What is Faith?

[Gus Bovona]

Without a free will culture and upbringing are irrelevant. You would not have a culture, and as far as upbringing, your parents would just be making sure you were fed and learned how to obtain food, everything else would not exist.

You keep on making claims without support. Why do you think you could we wouldn't have culture without free will? And why would parents be limited to making sure you're fed?

The NTS fallacy is irrelevant in this discussion, you either have a will or you dont. And animals dont.

It's not irrelevant when you use it to attempt to make a point. All I did was to point that out.

Yes, I explained it earlier in this thread.

Another claim without support. I'm not saying you didn't demonstrate it, but it's your job to show that you did, with a link or a post #.

No, if we didnt have a free will all those things except culture would be programmed in, so they would not be needed.

I don't understand how programming would make those things not needed. What does that mean?

Just like animals. Animals dont have culture and the only upbringing is what I explained above.

Just because animals don't have culture, nor free will, doesn't mean that all beings without free will can't have culture. That doesn't logically follow.

Your upbringing would just be minimum to survive.

Please demonstrate that, either logically or empirically.

 

[El Cid]

Then how do you tell the difference between an answered prayer and a coincidence?

There are no coincidences. My point was not every prayer is answered supernaturally. Sometimes He answers prayer thru natural law events or the free will choices of human beings.

 

[Eightcrackers]

There are no coincidences. My point was not every prayer is answered supernaturally. Sometimes He answers prayer thru natural law events or the free will choices of human beings.

We are next-door neighbours.

You pray for rain, because your plants need water.
I pray for it not to rain, because I'm hosting a barbeque.

One of those prayers is not going to be granted.

 

[Whatsisface]

There are no coincidences.

They happen all the time, they can't not happen. It's a coincidence that I'm typing this and a car drove past my house just now.

My point was not every prayer is answered supernaturally. Sometimes He answers prayer thru natural law events or the free will choices of human beings.

Then there's no way to tell whether a prayer has been answered or not.

 

[El Cid]

Evidence it doesnt exist? If it didnt exist then the recorder would not have recorded anything.

The recorder records air waves.

Which is sound.

El Cid said:
If there is a correlation between what you hear and the sound waves that are produced, then the sound you experience does exist.

The air waves are just that, air waves. The experience of sound is created in your head.

Sound occurs outside our heads as well, see above.

El Cid said:
And there can only be a correlation if we were created by a personal creator. But you are right if there is no Creator then you have no way of knowing if the sound is real.

So far this is an unsupported assertion.

Only if the universe was created by a personal creator is there a correlation by definition between subject and object. If not, then all that was at the beginning was objects, so it is unlikely that a correlation would have ever been established.

El Cid said:
NDEs, personal identity thru time, and transgenderism if it is real.

NDEs are not properly understood so they are weak evidence.

How do you know they are not properly understood?

How personal identity through time and transgenderism support the idea of thoughts independent of the body I do not know and you haven't said.

If you replace almost every part of a chair, then it is no longer the same chair. But every 7 years almost every cell in your body is replaced but at the end of the 7 years you are still you. This is evidence we are more than just the physical. And if transgenderism is true, then every cell in our body can be the opposite gender of who the person actually is, so plainly their personhood exists independently of their physical body.

 

[Whatsisface]

Which is sound.

Well, do you at least understand the distinction I'm making? There are air waves, then there is our experience of sound.

Only if the universe was created by a personal creator is there a correlation by definition between subject and object. If not, then all that was at the beginning was objects, so it is unlikely that a correlation would have ever been established.

This is again an unevidenced claim to justify an unevidenced claim. I've noticed others saying this to you as well.

How do you know they are not properly understood?

I have just read the Wiki page on NDE's which is a good place to start. It references known studies and that they are inconclusive as to the cause and what is actually going on.

If you replace almost every part of a chair, then it is no longer the same chair. But every 7 years almost every cell in your body is replaced but at the end of the 7 years you are still you. This is evidence we are more than just the physical.

Actually some cells are replaced but others are not. Cells in the brain get replaced very slowly and some not at all.

And if transgenderism is true, then every cell in our body can be the opposite gender of who the person actually is, so plainly their personhood exists independently of their physical body.

This is yet again an unevidenced claim, you go too far on too little. It may be that even if you're right about cells, other physical factors determine what gender a person feels they are.

 

[El Cid]

To the other members of the triune Godhead.

So he talked to himself?

Not really, they are separate persons just of the same essence.

The triune Godhead is a human invention.

No, it is a rational derivation from Gods Word.

El Cid said:
That the universe came into existence from something not detectable, that the universe is expanding and that it is winding down energetically to name three things.

Does the Bible say that God is not detectable?

No, just what the universe was made out of was not detectable. Just like the BB theory has shown. Read Hebrews 11:3.

