God does neither roll dice nor play determinism

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Bahman

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God does neither roll dice nor play determinism. The clear example is free will that violate determinism and is not stochastic either. The creation of self that owns free will as a very unique property is a mysterious phenomena. The self is an anomalous being meaning that one cannot find a set of laws by which the outcome of them could provide a better understanding of how self functions. The self is a singularity that no one knows how it functions meaning that giving one (name removed by moderator)ut, one cannot know what is the output since otherwise it was like a device with known outcome. The anomalous behaviour of the self is so important that without that we could not say that we are something since for example we could not have free will with unpredictable outcome and turned to a simple device.
 
Abandonment to Divine Providence

Jean-Pierre de Caussade

The designs of God, the good pleasure of God, the will of God, the operation of God and the gift of His grace are all one and the same thing in the spiritual life. It is God working in the soul to make it like unto Himself. Perfection is neither more nor less than the faithful co-operation of the soul with this work of God, and is begun, grows, and is consummated in the soul unperceived and in secret. The science of theology is full of theories and explanations of the wonders of this state in each soul according to its capacity. One may be conversant with all these speculations, speak and write about them admirably, instruct others and guide souls; yet, if these theories are only in the mind, one is, compared with those who, without any knowledge of these theories, receive the meaning of the designs of God and do His holy will, like a sick physician compared to simple people in perfect health.

The designs of God and his divine will accepted by a faithful soul with simplicity produces this divine state in it without its knowledge, just as a medicine taken obediently will produce health, although the sick person neither knows nor wishes to know anything about
medicine. As fire gives out heat, and not philosophical discussions about it, nor knowledge of its effects, so the designs of God and His holy will work in the soul for its sanctification, and not speculations of curiosity as to this principle and this state. When one is thirsty one quenches one’s thirst by drinking, not by reading books which treat of this condition. The desire to know does but increase this thirst. Therefore when one thirsts after sanctity, the desire to know about it only drives it further away. Speculation must be laid aside, and everything arranged by God as regards actions and sufferings must be accepted with simplicity, for those things that happen at each moment by the divine command or permission are always the most holy, the best and the most divine for us.

Peace
 
hazcompat said:
Abandonment to Divine Providence

Jean-Pierre de Caussade

The designs of God, the good pleasure of God, the will of God, the operation of God and the gift of His grace are all one and the same thing in the spiritual life. It is God working in the soul to make it like unto Himself. Perfection is neither more nor less than the faithful co-operation of the soul with this work of God, and is begun, grows, and is consummated in the soul unperceived and in secret. The science of theology is full of theories and explanations of the wonders of this state in each soul according to its capacity. One may be conversant with all these speculations, speak and write about them admirably, instruct others and guide souls; yet, if these theories are only in the mind, one is, compared with those who, without any knowledge of these theories, receive the meaning of the designs of God and do His holy will, like a sick physician compared to simple people in perfect health.

The designs of God and his divine will accepted by a faithful soul with simplicity produces this divine state in it without its knowledge, just as a medicine taken obediently will produce health, although the sick person neither knows nor wishes to know anything about
medicine. As fire gives out heat, and not philosophical discussions about it, nor knowledge of its effects, so the designs of God and His holy will work in the soul for its sanctification, and not speculations of curiosity as to this principle and this state. When one is thirsty one quenches one’s thirst by drinking, not by reading books which treat of this condition. The desire to know does but increase this thirst. Therefore when one thirsts after sanctity, the desire to know about it only drives it further away. Speculation must be laid aside, and everything arranged by God as regards actions and sufferings must be accepted with simplicity, for those things that happen at each moment by the divine command or permission are always the most holy, the best and the most divine for us.

Peace
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Thank you very much for your long post.

I however don’t think that God design self, since designing self means that the self must behaves appropriately under certain circumstances, which is against free will.
 
I however don’t think that God design self, since designing self means that the self must behaves appropriately under certain circumstances, which is against free will.
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Who said that? Maybe an extremist like John Calvin,
but certainly not a Catholic or any religious person.
Not any reporter, or politician, or sociologist, or psychologist, or for that matter anybody with any knowledge or experience of human behavior.

God does not design, or determine, our behavior. He creates us with the power, potency, ability, call it what you will, to choose our actions, to choose between good and evil, to choose between Coca-Cola which is good and Pepsi which is evil.

