Free will? I dont think so

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@aitapyh
I have noticed that you are avoiding using proof and sustainable logic. You keep telling us “what you believe”, as if you believing it gave it substance. Would you care to try actually proving some of the things you are saying, using universal facts?
 
Gorgias said:
I think that the burden of proof would lie on those who assert that other animals possess rationality, don’t you? If we can get to that point – which requires us first to decide on what “rationality” actually means! – then we might move towards your ‘evolved rationality’ claims!
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I already did that in the earlier post. The standard dictionary definition. It’s an ability to use reason. But yours is something specifically associated with the soul. If there’s no soul then there cannot be any rationality. By definition. So where can I possibly go from there?

Your proposal would mean that Man didn’t exhibit any reason at one moment in time and then was granted it the next. And he then instantly knows the reason why he’s doing something. So maybe he’s looking for a shelter or thinking about how to catch a meal and seemingly has no reason for doing so and then suddenly thinks ‘Hey, what just happened? Now I know why I’m doing this’. Does that make sense to you?

And the way that species are defined is a rather broad brush affair. It’s like adding a tiny drop of yellow paint to a bucket of blue paint. Keep adding it and there’ll be a point when we can all agree the colour is now green but there never was a point when it instantly changed to green. It simply became more of one and less the other. That’s how species work. So there is no ‘point on the continuum where we can say “this thing” and not “that thing.’ You can look at points some distance apart and say they are different. But you can’t point to one generation and say ‘that’s when it happened’.

But that’s what you want to do with the ability to use reason. Your proposal is that it was turned on at one instant.

And I’m not sure what you mean by the reference ‘homini’. Maybe hominini? And why reference that point specifically? I sincerely hope that you aren’t suggesting that man is not an evolved being. In which case there is literally nothing to discuss.
 
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Aristotelian2 said:
Any who truly seeks for the Truth will find it, just as Christ said. “Seek, and ye shall find”.
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Well that’s kind of a meaningless proposition. Because it’s true for pretty much anything. If one fervently seeks proof for the existence of Bigfoot then it’s pretty darn likely that they’ll find it.

But conversely, there have been a whole lot of people over the ages who’ve truly sought the truth, but came nowhere close to finding Christ, in fact many of them outright rejected Christ.

So the only conclusion that we can come to, is that people who honestly seek the truth will indeed find it…even if the truth is that they’re not able to find the truth.

Truth it seems, is in the eye of the beholder.
 
lelinator said:
Well that’s kind of a meaningless proposition. Because it’s true for pretty much anything. If one fervently seeks proof for the existence of Bigfoot then it’s pretty darn likely that they’ll find it.
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Well, they may think they have found proof, but if he doesn’t exist, then it isnt proof, for it proves nothing.
lelinator said:
So the only conclusion that we can come to, is that people who honestly seek the truth will indeed find it…even if the truth is that they’re not able to find the truth.

Truth it seems, is in the eye of the beholder.
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Aha! So you deny objective truth?
 
Aristotelian2 said:
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lelinator:
Well that’s kind of a meaningless proposition. Because it’s true for pretty much anything. If one fervently seeks proof for the existence of Bigfoot then it’s pretty darn likely that they’ll find it.
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Well, they may think they have found proof, but if he doesn’t exist, then it isnt proof, for it proves nothing.
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Now if you just change that lower case ‘h’ to upper case…
 
Aheh… Clever. But not accurate. There is objective proof for the existence of God, but it will only be accepted once one lets go of one’s pride and ego.
 
So, to clarify, you think Truth is subjective? Is it a subjective truth that Truth is subjective, or is that an objective truth? Cause, I would hope you can see how contradictory that is… If it is objective that Truth is subjective, that would mean that truth is also objective. And if the only objective truth is that truth is subjective, is it objectively true, or only subjectively? Cause that makes two objective truths, and it can go on like that, until your little subjective truth is lost in a sea of objective ones.
 
Do you know what agnosticism is? It sounds to me, judging by your mode of conversation, that you need to sit down and read a good book. I would highly suggest The Journey, by Peter Kreeft. Agnosticism teaches that one cannot come to know God, and can neither prove, nor disprove his existence. I, and any other informed Christian CAN prove the existence of God, and then it is up to the Free Will of the individual to accept. I would be more than happy to see your arguments against the existence of God, as long as their content is more substantial than naive debating cliches.
 
TheTomist said:
So, to clarify, you think Truth is subjective? Is it a subjective truth that Truth is subjective, or is that an objective truth? Cause, I would hope you can see how contradictory that is… If it is objective that Truth is subjective, that would mean that truth is also objective. And if the only objective truth is that truth is subjective, is it objectively true, or only subjectively? Cause that makes two objective truths, and it can go on like that, until your little subjective truth is lost in a sea of objective ones.
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You seem to arbitrarily spell truth with an upper case ‘T’ and then a lower case. As if it means something else with a capital ‘T’.

There are objectively true facts about the world. Here’s one: the tablet on which I’m writing this is propped up against a wooden Bhudda. Here’s another one: Moral choices are subject to the situation and conditions prevailing at the time the choice is made and are therefore subjective.

See how that works?
 
