Seeing Things Differently -DanP the apologist excuse.

[Res Ipsa]

I think we’re going in circles.

Regards,
MG

You are. The way you choose to argue forces you to go in circles.

[huckelberry]

Hey huck, suppose we remove "free" and first discuss "will" given your statements above. You note that the subconscious decision making can readily result in the thing you "want" whether it is decided by reason or some other way. Fair enough. But what does that mean for agency in enacting this thing we call will? Is will merely acting on wants?

Honorentheos, I fear I am having a bit of difficulty locating your question.By agency do you mean my ability or inability to do something which my imagination might suggest to want? Are you limiting the word wants to a selection of basic biological needs or directions like food or getting up after sleep? I would think of will as the direction of action resulting from the collection of needs, imaginations, understanding of possibilities and necessities, curiosity, enjoyments, possibilities of sharing and perhaps some other contributions.

[Res Ipsa]

Ah, and it all comes down to this does it?

I have engaged the evidence and found it wanting.

And I do have free will.

Regards,
MG

How would you know you aren't just claiming your left hand pointed at an apple because you like red when your subconscious saw the equivalent of an apple?

We have actual evidence this occurs, MG. There are whole fields of neuroscience engaged in the subjects involved. The idea we are engaging the world with highly executive decision making is pretty outdated.

There is very strong evidence that our brains make choices before any conscious awareness that there is even a choice to be made. Then, our brains make up a story to rationalize the choice. The story includes the feeling we have that we made a conscious choice. That doesn't mean that we never make conscious decisions. But it does mean that the subjective feeling we have of making choices is not a reliable indicator that a conscious choice has been made.

On the other hand, the only evidence we have that we make conscious choices is the same subjective feeling we have that we know is not reliable evidence. The evidence for free will comes down to the bare, unsupported assertion that MG made: I do have free will.

Why not "I believe I have free will?" Why not "I have faith that I have free will?" Why ground a factual claim in nothing but an assertion?

Me, I'm perfectly happy to say that I don't know whether I have free will or not. I don't even have an opinion one way or the other.

[Res Ipsa]

Hilarious.

OK.

Again, I’m interested in reading what others have to say in support of free will being ‘a thing’. I think it has been rather clear that there are folks that don’t believe in free will and have their reasons for taking this view.

There is a continuing debate on these matters. Anyone out there want to argue for free will and the agency of man either from a secular or religious perspective?

I think I’ve done my time.

And I know what my left hand doeth. And my right.

Good to see you around honor.

Back later.

Regards,
MG

I may have missed something, but I think drumdude is the only person who has taken the position that free will is an illusion. The rest of us have been responding to your claim that humans have some flavor of constrained free will. An argument against your claim is very different from a claim that free will does not exist.

I think you've done just fine presenting the religious argument. From a Mormon perspective, there's really no reason to argue. Belief in the existence of free agency is dictated by faith in the plan of salvation. Without free agency, Jesus's plan collapses into Lucifer's plan, and the entire shared construction of LDS reality crumbles to dust.

I suspect that any religion that views this life as a test of humans necessarily requires the existence of free agency. Leaving aside the Reformed folks, Christianity requires humans to make some kind of choice in order to be saved, even if the choice is limited accepting the free gift of salvation.

I'm not savvy enough about Judaism, Islam, Bhuddism, Hinduism, etc. to know their stances toward free will. The Christian arguments, to me, aren't so much arguments for the existence of free will, but arguments that free will is a necessary component of their belief system.

From a secular side, I could point you toward what I think are good arguments against ruling out the existence of free will based on current evidence, theoretical arguments about how free will could work, pragmatic arguments about why it would be a good idea to assume that we are acting out of free will, and consequentialist arguments about why believing that we have no free will would have bad consequences.

But as for arguments in support of the notion that humans have free will, pickings in my opinion are pretty slim. The vast majority of us experience live as if we were consciously making choices. That's something, but it runs smack into the evidence that our brains create lived experiences that don't match reality. Beyond that, finding evidence to support the existence of free will is pretty tough. Once a choice is made, we can't rewind the clock to see if a different choice is ever made under the same circumstances. We don't have duplicate people that we can test by giving them the same choice at the same time under the same circumstances.

In my opinion, our current knowledge of how the brain functions has not reached the point where we can claim that absence of evidence (of free will) is evidence of absence. So, I'm happy to say that I don't know and don't really have an opinion on whether we have free will. Pragmatically, I experience the world as if I had free will and I don't see any harm in assuming I have free will in my day to day life. So, Im happy to assume that I am actually making free will choices to some extent in my day to day living, even though I understand that it's only a pragmatic assumption.

[Res Ipsa]

I made a jokesy comment to Honor a few days ago about Mormonism being in superposition. For me, and with no caveats, I’ve settled on this:

Reality itself is in superposition and is in a quantum state where Everything Everywhere All at Once is happening. In other words, all choices are being made all the time, and the choices ‘we’ make collapse all other choices down to the one ‘we’ made so, in effect, ‘I’ am exerting free will, while ‘Every Other I’ has also made ‘Every Choice’ as their universes deviate from one another.

