Thomistic proofs for the existence of God in the light of modern science

[Logos385]

First of all, I won’t comment on the seeming feud between Leela and many other users, although some of the ideas she is supporting I would agree with, including that Atheism is NOT a religion. Religion is a type of belief, and Atheism is the lack of said belief, not a type of one. I hope we can continue this discussion track devoid of animosity : ).

yup, pretty much. as long as we exclude anything physically existent as the cause you are correct

While we may be able to do that, we can’t exclude anything natural. Natural things aren’t necessarily bound by the 3 (or 4, depending on how it is looked at) physical dimensions. I would argue that M Theory postulates a first cause using natural but non-physical means, eliminating the necessity for a non-natural cause.

I’m off for now, and probably won’t be able to respond again until later tomorrow. Have great nights everyone! : )

 

[1holycatholic]

Ummm… no. After listing Hinduism as an option, you said, “we reject them not because they cant exist, but rather because they are false faiths, to us.” in post 189, and in post 190 you said, “Logically, Vishnu cannot exist.”

I didn’t write post #189.

My apologies for any confusion. I meant to say that the foundation for the valid proofs say that the polytheistic Gods are illogical, but only after the qualities of YWHW (Omnipotence, Omniscience, Omnipresence, etc) are applied to the polytheistic deities. The assumption is made that these Gods have the same properties as YWHW, when there is no reason for them to. I hope that makes more sense : ).

Not really. Can you point me to a book on the Natural Theology of Polytheism?

 

[Logos385]

I didn’t write post #189.

Woops! My bad, I melded two different convos in my mind. Twas completely my fault, and I apologize.

Not really. Can you point me to a book on the Natural Theology of Polytheism?

I’m confused as to the question? All I am saying is that traits such as being all-powerful are intrinsic to Aquinas’s refutation of multiple deities.

Here is a link to the Wikipedia on polytheism? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytheism. I’m confused as to what you want.

And to Atheism being a false faith… It isn’t a faith.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Ummm… no. First of all, nanobots? What? Do you mean collections of cells? Because that is, in fact, what every human being is… Also, the naturalistic worldview does not necessarily eliminate free will.

then what natural mechanism might result in free will? we can discount any known phenomenon, with no supernatural there is no reason to believe in free will. even basic experiments in neurophysiology point to the fact that there is no evidence of free will.
if you say free will exists at this point, it is really no different than saying that fairies, trolls, or leprechauns exist.

you can not logically believe in free will, and then say there is not enough evidence to believe in G-d. a lack of evidence for something is a lack regardless of what it is

The most common system of belief that claims that something knows the whole future would be Christianity… not naturalism. Nature does not have the future all set up for us… Organisms change and grow, as does the environment, as does nature.

mathematically if you know the starting state of any system you can predict the state of that system at any point in its life.

what that means is that all things in the universe are mathematically predetermined by the starting state of the universe.

if it was a game of pool, you would know the position of each ball after the break, if you knew all the factors in the event. from what we have evidence of in the universe, you could consider the whole shebang on the particle level as a giant pool game.

thats what it means to be a slave to mathematical determnism

The jury is still out on free will. It at least seems like we have it, but that is possible through consciousness, a manifestation of natural brain function.

all the experiments in the field are pointing to a deterministically functioning brain

How is suffering outside of life?? And I have suffered, yet life is still wonderful.

are you a quadriplegic, have you lost a child, etc, i mean real suffering, the kind that one would rather die than face.
its easy to talk about an accidental creation making us priveleged, but how easy could you sit at your keyboard and type those words if you had to wear an adult diaper because of rectal cancer. or how about you just got a life sentence to prison, never to be free again.

if lifes only meaning comes from the privilege of some random act of creation, than i dont even see the point of living if one stubs his toe, why deal with any pain of any kind at all, after all you are just an accident. while you are young and invincible it would seem worthit for the pleasures of life. but those end. then you get reposibilities, you dont have time for a lot of fun, even sex loses its luster.given enough time. ask any middle aged person

…What?

sorry got my threads mixed up.

