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

[setarcos]

Ah yes…hear O Israel! Speaks to the “heart” doesn’t it. If nothing else the books are poetic. I myself do not equate feelings with emotions. You feel emotions and the emotional state you happen to be in at the time causes you to feel a certain way which we connect with certain emotions. So do we get emotional causing a certain feeling or do we feel a certain way causing an emotional response? Either way the two are quite intertwined. However might it be possible to feel something without an emotional response? Can I feel pain but be indifferent to it? Can I feel sick but care less; or can I take pleasure in these things while someone else gets emotionally distressed, the same stimulated feeling eliciting different emotional responses in different individuals? I do not think you have answered the question. What is it to feel God apart from an emotional response to the same? According to the above scripture the heart is not the same as the soul and it is not the same as the mind and yet we seem to have conviction to action through it according to our will for if we are commanded to act with all our hearts then some may act half heartedly yet the will is stimulated to action by our awareness which has its seat in the intellect or mind. So the heart is not conventionally connected to emotions nor does it reside in the mind then from where comes the stimulus by which it is caused to act fully? If it comes from outside ourselves as does say the stimulus of stubbing our toes causing the feeling of pain then how is it that we can act fully through it by our own convictions and yet not have this action hold its source in the mind? We know what it is to act with the mind, being the seat of awareness but what is it to act with the heart meaningfully without our will which holds its existence in our awareness through the mind?

 

[Wesrock]

Yes… yes… yes… just ignore the long posts I made on the subject.

 

[Roseeurekacross]

I am not talking about a feeling or emotional response, a self absorbed and self directed one as you describe. . It’s like

be still and know God is there. Be still and know the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in your heart and soul.
Be still and know your faith, know the seeds of faith, know the growth of your faith.

It’s not oh I feel sad or my emotion is anger,

Even the ecstasy of Saints or total joy the Holy Spirit gifts us with is so very different to what you are describing as

For want of a better word, base emotions and feelings that include physical hunger, lust, jealousy , happiness , rejection, etc. are not what I mean when I say

Feel God,
Do not feel as in self absorbed self generated emotion.

But in that gift of grace that generates faith, joy, elation, true sorrow or empathy, etc

 

[Sbee0]

Well, they have. Plenty of people have avoided retributive punishment because they had diminished responsibility.

But “plenty of people” would mean everyone if there was no free will. Our concept of justice and morality (among many other things in life) would completely fall apart in a deterministic world as nobody ultimately would be responsible for their actions. Like I said, how could you prosecute me for anything when ultimately I am just doing what determinism - “fate” - or whatever you want to call it - wrote for me. There’s an excellent reason why nobody I know of to date has ever tried to argue in court that their client is not responsible for a crime where every possible piece of evidence that exists points to their guilt - and win.

What evidence?

Among other things, to put it simply we humans generally have the conscious ability to ponder choices, consider the outcome of each choice, and then choose and act accordingly. We have the ability to desire something (which a deterministic robot or a computer program does not) and act on those desires. We humans also know and understand the difference between being in control and not being in control, which is something deterministic robots or animals who behave by instinct such as a dog fetching a stick cannot do. You’ll notice that there’s this distinction between what humans can do with their free will - and other entities such as robots or animals - who do not have such a thing. There’s an excellent reason for that distinction IMO.

I didn’t say God caused evil (although as the alleged creator of everything, he’s got some answering to do). But he allows it to happen when he could stop it. The only way you can reconcile that is to presuppose that free will must be real.

I already addressed the point about God allowing “evil” and for that matter, sin - a choice made by free will There is nothing in the bible or anywhere else which says that we are born into a perfect world of rainbows and unicorns where everything is perfect, everyone is happy all the time and there will never be anything to worry about. Being in an imperfect world bad things can and do happen.
If God created or let the world continue as a permanent utopia of rainbows and unicorns and everything is perfectly happy and blissful then what would be the difference between us in this world and say a tank of fish or a nice garden that God just created to look at on a whim? I have a much higher opinion of why we’re here than that and God does too. So I’m sure God knew exactly what he was doing

Cont’d

 

[Sbee0]

but it’s necessary for you to believe that your God is a good god.

Because God is a good God and like I said without free will, evil in the world cannot be reconciled with the presence of an all-good God. It would be a self contradiction and an absurdity. No different than the hypothetical scenario of an evil God - there is good in the world so clearly that too would be a contradiction without free will. God will not violate the laws of logic. To me from a religious point of view, that is as compelling evidence as we’re going to get about free will.
Also sounds to me like you’re treading into question-begging a bit, attempting to definitively support your conclusion that God doesn’t exist with premises with opinions and suppositions that are being cloaked as facts and used as supporting evidence anyway. I happen to think it’s interesting that no atheist has ever been able to provide me a clear definition of what it means to be moral and good. They’ve tried but haven’t done it very well. There’s a reason for that IMO.

