good" We view democracy as a good thing and slavery (which just happens to be condoned in some holy books) as a bad thing. Rape and paedophilia for instance naturally disgusts us, but consensual sex whether it as same sex partner of not can be viewed many as being perfectly acceptable.. No one needs to be religious to uphold those values.

5. Values/virtues (personal integrity) are an illusion without an objective basis for good.

Discuss.

I believe the objective basis for good is more to do with our survival and not religion like for instance not mistaking hemlock for parsley. It is far more important to us to know that than believing or not in the existence of God.

 

[Wombat]

Well in a multiverse paradigm I personally subscribe to, there necessarily exists universes that exist in every possible physical combination of physical laws and other idiosyncrasies so we inevitably find ourselves observing our world in one of those lucky universes with idiosyncrasies that have a presence of mind.

I also subscribe to the "multiverse paradigm"....and I'm glad that science is catching up.

Hinduism
Main article: Hindu cosmology
The concept of multiple universes is mentioned many times in Hindu Puranic literature, such as in the Bhagavata Purana:

Because You are unlimited, neither the lords of heaven nor even You Yourself can ever reach the end of Your glories. The countless universes, each enveloped in its shell, are compelled by the wheel of time to wander within You, like particles of dust blowing about in the sky. The śrutis, following their method of eliminating everything separate from the Supreme, become successful by revealing You as their final conclusion (Bhagavata Purana 10.87.41)
​

Islam

Main article: Islamic cosmology
There are seven verses in the Quran that specify that there are seven heavens. One verse says that each heaven or sky has its own order, possibly meaning laws of nature. Another verse says after mentioning the seven heavens "and similar earths".

So [Allah] decreed them as seven heavens (one above the other) in two periods and revealed to each heaven its orders. And We [Allah] adorned the lowest heaven with lights, and protection. Such is the decree of the Exalted; the Knowledgeable. [Quran 41.12]
​

Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (1149–1209), in dealing with his conception of physics and the physical world in his Matalib, "explores the notion of the existence of a multiverse in the context of his commentary" on the Qur'anic verse, "All praise belongs to God, Lord of the Worlds." He raises the question of whether the term "worlds" in this verse refers to "multiple worlds within this single universe or cosmos, or to many other universes or a multiverse beyond this known universe." Al-Razi disagreed with the Aristotelian and Avicennian view of the impossibility of multiple universes. This disagreement arose from his affirmation of atomism, as advocated by the Ash'ari school of Islamic theology, which entails the existence of vacant space in which the atoms move, combine and separate.[25] He argued that God has the power to fill the vacuum with an infinite number of universes.[26]

Multiverse - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I'm not getting the distinction. The experience is that I feel like I am making choices. This is very real for me. Do I want to keep typing or go to bed? OK, I want to keep typing for now. That felt like a choice. But, in a deterministic material world it is merely the outcome of processes not influenced by me (because there is no me) in the least. Data in - result out.

Wait - how can you say there's no "me" in a deterministic material world? Of course there's a "me"; it would just be a different sort of "me" than the one you thought existed.

But what I was getting at is this: right now, we have two mutually exclusive hypotheses:

- I have free will.
- I don't actually have free will, even though I feel like I do.

By itself, "I feel like I have free will" is going to occur under either situation, so you can't use it as the criterion to distinguish between them. To do that, you need to introduce something else: for instance, "the free will I feel I have is rooted in actual free will"... but this claim would need additional support.

How am I any different from a sponge? I can compute more variables, sure. Does a sponge have will?

Sure... a sponge has "will" in the same sense that the desert is wet.

We tend to think of a desert as dry, but it does contain non-zero moisture. If we gradually add water, at some point it'll reach the threshold for what we consider "wet", but it's not like it was like an on/off switch where it went from no moisture at all to lots of moisture in one instant.

I wouldn't say that a sponge has very much will, but (and I stand to be corrected by anyone who knows more about marine biology than I do) it probably has some.

Then who or what is?????

I have no idea. But I do realize that the dichotomy you set up effectively implies that the only thing that can negate strict determinism is free will. I recognize this as a claim that should be supported and justified before it's accepted.