Where does the Bible mention expanding? Where does the Bible mention winding down?

For expanding, Job 9:8, Psalm 104:2, and Isaiah 42:5 to name three verses. For winding down Romans 8:20-22.

 

[Tiburon]

Not really, they are separate persons just of the same essence.

No, it is a rational derivation from Gods Word.

Yes a human creation.

No, just what the universe was made out of was not detectable. Just like the BB theory has shown. Read Hebrews 11:3.

For expanding, Job 9:8, Psalm 104:2, and Isaiah 42:5 to name three verses. For winding down Romans 8:20-22.

Isaiah 42:5 says he stretches out the earth. Does that mean the earth is also expanding? Seems to me that you are taking a poetic description and trying to equate it to a scientific finding. There is no evidence that that is how it was understood.

 

[Whatsisface]

For expanding, Job 9:8, Psalm 104:2, and Isaiah 42:5 to name three verses. For winding down Romans 8:20-22.

From the Quran …. 47 "And the heaven We constructed with strength, and indeed, We are [its] expander."

 

[El Cid]

There is no empirical evidence for this, you are assuming what you need to prove. Brain cells are just chemicals too.

There is no empirical evidence for your contention, yet you believe it true.

No, throughout the entire history of chemistry there has been no empirical evidence that chemicals can produce reasoning for the reason I mention below.

El Cid said:
Reasoning requires utilization of the laws of logic, chemical reactions operate according to the laws of physics, two very different things.

What does this even mean? People all too often reason poorly paying no attention to the laws of logic, committing logical fallacies.

The product of chemical reactions is based on the ratio of chemicals involved in the reaction. The product of reasoning is based on the weighing of premises and evidence. Obviously they are not the same things. We cant even think without the law of non-contradiction.

El Cid said:
Yours is speculation as well. If the mind can no longer interact with the outside world using a damaged brain, you would have the same results.

So you admit your contention is speculation? At least what we know is, alter the brain and we alter reasoning ability and personality. That is a definite connection of cause and effect, where your contention has no such connection, it's pure speculation.

I admit it is speculation. But the results are the same. Altering the brain which is used by the mind to reason and produce our personality would of course affect those abilities as well.

 

[Whatsisface]

No, throughout the entire history of chemistry there has been no empirical evidence that chemicals can produce reasoning for the reason I mention below.

This doesn't deal with my point. You are saying that as "there has been no empirical evidence that chemicals can produce reasoning", you are not going to believe they can. My point is that there is no empirical evidence that reasoning was caused by anything else either, but nevertheless you believe it is. You are being inconsistent.

The product of chemical reactions is based on the ratio of chemicals involved in the reaction. The product of reasoning is based on the weighing of premises and evidence. Obviously they are not the same things.

This again, is vague. Please clearly state what you mean.

We cant even think without the law of non-contradiction.

You have yet again made an unsupported claim. What does this even mean? What causal connection is there between the law of non-contradiction and the ability to think?

I admit it is speculation. But the results are the same. Altering the brain which is used by the mind to reason and produce our personality would of course affect those abilities as well.

Mind altering pixies give the same result too.

 

[El Cid]

There are two ways of looking at chemical reactions. One is where you have a simple chemical reaction such as iron and oxygen that will produce rust. The other is where a complicated combination of chemical reactions will produce something far more complex, such a working human body. We are full of complex chemical reactions that sustain us. To show our dependence on them, if you take certain reactions away such as iron's part in red blood cell production, we will die.

We are an example of a lot of simple chemical reactions coming together to produce something far more complex. That is what is going on with our brains and our minds.

Maybe but there is no empirical evidence for this as I demonstrated in my other post regarding this subject.

 

[Whatsisface]

Maybe but there is no empirical evidence for this as I demonstrated in my other post regarding this subject.

There is no maybe about the fact that we have lots of chemical reactions going on in our bodies, and that includes our brains.

There is empirical evidence our brains give rise to consciousness as you have already been told. If you damage a part of the brain, we lose part of our mind. That is evidence the brain gives rise to the mind.

You won't believe the brain gives rise to consciousness on the grounds that you think there is no empirical evidence for it, but do believe the mind is a separate entity from the brain despite there being no empirical evidence for it.

Do you not see where you've gone wrong here?

 

[El Cid]

You don't deny, "Naturalists believe that chemical actions cause mental events":

but you do deny, "If naturalism is true, chemical actions cause mental events"?

Yes, but I dont deny that if naturalism is true, then naturalists believe chemical reactions cause mental events.

