If I can find an answer to these questions, I will turn back to religion

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What I mean is the conception of having a truly free will is dependent upon it being a fact that we are the authors of our own will to act given a certain stimulus . We are subject however to being aware of this will to act only as it is produced within our minds fully formed not from our own self aware actions but from some other process of which we are not aware. In other words if we don’t create the awareness of our own free will then the will we are acting in accordance to is not truly our own.
 
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Except that there is a serious scientific debate that says the speed of light and its limits may have actually been faster the closer to the so called big bang we get. So if we have a faster light speed earlier in the universes history and it has decelerated in some fashion since then we may have a skewed measurement of how old the universe actually is.
 
Make no mistake, this particular thread is about things which, if the Christian God exists and we have his revelations in scripture, make not one wit of difference in their truth or falsity as it concerns salvation. In that regard no Catholic should be swayed to change their practices solely based on these discussions. In my opinion.
 
So OP, you’ve gotten the answer. You’ve gotten multiple answers. Are going to come back to religion?
 
Sbee0 said:
It’s interesting too how the advancements and development of science hundreds of years ago that are accepted today can be attributed almost entirely to Christian (including Catholic) origins and thinking regarding the nature of the universe and linear properties of space/time. And yes, that includes Galileo. I have heard the atheist or anti-Catholic argument about Galileo plenty of times but be warned it is shut down quite easily when the facts are presented. 🙂
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You yourself should be careful here. Your assertions about the origins of scientific thought being Christian are demonstrably false. Certain Christians may have taken up the reins to further scientific progress but scientifically speaking Christianity definitely "stands upon the shoulders of " those giants that came before. As to Galileo the facts are the facts, the Church misbehaved in light of its own convictions. The Roman Church didn’t act to temporarily suppress Galileo’s assertions because they thought he was wrong, they acted because the clergy were afraid he may be right. They wanted time to verify and contemplate the implications for the church not in promotion of scientific progress but in order to defend against potential scientific damage to their authority in handing down truth. It was a purely politically motivated action.
 
setarcos said:
Granted you disagree. Now can you explain why you don’t agree that free will is exercised out of a reaction to an unknown stimulus?
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You changed your statement. Certainly, free will can be exercised out of a reaction to unknown stimuli. You posited it is CONTINGENT upon this stimuli. I disagree with the nihilistic approach to that word contingent that you presented. I understand that we are sheep responding to God’s shepherding. I think Augustine and Aquinas both discussed this at length. But to suggest we don’t have free will is ignoring the obvious.

As Chesterton stated, you might be inclined to tell a man to not drink that 10th shot of whiskey, and to “be a man”, but you wouldn’t do the same to a crocodile regarding eating his tenth explorer. Why not?

The crocodile after consuming that 10th snack will merely be a crocodile. But to exhort the drunkard is to accept that there is a higher plane of living and that a man has the choice to reach for that pinnacle. I accept that I can make that choice, the wrong choice being the path of sin and death. I accept I can go against God’s will for my life, and yet believe in His providence.

Perhaps you will come to see this also.
 
setarcos said:
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Sbee0:
It’s interesting too how the advancements and development of science hundreds of years ago that are accepted today can be attributed almost entirely to Christian (including Catholic) origins and thinking regarding the nature of the universe and linear properties of space/time. And yes, that includes Galileo. I have heard the atheist or anti-Catholic argument about Galileo plenty of times but be warned it is shut down quite easily when the facts are presented. 🙂
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You yourself should be careful here. Your assertions about the origins of scientific thought being Christian are demonstrably false. Certain Christians may have taken up the reins to further scientific progress but scientifically speaking Christianity definitely "stands upon the shoulders of " those giants that came before. As to Galileo the facts are the facts, the Church misbehaved in light of its own convictions. The Roman Church didn’t act to temporarily suppress Galileo’s assertions because they thought he was wrong, they acted because the clergy were afraid he may be right. They wanted time to verify and contemplate the implications for the church not in promotion of scientific progress but in order to defend against potential scientific damage to their authority in handing down truth. It was a purely politically motivated action.
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Nope. The idea that the Church condemned Galileo for his theories about the solar system is a myth. They had no problem at all with his views on the solar system - and oddly enough you don’t hear very often the real reason why he was condemned.