None. And none of the modern cosmological theories claim that. I would point to M theory as an explanation. A natural, non-physical explanation. Non-physical (because it exceeds the 3-dimension realm of physical things) and natural because no other, “supernatural” realm is required. Since the original claim is now changed, I won’t respond to the rest.

i dont get the original claim changed deal, but let me know
thats not m-theory, m-theory proposes that the universe came into being because membranes touched, yet they conveniently leave out where those membranes came from. they are still quite physical, in fact they are the same 'branes that make up the physical matter of our world. being the basis of all matter, they are fundamentally physical in nature.

and we have yet to prove that the m-theory interpretation is correct, in fact it is probably just another in a series of dead ends that string theory has run into

That is one of the only actually deplorable things I have heard you say. I want to thank you for being so patient, willing to discuss, and grounded in your belief, for it leads to an interesting discussion. But using the, “Atheists just want to sin a lot” argument is ridiculous.

i am coming from personal experience, i can look back and see what i was unwilling to admit in my youth, but maybe it was just me. except most of my friends from that period of my life in that social group relate similar feelings. as bad as it may sound, i go where the evidence leads me. though i am sorry if it offends you, i am not known for my tact

I am a very good, religious person… and would be so with or without religion.

im sure you are a good person. i dont doubt it.

I think morals derived from within and from society and observation enacted from personal drive only are MUCH better than morals derived simply from fear of retribution in the afterlife

.

why? ever seen lord of the flies? people making there own morals leads to eventual chaos.

further, the only thing that the largest mass killers in the last century, hitler, stalin, pol pot, red china etc had in common was that philosophy right there.

when man can decide his own morality it usually aint to long before he decides some people just arent as worth as much as he is.

history puts a very bad light on both moral relativism and atheism in concert. sounds good in theory, killed a hundred million plus in the last century in practice.

 

[1holycatholic]

Woops! My bad, I melded two different convos in my mind. Twas completely my fault, and I apologize.
I’m confused as to the question? All I am saying is that traits such as being all-powerful are intrinsic to Aquinas’s refutation of multiple deities.

Here is a link to the Wikipedia on polytheism? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytheism. I’m confused as to what you want.

And to Atheism being a false faith… It isn’t a faith.

You are repeatedly attributing the posts of others to me. I didn’t say that either. I said atheism (the assertion that there is no god) is false.

Are you not confident in your assertion that there is no god?
faith |fāθ|
noun
1 complete trust or confidence in someone or something : this restores one’s faith in politicians.
2 strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.
• a system of religious belief : the Christian faith.
• a strongly held belief or theory : the faith that life will expand until it fills the universe.
I’m looking for this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_theology for polytheism.

 

[Leela]

The jury is still out on free will. It at least seems like we have it, but that is possible through consciousness, a manifestation of natural brain function.

Hi Logos,

Free will/determinism is one of those metaphysical dualisms that is based on materialist assumptions and is a bugbear only for materialists and theists.

Determinism is the philosophic doctrine that man, like all other objects in the universe, follows fixed scientific laws, and does so without exception. Free will is the philosophic doctrine that man makes choices independent of the atoms of his body.

This battle has been a very long and very loud one because an abandonment of either position has devastating logical consequences. If the belief in free will is abandoned, morality must seemingly also be abandoned. If man follows the cause-and-effect laws of physics, then man cannot really choose between right and wrong.

On the other hand, if the determinists let go of their position it would seem to deny the truth of science. If one adheres to materialism, determinism is an inescapable corollary. If “everything” is included in the class of “substance and its properties,” and if “substance and its properties” is included in the class of “things that always follow laws,” and if “people” are included in the class “everything,” then it is an air-tight logical conclusion that people always follow the laws of physics.

To be sure, it doesn’t seem as though people blindly follow the laws of substance in everything they do, but within a Deterministic explanation that is just another one of those illusions that science is forever exposing.

For pragmatists this dilemma doesn’t even come up because physical laws are not seen as representing reality but rather as tools for coping with reality. (From a Darwinian perspective, languaged evolved as a tool to pursue human goals. At what point are we to believe that language stopped being a tool and started being a representation of reality?)

Further, beliefs are understood as habits of action rather than attempts to correspond with some external reality. True and false are evaluated in practice. We just need to ask about the consequences of believing in free will as opposed to the consequences of believing in determinism to see this question dissolve completely. As habits of action, these two philosphical positions ammount to the same thing, since people behave no differently based on these two beliefs that for materialist and theists are contradictory.

Best,
Leela

 

[Leela]

And to Atheism being a false faith… It isn’t a faith.

Exactly. One need not accept anything on insufficient evidence to be unconvinced by the arguments for gods.

Best,
Leela

 

[eichenb2]

I would suggest you reach “A Shorter Summa” by Peter Kreeft. It is a quick read and addresses your question directly. I must warn you though is relatively thick with Aristotolian teminology.