This is why one child becomes a saintly nun while a sibling becomes a serial killer.
This is why the Bible, especially the Gospels, are full of admonitions to be good.
This is why you are you and not Elvis or Kubla Khan.
 
empther said:
Who said that? Maybe an extremist like John Calvin,
but certainly not a Catholic or any religious person.
Not any reporter, or politician, or sociologist, or psychologist, or for that matter anybody with any knowledge or experience of human behavior.

God does not design, or determine, our behavior. He creates us with the power, potency, ability, call it what you will, to choose our actions, to choose between good and evil, to choose between Coca-Cola which is good and Pepsi which is evil.

This is why one child becomes a saintly nun while a sibling becomes a serial killer.
This is why the Bible, especially the Gospels, are full of admonitions to be good.
This is why you are you and not Elvis or Kubla Khan.
Click to expand...
So you think that God design the self such that the self behaves accordingly depending on the situation. I would be glad to have your opinion on this matter.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by empther View Post
Who said that? Maybe an extremist like John Calvin,
but certainly not a Catholic or any religious person.
Not any reporter, or politician, or sociologist, or psychologist, or for that matter anybody with any knowledge or experience of human behavior.
Click to expand...
God does not design, or determine, our behavior. He creates us with the power, potency, ability, call it what you will, to choose our actions, to choose between good and evil, to choose between Coca-Cola which is good and Pepsi which is evil.
Click to expand...
This is why one child becomes a saintly nun while a sibling becomes a serial killer.
This is why the Bible, especially the Gospels, are full of admonitions to be good.
This is why you are you and not Elvis or Kubla Khan.
Click to expand...
So you think that God design the self such that the self behaves accordingly depending on the situation. I would be glad to have your opinion on this matter.
Click to expand...

You’ll notice, friends, that Bahman completely ignores the point I just made. People have free choice. It’s not that they act accordingly to the situation. They may choose to act accordingly or do something that makes no sense at all…
 
Bahman said:
God does neither roll dice nor play determinism. The clear example is free will that violate determinism and is not stochastic either. The creation of self that owns free will as a very unique property is a mysterious phenomena. The self is an anomalous being meaning that one cannot find a set of laws by which the outcome of them could provide a better understanding of how self functions. The self is a singularity that no one knows how it functions meaning that giving one (name removed by moderator)ut, one cannot know what is the output since otherwise it was like a device with known outcome. The anomalous behaviour of the self is so important that without that we could not say that we are something since for example we could not have free will with unpredictable outcome and turned to a simple device.
Click to expand...
I agree with Emerson that God does roll dice, but “the dice of God are always loaded.” Or to paraphrase Aquinas, the entire history of the universe is as though the shipbuilder had given to the parts of the ship the ability to construct themselves according to his plan. I believe that strictly physical reality is deterministic. Given the initial conditions of the universe, its development into its current state was inevitable. The only non-deterministic element of our world is ourselves (or, for the sake of argument, any other intellectual beings).

The bestowing of intellect/free will (image of God) onto an organism introduces a “wild card.” But that which has no free will (i.e. anything that does not have a rational soul: animals, minerals, plants, stars, particles) cannot do anything but that which the physical laws that govern it cause it to do. Given the constancy of the laws of nature, it follows that prior to the arrival of the first intellectual creatures, and thus free will, in the world, the world was deterministic. However, given our ability to manipulate not only ourselves, but the things around us, our world is now also undetermined.
 
prodigalson2011 said:
I agree with Emerson that God does roll dice, but “the dice of God are always loaded.” Or to paraphrase Aquinas, the entire history of the universe is as though the shipbuilder had given to the parts of the ship the ability to construct themselves according to his plan. I believe that strictly physical reality is deterministic. Given the initial conditions of the universe, its development into its current state was inevitable. The only non-deterministic element of our world is ourselves (or, for the sake of argument, any other intellectual beings).

The bestowing of intellect/free will (image of God) onto an organism introduces a “wild card.” But that which has no free will (i.e. anything that does not have a rational soul: animals, minerals, plants, stars, particles) cannot do anything but that which the physical laws that govern it cause it to do. Given the constancy of the laws of nature, it follows that prior to the arrival of the first intellectual creatures, and thus free will, in the world, the world was deterministic. However, given our ability to manipulate not only ourselves, but the things around us, our world is now also undetermined.
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I do not believe that underlying laws of nature are deterministic. What we see in the surface as a result of the underlying laws however look deterministic since otherwise we should live in a very complex world.
 
