Intelligent Design

Armand Jacks Destroys ID in One Sentence

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Armand Jacks says he has a knock down show stopping argument to rebut ID’s claim that intelligent agency is the only known cause of specified complexity.

Get ready.

Hold on to your hat.

Here it is:

Using the same argument, the only known causes of everything we have ever seen in the entire universe are material causes.

Are blind unguided material forces capable of typing the post you just posted AJ?  If you say “no” your argument is refuted.  If you say “yes” you look like a fool or a liar or both.  Talk about the Scylla and Charybdis.

AJ, you really should stop and think for 10 seconds before you write something like that down.  I know, I know.  Thinking is hard, and 10 seconds is a long time.  But still.

As for the title of this post, on reflection maybe I overstated AJ’s accomplishment a little.

267 Replies to “Armand Jacks Destroys ID in One Sentence

  1. 1
    kairosfocus says:

    Does he understand the four classic causes? Or, does he mean, that the world is a materialistic entity from hydrogen to humans so causes must fit in an evolutionary materialistic view, which of course ends in self refutation, incoherently undermining the responsibly, rationally free mind. KF

  2. 2
    Armand Jacks says:

    Armand Jacks says he has a knock down show stopping argument to rebut ID’s claim that intelligent agency is the only known cause of specified complexity.

    Barry one, strawman zero.
    I must have forgotten where I said that my comment was in any way a refutation of ID. Because I clearly didn’t. And it clearly isn’t. I was simply stating that my claim for materialism uses the same argument as that used for ID.

    Are blind unguided material forces capable of typing the post you just posted AJ?

    Barry two, strawman zero.
    Read my quote. I have bolded the operative words for you below:

    Using the same argument, the only known causes of everything we have ever seen in the entire universe are material causes.

    Even if I concede that my typing doesn’t have a material cause, which I don’t, that would just mean that it has an unknown cause.

    AJ, you really should stop and think for 10 seconds before you right something like that down.

    if you are so sure of the stupidity of my statement, maybe you could grace us all with a couple examples of things in the universe whose cause is known beyond a reasonable doubt, and whose identified cause is not physical/material.

  3. 3
    Axel says:

    If I may interject, AJ and Barry : your idea, AJ, of ‘things whose cause is unknown beyond a reasonable doubt’ would be laughably at variance with ours. Miracles abound. And their cause known beyond the doubt of anyone not deliberately catatonic. Our faith and knowledge form a continuum, and the former is confirmed by a innumerable miracles. You on the other hand, have no difficulty in denying the unavoidable concluson that the DNA code inscriptions are the product of an immaterial intelligence.

    But alas, you and your kindred spirits seem to fit into that category, so I guarantee that if Barry provides examples, you will not accept them as the product of non-material causes. Why would God’s thoughts be any more subtle and less materially engendered than yours.

    C S Lewis makes the point rather more eruditely in the next thread header : The cardinal difficulty of naturalism – still a difficulty

  4. 4
    Axel says:

    C S Lewis makes the point rather more eruditely in the next thread header : The cardinal difficulty of naturalism – still a difficulty

  5. 5
    LocalMinimum says:

    Which classical school of thought is characterized by a myopia to rational connections beyond the first order and a compulsion to dive headfirst into blind tangents?

  6. 6
    Seversky says:

    kairosfocus @ 1

    Does he understand the four classic causes? Or, does he mean, that the world is a materialistic entity from hydrogen to humans so causes must fit in an evolutionary materialistic view, which of course ends in self refutation, incoherently undermining the responsibly, rationally free mind. KF

    Do you all understand that in the case of a God with demonstrable foreknowledge of the future there can be no responsibility or free will? If God knows something is going to happen then it will happen and there is nothing you or I or anyone else can do about it. We are all just good little Godbots trundling along our predetermined course through life to whatever future has been mapped out for us.

  7. 7
    Armand Jacks says:

    KF:

    Does he understand the four classic causes?

    I am using the same definition of cause that you use when you make your 500-1000 bit claim. If this type of argument is valid to make an ID inference, why isn’t it valid when making a materialism inference? Especially when there are trillions and trillions of examples.

  8. 8
    rvb8 says:

    And yet another post, that’s not a post.

    How exactly, does this serve the ID community, as stated in the mast head?

    AJ, states a simple fact; ‘for causation we need interaction of materials.’

    Barry says,

    ‘no, God did it.’