 

[grannymh]

Regarding post #223 by Leela

Good morning everyone,

What a challenging post to wake up to – like one very interesting Mulligan stew Do hope there are equally interesting replies – especially since I am stuck in the first two paragraphs.

Blessings for a good day,
grannymh

 

[Logos385]

Even basic experiments in neurophysiology point to the fact that there is no evidence of free will.

Recent experiments have, in fact, suggested that the most basic decisions are guided by something other than conscious decision-making, but so far no experimentation has been done (to my knowledge) about more complex decisions. Furthermore, if experimentation ever disproves free will, that would affect your belief as well, for if humans have no free will, in your belief, wouldn’t that nix one reason for believing in the supernatural?

it is really no different than saying that fairies, trolls, or leprechauns exist.

I would completely disagree. Just like humans create language as a natural manifestation of the brain (indirectly using one of Leela’s ideas), free will is created as well.

you can not logically believe in free will, and then say there is not enough evidence to believe in G-d. a lack of evidence for something is a lack regardless of what it is

It seems as if we have free will, and my personal experience would be some evidence of this. As every other human I’ve met in person generally experiences what seems to be free will as well, I assume it is simply part of what one would call the human condition.

mathematically if you know the starting state of any system you can predict the state of that system at any point in its life.

The problem is the starting state isn’t exactly known… so either way the future will remain a mystery, amounting to essentially the same thing.

all the experiments in the field are pointing to a deterministically functioning brain

To my knowledge, only the most basic decisions possible (pressing a button) have been tested. Plus, let me ask, are you contending that it is being proven that humans don’t have free will? Because if you argue that, it would seem to destroy your own belief system as well.

if lifes only meaning comes from the privilege of some random act of creation, than i dont even see the point of living if one stubs his toe, why deal with any pain of any kind at all, after all you are just an accident. while you are young and invincible it would seem worthit for the pleasures of life. but those end. then you get reposibilities, you dont have time for a lot of fun, even sex loses its luster.given enough time. ask any middle aged person

The reason to live…hmm, maybe this will help you understand what I am saying. This is from American Atheists, and it’s not exactly perfect, and by no means necessary to subscribe to to be an Atheist, but I do like most of what it says:

" An Atheist loves his fellow man instead of god. An Atheist believes that heaven is something for which we should work now – here on earth for all men together to enjoy.
An Atheist believes that he can get no help through prayer but that he must find in himself the inner conviction, and strength to meet life, to grapple with it, to subdue it and enjoy it.
An Atheist believes that only in a knowledge of himself and a knowledge of his fellow man can he find the understanding that will help to a life of fulfillment.
He seeks to know himself and his fellow man rather than to know a god. An Atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An Atheist believes that a deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An Atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanquished, war eliminated. He wants man to understand and love man.
He wants an ethical way of life. He believes that we cannot rely on a god or channel action into prayer nor hope for an end of troubles in a hereafter.
He believes that we are our brother’s keepers; and are keepers of our own lives; that we are responsible persons and the job is here and the time is now.

sorry got my threads mixed up.

No worries : ).

thats not m-theory, m-theory proposes that the universe came into being because membranes touched, yet they conveniently leave out where those membranes came from. they are still quite physical, in fact they are the same 'branes that make up the physical matter of our world. being the basis of all matter, they are fundamentally physical in nature.

I was under the impression the membranes were eternal…? I’m sorry if I’m mistaken.

and we have yet to prove that the m-theory interpretation is correct

I know, but it is a possibility, undoing the “necessity” in the thomistic proofs.

but maybe it was just me

It might have been you, but I assure you it is not me.

why? ever seen lord of the flies? people making there own morals leads to eventual chaos.

You can’t form a life conclusion simply from Lord of the Flies alone : P. And that’s why society exists, a sort of mutual agreement on morals. A way for order within what could be chaos.

further, the only thing that the largest mass killers in the last century, hitler, stalin, pol pot, red china etc had in common was that philosophy right there.

The only thing? They were also sadistic, crazy and psychotic. Far from a fair comparison to the normal human race.

when man can decide his own morality it usually aint to long before he decides some people just arent as worth as much as he is.

I would argue against that, saying that that would be the exception to the rule of people generally following society.

history puts a very bad light on both moral relativism and atheism in concert. sounds good in theory, killed a hundred million plus in the last century in practice.

This is because of people’s guillability and some well-spoken a**holes, not because of Atheism. Plus, Hitler was a Roman Catholic. (I’m not saying this means catholicism is bad because of this, just that Atheism isn’t the only belief system involved).

