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24th January 2019, 06:44 PM | #1 |
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Free Will Argument For God
Tell me what you think of the following argument for God.
1. There are three ways that events come about in the world: free will, determinism and indeterminism. 2. The universe came into existence. 3.The coming into existence of the universe is an event. 4. The coming into existence of the universe can not be due to determinism. (This is because every deterministic event requires a prior event to bring it about and that event requires another event and so on to infinity. A deterministic system can not just initiate action out of nowhere or from a state of rest.) 5. The coming into existence of the universe can't be due to indeterminism (Since the macroscopic world is largely deterministic rather than indeterministic, what I'm referring to with this premise is the quantum or sub-atomic world. The reason the quantum world can not be indeterministic is because indeterminacy is incoherent and incoherent things can not exist. This turns quantum indeterminacy into determinism since it has causes rather than not having causes and since determinacy has already been ruled out as causing the universe, so too is the option of the universe beginning from quantum mechanical events ruled out.) 6. Therefore, the universe must have been brought into being through an act of free-will.(This is because there are only three ways events can happen and because determinism and determinism are insufficient, the only other thing that can bring the world into existence is free will. Free will works because it avoids the problem of determinacy (always needing prior events) by being able to begin a chain of events without needing a prior event.) 7. Only beings have free will. (Free will requires a mind in order to judge various options and choose) 8. Therefore, a being is responsible for the universe. (Since this description matches the idea of God, we can call this being God. But if not God then simply the creator of the universe.) |
24th January 2019, 06:56 PM | #2 |
Observer of Phenomena
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Your problem starts with Step 4.
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So take that quantum equation and recalculate the wave by a factor of hoopty doo! The answer is not my problem, it's yours. Three Word Story Wisdom |
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24th January 2019, 07:00 PM | #3 |
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24th January 2019, 07:01 PM | #4 |
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24th January 2019, 07:02 PM | #5 |
Observer of Phenomena
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I was willing to grant Premise 1, since none of the three terms are actually defined.
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So take that quantum equation and recalculate the wave by a factor of hoopty doo! The answer is not my problem, it's yours. Three Word Story Wisdom |
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24th January 2019, 07:02 PM | #6 |
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24th January 2019, 07:03 PM | #7 |
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24th January 2019, 07:08 PM | #8 |
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So take that quantum equation and recalculate the wave by a factor of hoopty doo! The answer is not my problem, it's yours. Three Word Story Wisdom |
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24th January 2019, 07:08 PM | #9 |
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24th January 2019, 07:09 PM | #10 |
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So take that quantum equation and recalculate the wave by a factor of hoopty doo! The answer is not my problem, it's yours. Three Word Story Wisdom |
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24th January 2019, 07:09 PM | #11 |
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24th January 2019, 07:13 PM | #12 |
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A proud member of the Simpson 15+7, named in the suit, Simpson v. Zwinge, et al., and founder of the ET Corn Gods Survivors Group. "He's the greatest mod that never was!" -- Monketey Ghost |
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24th January 2019, 07:20 PM | #13 |
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Personally, I think this is a lot of words to say very little, and none of which is empirically correct or provable.
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24th January 2019, 07:28 PM | #14 |
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So take that quantum equation and recalculate the wave by a factor of hoopty doo! The answer is not my problem, it's yours. Three Word Story Wisdom |
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24th January 2019, 07:34 PM | #15 |
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24th January 2019, 07:37 PM | #16 |
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Imagine a domino that is standing upright. Imagine that it all of a sudden falls over. If it doesn't have a cause for falling over, that's indeterminism, because indeterminism essentially means "uncaused event".
If you look up the definition of determinism, it states:The philosophical doctrine that every state of affairs, including every human event, act, and decision, is the inevitable consequence of antecedent states of affairs. The important part is "is the inevitable consequence of antecedent affairs" meaning an event brought about by determinism must have a prior cause. |
24th January 2019, 07:38 PM | #17 |
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Decent explanation, and from here I will start using these definitions, but as I suggested, there are events that are neither determinate by this definition or indeterminate. Or perhaps you could say they are both. Regardless, your three possible states do not cover all possible events.
