Saturday 14 June 2008

why dont i have freewill

your skydaddy didnt give us freewill and if i had freewill i would be able to travel back in time, fly around, lift rocks heavier than myself, jump of cliffs and never die etc. why didnt your sky daddy give me freewill but instead restrict me to the laws of the universe?

now you might say that as our thoughts are just chemical reactions in my brain atheism doesnt have freewill either however atheists have no one to blame for that.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mike, you've botched your own argument...
you said that atheists have no one to blame for not being able to "travel back in time, fly around, lift rocks heavier than myself, jump of cliffs and never die etc."...

How certain are you, that this is the same meaning of 'free will' that Christians (non-Calvinists) claim?

At anyrate, your statement about out thoughts being just chemical reactions shows that your premises and your conclusions do not follow.


If your thoughts are your thoughts, then that is proof that they are thoughts produced by free will... if you will to think, and you did, in fact, think the thought that you had wanted to think, then you've just shown that you have free will.

A guy named Benjamin Libet did some experiments on the brain, that highly indicate the existance of free will. In quick and basic terms then, free will exists.
If it exists for the atheist, it also exists for the Christian, and the Muslim, and the.... well, you get the picture.

So what your argument really is trying to show (or should be trying to show), is that the existance of a God that is all powerful and all knowing is logically incompatible with the existance of free will.

The thing is, Mike, that several atheist philosophers tried that move about 60 years ago, and, although it was believed for more than 40 years, to be true, it has been proven to be incorrect.
But it's funny... the same arguments were around almost 2000 years ago, and they went pretty much the same course. And i suspect that it will continue to be revived and demolished time and again, until the End Times.


I like this topic. If you want to continue along this argument, then i might actually be here for enjoyment also.

God Bless,
johnny

Mike is Wright said...

no, atheists believe that it is just unlucky that evolution didnt allow us to fly around whereas you have a man with a beard in the sky to blame. our view allows us not to give an explanation whereas yours does.

if you chop someones head off then their body cannot move therefore our thoughts must all come from our brain. or if you chopped abit out of someones brain then that bit would not work and so our brain must be all there is to thought.

if arguemtns have been around for thousands of years then they must be good as each generation of atheist must have liked them.

Anonymous said...

Mikey, do you even know what free will is? No where does free will state that you should be allowed to break the laws of physics whenever you please. Try again...

Anonymous said...

MIKE said:
no, atheists believe that it is just unlucky that evolution didnt allow us to fly around whereas you have a man with a beard in the sky to blame. our view allows us not to give an explanation whereas yours does.


Mike, if being able to fly is a form of free will, then being an "unlucky atheist" or a Christian, makes no difference.

Think of it like this...
This would be an example of Determinism:
if we are like a bunch of balls on a billiard (pool) table, our actions are determined by the actions prior to our movement. So, let's say the pool ball that is you is hit by the cue ball, and you are caused to head toward the corner pocket, the only thing that can change whether or not you end up in the pocket is another outside force.

Now, and example of free will:

Same pool table, but when an outside force sends you toward a pocket (there still is some Causation), you have the will to choose to follow the direction you are going, or you can choose to avoid the pocket in some way.


Now, apply these to life...

Let's say that, due to circumstances beyond your control, you are in a situation that you see a young girl being raped. If you do not have free will, then anything you do, is completely and only determined by previous occurances in your life (both internal chemical processes/thoughts and external forces that were beyond your control) . So, if you were raped and enjoyed it, you might help out. If you were raped and you didn't like it, you may try to stop it. Etc.... although you are aware of them, these are not conscious choices... they are just a product of all previous influences.

Non-free will is at the whim of inside and outside forces and it becomes a new outside force (and possibly, inside force) as the metaphorical billiard balls careen this way and that.

Free will is the ability to make a conscious choice of action that can either go in the same direction as determinism or against it.


if you chop someones head off then their body cannot move therefore our thoughts must all come from our brain.

Mike, to use your logic, if you pulled someone's heart out, they would die, and that would mean that their thoughts came from their heart.
No, i do not believe this, i'm just trying to show the flaw in your thinking as briefly as i can.

or if you chopped abit out of someones brain then that bit would not work and so our brain must be all there is to thought.

There are parts of the brain that we don't know what function, if any, they serve. Also, there are parts of the brain that, if "chopped out", would "rewire" itself around the missing part of the brain.

But again, Mike, you are missing the point... you need to show that the thoughts produced by the brain are not simply and only a determined chemical process.
And i even gave you a "gimme"... i told fifi that i would spot her Benjamin Libet's work... that "gimme" applies to you as well.

if arguemtns have been around for thousands of years then they must be good as each generation of atheist must have liked them.


Remember when i said that your comment at times are stupid? Well, here is one of them.

Happy Father's Day and

God Bless,
johnny

Mike is Wright said...

look, atheists say that we are all here by chance as a lucky accident and therefore we have noone to blame. Its like if you loose a game of roulett would it be someones fault? You, my retarded idiot, believe in a sky daddy who chose things to be the way they are. Is it really a suprise that us atheists point the blame at your sky daddy, even tho they dont exist.

Anonymous said...

MIKE said:
look, atheists say that we are all here by chance as a lucky accident and therefore we have noone to blame.


Mike, your sentence here does not help your argument one bit... it actually hurts it.

Let me explain...

If we are all a product of time + chance + natural selection, then you have not made a decision to become an atheist... it would have been just a random mix of chemicals that made you and atheist and me a Christian... nothing for you to brag about, cuz it's no different than your eye color.

Its like if you loose a game of roulett would it be someones fault?

This has very little to do with YOUR free will argument and even less to do with the REAL free will argument.

In fact, Mike, if you are "blaming" chance, you've just violated the Law of Non-Contradiction.

I would even venture a guess, that you got your argument from someone besides your own mind, and you misunderstood it.

The reason there is an attack on the existance of free will, is because it is a possible answer (theodicy) for the existance of evil. Alvin Plantinga blew the Logical Problem of Evil out of the water with the Free Will Defense.
But, if you atheist try to argue against the existance of free will, you have shot yourself in the foot, because you need free will more than the Christian (because of an understanding called 'Calvinism', free will is not a necessary condition).


You, my retarded idiot, believe in a sky daddy who chose things to be the way they are.

Yes, i'm perfectly aware that all things are according to His Will.
But that does not mean that He did not create us with a limited amount of free will.
And it's not even a logical contradiction.

Is it really a suprise that us atheists point the blame at your sky daddy, even tho they dont exist.

Actually, yes it is a surprise, since:
1)you think that there is no free will
2)you NEED free will in order for your argument to mean something.
i.e. that you chose to believe that God doesn't exist, and that you chose to submit an argument.
3)that you have such passion to argue that God doesn't exist, yet you believe that your intellect was caused by an accident, and you have no way of confirming that your accidental intellect is able to understand the world, outside your mind, as it really is.


God Bless you Mike,
johnny

Mike is Wright said...

science can explain how everything came about by accident

Anonymous said...

Really Mikey? Where at?

Anonymous said...

MIKE said:
science can explain how everything came about by accident


Nope, Mike, it can't. At the very best, it can make a guess... but that's only with certain presuppositions taken a priori


johnny