 

[Logos385]

You are repeatedly attributing the posts of others to me. I didn’t say that either. I said atheism (the assertion that there is no god) is false.

Sorry again, thanks for calling me on it.

Are you not confident in your assertion that there is no god?
.

I am relatively confident, yes. And was using a different definition of faith- the religious definition. I was throwing back to the “is Atheism a religion” part of this thread.

I’ll get back to the natural theology deal when I have more time : ).
Have a great day!

 

[Mimi]

This is because of people’s guillability and some well-spoken a**holes, not because of Atheism. Plus, Hitler was a Roman Catholic. (I’m not saying this means catholicism is bad because of this, just that Atheism isn’t the only belief system involved).

I’m just jumping in here and admit I haven’t read all the posts (only the 1st few, then jumped to see how many responses there were).

This sentence about " Hitler was a Roman Catholic" could mislead people; perhaps he was baptized, but I think we all can agree that he did not live the life of a Catholic (commonly referred to as practicing the faith).

Happy New Year,
Mimi

 

[Logos385]

Yes, Mimi, I agree. he didn’t however lead a proper moral life either, so let’s just leave Hitler out of the discussion : ).

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Recent experiments have, in fact, suggested that the most basic decisions are guided by something other than conscious decision-making, but so far no experimentation has been done (to my knowledge) about more complex decisions. Furthermore, if experimentation ever disproves free will, that would affect your belief as well, for if humans have no free will, in your belief, wouldn’t that nix one reason for believing in the supernatural?

i beleive in free will , and i am intrigued about any neuro physical research on higher function determinism in regard to complex decision making.

if experimentation did disprove free will it would affect an intellectual factor for belief,

but as much as i wish it were other wise we have no evidence that free will exists.

if the universe is just an accident arising somehow from nothing, subject only to physical laws, which are the only thing we have evidence of (sorry leela), then their mathematically determined interactions are all there is, or can ever be, which is why i like to say ‘slave to mathematical determinism’

I would completely disagree. Just like humans create language as a natural manifestation of the brain (indirectly using one of Leela’s ideas), free will is created as well.

only we dont have any evidence of that, we only have evidence of sophisticated biochemical computing, further, if language were a natural or inbuilt manifestation, than we should all be born speaking the same language, or using the same sounds, but we dont. language groups all over the world use different sounds, some entirely unrelated phonetically. we learn language, but if you are born to deaf parents, you will not learn a spoken language until exposed to it.

language is entirely learned behavior.

It seems as if we have free will, and my personal experience would be some evidence of this. As every other human I’ve met in person generally experiences what seems to be free will as well, I assume it is simply part of what one would call the human condition.

i agree, but my point is that if we have a mathematically determinate universe, which is what we have proof of, then we cannot have free will. for me the free will that is obvious to us, is further evidence of the supernatural. no physical phenomenon is capable of producing that effect.

The problem is the starting state isn’t exactly known… so either way the future will remain a mystery, amounting to essentially the same thing.

sorry, im being a little to technical, how i mean that is to say that you dont need to know all the factors in a game of pool, the balls will always be exactly where the math says they should be. it has nothing to do with our knowledge. it is deterministic in nature.

To my knowledge, only the most basic decisions possible (pressing a button) have been tested. Plus, let me ask, are you contending that it is being proven that humans don’t have free will? Because if you argue that, it would seem to destroy your own belief system as well.

no, i believe in free will, and my beliefs are based on more than free will alone.

but i am pointing out that straight determinism, as the only thing we have proof of, does not allow for free will.

an accidentally created universe, cannot account for the free will we experience. one more reason to discount atheism.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

The reason to live…hmm, maybe this will help you understand what I am saying. This is from American Atheists, and it’s not exactly perfect, and by no means necessary to subscribe to to be an Atheist, but I do like most of what it says:

please hold still this is going to hurt

" An Atheist loves his fellow man instead of god

.

why? sheer personal altruism? thats not how the world works for everyone else, normally that is a quality we assign to saints like Mother Teresa.

ever watch two little kids fight over a toy? that is mans true nature. ever heard of greed? avarice? jealousy? hate?

motivations are usually in self interest. psych 101

An Atheist believes that heaven is something for which we should work now – here on earth for all men together to enjoy.
An Atheist believes that he can get no help through prayer but that he must find in himself the inner conviction, and strength to meet life, to grapple with it, to subdue it and enjoy it.

why bother? its all an accident, as soon as the pleasure is outweighed by the pain, what is the motivation to continue?

there is none logically. if true it would be a world of suicides.

