This is a thread to allow discussions about how those lucky enough to have free will make decisions.
As materialism doesn’t explain squat, this thread is a place for explanations from those that presumably have them.
And if they can’t provide them, well, this will be a short thread.
So do phoodoo, mung, WJM et al care to provide your explanations of how decisions are actually made?
walto,
He is calling it a GOD! The God of naturalism. Explain to me the difference exactly?
No there is no reason for this universe to have to be perfect. Only that it’s better for it to exist than not.
Who knows maybe God created a perfect universe that we just don’t know about. Or maybe he will create a universe that is perfect tomorrow.
The point is God is under no obligation to create anything at all.
I for one am glad that he created a universe that would accommodate me even if to do so meant that it was not the best world possible. 😉
peace
Have I met them? Were they ever cute?
You keep saying “perfect”–but I’ve never said anything about perfection. What I’m asking is whether if God could have made a BETTER universe (not perfect) he would have. If he could have, why wouldn’t he have?
walto,
In that better Universe, no one would complain that its not better than better?
I think Christians have to believe that this is
walto,
In the best world, no one would ever sing like that.
1) I have no way of knowing if God created a better universe or not or if one is possible or not. I only have knowledge of this universe and I like it.
2) better for who? It’s possible that a better universe according to walto would not contain me. I would not think such a universe was better.
3) All that really matters is if God had good reasons for creating this universe. I think he did. Like I said I kinda like it
peace
Heresy! Candide’s a great show! 😉
My sense is that if you thought about it further you’d agree that this universe must be best, or God in his perfection, would not have made it. What could possibly constrain him from making the best world? Is God not good enough, or smart enough, or powerful enough to do it? We mortals don’t have to understand the ins and outs of why it’s so good, of course–but we must know that there could not have been a better universe than the one that a perfect God made. What could be simpler?
Better simpliciter. If it contains you then that must have been for the best.
From my perspective that is obvious 😉
peace
fifth,
Then why didn’t God crank the “sin” knob even higher? All the way to “11”?
You are assuming that this is the only universe. How could you possible make that assumption? It’s possible that God made a universe that is the best possible one and then threw in this one as a bonus.
Think about this for a just a minute.
Jesus is the best possible human does that make God less than good because everyone is not Jesus?
Of course God could have each of us Jesus but it does not make him less good that he decided to make a walto and a FMM.
In fact it would make him less good from my perspective if he did not make a FMM and a walto even if we are not the best possible humans.
peace
1) I think the sin knob is pretty high
2) There are other goods besides grace
peace
fifth,
You just told us this:
Not so obvious after all, is it?
Why not?
God allowed sin because it enabled him to show his mercy and wrath. It is a good thing when God “reveals” himself to his creatures.
There are also other things that he reveals to us like his power and his wisdom these would be obscured in a world with too much evil
again
For a Calvinist it’s pretty obvious for sure.
peace
Movies could be about Revelation.
Some people would be thrilled by it.
Seriously, though, if there were no bad people we’d probably have fairly different brains/minds. Hence we might watch movies of flitting butterflies or what-not, and be giddy with delight.
Which is basically to raise the question of, if we didn’t evolve, what the hell would anything matter? I mean, maybe something would matter, but it’s hard to see how or why. That’s why I Plantinga’s nonsense seems so idiotic, since only evolution would tend to make us into “realists” of any sort at all, while God could make an interface with “reality” for us that bears no resemblance to “reality” at all.
Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. That includes our own lives. One may cavil over that aphorism, as Massimo Pigliucci has, but then that reveals a serious lack of understanding of aphorism.
Movies–Darwinian struggles.
Oh, and I know it was a joke, but one that invites commentary.
Glen Davidson
He could do that I suppose but if he did he would not be God
peace
Uh, yeah.
That means so much…
Glen Davidson
I don’t know what “the only universe” means, but if this world is “a bonus” meaning that things would have somehow been worse without it, then I don’t think a perfectly good God could have failed to create it. I don’t understand why you insist that the world God created might not be the best of all possible worlds.
What sort of God is it that could have made things better and failed to do so? I’d insist of my God that he be perfectly good, and that anything that seemed to me to be evil or otherwise worse than it might be was just function of my own ignorance.
ETA: By “the universe” I mean all that there is. I don’t really understand your suggestion of “another” (i.e., additional, not alternative) universe.
Earth is Heaven 1.0.
Godsoft assures us that the bugs are fixed in 2.0.
Here, you seem to understand that if God had structured things differently, it would have been worse. That’s got to be a general principle or God must fail in either power, intelligence or benevolence.
Using theistic “logic.”
I think I foresee some continued problems…
Glen Davidson
Because the knob only goes up to 10. You’re allowed to turn it down if you like. Give it a shot. 🙂
It might be or it might not be I simply have no way of evaluating if this world is the best of all possible worlds. I don’t even know what criteria I would use.