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So take that quantum equation and recalculate the wave by a factor of hoopty doo! The answer is not my problem, it's yours. Three Word Story Wisdom |
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24th January 2019, 07:44 PM | #18 |
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24th January 2019, 07:49 PM | #19 |
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24th January 2019, 07:55 PM | #20 |
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24th January 2019, 07:55 PM | #21 |
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The cosmological argument is hardly new or robust and has been rebutted many times in many places well before the appearance of the world wide web.
Luckily for us, the web preserves those rebuttals, which makes me wonder why somebody would go "ta da" with it on a skeptic forum, rather than just read the rebuttals which are little more than a search phrase away... |
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What do Narwhals, Magnets and Apollo 13 have in common? Think about it.... |
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24th January 2019, 07:58 PM | #22 |
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24th January 2019, 08:07 PM | #23 |
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So take that quantum equation and recalculate the wave by a factor of hoopty doo! The answer is not my problem, it's yours. Three Word Story Wisdom |
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24th January 2019, 08:11 PM | #24 |
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To me this line of thought nearly requires a desire for a god to exist.
Otherwise one could simply accept things happen beyond our current understanding. |
24th January 2019, 08:11 PM | #25 |
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24th January 2019, 08:13 PM | #26 |
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24th January 2019, 08:18 PM | #27 |
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Do you know that it's beyond our understanding? If you don't then you could be wrong. And if you stop at accepting that some things are beyond our understanding when they're really not, then you miss out on an opportunity to understand fundamental truths about the universe.
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24th January 2019, 08:18 PM | #28 |
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That act of some person doing something is still an event. You need a more precise pair of definitions to separate determinism from free will. And depending on where you go with it, you will probably need to tighten up indeterminism as well.
Be that as it may, apparently the god you seek is a person. I find that curious. |
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24th January 2019, 08:21 PM | #29 |
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24th January 2019, 08:21 PM | #30 |
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So take that quantum equation and recalculate the wave by a factor of hoopty doo! The answer is not my problem, it's yours. Three Word Story Wisdom |
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24th January 2019, 08:24 PM | #31 |
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Besides the other valid objections which you've failed to overcome, you still haven't addressed the issue of how a high-entropy "being" could have come before the low-entropy Big Bang (violating the Law of Entropy, IOW).
There are many more objections too; just thought I'd throw this one out there. But...
Quote:
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24th January 2019, 08:46 PM | #32 |
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24th January 2019, 08:49 PM | #33 |
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It reminds me of pretty much every cosmological argument anyone has made, ever. They're all made by people who don't have the remotest idea about what modern science has found about the origins of the universe, and they never fail to make the jump that since the universe was created, that creator must be the God of the Bible and therefore Jesus and sin and everything else.
Even if I do grant that the universe required a creator, which I don't, but even if I did, how can you demonstrate that the universe wasn't sneezed out of the nose of the Great Green Arkleseizure? |
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So take that quantum equation and recalculate the wave by a factor of hoopty doo! The answer is not my problem, it's yours. Three Word Story Wisdom |
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24th January 2019, 09:11 PM | #34 |
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Our best models of how the universe works posit a number of fundamental particles interacting in statistically predictable ways. That is either determinism with variables which remain hidden to us, or perhaps it is truly indeterministic. Larger systems resulting from these fundamental particles appear to be entirely deterministic, with perhaps a tiny bit of randomness at the margins. No scientifically testable evidence has been presented for the existence of a third possibility, in addition to randomness and determinism.
