Free will revisited

[EnterTheBowser]

Neithan:

…

Are you honestly saying that you have never come across any reasonable arguments for the existence of God

Yes… are you implying that you’ve never come across any reasonable argument for atheism? ( )

 

[itsjustdave1988]

Hitetlen:

Those in heaven are somewhat irrelevant for this discussion. Presumably they ejnoy where they are. Even if they have free will, they would not wish to exercise it. The ones who are denied admission to heaven are the ones who MAYBE would like to change their status, and are not allowed to do so.

As for your other question, and all the other poster’s remarks, I am about to go out of town for a week and will not have access to the Net. When I return, I will address their “points”.

Yes, but your premise is still incorrect. They are denied access to heaven, not because they have been stripped of free will, but because eternal life is a gift that nobody deserves, and God alone chooses who receives this gift. In Catholic theology, we are rewarded for our faithfulness to him in this life, based upon the actual knowledge we recieve in *this life. *To cry “its not fair” is ridiculous, as God gives sufficient grace to all to attain eternal life. If you fail to cooperate with the grace God gives, through poor use of free will, then the outcome is just–eternal separation from God and punishment congruent with the crimes deliberately committed in this life.
**

You are mixing “free will” with “freedom.” People in prison retain their free will even when they are being justly punished and restricted from the benefits which the other citizenry enjoy. Is that fair? You betcha.

 

[john_doran]

EnterTheBowser:

Yes… are you implying that you’ve never come across any reasonable argument for atheism? ( )

i think you are misusing the term “reasonable” - there are plenty of reasonable arguments for the existence of god, just as there are reasonable arguments for withholding belief in a divine entity.

what you seem to be asking for is something closer to a compelling argument, or perhaps one of such deductive rigor that it cannot be rejected on pain of irrationality.

in the first instance, of course, what you do or do not find compelling is utterly subjective; even arguments of the 2nd kind are not necessarily compelling to everyone.

as for the second kind, there is almost nothing that can be demonstrated with that kind of cartesian certainty - certainly not atheism…

 

[itsjustdave1988]

Hitetlen:

In science there is no preponderance of evidence, there is no reasonable doubt, there is either an empirical experiment, which can be repeated, or there is just a bunch of hot air.

I disagree. I studied Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, and Aritificial Intelligence in my bachelors and post-graduate studies. You are thinking like a mathematician, not a scientist. Much of science is believed by scientists without strict proofs, and we apply that science in real-world applications despite not having strict proofs.

 

[itsjustdave1988]

This is what I mean when I say that only emipirical evidence counts.

The real world doesn’t agree with you. Humans use witness testimony in everyday business, law, science, economics, and normal day-to-day decisions. If you disagree, perhaps the next time you need a doctor’s testimoly about your medical condition, you’ll not trust his mere opion and instead take the time to replicate all the medical research that led to his opinon about before trusting that he is giving you the right prognosis and treatment, hmmm?

To deny that very important beliefs are derived from testimony of others is absurd. I’ve never duplicated the experiments of quantum physics, yet I studied them in college and use this expert testimony about physics it to study how CMOS microchips are designed and manufactured. I trust Erwin Schroedinger’s expert witness when evaluating the veracity of his equation regarding quantum physics. This is how real science works, your premise to the contrary notwithstanding.

 

[itsjustdave1988]

Hitetlen:

No I don’t. I am questioning the lack of actual knowledge (not perfect knowledge) of God’s existence. No matter how many posters will assert that they find the evidence conclusive and sufficient, they can only speak for themselves and not for anyone else.

It is equally true that you can only speak for yourself with regard to the lack of actual knowledge.

If there would be actual, empirical evidence of God, there would be no atheists.

That’s rather silly. Let me try that … “If there were actual empirical evidence of neo-darwinism, then everybody would believe in it, right?” You see how absurd your claim is?

If there were actual empirical evidence that God does not exist, there would be no theists. Gee… that’s rather easy, and can be applied to many number of accepted beliefs, yet such fallacious argumentation doesn’t really amount to much, does it?

Furthermore, since you can only speak for yourself about the lack of actual knowledge, isn’t your first post more precisely a question as to why YOU lack actual knowledge of God? Perhaps you have impediments that keep you from acquiring actual knowledge of God.

Your assertion seems to amount to “I haven’t seen it with my own eyes, so it can’t be true.” Ya know, I bet you haven’t seen your own brain with your own eyes either, but you probably believe you have one.