I think our definitions are pretty close. To me, dualistic free will means that, given a choice, we could make that choice freely. And if we were somehow to go back to that decision point, we could make a different choice.

Feels like we aren’t that close actually. First of all the concept of going back and choosing differently creates the logical absurdity that at one point in time and space something happened and it also did not happen. Not worth pondering.
The reason why I mentioned the definitions is I think how you define “free will” is a good indicator to which side of the fence you are on in this topic. I don’t look at free will as just you acting on your “will” - which is a concept that can easily be put into a deterministic chain - and it seems you do. Science looks for causes, it can prove “will”, it cannot demonstrate “free will” any more than you can demonstrate to me that when you look up at the sky on a sunny day you see blue. I look at it in the bigger picture. See above.

 

[FredBloggs]

FredBloggs:

Of course there is - when the exception can be justified.

Is it justified to say “human standards do not apply to a dog, since a dog is not human”?

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.

We don’t expect a dog to act as morally as (most) humans as we know it lacks the capacity.

But we should expect God, if he exists, to act at least as morally as humans, as he allegedly far exceeds us in all capacities. He’s all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful, remember?

 

[Sbee0]

Sbee0:

Sounds like a red herring argument. We are talking about human free will. If you’re asking why God allows bad things to happen then I’m sure there are plenty of topics here and elsewhere that can help answer that question. Nobody has ever guaranteed to Christians or anyone else that life on earth would be perfect and without suffering. But the afterlife will be if we trust God.

Yes, there are plenty of discussions. This is one of them

The question I asked is: if God is all-good, all-knowing and all-powerful, then presumably he could stop bad things happening to good people - like we all presumably would. So why doesn’t he? The options are:

1. He’s not all-powerful - he can’t stop these things happening, or
2. He’s not all-knowing - he doesn’t know these things are about to happen to has no opportunity to prevent them, or
3. He’s not all-good - he doesn’t actually care what happens to people, or
4. He’s beyond our understanding and shouldn’t be questioned in this way.

Options 1 to 3 are clearly anathema to theists.
Option 4 is is a fallacious argument known as “special pleading.”

I’m yet to hear an Option 5 from anybody that doesn’t amount to another fallacious argument - begging the question. Although one person has argued, without seeming to realise the irony, that Option 4 is not special pleading because God is special .

1. It’s not necessary as we have Free will - and see my previous post.

That wasn’t hard.

 

[Wesrock]

You’re just begging the question here, as you haven’t refuted explanations that have been given to you and neither have you actually fleshed out your reasoning as to why you jave the expectations you do.

 

[AveOTheotokos]

Maybe I just missed it, but has the OP ever replied on this thread, or was this just a drive by?

 

[setarcos]

I am not talking about a feeling or emotional response, a self absorbed and self directed one as you describe. . It’s like

Feelings and emotions are necessarily self absorbed. They effect the individual, individually. I do not believe that feelings or emotions can be self directed. They are reactions to stimulus. They are not self directed causes in order that we may act.

be still and know God is there. Be still and know the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in your heart and soul.
Be still and know your faith, know the seeds of faith, know the growth of your faith.

Know, know, know…these things we are knowing are feelings we are aware of, of which our awareness stems from the mind not the heart. If we are to know these things it is because 1 we are aware and 2 we have been given a feeling to be aware of. These feelings have been given to us through Gods grace not by our actions yet it is apparently by our actions not by Gods that we our to somehow act through our hearts awareness. This alone implies we can act without awareness in our free will.

For want of a better word, base emotions and feelings that include physical hunger, lust, jealousy , happiness , rejection, etc. are not what I mean when I say

Feel God,
Do not feel as in self absorbed self generated emotion.

As I’ve said, I don’t see how our emotions are self generated?
And take what you said here above and compare it to what you said in the following…

But in that gift of grace that generates faith, joy, elation, true sorrow or empathy, etc

So our actions from our hearts are not generated from ourselves within our own hearts but are gifts given by God which stimulate us to act, and this action is in accordance to how we feel according to these graces which God has given us which “generate” certain emotional responses - like faith, joy, elation, true sorrow, empathy, etc…

 

[setarcos]

Who cares, it stimulated some thinking.

 

[AveOTheotokos]

I care because I would love to continue the discussion with the person that I responded to. I agree that it stimulated some thinking and others are benefiting from the discussion, but I was just curious as to what (name removed by moderator)ut the OP had on if anything that had been posted has caused a change in them.

 

[Roseeurekacross]

Do you have faith. ?
I don’t think you understand what I mean when I say the Holy Spirit gifts us joy

 

[FredBloggs]

But “plenty of people” would mean everyone if there was no free will.