Barring that. If indeed this is the only existent reality then I’m left with the fact that it’s causal and thus determinant. Whether or not it’s fundamentally physical is probably irrelevant.

If a god is part of anything I said above then it is probably an advanced species of some sort that is practically unknowable for all intents and purposes.

- Doc

Seems like a decent metaphor to me.

[Morley]

There is very strong evidence that our brains make choices before any conscious awareness that there is even a choice to be made. Then, our brains make up a story to rationalize the choice. The story includes the feeling we have that we made a conscious choice. That doesn't mean that we never make conscious decisions. But it does mean that the subjective feeling we have of making choices is not a reliable indicator that a conscious choice has been made.

Exactly.

[Res Ipsa]

Consider the fallacy of sunken costs and whether that is what drives you. All you have left in life is today and the days remaining thereafter until you die. Make good use of them; don't resign yourself to the shackles of a religion simply because you may have foregone living life to its fullest for the years you've been under the spell of a religious cult.

The arguments on this board against free will all come down to this constant refrain that you and others make after all is said and done. That “living life to the fullest” demands that one leave the CofJCofLDS.

How that might apply to free will and making choices is an interesting question in and of itself.

We ALL have only today and the days remaining thereafter “until [we] die”. We all should “make good use of them”. Are you saying that because one has made what they believe to be covenants with God that they are somehow at a disadvantage in making good use of time and that we are somehow caught in shackles that keep us from being the kind of person we have the potential of being?

I’ve mentioned the arrogance I’ve observed a time or two on this thread. Your comments seem to demonstrate the fact that those, such as yourself, that have “left the cult” are somehow privy to special knowledge that allows you to judge your fellow human beings and call them deluded and something ‘less than they can be’ because they adhere to religious doctrines and principles. As I mentioned to another poster, this the height of conceit, arrogance, and hubris.

This conversation about free will and the adamant condemnation of its existence seems to be attached to feelings and judgements being made in regards to whether or not a creator God exists to whom we owe allegiance and are accountable. After all, if we are not accountable to a God we are perfectly willing to define free will however we want even to the point of explaining it away.

Life can then be, as you say, “lived to its fullest” as one discards the chains of obedience or conformity to religious doctrines, principles, and practices. Me thinks that this choice of “living life to its fullest” is an exercise of free will in and of itself.

I would like to think that you’re being honest with yourself and others but there is a part of me that doubts your sincerity and confidence in the path you’ve taken and are out to ‘convert’ others to your worldview/lifestyle.

The paragraphs I’ve quoted from you seems to point towards this as being a distinct possibility.

Anyway, as I’ve said, I think I’ve said just about all I have to say in this thread directly discussing free will and such. But I have to take issue with what you have said and simply say that I think you are confused and mistaken. That is if we’re not dealing without outright half truths and lies.

Regards,
MG

Those of us who were raised LDS or were LDS for a substantial amount of time took the object fact that we had access to special truth that no one else on the earth had. Leaving the LDS church does not necessarily change deeply ingrained assumptions about how the world works. I bumped into a number of LDS teachings and assumptions I had retained but been unaware of for several decades after I left the COJCOLDS. The process of rebuilding a reality after the shared LDS reality collapses requires thinking about pieces of the former reality that you just took for granted and deciding whether to retain them or not. I think it's a long process for many and the end product may look more like the former reality than we realize.

I don't think it's a coincidence that many of criticisms by faithful LDS folks of critics mirror the criticisms by critics of faithful LDS folks. Whether expressed or not, an important part of the shared LDS reality is they know what is best for everyone: the Celestial Kingdom and an eternal family. And only they know how to get there. The notion of knowing what is best for others is, in my opinion, very hard to let go of. Mormonism and anti-Mormonism share the same stance on knowing what is best for others, which I think can be fairly described as arrogant.

The problem you face, MG, is that everything you said about Sock Puppet applies to you. What you said here pretty accurately captures what I think about you:

I would like to think that you’re being honest with yourself and others but there is a part of me that doubts your sincerity and confidence in the path you’ve taken and are out to ‘convert’ others to your worldview/lifestyle.

And this is the part that really gives the symmetry away: "That is if we’re not dealing without outright half truths and lies" Those are not the words of someone whose world view is "I'm OK, You're OK."

[MG 2.0]

The problem is that your claims about your God are self-contradictory and incoherent.

I read through your post a few times. You make some good points. It is true that when discussing (as a believer) God’s attributes and powers one can, if not thoughtful and careful, get tangled up in knots.

The post you were responding to was an example of that.

Over the years I’ve watched Closer to Truth

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closer_to_Truth

…and watched as Kuhn demonstrates through interviews with a wide range of scholars and theologians that there are a lot of bright people who agree on some things and disagree on some things. Some of those things being of major import. Nature of God. Consciousness. Free Will. Etc.

They each would like others to accept their ‘truth’ or views in regards to those things of importance.

So many different ways of viewing reality. If he were to sit all of these people down in the same room it is more than likely none of them would leave having converted to another point of view in regards to ‘truth’.