It was actually Galileo’s unabashed arrogance, his inability to take criticism, his insistence that he knew more about scripture than the church and certainly his taunting of the church and specifically the pope (calling him a simpleton) that got him into trouble.

The Catholic Church holds science in very high regard. Always has and I suspect always will.
 
Science has a foundation of Christian thought and the two are very compatible. Science requires order and structure. Not the chaos that would and did exist in other beliefs or lack thereof. There’s a reason why some of the greatest scientific discoveries and scientists and astronomers in the last millennium were Catholics and/or in Christian/Catholic societies. There’s also a reason why some of the greatest scientific and philosophical thinkers were Catholic.

Including Augustine whose work was fundamental on reconciling faith with science and refuting many of the fundamentalist beliefs that skew the non Christian’s view of our faith.
 
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setarcos said:
Except that there is a serious scientific debate that says the speed of light and its limits may have actually been faster the closer to the so called big bang we get. So if we have a faster light speed earlier in the universes history and it has decelerated in some fashion since then we may have a skewed measurement of how old the universe actually is.
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May be so but the difference between 6000 years and billions of light years is significant enough to make the original point stand.
 
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FredBloggs said:
Not in and of itself. It’s not that a dog isn’t human, it’s that it doesn’t have the same capacity for understanding, compassion, empathy as humans. We can test that, so we can justify the exception.
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Great point! We can test and justify our abilities that exceed dogs’, so we can be expected to prove the point. Dogs, on the other hand, wouldn’t be expected to make that case.

The example, of course, leads us to consider the differences between us and God. Based on our abilities, we can recognize that there are differences. God, on the other hand, can be expected to test and justify the case. Since we are not “all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful”, though, as you point out, is it unreasonable to recognize that He can make a case that we cannot? And, that being the case, we can assert the exception, reasonably, without proving it? After all… we don’t expect a human to act as morally as God, as we know we lack the capacities that God has.

In sum, then, there’s no “special pleading” for God – just reasonable assertions that He is different than us. QED.
 
Gorgias said:
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FredBloggs:
I disagree. “It sure feels like I have free will” is not good enough.
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“It sure feels like I’m thinking” or “it sure feels like I’m seeing that tree” are good enough, aren’t they? And if so, then why not “it sure feels like I have free will”?
Our decisions are what our brains do. Our brains are purely physical entities undergoing physical (chemical) processes. We have zero evidence that anything else is going on.
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I would disagree – the evidence we have are the perceptions we experience, and the thoughts we have. They are not physical entities themselves! So… from whence do they proceed? The experience itself is the evidence you claim doesn’t exist! The very thought processes you used in order to compose your post is that evidence! 🤔
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Bit late to this discussion but…

…I think you are dead right. Up to a point. We are just collections of atoms arranged in a particular way. Consciousness could be some sort of cosmic illusion. What we experience might not exist as we perceive it. But driving down the road I will simply assume that everything is real so I will avoid driving into the tree to preserve this particular collection of atoms which I like to call ‘me’.

Likewise, it doesn’t make sense to act as if no-one has free will. Otherwise we’d all have a get-out-of-jail card available at all times. But that doesn’t mean to say that it exists just because it’s convenient to assume it does.
 
Secant said:
God will not send us to hell. If we are to go there, it will be because we choose it.

Hope this helps.
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Let me ask you something. Think of someone truly evil - Let’s say Martin Bryant who slaughtered men, women and children in Australia in 1996.

So you are one of his parents and before he is born you are granted a vision of the future. You see the massacre. You get to watch him gun down small children and shoot mothers and their babies. You then have a choice. Do you go straight to the local clinic and get sterilised or do you think: ‘I have to allow him to make his own choices’.
 
Wesrock said:
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FredBloggs:
That’s an interesting point. There’s an assumption that theists have the drop on atheists by virtue of the fact that they believe. That this belief somehow gives them insight into the nature of God that is unavailable to the atheist.
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It’s not hidden knowledge or something only a believer can understand. You just honestly appear to not grasp what we’re talking about when it comes to God, though you certainly have the capacity to do so. You seem content with a “if humans evolved from monkeys, why are monkeys still around” understanding of the concept and believe yourself to have already grasped it.
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I think that this is grossly unfair. It appears to me that Fred (and most other regular atheists on this forum) has a very good understanding of what God is. Which is precisely what Christians describe Him as.