Your response just makes no sense whatsoever. Tell me which of the following claims you deny:

1) Naturalism IS the belief that everything is caused by natural, physical events;
2) Therefore, if naturalism is true, then everything is caused by natural, physical events.
3) If everything is caused by natural or physical events, then mental events are caused by natural, physical events.
4) Therefore, if naturalism is true, then mental events are caused by natural, physical events (chemical reactions in the brain being overwhelmingly the leading candidate).

In other words, if naturalism is true, then the claims of naturalism are NOT just something naturalists believe; they're the truth. Obviously. Self-evidently. Because to deny that would be to assert "even if naturalism is true, naturalism isn't true, it's just a belief." Which, again, just makes no sense whatsoever.

No, because if naturalism were true, no. 3 and 4 would not follow. That is why it is a self refuting worldview.

Compare:

"Christians believe that Jesus rose from the dead on the third day."
"Yes, that's true."
"So, if Christianity is true, then Jesus rose from the dead on the third day."
"No, that doesn't follow. If Christianity is true, then Christians believe that Jesus rose from the dead on the third day."

But that's ludicrous. "Christianity is true" means that the things Christians believe are true. Christians believe that Jesus rose from the dead. Therefore, if Christianity is true, it's not just true that Christians believe Jesus rose from the dead, it's true that Jesus rose from the dead. The most dogmatic atheist in the world could not deny this, if he understood how the word "if" works.

Not the same, because claim 3 logically follows, unlike the argument about naturalism.

El Cid said:

Komodo said:
What is the difference between the two statements? Do you think that "naturalism" is something other than "the positions that naturalists believe to be true"?

Yes, I believe that chemical reactions cannot cause mental events especially abstract mental events, no matter what naturalists believe to be true.

You just completely missed the question. I didn't ask what you believed about chemistry and mental events, I asked what you thought the word "naturalism" meant. I say "naturalism" means nothing more or less than "the positions that naturalists believe to be true." Do you in fact believe that "naturalism" means something other than that? If so, what?

Actually, it is not what I believe, it is what empirical science has confirmed as a scientific fact.

 

[Komodo]

Komodo said:

You don't deny, "Naturalists believe that chemical actions cause mental events":

but you do deny, "If naturalism is true, chemical actions cause mental events"?

Yes, but I dont deny that if naturalism is true, then naturalists believe chemical reactions cause mental events.

Your response just makes no sense whatsoever. Tell me which of the following claims you deny:

1) Naturalism IS the belief that everything is caused by natural, physical events;
2) Therefore, if naturalism is true, then everything is caused by natural, physical events.
3) If everything is caused by natural or physical events, then mental events are caused by natural, physical events.
4) Therefore, if naturalism is true, then mental events are caused by natural, physical events (chemical reactions in the brain being overwhelmingly the leading candidate).

No, because if naturalism were true, no. 3 and 4 would not follow. That is why it is a self refuting worldview.

So you deny that "if everything is caused by natural events, then mental events are caused by natural events."

If you're going to be this blatantly nonsensical, there's no point in continuing this discussion.

 

[El Cid]

I brought up a woman with dementia who accused her best friend of trying to poison her. Are you claiming she actually did not believe this, but was only saying it because her damaged brain was garbling her thoughts (which were normal and undamaged) in the process of turning those thoughts into speech? that she was actually thinking "hello, it's nice to see you" but that her brain was forcing her mouth to say "you're trying to poison me!" instead? Why in the world would you believe that to be the case?

Not exactly, it is probably more complex than that. It would probably be more like watching a scary movie of yourself but not really yourself and not knowing for sure if it true or not. She would still sense the fear of being poisoned since that comes from the part of the brain that is more instinctual.

If you're going to assume such a vast separation between what is happening in our minds and what comes out of our mouths, then maybe I am actually composing a symphony in my mind, one which would put Beethoven to shame, but unfortunately my brain isn't letting that composition out and is forcing me instead to whistle "Yankee Doodle." Why is that hypothesis any less absurd than your hypothesis about the woman with dementia?

See above.

We have good reason in this case to believe that behind the nonsense that we are reading there is an operator whose intended communication is being sabotaged. We can talk to operators to whom this has happened. The operator will actually bring attention to her problem. What reason is there to believe in the existence of a sane, undamaged operator behind the speech patterns of a woman making paranoid accusations? If she exists, is she entirely incapable of alerting anybody to her actual thoughts, and protest this hijacking of her speech? Who made the rules which cause that to happen?

See above, they would not be a completely unaffected observer or operator especially if something is happening that involves strong instinctual emotion such as fear.

 

[Komodo]

Not exactly, it is probably more complex than that. It would probably be more like watching a scary movie of yourself but not really yourself and not knowing for sure if it true or not. She would still sense the fear of being poisoned since that comes from the part of the brain that is more instinctual.

If I understand you, what happens is that when the brain is damaged, it creates a kind of miasma which puts the mind under an illusion of danger. Is that about right?