It really makes no difference because it would be good for God to create this world even if it weren’t the best world possible.
I really find talk of the best possible world to be nonsensical.
What I might consider to be best is probably not what you would consider to be the best. Who’s opinion is normative here? Who even cares.
It reminds me of a third grader’s boast that my dad is stronger than your dad
What is important is, is it good that this universe exists? the answer is
Of course it is.
God is under absolutely no obligation to create anything at all. He would be just as good and just as holy if he never created anything. That is what the doctrine of Aseity is all about.
It seems to me that this idea of best of all possible worlds is rooted in a faulty sense of entitlement. What makes you think that you deserve any universe at all? Any universe at all in which you can exist is a profound undeserved gift from God to you.
To ponder if the universe might be a little better seems to me to be the height of ingratitude.
Worse from whose perspective? Worse for me might be better for you
You can’t infer a general principle from an appraisal that is profoundly subjective
peace
FMM said,God allowed sin because it enabled him to show his mercy and wrath. It is a good thing when God “reveals” himself to his creatures. There are also other things that he reveals to us like his power and his wisdom these would be obscured in a world with too much evil
Walto said, Here, you seem to understand that if God had structured things differently, it would have been worse.
FMM says,
Not at all, I am only demonstrating that God had a reason to allow evil and also a reason to limit that evil.
If we acknowledge that this is even possibly true (no mater how unlikely) then the so called “problem of evil” is defeated aka Plantinga.
peace
fifth,
Hardly. The problem of evil is alive and well, and no one (including Plantinga) has come close to “defeating” it.
Plantinga’s “free will defense” works only against the so-called “logical problem of evil”, not against the problem of evil in general.
keiths:
fifth:
Don’t try to sleaze out of it, fifth. I asked you about the immaterial soul:
You answered:
If your answer was incorrect, then correct yourself. Don’t try to blame someone else for your mistake.
I don’t think it makes any difference in this context whether we’re talking about the mind or the soul. My questions are just as problematic for an immaterial mind as they are for an immaterial soul. Either way, you can’t answer them sensibly.
Irreducible complexity doesn’t help you, because it doesn’t imply that parts are inseparable. It just implies that function is lost when one of the parts is removed. I thought you were an IDer — don’t you understand IC?
And even if it were true that mind and body are inseparable, that wouldn’t help you. You claim that the mind is immaterial, and so all of my questions about the interactions between the immaterial mind and the physical body still apply, even if the two are inseparable.
So here is my question again, edited to correct for your mistake:
Perfectly sums up my feelings also on what this thread has demonstrated. I mean, I expected no differently but to see it laid out like this by them is something else.
Yes, let’s start simple.
When I make a decision my brain ____________ then my soul __________ and then __________ and the decision is made. My soul then ___________ and the brain does ________ and the decision is implemented
Pick a blank and fill it in hylephobes! Between fmm, Mung and phoodoo I bet we can get 0 to 0 of those filled in!
phoodoo,
It’s not a problem for me. So your assumption is incorrect. And regardless of my motivation for creating this thread the fact remains you cannot solve the same problem.
That’s for the other thread.
I know what I am, but what are you? Misdirection much?
Nobody is asking for empirical evidence. Given the nature of the question I accept you will be unlikely or unable to provide such.
What I’m asking is that how does phoodoo think decisions work in phoodoo world?
So far all you seem to have said is the difference is a divine intelligence. How does that divine intelligence interact with your to allow you to make real decisions?
our explanation for the difference is a divine intelligence
Sensory information is more than just physical. Some may believe that percepts belong to objective reality while concepts are our subjective representation of this reality. IMO it is precisely the opposite. The way that we receive percepts is dependent on our organisation and situation (subjective), but to make sense of these percepts we select the concepts which go along with these percepts from the conceptual sphere (objective). This conceptual sphere exists separate from the physical world in our understanding. And because of the way it appears in our consciousness we assume that it must be subjective. It is not. I’ve argued something similar here before. The concept “tetrahedron” is a unity. It does not become multiple just because it is grasped by many different thinkers. It is not a product of our minds, it is revealed to our minds.
To believe that there is a real “material world out there” and the “immaterial concepts in here” is only a copy of that “material world” is to fall for the dualism of Descartes. Those who believe in this separation may think they have moved on from Descartes, but have they really?
Thinking, willing and feeling cannot be said to be made of material stuff, but they are as much part of reality as rocks and trees. They appear in each human after the physical body starts to develop, but this does not mean that the physical body is the cause of consciousness. All that it means is that we need our physical bodies in order to develop the consciousness which is a process of becoming increasingly aware.
Anyone who asks how our minds can move our bodies are not thinking correctly. They see the duality when in reality there is unity. Once the unity is grasped then the problem of mind and matter goes away.