    The two lines in the sand are dilineated. However, before we can have a reaction, two things do indeed need to come into contact, or do indeed need to react to one another.

    Harry Potter’s wand won’t help Barry.

    AJ, and his damned materiaistic, contact is necessary, argument appears to be correct.

    Your wand desire Barry, and fairy wishfulness, and Godish creationist hope, desire, mentality, does not!

  9. 9
    EricMH says:

    Field effects, such as gravity, don’t work through contact. That’s why gravity was such a controversial idea among the materialists when the law of gravity was discovered by Newton. In fact, nothing in the universe works through contact due to field effects. Nothing ever touches, it is all attraction and repulsion at the atomic level.

    Old-school Democritus style materialism, “it is all just atoms colliding” is now completely refuted, so the materialist goalposts have been moved and the fact materialism has been refuted is hidden.

    Similar to how Darwinists moves the goalposts whenever a prediction of Darwinism is refuted, such as lack of transitional fossils, extremely rapid speciation in the Cambrian explosion, epigenetics, and so on.

    The only reason materialism is respected nowadays is that people have very short memories, perhaps purposefully.

    I predict this is what will happen with Intelligent Design. Materialists will just lump ID into a catch all “materialism” and continue to claim there is no evidence against materialism.

  10. 10

    Physical dynamics do not determine the measurement function. — John Von Neumann, HH Pattee

  11. 11
    kairosfocus says:

    Sev, cross-temporal knowledge of the future does not CAUSALLY restrict that future. So, Divine foreknowledge or even intervention through prophecy and actions that move the world on the whole to a divine end, do not inherently undermine responsible, rational freedom. At very simple and crude analogical level, sometimes macro-economic models do accurately predict; as a certain analyst once did by way of warning in a certain country. The credible knowledge base for that prediction involving input-output tables, statistical studies and Fourier analysis etc did not change the freedom and responsibility of decision makers to act, though it did inform them from a source that they should have known was sound. Unfortunately, a decision was still taken to go ahead, leading to the prediction being sadly borne out by events. And, the decisions and analyses did not rob people of freedom to act in various ways, though of course there are tendencies and constraints we all face. I trust this allows you to begin to see that Divine foreknowledge — contrary to certain common talking points — does not undermine freedom of the individual, or the responsibility of the individual and particularly decision-makers to seek the truth and act prudently towards the right and the long-term good. Unfortunately, marches of folly are all too common and such reliably head over the cliff, as our civilisation currently seems hell-bent on. KF

  12. 12
    Armand Jacks says:

    KF:

    Sev, cross-temporal knowledge of the future does not CAUSALLY restrict that future.

    Of course it does. If I know that the Toronto Maple Leafs are going to win the next game, the free will of the players on both teams mean absolutely nothing. If god knows that the Maple Leafs will win the next game, the same applies. Free will is dead.

    At very simple and crude analogical level, sometimes macro-economic models do accurately predict; as a certain analyst once did by way of warning in a certain country.

    So, god is no more omniscient than a good Wall Street trader? I’m pretty sure that is not what most Christians believe. Although, it would explain much of recorded history.

    I trust this allows you to begin to see that Divine foreknowledge — contrary to certain common talking points — does not undermine freedom of the individual, or the responsibility of the individual and particularly decision-makers to seek the truth and act prudently towards the right and the long-term good.

    Yes. This makes it very clear. We all have free will in our day to day decisions, but these choices make absolutely no difference to the final outcome. In that respect, free will appears to be more of a cruel joke than a gift.

    Unfortunately, marches of folly are all too common and such reliably head over the cliff, as our civilisation currently seems hell-bent on. KF

    .
    And, if god is omniscient, our free will can do nothing to avert this lemming like march over the cliff. Btw, I am sure you are aware that lemmings don’t actually jump over the cliff. You might want to rethink your much used graphic.

  13. 13
    LocalMinimum says:

    AJ:

    If I know that the Toronto Maple Leafs are going to win the next game, the free will of the players on both teams mean absolutely nothing.

    Except, the free will of the Toronto Maple Leafs would be a factor from which the event emerged, thus potentially crucial to it. Your knowledge in no way affects this unless you apply it to alter the result. With sufficient knowledge and means, you could choose to render their free will meaningless.

    Your knowledge of factors alone in no way constrains them, unless you’re willing to dive into some observer-centric interpretation of reality; at which point you’ll have quite a hole to dig yourself out of, materialism-wise.