Likewise, I’ve never seen the dark side of the moon. I betcha it exists. Why? Not because I have actually experienced it myself, but due to the testimony of other trustworthy witnesses, and based upon reason. Then again, mayby the Apollo missions were faked. Geezzzzz… now I’m starting to doubt there really is a dark side fo the moon… Wait! Now I’m starting to doubt my doubt. When will the madness end!!!

 

[EnterTheBowser]

john doran:

i think you are misusing the term “reasonable” - there are plenty of reasonable arguments for the existence of god, just as there are reasonable arguments for withholding belief in a divine entity.

what you seem to be asking for is something closer to a compelling argument, or perhaps one of such deductive rigor that it cannot be rejected on pain of irrationality.

in the first instance, of course, what you do or do not find compelling is utterly subjective; even arguments of the 2nd kind are not necessarily compelling to everyone.

as for the second kind, there is almost nothing that can be demonstrated with that kind of cartesian certainty - certainly not atheism…

In conclusion, we can believe whatever we want? Just kidding…

I’m willing to entertain arguments that are evidential in addition to purely logical arguments. I’m not asking for arguments which literally compel belief - those are few and far between indeed - but I am looking for arguments which, as you say, would be rejected on pain of irrationality. I don’t think that such arguments are necessary deductive or strictly compelling.

As a remark, under ideal circumstances, reasonable arguments would not have contradictory conclusions. As it stands, reasonable arguments might indeed have contradictory conclusions - that is, we might be reasonably justified in believing something which is false. That said, I am still not aware of reasonable arguments in favor of theism, and I am aware of reasonable arguments in favor of atheism.

 

[john_doran]

EnterTheBowser:

I’m willing to entertain arguments that are evidential in addition to purely logical arguments. I’m not asking for arguments which literally compel belief - those are few and far between indeed - but I am looking for arguments which, as you say, would be rejected on pain of irrationality.

give me an example of this kind of argument, and of the kinds of beliefs you have which are supported by them.

EnterTheBowser:

As a remark, under ideal circumstances, reasonable arguments would not have contradictory conclusions. As it stands, reasonable arguments might indeed have contradictory conclusions - that is, we might be reasonably justified in believing something which is false. That said, I am still not aware of reasonable arguments in favor of theism, and I am aware of reasonable arguments in favor of atheism.

and this is probably where it all shakes out for us - our different concepts of epistemological warrant and “reasonable” belief: if you can honestly have come away from, for instance, our discussion on the complexities of the cosmological argument and the attendant metaphysical and scientific issues, believing that i am actually unreasonable in my assessment of the doxastic probabilities, then we are clearly at loggerheads and it is literally useless to talk about anything else prior to determining whether or not we can see eye-to-eye on the foundational epistemological issues.

i am curious: is “being capable of rejection only on pain of irrationality” a necessary condition of reasonable belief for you? if so (and the implication of your statements is clearly that it is), then you either have almost no reasonable beliefs, or you have almost no beliefs of any kind.

can you demonstrate to me that the only way i can reject such an epistemology is on pain of irrationality?

 

[Mijoy2]

Hitetlen:

I am a mathematician, so I am quite well versed in deductive systems, and they are not applicable. In a deductive system one bases the deductions on axioms. Axioms are self-evident truths, everything else is conditional. For example in mathematics every proof start with “IF ‘a’ is true, THEN ‘b’ follows”. In deductive systems there are no absolute true statements, only conditional ones.

Therefore, even if God’s existence would be “proven” by deductions, it would be contingent upon the axioms, whatever they are. Since I am not aware of these axioms you speak about, I cannot go any further.

Only empirical proof counts outside these systems. And as you said, there is no empirical proof of God’s existence, so my (and other atheists’) skepticism is well founded.

But be as it may, the fundamental assertion of the OP still stands: once we have empirical proof of God’s existence, our free will is taken away.

If you could bare with the following:

The problem with your hypothesis is that is assumes God bases His judgement completely on whether you believe the (according to you) unprovable Him.

The problem with this reasoning is that is yields no good reason for us to be here in the first place (from a believer’s perspective). Given your logic why wouldn’t God simply create us, look us in the eye and ask if we believe in Him. If we answer yes we go to Heaven, no, we go to Hell. We do not pass earth and we do not collect 200 dollars.

I’d propose there is more to the plan then this.

Let us assume, to begin with, God knows what He is doing. In other words, for every individual God has a plan.

