z31maniac

I'm confused by your question.

Determinism vs Free will isn't a problem for the atheist, because they don't believe there is a pre-determined plan that they have no effect on.

Whereas many theists purpose that not only does God have a plan, yet they have their own free will to act as they see fit.

The idea that I have free will to do as I see fit, yet God has already mapped out our existence........those to ideals are fundamentally opposed to each other. They are at complete odds with each other.

It's entirely possible I've missed what you are asking though.

Ryan_G

iTrader: (8)

The fact that God is all knowing and has a plan for you does not contradict free will. He is all knowing and would know your free will reaction to any set of circumstances. He is therefore the master manipulator. He can, in effect, control your life (all life, in fact) without actually taking away free will by manipulating circumstances around you or others to change the circumstances or environment. Think of it like the butterfly effect. He knocks a rock down a hill at the right moment and creates a completely different scenario. Multiply that one incident by a million or trillion events orchestrated by an omnipotent being and you have in effect manipulated everything with out "controlling" any being's actions per se.

mgeoffriau

iTrader: (7)

Oh, I think you're mistaken there. Atheists don't believe in a predetermined plan in the sense of a sovereign deity, but many of them do profess to believe that the world operates by entirely natural and logical processes, a series of causal relationships.

The wiki on determinism would be helpful to read, but here's an extremely quick summary of one way of looking at the free will vs determinism debate.

So, what you believe are your internal thoughts and choices are really a product of brain chemistry. Your brain chemistry is a product of biological processes. Those biological processes are, in turn, products of the physical attributes of your component molecules. Those component molecules are, of course, products of the physical attributes of their component atoms, which are in turn products of the very structure and nature of the universe.

It could then be argued that you've never actually made a "choice" -- any appearance of free will is merely a post hoc explanation for what was really just a natural product of the movement and interaction of the multitude of atoms in the universe. Thinking of yourself as an individual who makes choices is simply a convenient story to avoid the reality that you have no choices at all; you are simply playing out the predetermined results of natural forces.



Alternatively, we could affirm free will, but this has consequences for causality and the uniformity of nature. If we accept that you are the product of nothing more than natural causes, but we also affirm that you actually have free will, that is, you are free to choose different actions in response to the exact same situation or stimuli, then we have likewise affirm that effects do not necessarily follow from causes. You can hit a billiard ball the exact same way, but it might go right or it might go left. This obviously would have severely detrimental consequences for our ability to understand or gain reliable knowledge about the universe.



That is the crux of the philosophical debate over free will and determinism.

z31maniac

I've read articles before like what Sam Harris mentions later down in that page. It's an interesting idea, but I have trouble with it.

Unrelated to your point, I just ran across this earlier. This kind of thinking is frightening.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Returning to the conversation, after a weekend spent violating the Third and Sixth commandments (as well as some of the dietary laws set down in Leviticus), the conversation continues...


This is a good point, and one which I sometimes forget on account of its complete absurdity, despite the fact that my mother is a biblical literalist. I'm going to diverge a bit into analysis of scripture itself (even though I said I wouldn't) because it's important to have some background.



What I find quite interesting about this argument is that the book of Genesis actually contains two entirely separate accounts of creation. The first is the one which most people are familiar with, starting out "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth..." and going on to describe various acts of subsequent creation taking place over a six day timeframe. (Gen 1:1-31)

Turning the page, however, there is a second telling of the creation story in Gen 2:4-23. This account differs greatly from the first not only in the tone and style of writing, but in the "facts" presented, specifically the order of events.

The first account breaks out creation such that one significant event happens on each consecutive day, as follows:

1. Big Bang.
2. Earth cools, atmosphere forms.
3. Continents appear, plant life forms.
4. Dust and fallout settle, atmosphere becomes clear enough to see the night sky through.
5. Marine and avian life form.
6. Mammals appear, culminating in homo sapiens.

The second account, by comparison, reads not so much like an instruction manual as a fireside fable. It breaks down creation not by day, but rather meanders through the process in a sort of poetic tone, pointing out major milestones along the way. What's really important, however, is that it lays out specific events in a different order than the first account. Man before animals, for instance. Man before woman, vs both at the same time. Man before plant life (?!) vs. after. And so on...


Now, scholars have debated these points to death for centuries, and there's little incentive for me to continue that analysis. While I'd love to have been a fly on the wall to hear this debate at the First Council of Nicaea which, in 325 AD under the commission of Roman Emperor Constantine, pieced together all the little scraps of ancient manuscript into a "coherent" text which we today recognize as the modern Christian bible, that's clearly a moot point.

The best explanation which I have heard for this is also the simplest. That what we have here are simply two different transcriptions of a story whose origin comes from a pre-literate society, passed down over thousands of years through oral tradition until fixed in stone (literally) by two very different cultures in two very different languages.


Now, that having been said, it becomes impossible to state that every single word in the entire bible is literally true. It simply cannot be the case, nor would we EXPECT it to be, given that no autographic sources for any of the Old Testament exist. If we presuppose an extant, underlying faith in the fundamental concepts of Christianity, then we must view the Bible as being ALLEGORICAL in nature.




Where did the six-day model come from? Who knows- no person was standing there watching the universe being created and writing it all down in real-time. Perhaps whoever wrote down what we know as Genesis 1 heard the story told over the course of six nights sitting around a campfire in his ancient village. Perhaps whoever originated the story in pre-historic times received it in the form of Divine Revelation from God (eg: while hallucinating a burning bush on top of a mountain) over a period of six days. These are all just guesses (which I hesitate to even write, for fear that z31maniac will latch on and start critiquing them rather than the larger argument) and in the end, it doesn't matter at all.

What matters is that since Gen 1 and Gen 2 contain material which is even trivially and superficially inconsistent, it becomes not mere unnecessary but unreasonable to require a strict, literal interpretation of either.




As such, I cannot accept the argument that a "Young Earth" is necessary to a Creationist model of the origin of life, nor that the notion of an "Old Universe" (as is generally held to be necessary by ALL branches of modern science, from Astronomy to Zoology) is in any was incompatible with Creationist doctrine.




And THAT, in case it was unclear earlier, is why Darwinian Evolution and Biblical Creationism are not inherently incompatible ideas.

z31maniac

That is a very interesting take on the subject.

DNMakinson

iTrader: (3)

Joe, I was speaking specifically to Young Earth Creationists, of whom Ken Ham is a major leader. Yes, there are other creation and ID branches that do not adhere to a young earth, but Ken does not like them, and I was not discussing them.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Indeed.

Having now watched that whole video, I must say that I am unimpressed both by Mr. Ham's message and the manner in which he presents it.

To be fair, I am also unimpressed by the manner in which Mr. Nye automatically makes the leap from "Evolution is obviously factual" to "therefore, God must not exist," without covering much ground in between. In legalese, he seems to be assuming facts not in evidence. It would have been fairer for Nye to conclude "... therefore the Young Earth theory is obviously wrong," and with this I would have agreed intuitively.

But speaking directly to the Young Earth notion in particular... going back to z31maniac's query in re: "Perhaps, explaining to me why you think they don't create a paradox will help me understand your viewpoint," your mention of Young Earth made me think that perhaps this was an assumption which was causing the disconnect between what I was saying and what he was hearing, and decided that devoting some time to dissecting that specific point (and demonstrating why I believe it to be laughably false and unnecessary) might bring some clarity to the discussion.