Hmmmm. I mean that there needs to be some kind of agency and will for there to be choice, and I can't locate these in a material, deterministic world.

I think we're running into terminology issues again. I don't see any problem with the idea of agency in a deterministic setting. In fact, we often use the term "agent" to describe things that we probably all agree don't (and can't) have any sort of will or choice at all... for instance, gas stations around here like to advertise the "cleaning agents" in their gasoline.

I guess we are using two different definitions of choice, then. What you describe as choice I think of as a result. Run the experiment or program and get a result.

In that context, I see the result as the final end product. In a digital system, a "result" could be the cumulative effect of many intermediate choices.

The idea of Ground of Being is a whole exploration in itself. I make a connection with it and process philosophy, which is also a whole other conversation. Are you interested in learning about process philosophy and discussing it further?

I don't know; is it necessary for me to accept process philosophy in order to accept your initial arguments/claims in the OP? What does it bring to the discussion?

Short answer to your question, in process philosophy one might think of all 'things' as having souls (although, the basic unit of existence is not a material thing, but a process, and 'actual entities' are more rightly thought of as becomings).

"One might"? So one doesn't necessarily have to think of things that way?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Did Watson choose that answer? Could Watson have given any other answer, barring a program glitch or faulty input into its database? I don't know about you, but when I put data into a computer and get an answer, I don't want the computer to choose the output, but to give me the result it is programmed to produce. Wouldn't we be concerned if computers started choosing different outputs freely?

When I was in high school, my senior programming class was one big project for the year. My project was a computer interface for our theatre's lighting system. A couple of my friends decided that their project would be an "intelligent" computer audio filter that would clean up the sound quality on noisy recordings of music.

However, they didn't do it by giving the program a deterministic set of rules for how to process the music. Instead, they created a program that provided a "learning framework" using neural networks and then they taught it by playing it example after example of high-quality recordings of music in the same style (jazz, IIRC). Once this was done - once the program knew what "good" recordings sounded like - it could figure out how to make bad recordings sound more like the good ones.

Now... in all this, exactly what was the result that the computer was programmed to produce?

AFAICT, it didn't have one. It had an overall goal or objective ("make the music sound better"), but there were many ways it could achieve this goal, and they never told it how they wanted the music to be better. If the program decided to eliminate hiss, that would've acheived the goal... but removing pops and scratches would have acheived the goal, too.

 

[ninerbuff]

Five Reasons to Believe in God

1. It is highly unlikely that the material world we have access to through our senses is all that there is.

Of course. Without telescopes we wouldn't know about other galaxies, but god didn't give us telescopes.

2. There is somthing, rather than nothing.

When death occurs, there is nothing.

3. Higher reasoning, abstract thinking (including logic), and philosphy are not rational without an objective basis outside of our sensory world.

Yep, without scientists (who are basically non religious) we would still be in the stone ages.

4. Ethics (responsibility to others) are an illusion without an objective basis of right and wrong.

But it's different from culture to culture and no one culture totally agrees with another on religion.

5. Values/virtues (personal integrity) are an illusion without an objective basis for good.

Discuss. :seesaw:

Definition of good is subjective. Where you think feeding the homeless is good, others think it might be a crutch.

 

[lunamoth]

Wait - how can you say there's no "me" in a deterministic material world? Of course there's a "me"; it would just be a different sort of "me" than the one you thought existed.

I am equating the "me" with the agent that may or may not have free will. What are the possibilities for such an agent? I conclude that it must be either 1) functionally equivalent to my brain and the processes of my brain, fully under the control of cause and effect (thus 'me' and free agency is an illusion) or 2) something else that is not physical or not dependent upon the physical processes of my brain. What are the other alternatives?

But what I was getting at is this: right now, we have two mutually exclusive hypotheses:

- I have free will.
- I don't actually have free will, even though I feel like I do.

By itself, "I feel like I have free will" is going to occur under either situation, so you can't use it as the criterion to distinguish between them. To do that, you need to introduce something else: for instance, "the free will I feel I have is rooted in actual free will"... but this claim would need additional support.

