The Cosmic Slot Machine: a metaphor of free will

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oldcelt said:
I thought that the lesson from Job is that the god in the story would sell out a faithful servant to make a point to his greatest enemy.

John
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Not really, assuming Satan has made his choice eternally, God making a point to him would be worthless.
 
oldcelt said:
Without limit, total…any decision made is the responsibility of that individual…with no divine involvement what-so-ever.
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That isn’t real. Every decision involves a motive. An action cannot exist without a motive.
 
blase6 said:
I thought the point of the story of Job was “you don’t understand why God allows you to suffer, so don’t complain”.
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I suggest it’s high time you change your understanding. Because really, if that’d be the case I will gladly pull a Genghis Khan and call myself the scourge appointed to bring such suffering because I secretly have a stronger belief in my own autonomy.
blase6 said:
I said by your will alone. I was arguing against Bahman who thinks that all actions involve “consciousness”. You can move your limbs and muscles with your will alone, but most everything else requires secondary causes. Like the knife.
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No offense (no really) but your understanding of ‘will alone’ sounds like a wish to be telekinetic. I can’t say that’s reasonable, let alone philosophical. The difference between stopping a heart through willpower versus ‘secondary causes’ is moot in this discussion. (It’d be a different story if this thread was discussing the efficiency of certain killing techniques and that’s not even a philosophical discussion to begin with! 🤷)
 
blase6 said:
That isn’t real. Every decision involves a motive. An action cannot exist without a motive.
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Motive, in this case, is irrelevant. Did the individual have the absolute right, regardless of motive, to make a decision?
 
blase6 said:
Freedom is where something happens by chance, but that chance happens to be your fault.

God wants to create creatures who can love him back. But for it to be “real” love, they have to be able to not love him. So God creates persons and runs them through the Cosmic Slot Machine, where it is determined whether they will accept God and go to Heaven, or reject God and go to hell.

The problem is that freedom just doesn’t make any logical sense. In our world there are apparently only things which happen because they must happen. “Chances” don’t really exist, unless you are a scientist/philosopher who pushes a weird understanding of the behavior of subatomic particles.

This is the world which would make sense to me: God would create the world because he was necessitated by his nature, which desires things to exist. And since God is perfect, he would not allow imperfection to exist in any way.

But sadly, the world is not that simple. It is a chaotic mess of freedom where there is great suffering because of freedom. But God prefers this world to one without suffering. It is maddening.

It isn’t fair to continually assert that a person is ultimately responsible for their own actions, when there is all the evidence against it. One’s family background, one’s disposition, one’s opportunities, all of those things are predetermined. Creativity and spontaneity seem to be lies. Everything human beings create as art is always based on other things. It is extremely difficult to see the rat race every day and still hold one’s belief in freedom.
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The alternative idea, that humans are basically imbeciles or animals, led around by their noses to behave in whatever manner fate would have them: “God made me do it”, The devil made me do it", etc. is much more absurd; man is simply not a morally irresponsible being; he can choose to act in a morally better way, or to act in a morally inferior way. We can elect not to commit some evil or another; we can change our minds.
 
fhansen said:
The alternative idea, that humans are basically imbeciles or animals, led around by their noses to behave in whatever manner fate would have them: “God made me do it”, The devil made me do it", etc. is much more absurd; man is simply not a morally irresponsible being; he can choose to act in a morally better way, or to act in a morally inferior way. We can elect not to commit some evil or another; we can change our minds.
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Well said.
 
fhansen said:
The alternative idea, that humans are basically imbeciles or animals, led around by their noses to behave in whatever manner fate would have them: “God made me do it”, The devil made me do it", etc. is much more absurd; man is simply not a morally irresponsible being; he can choose to act in a morally better way, or to act in a morally inferior way. We can elect not to commit some evil or another; we can change our minds.
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I find there to be a logical problem in the idea of any agent acting without necessity.
 
blase6 said:
I find there to be a logical problem in the idea of any agent acting without necessity.
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Necessity still creates choices. Choices may not be perfect but then again, that’s why you end up with opportunities for more decisions.

It sounds like chaos? Quite frankly, the only people who say that are the people who fear the idea.
 
Lost_Wanderer said:
Necessity still creates choices. Choices may not be perfect but then again, that’s why you end up with opportunities for more decisions.

It sounds like chaos? Quite frankly, the only people who say that are the people who fear the idea.
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That is not what I meant by “necessity”. By necessity I mean the only logically possible action given the situation.
 
blase6 said:
That is not what I meant by “necessity”. By necessity I mean the only logically possible action given the situation.
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So far you’ve only demonstrated that your understanding of necessity is also skewed. Because really, my experience with life has given me more than enough evidence that there is more than one ‘logically possible action’ in response to a given situation. 🤷
 
A coin in a slot machine is useless, worthless and meaningless. Therefore it can and should be ignored…
 
Lost_Wanderer said:
So far you’ve only demonstrated that your understanding of necessity is also skewed. Because really, my experience with life has given me more than enough evidence that there is more than one ‘logically possible action’ in response to a given situation. 🤷
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You are looking at this from a common perspective, not a philosophical one. In the common world, words like “necessity” have wishy-washy meanings which are not absolute. But in philosophy, “necessity” is generally the opposite of freedom.
 
tonyrey said:
A coin in a slot machine is useless, worthless and meaningless. Therefore it can and should be ignored…
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Your eternal fate depends on it, you should be concerned. Of course, it will just be “your” fault anyway, so maybe you don’t have to worry.
 
blase6 said:
Um, no, you don’t. You still confuse people constantly.
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So I do define consciousness for sake of clarity again: Consciousness is the essence of any being with the ability to experience and create. Free will is the ability to make conscious choice. You cannot understand freedom unless you understand consciousness.
 
Bahman said:
So I do define consciousness for sake of clarity again: Consciousness is the essence of any being with the ability to experience and create. Free will is the ability to make conscious choice. You cannot understand freedom unless you understand consciousness.
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You use all of those terms to mean things that others do not understand as the meaning of those words. Until you are able to refine your terms to the point where they can be understood for your specific understanding of them, repeating them on every topic is wholly futile and a waste of time.
 
blase6 said:
You are looking at this from a common perspective, not a philosophical one. In the common world, words like “necessity” have wishy-washy meanings which are not absolute. But in philosophy, “necessity” is generally the opposite of freedom.
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You’ve only proven how much of self-proclaimed ‘philosophy’ does nothing but throw common sense out the window because you fancy yourself as a non-plebeian.
 
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