I believe the underlying laws of nature are completely deterministic. The problem is that our human capacity is limited and we cannot comprehend the vast number of variables. That is why, even though the laws are deterministic, it is beyond our capacity to determine many outcomes.
 
Determinism in physical reality belongs to classical physics:
We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.
—Pierre Simon Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities.
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Determinism thus understood is incompatible with interpretations of quantum mechanics that stipulate indeterminacy, and has nothing to do with belief or not in God, whose Providence is beyond what science - or our brains - can explain/comprehyend.

In particular, God gave us the ability to make decisions that we experience as free, and still know the outcome of our decisions. This would be a contradictio in se only if God were a human being subject to cause and effect dependent on the flow of time.

Besides, whatever science might conclude about the “nature” of free will, there are reasons beyond science (ethics, jurisdiction) that compel not only theists to believe in the reality of free will, and hence find a suitable interpretation of science’s findings that is compatible with this a priori belief.
 
Solus_vistor said:
Determinism in physical reality belongs to classical physics:

Determinism thus understood is incompatible with interpretations of quantum mechanics that stipulate indeterminacy, and has nothing to do with belief or not in God, whose Providence is beyond what science - or our brains - can explain/comprehyend.

In particular, God gave us the ability to make decisions that we experience as free, and still know the outcome of our decisions. This would be a contradictio in se only if God were a human being subject to cause and effect dependent on the flow of time.

Besides, whatever science might conclude about the “nature” of free will, there are reasons beyond science (ethics, jurisdiction) that compel not only theists to believe in the reality of free will, and hence find a suitable interpretation of science’s findings that is compatible with this a priori belief.
Click to expand...
The model of reality described by qm may involve probability theory and thereby have a certain non-deterministic aspect, but that does not prove that the correct physical theory is non-deterministic, because it is not clear as to whether or not qm is the last word. In fact, string theory contains qm, classical mechanics and gravity and is deterministic.
 
Solus_vistor said:
Determinism in physical reality belongs to classical physics:

Determinism thus understood is incompatible with interpretations of quantum mechanics that stipulate indeterminacy, and has nothing to do with belief or not in God, whose Providence is beyond what science - or our brains - can explain/comprehyend.

In particular, God gave us the ability to make decisions that we experience as free, and still know the outcome of our decisions. This would be a contradictio in se only if God were a human being subject to cause and effect dependent on the flow of time.

Besides, whatever science might conclude about the “nature” of free will, there are reasons beyond science (ethics, jurisdiction) that compel not only theists to believe in the reality of free will, and hence find a suitable interpretation of science’s findings that is compatible with this a priori belief.
Click to expand...
Determinism applies to QM as well, since once you can project the final wave function given the initial one. There is a however a problem in measurability of a quantum state which states that the quantum state of a system before and after the measurement
are not identical.

Our free will does cannot be fitted in deterministic framework. We cannot provide any proof whether our decision is are result of an random accident.
 
Tomdstone said:
The model of reality described by qm may involve probability theory and thereby have a certain non-deterministic aspect, but that does not prove that the correct physical theory is non-deterministic, because it is not clear as to whether or not qm is the last word. In fact, string theory contains qm, classical mechanics and gravity and is deterministic.
Click to expand...
I do not know what you mean by “correct” physical theory but QM has certainly been widely accepted as adequate to model features of physical reality and it does not allow for what I quoted - and is usually referred to as the “Laplace demon” - unless you introduce some “hidden variables” (David Bohm) not acceptable to most physicists.

Quantum Mechanics might be extended to some superstrings or M-theory but these are still speculations. Nevertheless, you are right that according to Gerard 't Hooft Superstring Theory is mathematically equivalent to a deterministic automaton.
 
Bahman said:
Determinism applies to QM as well, since once you can project the final wave function given the initial one. There is a however a problem in measurability of a quantum state which states that the quantum state of a system before and after the measurement
are not identical.