You are breaking the problem down inappropriately.

These are not hypotheses at all until we think of a way to test them. They are mutually exclusive possibilities: I have free will or I do not have free will.

This actually breaks down further to 'there is such a thing as free will' or 'there is not.'

Let's agree that we need some kind of evidence or empirical fact to support whether we have free will or not. I submit that the fact that I feel like I have free will supports that it exists. Further, the idea that I have free will matches how I conduct myself in the world - I believe and act as if I am responsible for my actions.

However, I admit that this could all be an illusion. Free will and the idea that I am responsible for my actions could be illusions.


As you know, the topic of free will is huge. Let's take a minute to be impressed by the massive amount of effort that has been put into this question and yet it still has not been resolved to anyone's satisfaction. Even among agreed determinists (who all agree that determinism is contingent and that the truth of it should be verified by scientific method, evidence, and empiricism; the two ways a world could fail to be deterministic would be if the laws of nature are probabilistic at the macro level or there are entities within the world that are not governed by physical laws) there is not agreement on free will.

So, first choice is deterministic world or indeterministic world. If you agree that the laws of nature are laws, and not probabilities, and do not want to invoke entities not governed by physical laws, you are deterministic.

In determinism you can be an incompatibilist (free will is not compatible with determinism), a compatibilist (free will is compatible with determinism) or a pessimist (deterministic or indeterministic, either way free will is impossible or meaningless). One may also simply be a free-will denier (free will is compatible with determinism, but we still don't have it).

I would be interested to know which position you hold. If you have other options I would also be interested in hearing them detailed and which you hold (otherwise let's agree that unspecified 'other options' are not important for our discussion). [Interesting aside to this - can you choose your beliefs about this?]

Sure... a sponge has "will" in the same sense that the desert is wet.


We tend to think of a desert as dry, but it does contain non-zero moisture. If we gradually add water, at some point it'll reach the threshold for what we consider "wet", but it's not like it was like an on/off switch where it went from no moisture at all to lots of moisture in one instant.

I wouldn't say that a sponge has very much will, but (and I stand to be corrected by anyone who knows more about marine biology than I do) it probably has some.

OK, if I have will then a sponge has will, and it is a matter of degree. Notice, though, that now we (might) have disconnected will from higher reasoning. Is will rational in any sense?

Now, does a rock have will?

Breaking this into two posts.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I am equating the "me" with the agent that may or may not have free will. What are the possibilities for such an agent? I conclude that it must be either 1) functionally equivalent to my brain and the processes of my brain, fully under the control of cause and effect (thus 'me' and free agency is an illusion)

No; free agency would be an illusion, but "me" would be real... deterministic, but real.

You are breaking the problem down inappropriately.

These are not hypotheses at all until we think of a way to test them. They are mutually exclusive possibilities: I have free will or I do not have free will.

I know that there's no way to test them; that was my point.

This actually breaks down further to 'there is such a thing as free will' or 'there is not.'

Let's agree that we need some kind of evidence or empirical fact to support whether we have free will or not. I submit that the fact that I feel like I have free will supports that it exists. Further, the idea that I have free will matches how I conduct myself in the world - I believe and act as if I am responsible for my actions.

However, I admit that this could all be an illusion. Free will and the idea that I am responsible for my actions could be illusions.

Why do you keep on adding extra unsupported bits and pieces to your argument? How does the absence of free will mean you aren't responsible for your actions?

As you know, the topic of free will is huge. Let's take a minute to be impressed by the massive amount of effort that has been put into this question and yet it still has not been resolved to anyone's satisfaction.

Yes, I realize this. I also realize that your arguments are dependent on the question being resolved. Besides being an appeal to consequences, the argument that we can't have free will without God is a moot point if we don't have free will. Free will is necessary for your argument, therefore the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate it... or at least demonstrate that it's better supported than its alternatives.