Here is where my proverbial substance hits the fan:

God created us inquisitive (hense possibly your visiting the forums) and as Augustine said, :“our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee”. He also issues graces to us guiding us towards Him (such as possibly feeling deep remorse and guilt over our sin; or a deep longing to be with Him without fully understanding why). Although possibly not what you would qualify as conclusive evidences. With these graces our hearts soften (or not). He desires us to accept Him and follow Him. Yet He allows us to make our own decision. He wants this to be a journey for us towards holiness, NOT a - if a then b conditional.

The way I think about this is: God wants this to be a journey towards His Truth. He knows what we have been exposed to and He knows what graces He has chosen to sprinkle us with. His judgement, ultimatley is based on what we chose to do with this knowledge and grace.

The Catholic doctrine of invincible ignorance caters to this assesment. Most Protestant doctrine does not (which was the primary reason I reverted back to Catholicism.

Admittedly not a scholarly explaination but I hope it helps.

 

[doomhammer]

itsjustdave1988:

Much of science is believed by scientists without strict proofs, and we apply that science in real-world applications despite not having strict proofs.

Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, would be good literature for our lost friend.

 

[EnterTheBowser]

john doran:

give me an example of this kind of argument, and of the kinds of beliefs you have which are supported by them.

Well… let’s talk about the existence of the external world. It’s not certain in the deductive sense that the external world exists. But it seems to be that an inference to the best explanation, taking our phenomenal experiences as things to be explained, would arrive at the existence of the external world. So we might not know that there’s an external world, if we hold that true knowledge cannot be mistaken, but we can have reasonable belief that there is such a world.

and this is probably where it all shakes out for us - our different concepts of epistemological warrant and “reasonable” belief: if you can honestly have come away from, for instance, our discussion on the complexities of the cosmological argument and the attendant metaphysical and scientific issues, believing that i am actually unreasonable in my assessment of the doxastic probabilities, then we are clearly at loggerheads and it is literally useless to talk about anything else prior to determining whether or not we can see eye-to-eye on the foundational epistemological issues.

Okay.

i am curious: is “being capable of rejection only on pain of irrationality” a necessary condition of reasonable belief for you? if so (and the implication of your statements is clearly that it is), then you either have almost no reasonable beliefs, or you have almost no beliefs of any kind.

Well… let me qualify my statement: it’s irrational to reject the conclusion of a reasonable argument absent a good reason for so doing. Incidentally, when we have two reasonable arguments with contradictory conclusions, we should not throw up our hands and leave it there; we should attempt to more closely approach ideal conditions so that the conflict is eliminated (perhaps by demonstrating that one argument is not actually reasonable).

can you demonstrate to me that the only way i can reject such an epistemology is on pain of irrationality?

Indeed… is it rational to be rational? I’ll admit that here, on the border of rationality and whatever might lie beyond, I have trouble defending reason. I can mount pragmatic arguments; I can mount arguments relating to the possibility of discussion, but I cannot directly establish what I’d like. It’s a particular concern of mine which I cannot at the present time resolve. That being said, when arguing, I content myself with aiming at reasonability, and save questions regarding the supremacy of reason for another day.

 

[EnterTheBowser]

doomhammer:

Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, would be good literature for our lost friend.

Well, yeah, because obviously there’s no objective (that is, theory-independent) way of evaluating scientific theories… because precision, accuracy, breadth, and simplicity certainly don’t do it.

 

[john_doran]

EnterTheBowser:

Well… let’s talk about the existence of the external world. It’s not certain in the deductive sense that the external world exists. But it seems to be that an inference to the best explanation, taking our phenomenal experiences as things to be explained, would arrive at the existence of the external world. So we might not know that there’s an external world, if we hold that true knowledge cannot be mistaken, but we can have reasonable belief that there is such a world.

you have not answered my question: i asked that you provide me with a demonstration of some putatively reasonable belief of yours that i (or anyone else) could only reject on pain of irrationality…surely this is not your best effort, because there’s absolutely nothing about this paragraph that presents even a cursory argument of the kind required to shore up your position…

EnterTheBowser:

Well… let me qualify my statement: it’s irrational to reject the conclusion of a reasonable argument absent a good reason for so doing. Incidentally, when we have two reasonable arguments with contradictory conclusions, we should not throw up our hands and leave it there; we should attempt to more closely approach ideal conditions so that the conflict is eliminated (perhaps by demonstrating that one argument is not actually reasonable).

(A) what makes an argument “reasonable”?