I often will, maybe without processing it fully in my mind, say and do things that I’m hoping might change hearts and minds. People do that.

To view an all powerful God who can literally do anything is almost beyond expectation and belief. But you’re right, if a monotheist is going to put forward the assertion that God is omnipotent and all powerful we/I cannot place personal limitations on that God that we worship.

I did that. I am wrong (I think) in having done so. My bad.

And you’re right. I will at times make arguments that don’t follow along logically. I will rely on a foundational principle of ‘I believe’ and build upon that. In doing so I’m doing to fall into some illogical and fallacious traps of my own making.

I’m in the room, have my beliefs, they’re different than others, and I can offer nothing of any real evidence…rationally…to change hearts and minds or to add value to the conversation. Why? Because I am not able to present rational arguments or information that others will value as being evidentiary. Even though those arguments might be convincing to me.

Anthropic theory and others we’ve discussed along the way.

So you’re right. When discussing these things ‘of the heart’ it is very difficult to discuss things without coming back to ‘I believe’ or ‘this is what I feel’. Granted, trying to limit one’s discussion to purely rational/logical ways of viewing the world are going to butt heads against ‘the spiritual’.

It may well be that these discussions become more or less a series of non sequiturs on my part as I try to fit pieces of a puzzle together in which there are some pieces missing.

Anyway, I concede that I did through some limits on God that I should not have and would not have if I had given it a bit more thought.

But I didn’t.

Regards,
MG

[MG 2.0]

OK.

Again, I’m interested in reading what others have to say in support of free will being ‘a thing’. I think it has been rather clear that there are folks that don’t believe in free will and have their reasons for taking this view.

There is a continuing debate on these matters. Anyone out there want to argue for free will and the agency of man either from a secular or religious perspective?

I think I’ve done my time.

And I know what my left hand doeth. And my right.

Good to see you around honor.

Back later.

Regards,
MG

I may have missed something, but I think drumdude is the only person who has taken the position that free will is an illusion. The rest of us have been responding to your claim that humans have some flavor of constrained free will. An argument against your claim is very different from a claim that free will does not exist.

I think you've done just fine presenting the religious argument. From a Mormon perspective, there's really no reason to argue. Belief in the existence of free agency is dictated by faith in the plan of salvation. Without free agency, Jesus's plan collapses into Lucifer's plan, and the entire shared construction of LDS reality crumbles to dust.

I suspect that any religion that views this life as a test of humans necessarily requires the existence of free agency. Leaving aside the Reformed folks, Christianity requires humans to make some kind of choice in order to be saved, even if the choice is limited accepting the free gift of salvation.

I'm not savvy enough about Judaism, Islam, Bhuddism, Hinduism, etc. to know their stances toward free will. The Christian arguments, to me, aren't so much arguments for the existence of free will, but arguments that free will is a necessary component of their belief system.

From a secular side, I could point you toward what I think are good arguments against ruling out the existence of free will based on current evidence, theoretical arguments about how free will could work, pragmatic arguments about why it would be a good idea to assume that we are acting out of free will, and consequentialist arguments about why believing that we have no free will would have bad consequences.

But as for arguments in support of the notion that humans have free will, pickings in my opinion are pretty slim. The vast majority of us experience live as if we were consciously making choices. That's something, but it runs smack into the evidence that our brains create lived experiences that don't match reality. Beyond that, finding evidence to support the existence of free will is pretty tough. Once a choice is made, we can't rewind the clock to see if a different choice is ever made under the same circumstances. We don't have duplicate people that we can test by giving them the same choice at the same time under the same circumstances.

In my opinion, our current knowledge of how the brain functions has not reached the point where we can claim that absence of evidence (of free will) is evidence of absence. So, I'm happy to say that I don't know and don't really have an opinion on whether we have free will. Pragmatically, I experience the world as if I had free will and I don't see any harm in assuming I have free will in my day to day life. So, Im happy to assume that I am actually making free will choices to some extent in my day to day living, even though I understand that it's only a pragmatic assumption.

I don’t really disagree with anything you’ve said here. Yes, Mormonism is ‘locked in’ to free will being ‘a thing’ and that it is a gift given to mankind.

Over the years I’ve read some of the scientific stuff dealing with free will and found it extremely interesting. Being a religionist I take a position that whatever truth there is in this matter is going to found somewhere in the middle.

That is generally my modus operandi on most things.

You have given some good food for thought in your recent posts.

Regards,
MG

[malkie]

...

Could God make a baseball into a football simply by wishing it so?

Why not? I don't think your God cares at all about your arguments from incredulity. I suspect he knows they are logical fallacies.
...

Your God is 100% ad hoc rationalization.

The ‘big deal’ is trying to fathom what might be impossible vs. possible.

But not to you. Water into wine is possible. Sand into ice cream is impossible. Creating the universe is possible. Changing a football into a soccer ball is impossible. Bring dead people back to life is possible. Millions of other things that you can just assert are impossible.
...

Excuse me, excuse me:

[takes off Scottish hat]