I would be interested to know which position you hold. If you have other options I would also be interested in hearing them detailed and which you hold (otherwise let's agree that unspecified 'other options' are not important for our discussion). [Interesting aside to this - can you choose your beliefs about this?]

I think that free will is a useful mental construct, but at the same time, I think it's probably illusory.

OK, if I have will then a sponge has will, and it is a matter of degree. Notice, though, that now we (might) have disconnected will from higher reasoning. Is will rational in any sense?

It can be; I don't see why we should assume it has to be.

Now, does a rock have will?

Depends what you mean by "will". It can have "agency" in the same sense that chemicals can be "agents", but I don't think that rocks make decisions, no.

 

[Willamena]

I'm not getting the distinction. The experience is that I feel like I am making choices. This is very real for me. Do I want to keep typing or go to bed? OK, I want to keep typing for now. That felt like a choice. But, in a deterministic material world it is merely the outcome of processes not influenced by me (because there is no me) in the least. Data in - result out.

How am I any different from a sponge? I can compute more variables, sure. Does a sponge have will?

Significantly, the question should not arise, because the sponge lacks something that you have: you. Will is an agent active in the world; for each of us, there is only one significant agency at play. Our "self."

 

[lunamoth]

I have no idea. But I do realize that the dichotomy you set up effectively implies that the only thing that can negate strict determinism is free will. I recognize this as a claim that should be supported and justified before it's accepted.

No, that is not what I was trying to do. My apologies. I'm also learning as I go.

We are discussing causal determinism - the thesis that the course of the future is determined by the conjunction of the past and the laws of nature. The alternative to this is indeterminism - that this is not true. Either can be true irregardless of whether or not there is free will.

Your statement: For instance, maybe things aren't deterministic but we aren't the ones determining the outcome.

This recognizes the possibility of indeterminism, such as might be supported by interpretations of QM. Do you think that indeterminism is tenable at the 'macro' scale?

I've kind of lost track of what we were talking about for this point, but perhaps if you can address whether you are a compatibilist, incompatibilist, pessimist, or free-will denier, (or other), that will help us.

I think we're running into terminology issues again. I don't see any problem with the idea of agency in a deterministic setting. In fact, we often use the term "agent" to describe things that we probably all agree don't (and can't) have any sort of will or choice at all... for instance, gas stations around here like to advertise the "cleaning agents" in their gasoline.

But isn't that just a looseness and lack of rigor in our language?

It looks to me like you are arguing the compatibilist position for free will. I agree that there are arguments for this and it would be interesting to discuss these further if you want. These do not require supernatural agents, but they do require some premises that most people find objectionable for one reason or another.

In that context, I see the result as the final end product. In a digital system, a "result" could be the cumulative effect of many intermediate choices.

But are they intermediate 'choices' if they are locked into a cause and effect chain based on fixed past events?

I don't know; is it necessary for me to accept process philosophy in order to accept your initial arguments/claims in the OP? What does it bring to the discussion?

No, it is not necessary. In fact one could see process philosophy as a way to dispense with the notions of God, but we still end up with some untidy ends when we do so.

It is an interesting way of interpreting 'being' that solves the mind-body dualism problems at the root of most of this discussion. It also can incorporate the current understanding of QM in a way that 'makes more sense' (to me anyway). It is possible that while a material worldview of the world predominates our thinking so much today that we have a hard time envisioning process philosophy (our neural networks act as filters against it), a process philosophy worldview could very well be the way everyone thinks in the future. Or not.

"One might"? So one doesn't necessarily have to think of things that way?

You tell me. Can we choose our beliefs? Are we free to choose our worldview?

 

[Willamena]

I am equating the "me" with the agent that may or may not have free will. What are the possibilities for such an agent? I conclude that it must be either 1) functionally equivalent to my brain and the processes of my brain, fully under the control of cause and effect (thus 'me' and free agency is an illusion) or 2) something else that is not physical or not dependent upon the physical processes of my brain. What are the other alternatives?