An Atheist believes that only in a knowledge of himself and a knowledge of his fellow man can he find the understanding that will help to a life of fulfillment He seeks to know himself and his fellow man rather than to know a god.

.

they just stole that from eastern religions, concepts of enlightenment. thats a religious idea itself

An Atheist believes that a deed must be done instead of a prayer said

.

completely misunderstands the purpose of prayer, but that said where are these great halls of Atheism? their hospitals, their shelters, their programs for the poor, the lame, the downtrodden, workers rights, social justice, etc?

sounds like lip service to me

An Atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanquished, war eliminated. He wants man to understand and love man.
He wants an ethical way of life. He believes that we cannot rely on a god or channel action into prayer nor hope for an end of troubles in a hereafter.

nice words, but what is the motivation for anything in this quote? he may want to avoid the suffering of disease, but whats the motivation to understand and love man, if its all an accident why care? whats the point of understanding or loving a random collection of particles? why be ethical? shouldn’t it really be all about personal pleasure? fulfilling ones desires and will? or does ethics mean doing it in such a way as to maximize gains while interacting with a larger society of people trying to do the same?

He believes that we are our brother’s keepers; and are keepers of our own lives; that we are responsible persons and the job is here and the time is now.

that is a complete load of propaganda, nice words backed up by nothing, like a used car salesman.

sounds like something repeated by masses of chinese people standing in rows at a reeducation camp

I was under the impression the membranes were eternal…? I’m sorry if I’m mistaken.

no they would be the most basic building blocks particles, they would be physical.

I know, but it is a possibility, undoing the “necessity” in the thomistic proofs.

actually, they would just be one more regression, physical things cannot cause themselves. though that is how they are being marketed among atheists. its more a lack of understanding thomistic proofs than anything else

The only thing? They were also sadistic, crazy and psychotic. Far from a fair comparison to the normal human race.

it took millions of people cooperating, to produce those atrocities, were they all crazy? no, of course not, they were all operating on commonly held beliefs, which were moral relativism and atheism, the only factors that all those governments held in common.

they were regular people like you and i, who accepted that some people were less valuable then others, all for different reasons, but all allowed because there was no concept of an overarching objective morality, an intrinsic value of people derived from a special creation.

it will happen again, our thinking is already headed back in that direction.

I would argue against that, saying that that would be the exception to the rule of people generally following society

.

i dont mean man individually, i mean mankind, and the proof is the millions of dead in the last century.

This is because of people’s guillability and some well-spoken a**holes, not because of Atheism

.

thats assuming that millions upon millions were practically retards. they just had beliefs that allowed for those actions as above.

further those regimes have no common factors accept atheism and relativism. pretty scary.

Plus, Hitler was a Roman Catholic. (I’m not saying this means catholicism is bad because of this, just that Atheism isn’t the only belief system involved).

hitler was not a practicing Catholic, and he was only one man, maybe i should have said nazis.

 

[Leela]

This is because of people’s guillability and some well-spoken a**holes, not because of Atheism. Plus, Hitler was a Roman Catholic. (I’m not saying this means catholicism is bad because of this, just that Atheism isn’t the only belief system involved).

I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s also not even a belief system. It is simply the lack of particular belief. If there is any generalization to be made about atheists, I think they do tend to try to be reasonable and have a taste for evidence to justify their beliefs. Beyond that, I don’t think there is much to say.

I’m not so sure about Hitler being Catholic, but one things is for sure. The problem with the regimes of Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin etc. is not that they were too reasonable and required too much evidence in support of their core beliefs. The problem is that they were too much like religions with their personality cults and dogmatic claims to truth about national identity and race in place of religious identity and the associated dogmatic claims about history, cosmology, biology, ethics, etc.

Best,
Leela

 

[1holycatholic]

Hi Logos,

Free will/determinism is one of those metaphysical dualisms that is based on materialist assumptions and is a bugbear only for materialists and theists.

Determinism is the philosophic doctrine that man, like all other objects in the universe, follows fixed scientific laws, and does so without exception. Free will is the philosophic doctrine that man makes choices independent of the atoms of his body.

This battle has been a very long and very loud one because an abandonment of either position has devastating logical consequences. If the belief in free will is abandoned, morality must seemingly also be abandoned. If man follows the cause-and-effect laws of physics, then man cannot really choose between right and wrong.

