Darren New wrote:
> Well, the existence of the "soul" is another question. One can 
> reasonably question what is even meant by "the soul".

I completely agree.  Since the question was phrased in religious terms I 
was merely trying to phrase the answer in the same way as well. 
Personally, I'm iffy enough on what "free will" means and how to make it 
coherent to actually attempt to argue about something more difficult 
still like a soul.

> That's not how the "first cause" argument is usually argued - I've never 
> seen an argument that uncaused events can be caused by conciousness. 
> Generally, the uncaused events are caused by a god, and the god doesn't 
> need a cause because he's always been present.

I haven't seen it argued this way either, but I'd be quite surprised if 
the argument isn't commonly considered in more modern philosophical 
discussions of the topic.  It seems like a pretty natural response, and 
fits well with the sort of dualistic conception of the mind taken by 
many religious people.

> Then, of course, you can get into an argument over what "consciousness" 
> is, but that's another argument and (in my opinion) rather easier to 
> discuss.

A completely agree.  Though technically speaking the argument still 
works if you replace "conscious agent" with "free agent".  It's just 
that (in my view) our conception of free will is so closely tied with 
our concept on consciousness (however vague) that it's more intuitively 
compelling to state it that way.

Said differently, you only need to push the argument to one about 
consciousness to the degree that you believe free will necessitates 
consciousness, although it's probably reasonable for a proponent to take 
that view as a "free but not conscious" God is a rather odd concept.

> Yes it would.  (Actually, I suspect anyone who would actually argue with 
> me this way is far beyond convincing, but that's another question.)

But at least they could also be rational in being unconvinced!

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Darren New wrote:
> Chambers wrote:
>> Now, quantum interactions appear random to us, but if it were possible
>> to "zoom in" sufficiently, we might determine otherwise.
> 
> As I understand it, this has been conclusively disproven in ways not too 
> difficult to understand.

Unless you mean merely to imply that such "zooming in" is theoretically 
impossible, to my (very limited) knowledge on this subject I don't think 
that this is true.  At least as far as classical quantum mechanics is 
concerned, it is possible for the predictions to arise from entirely 
deterministic, with the caveat that you have to allow for 
faster-than-light interactions.

The most relevant theorem is known as Bell's theorem: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem, which you may remember 
was employed in the paper arguing against Wolfram's CA view of physics 
that I linked for you.

In fact, a deterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics has been 
mathematically laid out 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohm_interpretation, although I don't know 
how well it lends itself to attempts to unify it with general relativity 
(although afaik, it's not clear how well standard QM is either).

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Kevin Wampler wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> Chambers wrote:
>>> Now, quantum interactions appear random to us, but if it were possible
>>> to "zoom in" sufficiently, we might determine otherwise.
>>
>> As I understand it, this has been conclusively disproven in ways not 
>> too difficult to understand.
> 
> Unless you mean merely to imply that such "zooming in" is theoretically 
> impossible, to my (very limited) knowledge on this subject I don't think 
> that this is true.  At least as far as classical quantum mechanics is 
> concerned, it is possible for the predictions to arise from entirely 
> deterministic, with the caveat that you have to allow for 
> faster-than-light interactions.

Yes. And recently, they've used a variant of the Bell Inequality to disprove 
that it's due to non-local interactions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kochen-Specker_theorem

(Or, for a more popular treatment:)
http://richarddawkins.net/article,2991,Do-subatomic-particles-have-free-will,Science-News

I'm not sure if this is the one I read about, but I think someone did an 
experiment and validated this experimentally, basically by running Bell's 
Inequality sorts of tests on a whole sphere of points rather than just two 
directions.

http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR08/Event/76135
disagrees.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v446/n7138/abs/nature05677.html
may be what I remember reading about, but I don't know where the popular 
reference to it is.  I can't seem to find the article about someone actually 
doing the experiment that the math implies and finding it worked, but it was 
pretty clear that they eliminated non-local interactions thereby.

> The most relevant theorem is known as Bell's theorem: 

Yes, I've pointed that out to people here before, I believe. :-)

> In fact, a deterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics has been 
> mathematically laid out 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohm_interpretation, although I don't know 
> how well it lends itself to attempts to unify it with general relativity 
> (although afaik, it's not clear how well standard QM is either).

AFAIK, QED and GR are at odds because GR assumes a non-quantum 
everywhere-differentiable space, basically.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   The NFL should go international. I'd pay to
   see the Detroit Lions vs the Roman Catholics.

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> The existence of "free will" negates the argument that God must have 
> created the universe as a "first cause".
>
> The "first cause" argument is that every effect has a cause, and hence for 
> the universe to exist, something before the universe must have caused it, 
> and hence God exists.[1]
>
> On the other hand, either our decisions are caused by what's in the 
> environment, or some aspect of our decisions are not subject to prior 
> causes. In the first case, it would be unjust to blame someone for not 
> believing in your religion if such disbelief is entirely the fault of 
> external circumstances. In the latter case, many decisions have effects 
> without precedent cause, and hence the requirement for God to have created 
> the universe disappears.
>
> Thoughts?

Why does the first case rule out the possibility of God having created the 
universe?  Or do you mean that if "the decisions" are entirely made based on 
the environment, there must have been "something else" at the beginning 
because otherwise no decisions could be made to start the universe?