In one (very real) sense, there is no "free will" without a "me" that is at the helm of her ship, gripping the wheel and steering a course. But take that picture and freeze it, hold it in your hand a moment, and turn it around a bit to see it from different angles. When you're no longer looking at it from the helm, through your eyes, you see a ship, a "me" at the helm, and everything that surrounds and influences each. This free will/determinism debate is just a matter of perspective, looking at the same thing from two different views.

Both views exist. Both views are real. In one, there is clear and evident free will; in the other, any "will" there might be is hidden from view. What significantly changes between the two views is how that picture is viewed.

Now take this picture, of an objective observer looking at the two different views, and hold it in your hand, and turn it around a bit...

 

[lunamoth]

When I was in high school, my senior programming class was one big project for the year. My project was a computer interface for our theatre's lighting system. A couple of my friends decided that their project would be an "intelligent" computer audio filter that would clean up the sound quality on noisy recordings of music.

However, they didn't do it by giving the program a deterministic set of rules for how to process the music. Instead, they created a program that provided a "learning framework" using neural networks and then they taught it by playing it example after example of high-quality recordings of music in the same style (jazz, IIRC). Once this was done - once the program knew what "good" recordings sounded like - it could figure out how to make bad recordings sound more like the good ones.

Now... in all this, exactly what was the result that the computer was programmed to produce?

Fascinating experiment! This sounds like what happens in the brain as we form neural networks when we are exposed to various stimuli and learn. The outcome is unpredictable. As you have argued in past threads, though, it is only unpredictable because we don't have access to all of the information we need to make the prediction.

Answer to your question, the result was that the computer made improved recordings based upon its input and programming. The computer could not make recordings that did not sound more like it was trained to make.

What would have been interesting is if the computer had free will. Then it could choose to make recordings that it liked and thought were good, even though they would only sound good to other computers (if those computers had the same taste as the one creating the new recordings). What would this sound like to humans? Who knows!

AFAICT, it didn't have one. It had an overall goal or objective ("make the music sound better"), but there were many ways it could achieve this goal, and they never told it how they wanted the music to be better. If the program decided to eliminate hiss, that would've acheived the goal... but removing pops and scratches would have acheived the goal, too.

Just because a goal can be met in multiple ways does not mean that the computer was making a choice that was free of cause and effect. If the programmers could input more exacting criteria with respect to what was 'good,' the number of acceptable results would be reduced. More refined input in - more refined output out.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

No, that is not what I was trying to do. My apologies. I'm also learning as I go.

We are discussing causal determinism - the thesis that the course of the future is determined by the conjunction of the past and the laws of nature. The alternative to this is indeterminism - that this is not true. Either can be true irregardless of whether or not there is free will.

Your statement: For instance, maybe things aren't deterministic but we aren't the ones determining the outcome.

This recognizes the possibility of indeterminism, such as might be supported by interpretations of QM. Do you think that indeterminism is tenable at the 'macro' scale?

Seeing how quantum events can have effects at the macro scale (hence why we can observe them), I don't see how it'd be an unreasonable assumption.

Also, one of your initial arguments was that there's more to the universe than what we know. If there's room for God in that gap, there's room for unknown forces, non-God agents, or who-knows-what in there as well.

I've kind of lost track of what we were talking about for this point, but perhaps if you can address whether you are a compatibilist, incompatibilist, pessimist, or free-will denier, (or other), that will help us.

I think "free will" probably is illusory, but mainly because of what I think we know about the nature of our brains than any philosophical issues like determinism. I think that at a rather fundamental level, the evidence suggests that most aspects of our "free will" can be shown to be biologically or physically driven, and that's even before we start to consider whether the other (IMO minor) aspects are deterministic or not.

IMO, "me" is largely biological and physical... to the point where if you take away that which is demonstrably biological and physical, it could no longer rightly be called "me".

But isn't that just a looseness and lack of rigor in our language?

It may very well be a different sense than you're intending the term, but that's why I was asking you to define your terms as you're using them.

But are they intermediate 'choices' if they are locked into a cause and effect chain based on fixed past events?

Sure. Why would they stop being choices just because they're deterministic? That would just mean that "choice X is made" is one link in the chain of cause and effect... but we knew that anyhow.