Our free will does cannot be fitted in deterministic framework. We cannot provide any proof whether our decision is are result of an random accident.
Click to expand...
QM is deterministic with respect to the wave functions of a system but not with respect to the observable properties. Free will is not something physical theories can make statements about, but it is compatible with some interpretations of accepted physical theories. What looks like accidental from within physics might be an application of our free will that is part of our consciousness (see e.g. www.trin.cam.ac.uk/butterfield/Papers/QmCuriositiesPsychophysicsFeb01.pdf) or perhaps an incident of Divine Action.
 
All this deterministic / stochastic dichotomy is irrelevant in this problem. Our decision making process happens in our mind, which is composed of two parts, the conscious and the subconscious. (Animals have very little “conscious” part.) The mind is the electro-chemical activity of the brain. The physical activity itself is (most probably) deterministic, it could be described by the laws of physics and chemistry. (Neurons exchange electrical and chemical information with each other).

However, this has nothing to do with the “laws of the mind”. The interaction of the neurons has an internal meaning, which are our thoughts, and decision making activities. In the physical reality no object can move faster than the speed of light, but we can create an “artificial environment” in our mind, where spaceships can move faster.

If you look at a sophisticated MMORPG, you find that the authors created a “world” within the fully electronic hardware of a computer. The exchange of electrons happens according to the deterministic laws of physics, but those laws are not applicable in the program itself. The program can and does exhibit a “free-will-like” behavior, because the “laws” of connecting the (name removed by moderator)ut to the output have nothing to do with the laws of nature. The world is an artificial world, with their own laws and rules. This is merely an example, not to be taken as an exact model of our decision making processes.

If you look at the AND-gates, and OR-gates within a computer, you can see how the (name removed by moderator)ut is connected to the output. But that information tells you exactly NOTHING about the working of the program itself. It may be a spreadsheet, or a word-processor, or a simulation model of meteorological circumstances, or anything else. You can write a program, which will gladly add two even numbers, but will “refuse” to deal with odd numbers. How this happens cannot be found out by looking at the electrons moving along in the AND-gates and OR-gates. To find it out you would need to have access to the source code itself.

The point is that the laws of nature have nothing to do with the laws of our thinking and decision making processes. It is true that there are many unknowns, which require a lot of research, but those are actual, scientific problems, not speculations about the deterministic / stochastic nature of the physical reality.
 
Bagheera said:
All this deterministic / stochastic dichotomy is irrelevant in this problem. Our decision making process happens in our mind, which is composed of two parts, the conscious and the subconscious. (Animals have very little “conscious” part.) The mind is the electro-chemical activity of the brain. The physical activity itself is (most probably) deterministic, it could be described by the laws of physics and chemistry. (Neurons exchange electrical and chemical information with each other).

However, this has nothing to do with the “laws of the mind”. The interaction of the neurons has an internal meaning, which are our thoughts, and decision making activities. In the physical reality no object can move faster than the speed of light, but we can create an “artificial environment” in our mind, where spaceships can move faster.

If you look at a sophisticated MMORPG, you find that the authors created a “world” within the fully electronic hardware of a computer. The exchange of electrons happens according to the deterministic laws of physics, but those laws are not applicable in the program itself. The program can and does exhibit a “free-will-like” behavior, because the “laws” of connecting the (name removed by moderator)ut to the output have nothing to do with the laws of nature. The world is an artificial world, with their own laws and rules. This is merely an example, not to be taken as an exact model of our decision making processes.

If you look at the AND-gates, and OR-gates within a computer, you can see how the (name removed by moderator)ut is connected to the output. But that information tells you exactly NOTHING about the working of the program itself. It may be a spreadsheet, or a word-processor, or a simulation model of meteorological circumstances, or anything else. You can write a program, which will gladly add two even numbers, but will “refuse” to deal with odd numbers. How this happens cannot be found out by looking at the electrons moving along in the AND-gates and OR-gates. To find it out you would need to have access to the source code itself.

The point is that the laws of nature have nothing to do with the laws of our thinking and decision making processes. It is true that there are many unknowns, which require a lot of research, but those are actual, scientific problems, not speculations about the deterministic / stochastic nature of the physical reality.
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First, how such a thing is possible that law of mind is independent of law physics knowing the fact that law of physics is the underlying law?

Second, there could be no laws of mind which can tell you what would be the outcome of a mind to an (name removed by moderator)ut as it has serious conflict with free will.
 
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