I don’t agree with your drop into relativism here. When I say “best” or “better”–I’m not talking about MY perspective or YOUR perspective or anybody else’s (except maybe some omnicient person’s). I mean best overall. If you need to know “according to whom” then according to God. Why should it matter what I or you think is best? What the hell do we know about the entire state of the universe? (I don’t even know much about what’s going on in my house.)
So when you say it’s good that God created this world rather than not because it worked out nice for you, that’s neither here nor there. Finite mortals aren’t really in a position to judge things like that. God IS, however, and nothing could constrain God from creating the best world possible. Such a being would want to (being perfectly good), would know how to (being omniscient), and couldn’t be prevented from doing so (being omnipotent). To say he might not have is an attribution of some fault to God.
This is just simple logic–something you generally grok. Here, you resist, I don’t really get why.
BTW, when I said that you and I agree on compatibalism and consequentialism, I didn’t mean that was all. We usually agree about things like truth, non-contradiction (when you don’t call them “God”) and epistemic fallibalism (when you don’t throw in “revelation” or utilize bootstrapping to get to KNOWLEDGE OF TRVTHS).
So our take on the world has a lot in common–except that it’s as different as it could possibly be.
Really? You should read Quine’s Word and Object–or at least google “radical translation.”
Also (IMHO) you should pontificate less. Even if Platonism were to be true, as you claim above (regarding the tetrahedron), nothing follows about skepticism or Cartesianism–at least nothing obvious. If you can make the arguments for the connections, I encourage you to do so, but these are ancient issues, and I hope you won’t mind if have my doubts–your obvious confidence about the matters notwithstanding. You’ve enjoyed what you’ve read of Steiner (I guess not including his musing on stag bladders); good for you.
The logical problem of evil is the only problem of evil that is relevant to the existence of God.
Other iterations of the “problem” amount simply to complaints that you don’t like the universe you have been given.
To that I would just say “you can’t always get what you want”
peace
This defense seems to me to make sense only if you’re willing to say that God has made the best world possible–in spite of what any individual mortal or group of them complains. If you keep resisting that, then I don’t know what basis you have for saying the universe is good at all. Yeah–you like it. So what?
BTW, I want to apologize to Omagain for my hijacking here. I’ll stop with the biz about evil now.
I don’t recall you asking anything. I recall this thread asking how decisions work in phoodoo world.
I take that to mean in the actual world. A world in which there is more going on than matter in motion.
I never claimed that the parts were inseparable only that the function (decision making) is lost when one of the parts is removed
peace
Here you are assuming that the universe is an end in itself perhaps the universe is a means to another more important end that is the best.
I would say that God’s actions when taken in their entirety would be the best from his perspective (the only one that matters).
Our particular universe when viewed from our particular perspective probably won’t be the best. That does not mean that it’s not good.
I would say that God’s actions when taken in their entirety would be “the best”.
The problem is there is absolutely no way for us as finite individuals to evaluate God’s actions when taken in their entirety because we are not God.
All we can do is look at what we have access to and decide if it is good
peace
See, we serious Christians aren’t all bug eyed aliens with a mandate to ruin all the fun.
😉
peace
fifth:
That’s odd, since you quoted my question right before answering it:
Jesus, fifth. How does this sort of sleazy behavior bring glory to God, which is your supposed goal?
So here is my latest question again, edited to correct for your mistake:
If you can’t answer the question, then be honest and say so.
3.11 works great. trust me.
Right. That’s what I’ve been saying. An all-powerful, good, and intelligent being has to make this the best of all possible worlds–not from our perspective, but from its own, infinite one. Nothing could prevent that.
So the Leibnizian/Christian response to the problem of evil must be that, in spite of any appearances to the contrary, this must be the best of all possible worlds. I don’t think there’s any way of escaping that conclusion.
ETA: Sorry, OMagain, I guess I did it again…..
It’s not sleazy behavior IMO I was just using your comment as a spring board to answer O’Magain’s question. I suppose I assumed you were just rephrasing it in your usual flaming antiChristian style.
In the interest of civility I often try to read what you write charitably and assume that you are not on some personal agenda as apposed to the topic of the thread.
The parts that are associated with consciousness. You know the parts that make it a choice instead of a just a programed response to stimuli
This is not rocket science.
If you had been reading the rest of this thread you would find that KN and I had a long and interesting conversation about just that.
peace
I see that OMagain finally admits that decisions involve reasons.
Maybe there is yet hope.
If reasons are no more than brain states, why are your reasons better than my reasons? Brain states change all the time. That is in fact the nature of the physical world. Change. So are your reasons likewise always changing? Perhaps what makes a decision is also constantly changing in your brain.
Why should I try to communicate how to make a decision to someone who’s brain states are constantly changing both about what it means to make a decision and reasoning about making decisions?
keiths is trying his best to turn that knob above 10!