No, it is not necessary. In fact one could see process philosophy as a way to dispense with the notions of God, but we still end up with some untidy ends when we do so.

Okay. I'm just trying to keep us on the original track as much as possible. If getting into a long tangent about process philosophy doesn't get us closer to showing how your initial arguments point toward God, then it's probably not a useful tangent... at least for this thread.

You tell me. Can we choose our beliefs? Are we free to choose our worldview?

I was just trying to find out whether you were saying that souls are implied by process theology, or whether they're merely compatible with it.

 

[Copernicus]

So the mind does not have a cause and effect relationship with the brain? That seems to differ with the position you stated in your own Five Reasons thread:...

I have consistently said that the brain "causes" the mind, but causation is not as simple a process as many people think it is. Brain activity simultaneously gives rise to mental activity. That is why doing things to a brain has predictable effects on mental activity. I would not define a mind as a physical thing, but as a "brain system"--the effect of interactions between physical components of the brain.

If there is not a cause and effect connection between the mind and the brain, what is their relationship? How are they connected?

In the same way that physical interactions in the atmosphere give rise to storm systems. You can describe storm systems in terms of smaller subsystems within the overall weather pattern, but ultimately the whole thing emerges from interactions between much simpler physical elements in the environment. Perhaps one could think of a mind metaphorically as a kind of "brainstorm".

 

[lunamoth]

No; free agency would be an illusion, but "me" would be real... deterministic, but real.

OK.

Why do you keep on adding extra unsupported bits and pieces to your argument? How does the absence of free will mean you aren't responsible for your actions?

I thought you would be pretty well acquainted with the connection between free will and ethical responsibility. If you are not free to choose your actions, if you are constrained by the past and the laws of nature, this is no different from being coerced. Are you responsible for actions you have no choice about?

Yes, I realize this. I also realize that your arguments are dependent on the question being resolved. Besides being an appeal to consequences, the argument that we can't have free will without God is a moot point if we don't have free will. Free will is necessary for your argument, therefore the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate it... or at least demonstrate that it's better supported than its alternatives.

If I were trying to prove God then the above would have weight. I can't prove God and am not trying to.

I think that free will is a useful mental construct, but at the same time, I think it's probably illusory.

OK. That's not really the same at taking a position on the issue, but I realize that's are far as you want to go.

It can be; I don't see why we should assume it has to be.

This is about will being rational. You think there is not a necessary connection between our will (understood as freedom to choose) and reason. OK.

Added: I asked this because some of the compatibilist arguments require reason's involvment in free will.

Depends what you mean by "will". It can have "agency" in the same sense that chemicals can be "agents", but I don't think that rocks make decisions, no.

OK. In process philosophy the rock would have will.

 

[Willamena]

How does the absence of free will mean you aren't responsible for your actions?

Is there any sense of responsibility that doesn't include initiative and accountability?

 

[lunamoth]

Seeing how quantum events can have effects at the macro scale (hence why we can observe them), I don't see how it'd be an unreasonable assumption.

I agree. Help me out. Does this mean that the natural laws are more like 'guidelines?'

Also, one of your initial arguments was that there's more to the universe than what we know. If there's room for God in that gap, there's room for unknown forces, non-God agents, or who-knows-what in there as well.

OK.

I think "free will" probably is illusory, but mainly because of what I think we know about the nature of our brains than any philosophical issues like determinism. I think that at a rather fundamental level, the evidence suggests that most aspects of our "free will" can be shown to be biologically or physically driven, and that's even before we start to consider whether the other (IMO minor) aspects are deterministic or not.

IMO, "me" is largely biological and physical... to the point where if you take away that which is demonstrably biological and physical, it could no longer rightly be called "me".

The evidence as you understand it indicates that we do not have free will. That is fine! No free will is a logical conclusion based on our current scientific understanding and a materialistic worldview.

Sure. Why would they stop being choices just because they're deterministic? That would just mean that "choice X is made" is one link in the chain of cause and effect... but we knew that anyhow.