To use myself as an example, I cannot list the attributes of something in which I do not believe. To me, God is whatever the person I am responding to believes Him to be. There is no One God. He is represented by every individual belief of all those who claim to know Him. And there are as many varieties of God found in the posts of this forum as there are posters making them.

There are plenty of claims of atheists anthropomorphising Him but if that claim is true in any way then it reflects on those who use terms such as ‘God is just’ and ‘God is merciful’. For those terms to have any meaning whatsoever then we have to understand them as they apply to us. Otherwise the terms are meaningless.

‘God is just*’
  • Note that ‘just’ in this context does not refer to a human understanding of the word but is applicable only to God and should not be confused with a sense of being fair minded or equitable.
So if I’m discussing with someone if God was justified in ordering the massacre of the Amalekites, then it is not because I believe He wasn’t, it’s because that someone else believes He was. And He was in a sense that allows for the term ‘justified’, the definition of which we both agree.

And muddying the waters with statements such as ‘God doesn’t love, God IS love’ or some such obscure statement plucked from a bible-belt fire and brimstone preacher’s Sunday sermon doesn’t help either.

It all sounds a bit Spock to me: ‘It’s Love, Jim. But not as we know it.’
 
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Bradskii said:
I think that this is grossly unfair. It appears to me that Fred (and most other regular atheists on this forum) has a very good understanding of what God is. Which is precisely what Christians describe Him as.

To use myself as an example, I cannot list the attributes of something in which I do not believe. To me, God is whatever the person I am responding to believes Him to be. There is no One God. He is represented by every individual belief of all those who claim to know Him. And there are as many varieties of God found in the posts of this forum as there are posters making them.

‘God is just*’
  • Note that ‘just’ in this context does not refer to a human understanding of the word but is applicable only to God and should not be confused with a sense of being fair minded or equitable.
So if I’m discussing with someone if God was justified in ordering the massacre of the Amalekites, then it is not because I believe He wasn’t, it’s because that someone else believes He was. And He was in a sense that allows for the term ‘justified’, the definition of which we both agree.
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I hear you. On the word “just,” the response “Note that ‘just’ in this context does not refer to a human understanding of the word but is applicable only to God and should not be confused with a sense of being fair minded or equitable” is indeed nonsense, insofar as it makes it completely pointless to use the word “just” for God. That is an example of someone claiming an equivocal use of language for the term just. The meaning is completely different and unrelated. The parallel use is “univocal,” that is, it’s exactly the same. There have been Christians who’ve taken both approaches, equivocal and univocal. Most theologians I’m aware of reject both. They prefer an analogical use of language. Food can be good. A person can be good. Food can be good for you. The terms aren’t univocal, because food isn’t good in the way a person is good, but neither are they equivocal, in that their meaning is completely unrelated. Understanding what it means to be a good person does, in a limited way, give us some insight into what it means for food to be good.
Bradskii said:
And muddying the waters with statements such as ‘God doesn’t love, God IS love’ or some such obscure statement plucked from a bible-belt fire and brimstone preacher’s Sunday sermon doesn’t help either.
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It sounds at first hearing a bit too feel-goody-kumbaya, I agree. In the case of God we’re not using it in that way, at least theologians and philosophers aren’t. It’s actually an ontological statement about what God is. If you don’t understand we’re talking about something that doesn’t have multiple attributes such as intelligence, power, goodness, or love then the whole discussion will, unfortunately, go over your head. And what I’m saying does actually make sense and have rational explanation, even if it sounds like gobbledygook to people who haven’t delved into it.
 
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@Bradskii

Just on the topic of goodness in general and whether any special pleading is applied to God, I made a two-post explanation earlier in the topic which @FredBloggs never acknowledged, that I saw.
 
All good. So why don’t we agree that to use a word like good or just which might be misconstrued, we put in the extra yards and say exactly what we mean.

We can then say that God is ‘fair minded and equitable’. Unless you want to suggest that these too cannot be used to describe God in a meaningful way. And so on…

And we are left with a God that cannot be described. In which case we have no basis for a discussion. You cannot say that He ‘loves’ us and we cannot say that He is ‘unjust’.
 
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