Exactly. So we treat people instead of just punishing them.

Our concept of justice and morality (among many other things in life) would completely fall apart in a deterministic world as nobody ultimately would be responsible for their actions. Like I said, how could you prosecute me for anything when ultimately I am just doing what determinism - “fate” - or whatever you want to call it - wrote for me. There’s an excellent reason why nobody I know of to date has ever tried to argue in court that their client is not responsible for a crime where every possible piece of evidence that exists points to their guilt - and win.

The fact that our justice system is based on the supposition of free will does not mean that it’s right, or that free will exists.

Among other things, to put it simply we humans generally have the conscious ability to ponder choices, consider the outcome of each choice, and then choose and act accordingly. We have the ability to desire something (which a deterministic robot or a computer program does not) and act on those desires. We humans also know and understand the difference between being in control and not being in control,

I’ll agree it feels like that. That’s not evidence, any more than a feeling of paranoia is evidence that everyone is talking about you.

… which is something deterministic robots or animals who behave by instinct such as a dog fetching a stick cannot do.

You think that’s instinct? You don’t think the dog feels in control of whether to chase the stick? Perhaps a subject for a different thread…

You’ll notice that there’s this distinction between what humans can do with their free will - and other entities such as robots or animals - who do not have such a thing. There’s an excellent reason for that distinction IMO.

What distinction? I see those things acting on the laws of physics. That’s what I’m claiming for humans, in the absence of any evidence for a non-physical enabler of free will.

 

[LilyM]

There are serious limits to our ability to test or prove much at all about animal psychology, given our limited ability to communicate with animals and they with us.

 

[setarcos]

Not hard at all. Lol
But tell me…from where does the next thought you will think come from? The next words will you say to someone? Do you think to yourself…I’m gonna think about thinking about God and then become aware of wanting to think about God? Are you conscious of the next reply you will make to a friend in its totality before you start to make your reply? Don’t these things come to you as if ex nihilo fully formed when you become aware of them or do you somehow self will them into your awareness?

 

[FredBloggs]

I already addressed the point about God allowing “evil” and for that matter, sin - a choice made by free will There is nothing in the bible or anywhere else which says that we are born into a perfect world of rainbows and unicorns where everything is perfect, everyone is happy all the time and there will never be anything to worry about. Being in an imperfect world bad things can and do happen.
If God created the world as a permanent utopia of rainbows and unicorns and everything is perfectly happy and blissful then what would be the difference between us in this world and say a tank of fish or a nice garden that God just created to look at on a whim? I have a much higher opinion of why we’re here than that and God does too. So I’m sure God knew exactly what he was doing

We’re going round in circles here. You’re presupposing free will because that’s how you reconcile a good God with a bad world. You’re starting with your conclusion (God exists and is perfect) and creating a rationale for why he allows bad things to happen.

I’m pointing out there’s no evidence for free will, and you’re saying “the evidence is God gave us free will.”

FredBloggs:

Yes, there are plenty of discussions. This is one of them

The question I asked is: if God is all-good, all-knowing and all-powerful, then presumably he could stop bad things happening to good people - like we all presumably would. So why doesn’t he? The options are:

1. He’s not all-powerful - he can’t stop these things happening, or
2. He’s not all-knowing - he doesn’t know these things are about to happen to has no opportunity to prevent them, or
3. He’s not all-good - he doesn’t actually care what happens to people, or
4. He’s beyond our understanding and shouldn’t be questioned in this way.

Options 1 to 3 are clearly anathema to theists.
Option 4 is is a fallacious argument known as “special pleading.”

I’m yet to hear an Option 5 from anybody that doesn’t amount to another fallacious argument - begging the question. Although one person has argued, without seeming to realise the irony, that Option 4 is not special pleading because God is special .

1. It’s not necessary as we have Free will - and see my previous post.

That wasn’t hard.

Okay - suppose we have free will. Why does that give God a get-out? Assume I have free will. Assume my friend Joe has free will. Assume I know he’s planning to murder someone, and I could stop it happening. Do I say to myself, “Well, Joe has free will so I’ll let him get on with it?” I think that would make me - anybody - a bad person. But apparently not God. God gets a free pass. Because… erm, actually, I can’t think of a good reason.

 

[setarcos]

Tell me, what is the difference from our frame of reference between thinking you have free will but actually not having it and actually having free will?

 

[FredBloggs]

There are serious limits to our ability to test or prove much at all about animal psychology, given our limited ability to communicate with animals and they with us.

Seriously? You’re saying the only way to test something is to be able to communicate with it?

That’s really scraping the barrel, Lily.

 

[FredBloggs]

Tell me, what is the difference from our frame of reference between thinking you have free will but actually not having it and actually having free will?

I’m not sure I understand the question. Can you rephrase?