Because 'choice' requires free will and above you indicated that the empirical evidence points against free will, and so the empirical evidence points against choice.

You asked what I mean by choice and I said that I define it as requiring agency and will. In post #273 I said: I mean that there needs to be some kind of agency and will for there to be choice, and I can't locate these in a material, deterministic world.

You followed this by pointing out other uses of the term agent. If you think the idea of choice is completely captured by the idea that 'one of multiple outcomes was selected,' then we are done.

Okay. I'm just trying to keep us on the original track as much as possible. If getting into a long tangent about process philosophy doesn't get us closer to showing how your initial arguments point toward God, then it's probably not a useful tangent... at least for this thread.

OK.

Added: Process philosophy offers an alternative to a materialistic worldview. In process philosophy will is integral.

I was just trying to find out whether you were saying that souls are implied by process theology, or whether they're merely compatible with it.

I am using soul as a signifier for an agent with will. So, in that case, yes, souls are required for process philosophy or process theology.

Added: What is added by process philosophy is an explanation for how God interacts with the world.

 

[lunamoth]

I have consistently said that the brain "causes" the mind, but causation is not as simple a process as many people think it is. Brain activity simultaneously gives rise to mental activity. That is why doing things to a brain has predictable effects on mental activity. I would not define a mind as a physical thing, but as a "brain system"--the effect of interactions between physical components of the brain.

So you do not think that cause and effect applies to the brain and mental activities? Or that it only applies in some loose sense? Is brain function the only place where cause and effect are not fully applicable, or are there other things/events in the world where cause and effect do not apply?

In the same way that physical interactions in the atmosphere give rise to storm systems. You can describe storm systems in terms of smaller subsystems within the overall weather pattern, but ultimately the whole thing emerges from interactions between much simpler physical elements in the environment. Perhaps one could think of a mind metaphorically as a kind of "brainstorm".

So storm systems are also not the result of cause and effect?

 

[lunamoth]

Your question and your attitude, and even the need to make a case, blatently state that the material world is not only the norm but all there is to nature.

I disagree.

Willa, I have been pondering this and pondering this. All I can say is that if I am following your syntax correctly, I agree with your disagreement.

 

[Copernicus]

So you do not think that cause and effect applies to the brain and mental activities? Or that it only applies in some loose sense? Is brain function the only place where cause and effect are not fully applicable, or are there other things/events in the world where cause and effect do not apply?

Wait a minute, Luna. I'm having difficulty answering such questions, because you seem to be imputing positions to me that I did not take. "Cause and effect" can apply to both physical and mental domains. The physical domain--the brain--"causes" the mental domain--the mind--in the sense that it generates mental activity. It generates such activity in the same sense that physical interactions give rise to any chaotic deterministic system. At least, that is what I meant when I said that the brain "causes" mental activity. Cause and effect are "fully applicable" in both brains and minds, but there is a difference between a physical event and a mental event. It is a category mistake to confuse them, even though one set of events is necessary for the other to occur.

So storm systems are also not the result of cause and effect?

Weather forecasters stake their reputations on it.

 

[lunamoth]

Wait a minute, Luna. I'm having difficulty answering such questions, because you seem to be imputing positions to me that I did not take. "Cause and effect" can apply to both physical and mental domains. The physical domain--the brain--"causes" the mental domain--the mind--in the sense that it generates mental activity. It generates such activity in the same sense that physical interactions give rise to any chaotic deterministic system. At least, that is what I meant when I said that the brain "causes" mental activity. Cause and effect are "fully applicable" in both brains and minds, but there is a difference between a physical event and a mental event. It is a category mistake to confuse them, even though one set of events is necessary for the other to occur.

You keep saying that it is a category mistake to confuse the physical process of the brain and the mental process that is associated with the mind.

1. Brain - physical - itself controlled by cause and effect.
2. Mind - mental activity - caused by brain - controlled by cause and effect.
3. Brain and Mind related by cause and effect
4. Is there something else impinging on the mind that is not under cause and effect?



If there is a category error I am still missing it.

Weather forecasters stake their reputations on it.

I thought so.