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"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message
news:494### [at] sanrrcom...

> The existence of "free will" negates the argument that God must have
created
> the universe as a "first cause".
>
> The "first cause" argument is that every effect has a cause, and hence for
> the universe to exist, something before the universe must have caused it,
> and hence God exists.[1]
>
> On the other hand, either our decisions are caused by what's in the
> environment, or some aspect of our decisions are not subject to prior
> causes. In the first case, it would be unjust to blame someone for not
> believing in your religion if such disbelief is entirely the fault of
> external circumstances. In the latter case, many decisions have effects
> without precedent cause, and hence the requirement for God to have created
> the universe disappears.
>
> Thoughts?

Free will negates itself, as you note. Only a will that is not dependent on
its environment is truly free, but that also implies a will that's
indifferent to its environment, hence essentially random. Neither a
deterministic, nor a probabilistic will is thus appealing. What's more, no
amount of mixing the two yields one that is appealing either. How "free" a
will depends on how ignorant we are of the process. We can say that the will
of someone under the influence is not so free precisely because we know how
his decision making process is affected by an outside (well, by now, inside)
agent that we can readily identify. To a lesser extent, someone who has
consumed a lof of coffee or sugar arguably has less "free will" than someone
who has not. But of course when we say a "normal" person has free will, it's
our ignorance of the precise biochemical processes speaking.

As to the first cause argument, one can simply note that human will is not
enough to create anything out of nothing, much less a universe. After all,
humans are not omnipotent. Thus, whether humans have free will or not does
not affect the "neccessity" of a first cause for the universe. And special
pleading then "answers" the question of the cause of God. If the free will
of humans is bothering one, he can simply turn that into a special pleading
as well, as in: "everthing except human will has a cause", followed by
"human will is not enough to create a universe", both of which seem
reasonable from a distance, so that the first cause argument remains
"intact".

The bottomline is, despite what the likes of Anselm, Aquinas, Pascal.. etc
attempted, religion has little to do with logic or reason. One can always
tailor the "axioms" to fit the agenda.

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Darren New wrote:
> Warp wrote:
>>   How can *any* hypothesis which states how the Universe came into
>> existence
>> be testable? 
> 
> It can make predictions that are or are not borne out, the same as any
> other. For example, the "big bang" theory postulates that the universe

	Only if causation applies.


-- 
Fax me no questions, I'll Fax you no lies!


                    /\  /\               /\  /
                   /  \/  \ u e e n     /  \/  a w a z
                       >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                   anl

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Mueen Nawaz wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> Warp wrote:
>>>   How can *any* hypothesis which states how the Universe came into
>>> existence
>>> be testable? 
>> It can make predictions that are or are not borne out, the same as any
>> other. For example, the "big bang" theory postulates that the universe
> 
> 	Only if causation applies.

And if it doesn't, then we're happily back at the point where there was 
nothing needed to cause the big bang, and hence no need for an eternal god 
to be around first. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   The NFL should go international. I'd pay to
   see the Detroit Lions vs the Roman Catholics.

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scott wrote:
>> The "first cause" argument is that every effect has a cause, and hence 
>> for the universe to exist, something before the universe must have 
>> caused it, and hence God exists.[1]

> Why does the first case rule out the possibility of God having created 
> the universe?

It doesn't. It just makes God responsible for all the sins and evil in the 
world.

Usually, the answer to "if God is all-powerful, why is there evil?" is 
"Because God wants you to have free will."

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   The NFL should go international. I'd pay to
   see the Detroit Lions vs the Roman Catholics.

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somebody wrote:
> How "free" a will depends on how ignorant we are of the process.

Yes.

> As to the first cause argument, one can simply note that human will is not
> enough to create anything out of nothing, much less a universe.

It creates evil and sin, apparently. :-)

> as well, as in: "everthing except human will has a cause", followed by
> "human will is not enough to create a universe", both of which seem
> reasonable from a distance, so that the first cause argument remains
> "intact".

Reasonable but equally unsubstantiated, yes. :-)

> The bottomline is, despite what the likes of Anselm, Aquinas, Pascal.. etc
> attempted, religion has little to do with logic or reason. One can always
> tailor the "axioms" to fit the agenda.

Certainly. Thanks for your thoughts. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   The NFL should go international. I'd pay to
   see the Detroit Lions vs the Roman Catholics.

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Chambers wrote:
> 
> Now, quantum interactions appear random to us, but if it were possible
> to "zoom in" sufficiently, we might determine otherwise.

I haven't spent much time contemplating or studying physics, but this is 
my basic understanding of it.

1. The universe is made of particles which behave in predictable ways.
2. A tiny group of people with very expensive tools have seen what 
looked like particles behaving in unpredictable ways.

This has led to the conclusion by some that chaos or randomness is a 
force in the universe just like gravity but a bit harder to demonstrate 
or conceptualize. Seems hasty to me, but they know a lot more than I do.

What I wonder is: if chaos can be accepted as a natural force, why can't 
consciousness? Is there a logical argument against consciousness 
affecting our particles towards non-deterministic behavior?

A lot of very smart people believed the Earth was flat.

  -Shay

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