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24th January 2019, 09:17 PM | #35 |
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An act of free will does not have a prior cause that initiates it. A deterministic event would just determine it. If free will were indeterministic then your actions would be erratic and not orderly. The act and cause of free will happen simultaneously. Where acts of determinism are dictated by physical laws, free will, although it must act within the boundaries of physical laws, is not dictated by them, rather it's dictated by the person.
And the part about God being a person: I don't believe that God is a human being. What I meant by person is a being with a mind and free will. I don't imagine how God could have free will without also having a mind in order to determine it's decisions. |
24th January 2019, 09:28 PM | #36 |
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24th January 2019, 09:28 PM | #37 |
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What do Narwhals, Magnets and Apollo 13 have in common? Think about it.... |
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24th January 2019, 09:33 PM | #38 |
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I am not religious and am actually as against religion as most atheists. I have no interest in validating a certain God of a certain religion because I think that all religions, at least the ones I know of, are wrong. I am a secular theist, therefore, I don't attach to God all the attributes that religion has attached to God. What I am referring to when I talk about God, is a being with a mind and free will that created the universe.
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24th January 2019, 09:40 PM | #39 |
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In your words it is an argument for god. It is designed to prove god made it, did it or caused it.
Tell me what else there would be to learn. We are all sort of specialists now. I do not need to know everything. I need to know well my part. Let others pick up where I left off. |
24th January 2019, 09:41 PM | #40 |
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I think it's not only terrible and fatally flawed in many ways, but that it's not even original. This was claimed and debunked so long ago that it's great-grandchildren have great-grandchildren.
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And right out of the gate, we hit a major roadblock. Why should we believe that there are as many as (or only) three ways things happen? And why is free will different from determinism or indeterminism? Those to concepts, being opposites, would seem to cover every eventuality. Do you have evidence free will even exists? Could you devise a test that would be positive only if there is free will and/or negative only if there is not? I just ate an apple. To a certain extent, I ate it of my own will. I chose an apple of my own accord, nobody had a gun to my head. And yet, I ate the apple because I was hungry. I was going to eat something. I needed a low sodium snack but my house held only an apple, a bag of potato chips, and a raw squash. So, my choices were constrained against my will. Heck, even if I was in a grocery store with thousands of items, I'd still only have finite choices. I am not free to eat whatever I want. I can't eat a Volkswagen.
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Are you sure about that? We absolutely cannot know the state of things before the universe began. That's the definition of "universe." It's all things. We can never get outside it or observe it from a distance. By definition, we cannot know what existed before the universe and/or how any of it might have caused the universe to come to be. Heck, even the word "before" in my last sentence is meaningless. There was no time before the universe because time is a function of the universe. In any case, if you'd like to stick to this point, I'd ask you to remember it. You're going to contradict yourself in about two sentences.
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Plenty of incoherent things exist. Your argument is incoherent. And yet it exists. In any event, I know of no way of testing any of this. Do you? Do you have any experimental evidence that falsifiably demonstrates that quantum events are not random? If you have no such evidence, then there's no reason to discount the possibility. If you have such evidence, you should publish it immediately. You'd be as guaranteed to win a Nobel Prize as Sheldon is in the series finale of The Big Bang.
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And there it is. Except, your conclusion contradicts one of your premises. You said everything must have a cause. Yet you haven't identified what caused this thing you're calling "God." You said, "every deterministic event requires a prior event to bring it about." So what prior event brought about your God? If God used free will to create the universe, then who used free will to create God? What you've done is built a marvelous, towering castle on a foundation of undefined words, unevidenced opinions, and logical inconsistencies. Iron those out and then try again. ETA: I've never understood why a deist would resort to a definition of god that's as flimsy as, "creator of the universe." Even if we granted that a god created the universe, how would it affect anything? The proof doesn't support the idea the god knows or cares what the universe is doing, let alone what primates living on a clump of dirt are doing to each other. It doesn't even support the idea that this god still exists at all. It's a rather impotent and irrelevant god, as deities go. |
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