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"Darren New" <dne### [at] san rrcom> 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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On Mon, 22 Dec 2008 14:24:09 -0600, Shay <sha### [at] nonenone> wrote:
>
>A lot of very smart people believed the Earth was flat.
Are you sure about that?
--
Regards
Stephen
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Stephen wrote:
> On Mon, 22 Dec 2008 14:24:09 -0600, Shay <sha### [at] nonenone> wrote:
>
>> A lot of very smart people believed the Earth was flat.
>
> Are you sure about that?
Not at all, really. AFAIK people used to believe the world was flat. I'm
assuming some of those people were very smart. I could be wrong on
either end of that.
-Shay
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Darren New wrote:
> 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
I had forgotten about this theorem, thanks for the reminder!
>
> 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.
Interesting, I wish I had enough time at the moment to read and digest
this. I'll attempt to queue it somewhere in my head for later.
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On Mon, 22 Dec 2008 14:36:59 -0600, Shay <sha### [at] nonenone> wrote:
>Stephen wrote:
>> On Mon, 22 Dec 2008 14:24:09 -0600, Shay <sha### [at] nonenone> wrote:
>>
>>> A lot of very smart people believed the Earth was flat.
>>
>> Are you sure about that?
>
>Not at all, really. AFAIK people used to believe the world was flat. I'm
>assuming some of those people were very smart. I could be wrong on
>either end of that.
>
Well the Greeks knew the Earth was round in the 4th Cent BC. The "flat Earth"
fallacy became more common in the 19th century with the Religion Vs Science
debate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth_mythology
--
Regards
Stephen
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