 

[El Cid]

Yes, without free will your conclusion is just based on previous predetermined events such as the chemical reactions in your brain. But with free will you can weigh evidence and arguments based on the laws of logic.

You need to establish that you need free will to use logic. I've already given you the example of a computer or a calculator that uses mathematical logic, but has not free will.

I explained in an earlier post how mathmatical logic is very different from abstract logic used for reasoning. The product of Chemical reactions are predetermined by the ratio of the reagents not the weighing of premises and arguments. So there is no reasoning without free will.

El Cid said:
My point is that there is no such thing as a unique series of numbers since the entire series of numbers already exists, so that no number generated by a number generator is unique. But we can actually create original unique things.

Now you're equivocating on the word "exists," which has to mean actually instantiated (written down, displayed on a screen, etc.) with some sort of Platonic existence that I'm not even sure numbers have.

No, there is evidence that numbers exist without being instantiated.

But, I can make my point without numbers. When I was teaching at another university, I met a music professor who created a computer program that spit out thousands of musical compositions in the style of Mozart, Bach, Scott Joplin, and the like. All of those compositions were unique, and he only set up the computer to generate them, but the computer did the actual choosing of notes. If we don't have free will, we can view our brains as having been programmed, so to speak, to be able to spit out creative utterances, compositions, etc. Being creative is not, therefore, incompatible with not have free will.

Mimicking Style is not the same as inventing the actual original compositions. The computer just randomly picked notes that fit with the style. I have a hunch a real music expert could tell the difference between a computer generated Bach with an actual Bach.

El Cid said:
Millions of people go against all those things everyday. But if there was no free will, then we could not go against them. All our decisions would be predetermined by those things.

You can't determine that because you don't have sufficient knowledge of all of the inputs from their culture and society - including their day-to-day experiences, much less sufficient knowledge of how their brains will help determine their actions.

Culture would not exist without free will, this can be seen by studying animals, no animal can produce culture, because they dont have free will. Without a free will people would be controlled by biology like animals, so genes would have a much stronger influence on your behavior, but we dont see that in humans because we do have free will.

 

[Gus Bovona]

I explained in an earlier post how mathmatical logic is very different from abstract logic used for reasoning. The product of Chemical reactions are predetermined by the ratio of the reagents not the weighing of premises and arguments. So there is no reasoning without free will.

Why can the weighing of premises and argument not occur through chemicals arranging in a certain way? Mathematical logic can occur in materials arranged in a certain way.

No, there is evidence that numbers exist without being instantiated.

What evidence is that?
Is that evidence sufficient to draw your conclusion?
What do you mean by "exist?"

Mimicking Style is not the same as inventing the actual original compositions.

The vast majority of original compositions are within an already established style.

The computer just randomly picked notes that fit with the style. I have a hunch a real music expert could tell the difference between a computer generated Bach with an actual Bach.

Your hunches aren't enough to draw conclusions from. Here is a Bach chorale written by a computer that is indistinguishable from actual Bach chorales. I studied Bach chorales in college, I have a Ph.D. in music theory and composition, and I'm telling you that chorale is indistinguishable from an actual Bach chorale.

How many human musical compositions are begun, do you think, but someone just sitting at a piano or with a guitar and randomly picking out some notes? I'm here to tell you, a lot!

Culture would not exist without free will, this can be seen by studying animals, no animal can produce culture, because they dont have free will.

How do you know the difference between animals and humans, in terms of culture, is because of free will and not some other factor (like size of the brain, for instance)?

Also, animals are not without any culture.

Without a free will people would be controlled by biology like animals, so genes would have a much stronger influence on your behavior, but we dont see that in humans because we do have free will.

1. Stronger than what?

2. It's not logically inconsistent that human behavior, in the absence of free will, is determined by a mixture and interplay of genes and the environment.

 

[El Cid]

Again, When you police yourself that IS the honor system.

Yes, policing yourself is the honor system. That is not science, though.

Policing yourself and your colleagues. That IS how science polices itself though.

El Cid said:
You correct those in your group and correct yourself when you receive what you believe is valid criticism from those in your group, ie academia or the "halls of science".

The above is not a description of the absence of science police, which is what you earlier claimed. You're all over the place here. There *is* a science police, any scientist can police - that is, critically examine the work of another and hopefully improve on it - any other scientist. Einstein policed Newton, for example.

Exactly, that is what the honor system IS. When an organization polices itself.

El Cid said:
Nope.

Good, I'm glad, but your understanding of how science works is woeful, especially for someone with an advanced degree in the sciences.

In what way is it woeful?

El Cid said:
Whats to comment about?

Seriously? This is about hunches and intuition only being *sometimes* correct, which helps no one with anything.

Many great scientific discoveries were made on hunches and intuition.