Leela please stop stealing the ideas of others and presenting them as your own.

moq.org/forum/RoryFitzgerald/rory.html
This battle has been a very long and very loud one because an abandonment of either position has devastating logical consequences. If the belief in free will is abandoned, morality must seemingly also be abandoned under a subject-object metaphysics. If man follows the cause and-effect laws of substance, then man cannot really choose between right and wrong.
npatrol:

 

[grannymh]

Recent experiments have, in fact, suggested that the most basic decisions are guided by something other than conscious decision-making, but so far no experimentation has been done (to my knowledge) about more complex decisions.
).

Dear Logos385,

This is a comment on just part of your interesting post 227 which replied to one by warpspeedpetey.

The recent experiments referenced above sound like ones I’ve read about. When connecting them to the issue of free will, two points need to be kept in the back of one’s mind.

1. There are times when free will choice cannot be exercised due to a number of reasons including medical, psychological ,or being three sheets to the wind. A lot of us do things by habit without thinking or choosing. For example, I turn the car headlights off automatically so much so that sometimes I have to go back and check to see if I actually did it.
   The point is that while the gift of free will gives one the ability to make choices, it is not always in use.
2. The accounts of the experiments I read seemed overly simplistic. But that was probably due to the writer’s perspective. Regardless of what was really going on, the free will choice was the initial agreement to the experiment. Furthermore, the empirical evidence relates only to the period of the actual experiment. It says nothing about the action of free will prior or following the experiment.

What is neat about Aquinas’ evidence for the existence of God is that it takes in the whole picture.

Blessings,
grannymh

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Leela please stop stealing the ideas of others and presenting them as your own.

moq.org/forum/RoryFitzgerald/rory.html
This battle has been a very long and very loud one because an abandonment of either position has devastating logical consequences. If the belief in free will is abandoned, morality must seemingly also be abandoned under a subject-object metaphysics. If man follows the cause and-effect laws of substance, then man cannot really choose between right and wrong.
npatrol:

this is the fourth or fifth time. i wonder what the motivation to plagiarize so blatantly could be?

for me the embarrassment of being exposed as an intellectual fraud and thief would be enough to stop me

why? what is there to gain by pretending one really understands the

now it is past being funny, its just sad. like watching a crazy guy pull out his own hair.

i suggest the best way to deal with this unacceptable behavior is the judicious use of our ignore lists. let us simply separate the plagiarizer from the conversation by ignoring their posts.

let us continue the conversation with good ethics in mind

 

[Logos385]

but as much as i wish it were other wise we have no evidence that free will exists.

Except a personal experience permeating every human I’ve ever known.

if the universe is just an accident arising somehow from nothing, subject only to physical laws, which are the only thing we have evidence of (sorry leela), then their mathematically determined interactions are all there is, or can ever be, which is why i like to say ‘slave to mathematical determinism’

I see where you are coming from, but I would disagree. As I can’t say it nearly as well as others, here is a quote from an article at naturalism.org/demoralization.htm:

“People and their wills aren’t disempowered when we explain them in terms of antecedent causes. Just as my antecedents, genetic and environmental, had the causal power to create me in all my glory, I too have causal power to influence the world. So don’t forget about me. You can’t logically attribute power to the world and not to the agent, which is what the previous paragraph does: it concedes the causal efficacy of what created the person, but denies that the person plays a role in how things unfold in her immediate neighborhood, and sometimes well beyond. Although we don’t have ultimate control over ourselves – there’s no evidence we are self-created in a way that can’t be traced back to non-self factors – we have plenty of local, proximate control and power: our actions, controlled by our wills, often have the intended effects. This control and power doesn’t go away when we admit that the will itself has causal antecedents, that it didn’t create itself.”

i agree, but my point is that if we have a mathematically determinate universe, which is what we have proof of, then we cannot have free will. for me the free will that is obvious to us, is further evidence of the supernatural. no physical phenomenon is capable of producing that effect.

You seem to be contradicting yourself, and I’m confused. You are saying, “We only have evidence of determinism, thus we don’t have free will. But I know we have free will, thus there is a supernatural cause of it.” If we have no evidence of free will, why assert it exists at all?

no, i believe in free will

…

but i am pointing out that straight determinism, as the only thing we have proof of, does not allow for free will.

?

an accidentally created universe, cannot account for the free will we experience. one more reason to discount atheism.

Once again, if it exists, it would just be a natural manifestation of physical things. Concepts exist, even if they are not “things” as you would define them. Free will is a conceptual idea… why can’t the brain simply account for this? I feel like you are jumping to an unwarranted conclusion here?