Freddy said:
You seem to arbitrarily spell truth with an upper case ‘T’ and then a lower case. As if it means something else with a capital ‘T’.
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@Freddy… So you did catch on to that! Good, that’s some headway I suppose. I do so because there is one Truth, the Logos, and He is objective, and does not change with circumstances, and it is in him that all of our reality is found. Not in a pantheistic way of course. It is in the mind of God that all have meaning. Plato (who got most of his ideas from Socrates) was on the right track, but it was in his student, Aristotle, that it was completed and perfected. Luckily, as a 15 year old high-schooler, I was just writing a paper on this very subject, so you caught me somewhat prepared;) I have to log off for today, as I have spent enough time on here as it is!
 
TheTomist said:
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Freddy:
You seem to arbitrarily spell truth with an upper case ‘T’ and then a lower case. As if it means something else with a capital ‘T’.
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@Freddy… So you did catch on to that! Good, that’s some headway I suppose. I do so because there is one Truth, the Logos, and He is objective, and does not change with circumstances, and it is in him that all of our reality is found. Not in a pantheistic way of course. It is in the mind of God that all have meaning. Plato (who got most of his ideas from Socrates) was on the right track, but it was in his student, Aristotle, that it was completed and perfected. Luckily, as a 15 year old high-schooler, I was just writing a paper on this very subject, so you caught me somewhat prepared;) I have to log off for today, as I have spent enough time on here as it is!
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Yeah, get back to work! No slacking off on the forum. And no using other people’s ideas of the impossibilty of everything being subjective if that is in fact an objective truth without thinking it through.

Facts are objective. Morality is not. And that last sentence is an objective truth. In my humble opinion, of course.

And don’t mix ‘n’ match Truth and truth. It doesn’t obscure what you want to say - it makes it meaningless.
 
My Tomist friend here was neither attempting to be obscure nor meaningless (leastways I understood him). Yes, some truths (lowercase t truth) are subjective; e.g.: It is true that I like fruitcake, but it is also truth that my friends do not. As to morality being subjective, it doesn’t make sense. Don’t get me wrong; to kill in self defense is acceptable while killing for gain or pleasure is wrong, I understand if that’s where you’re coming from. However, it is murder, needlessly taking a life, that’s objectively wrong, and in no circumstance is it right to murder, therefore the morality of murder is objectively wrong.
now, I don’t know for certain if you believe in a god, but as a divine being(s) and a moral law generally go hand in hand when it comes to a person’s beliefs, I will assume (and you can correct me if I’m wrong) that you believe in God (the capital T Truth). So, why would God, our superior, make his moral laws subject to the whim of a race that is historically known for its perversions, its tendency to war (read any history book), and its many evils. On that note, would you consider such degradations as slavery or rape to be absolutely, objectively wrong, or merely subjective to the individual?
 
again, suppose that you don’t believe in a god (my last question still stands). if there is no God, then morality is not subjective because there is no Moral law that binds us to anything. This can’t be, or else what put each individual’s sense of the moral, the conscience, there?
 
J.r.r.chesterlewis said:
My Tomist friend here was neither attempting to be obscure nor meaningless (leastways I understood him). Yes, some truths (lowercase t truth) are subjective; e.g.: It is true that I like fruitcake, but it is also truth that my friends do not. As to morality being subjective, it doesn’t make sense. Don’t get me wrong; to kill in self defense is acceptable while killing for gain or pleasure is wrong, I understand if that’s where you’re coming from. However, it is murder, needlessly taking a life, that’s objectively wrong, and in no circumstance is it right to murder, therefore the morality of murder is objectively wrong.
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But the very definition of murder is relative to the conditions. What you are actually saying is that IF you take a life AND it’s premeditated AND it’s illegal AND if it’s deliberate AND it’s done with sound mind…then killing is wrong. It’s wrong according to those conditions. It is, obviously, conditional.

Is stealing wrong? Is hurting a child wrong? Is killing wrong? Is taking drugs wrong?

None of those questions can be answered unless you know the conditions under which the acts occur. They are all relative to a set of conditions that may or may not convince you that they are immoral.

If you give me a specific set of conditions for any of those acts then it makes no sense whatsoever to then class them as absolute moral truths. If that were the case then there wouldn’t be any acts that are relative to the conditions. They’d all be morally absolute and the term ‘relative’ would cease to have any meaning.
 
J.r.r.chesterlewis said:
again, suppose that you don’t believe in a god (my last question still stands). if there is no God, then morality is not subjective because there is no Moral law that binds us to anything. This can’t be, or else what put each individual’s sense of the moral, the conscience, there?
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Since you’re here - I’ll assume your reason is to maybe learn something?

Even though your POV on your situation, and the logic you’re applying to is … is Wrong.
That does not mean you’ve been forgotten by God
At the least - obey the Golden Rule
 
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J.r.r.chesterlewis said:
again, suppose that you don’t believe in a god (my last question still stands). if there is no God, then morality is not subjective because there is no Moral law that binds us to anything. This can’t be, or else what put each individual’s sense of the moral, the conscience, there?
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It’s what works, generally speaking. Societies didn’t form from groups of people who thought it was ok to take whatever they wanted from anyone else or kill on a whim. They formed from people who tended to think it was a bad idea to steal from others and a bad idea to randomly murder. The golden rule and empathy saw to it that societies formed.

So if you were one of those who happened to think that stealing and murdering were not such a great idea then you’d eventually find yourself in the company of like minded people. And voila - a society. So you will find that the majority of people in society have a tendency to think that we shouldn’t go around stealing from each other. And we call those who tend to break those rules ‘unsocial’.

In other words, it’s inbuilt.
 
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