(B) how would one demonstrate that one of two contradictory results of some antinomy is unreasonable?

without more, your epistemology is far too rudimentary a thing upon which to engage you…is there a model to which you largely subscribe? putnam? kitcher? bayes? bonjour? dretske? chisholm? if we are to involve each other usefully, i’m going to need more than that with which you have provided me here.

EnterTheBowser:

Indeed… is it rational to be rational? I’ll admit that here, on the border of rationality and whatever might lie beyond, I have trouble defending reason. I can mount pragmatic arguments; I can mount arguments relating to the possibility of discussion, but I cannot directly establish what I’d like. It’s a particular concern of mine which I cannot at the present time resolve. That being said, when arguing, I content myself with aiming at reasonability, and save questions regarding the supremacy of reason for another day.

once again, you miss my point…whatever else this might be, it is certainly not a demonstration of any kind that “rational” can only (rationally) be understood to mean something like “that which can only be rejected on pain of irrationality”…

so i will ask once more: can you provide me with incontrovertible proof that the only reasonable beliefs are those which are incapable of being rejected on pain of irrationality?

 

[EnterTheBowser]

John: I’ll admit that the sort of epistemology I presented was exceedingly vague. I intentionally presented it that way as a sort of a favor to theistic arguments; I wanted to be very inclusive. I’ll also admit that there’s a lot I don’t know about basic epistemology - e.g. “what is truth.” As I’ve previously noted, it’s a subject I’m rather interested in, though I’ve got nothing to profess at the moment. For the moment, I generally work within a sort of “commonsense rationality” framework, which is rather ill-defined and supported. Maybe the right picture of rationality won’t come out looking anything like that. As of right now, I don’t know; consequently most of what I say is going to be provisional on that sort of commonsense rationality actually being the case.

 

[john_doran]

EnterTheBowser:

John: I’ll admit that the sort of epistemology I presented was exceedingly vague. I intentionally presented it that way as a sort of a favor to theistic arguments; I wanted to be very inclusive. I’ll also admit that there’s a lot I don’t know about basic epistemology - e.g. “what is truth.” As I’ve previously noted, it’s a subject I’m rather interested in, though I’ve got nothing to profess at the moment. For the moment, I generally work within a sort of “commonsense rationality” framework, which is rather ill-defined and supported. Maybe the right picture of rationality won’t come out looking anything like that. As of right now, I don’t know; consequently most of what I say is going to be provisional on that sort of commonsense rationality actually being the case.

fair enough.

incidentally, reading my post again, it strikes me as (maybe more than) a bit abrupt and discourteous - i apologize. not sure what was going on there…

 

[doomhammer]

Hitetlen:

if I am lost, and ask for guidance, why does not anyone try to answer me?

Away from Faith all is darkness… Are you going to fulfill the deepest desires of human heart with maths? We are answering you, but it seems that you want to play word games.

 

[doomhammer]

Hitetlen:

So is an electron, but there are instruments which can prove the electron’s existence. Is there an instrument to detect a “soul”?

So before the instruments to measure it were invented, an electron did not exist?

 

[doomhammer]

Hitetlen:

Is there an evidence of hell? No.

Yes, it is. You are going to receive it the moment you die. All Atheists believe in God when they die. The little problem is that it’s too late to convert. Again: Luke 16, 30-31: “…’if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ Then Abraham said, 'If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead. In short: “There is no excuse”.

 

[doomhammer]

Hitetlen:

So those who do not believe in its existence cannot “choose” to be sent there. How can anyone “choose” something he or she does not BELIEVE in???

Very easy. What you consider only a “belief” (an “opinion”) is a fact. Things are what they are. It does not matter your (our, anyone) opinion. An opinion does not change a fact. We do not “choose” being born. We do not “choose” dying. But we were born to die!

 

[Neithan]

EnterTheBowser:

Yes… are you implying that you’ve never come across any reasonable argument for atheism?

Of course I have, the Problem of Evil for example. The reasonability of arguments in favour of theism, however, maintain my judgement in their favour. Without faith of any kind, one would have to withhold any judgement whatsoever, and remain agnostic (or at the most weak atheistic)–if judgements demanded proof beyond a reasonable doubt, that is. You have described yourself as a Strong Atheist, however–so some degree of belief without self-evident rational proof is present in each of our worldviews. All that is needed are reasonable arguments to demonstrate their reasonability, not certainty.

If you can capably demonstrate the objective irrationality of any argument in favour of theism–well then you should be busy writing those groundbreaking philosophical Theses and cement your fame/notoriety in the history of human thought. It would be quite a feat!