  14. 14
    goodusername says:

    Sev, cross-temporal knowledge of the future does not CAUSALLY restrict that future.

    If the future can be known, with certainty, then it is already determined, with certainy.
    If the future isn’t determined, then God can’t know the future, as there’s nothing to know (since it hasn’t been determined).

  15. 15
    kairosfocus says:

    It seems that there is indoctrination on the point. Maybe another simple case will help. Suppose I have a tape of an event such as a debate. Does my knowing the outcome through having viewed the tape undermine the freedom of action of its participants when they acted? Obviously, not — and now just imagine someone beyond time who can see the tape even while we are located temporally prior to the events. I suggest, that makes no difference to the issue of real choice and responsible agency for those going through the spatial-temporal-volitional process that creates that future. Earlier, I used a very relevant case of macroeconomic prediction and policy making. Again, credible knowledge of the future state did not undermine freedom of either the participants in decision-making or the public who on receiving the injection through ill-advised policy triggered the macroeconomic crisis that was predicted. In short, objectors are confusing knowledge and causation. Someone above has rightly highlighted that freedom of choice and the action of choice are part of the causal framework that makes the future state come to be. But just as believers in macroeconomic folly refused to heed sound counsel tot he contrary, I can predict that objectors here will not heed correction due to their commitment to a scheme of thought that is hostile to the idea of God. However, there will be onlookers who will see that something is very wrong with the oh if God knows the future we have no freedom argument. KF

  16. 16
    rvb8 says:

    LocalM,

    nonsense, if God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, then all events are known, their outcomes for ordained, and my life, your life, and everybodied life is a pointless side show.

    You either accept Calvin’s ‘elect’, or you don’t.

    I don’t BTW, just more religious hokem

    Free will in Christianity, with such a God, is an oxymoron.

  17. 17
    goodusername says:

    kf,

    Suppose I have a tape of an event such as a debate. Does my knowing the outcome through having viewed the tape undermine the freedom of action of its participants when they acted? Obviously, not — and now just imagine someone beyond time who can see the tape even while we are located temporally prior to the events.

    It sounds like you agree that God having foreknowledge does indeed mean that the future is determined (just as what happens on a pre-recorded tape is determined). I take it then that you’re a compatibilist. That’s fine, although that probably makes you a minority on this site.

    (see here for instance: http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ot-really/)

  18. 18
    kairosfocus says:

    We continue to see the effect whereby hostile indoctrination undermines ability to see and acknowledge a fundamentally simple point. Which goes to an unfortunately familiar pattern, selective hyperskepticism. I guess I should note that God uses omnipresence and omnipotence to enable and sustain the existence of reality, including morally governed beings capable of love, which requires true freedom of choice (and thus also, the possibility of ill-advised choices). So, are we or are we not capable of genuine love? If yes, we are free. If no, this is absurd. KF

  19. 19
    Eugen says:

    RVB

    God knows that in the future you’ll be an atheist, you can trick Him and after one year become theist.

  20. 20
    kairosfocus says:

    GUN, again a misperception. I suspect a part of the problem is that we often have a challenge understanding temporality and agency. The last is prior in importance, so again I ask, are we capable of genuine love, which requires actual choice? If not, we are not even capable of genuine conversation, reasoning and responsibility; which instantly lets grand delusion loose and ends in absurdity. So, the question to you is, are we capable of love: ___________, and if not, how then do you come here to try to have a reasoned discussion: ______ ? For the former, the future emerges causally connected stage by stage as we act so that action here and now is an integral part of how it is made. The simple analogy of watching a video a second time after the fact not changing the reality of choices made by participants seen in the video then shows that knowledge of what will happen does not inherently force what happens. God would be in a position to see the video so to speak outside of our temporally constrained domain. I think you may imagine that as the future emerges through cause-effect bonds and chains, only an act in the present that utterly controls it to the point that agency is a delusion could lead to foreknowledge. That is an error of conception, and one that undermines even the possibility of a genuine reasoned conversation, it is that bad. And BTW, hypercalvinism is just as much in error as any other species of determinism on controlling causes, which of course includes the errors of evolutionary materialistic scientism. All such schemes lead to setting grand delusion loose. By contrast, I suggest that you ponder the self-moved, reflexively acting agent . . . the living soul . . . as a genuinely free first cause capable of responsible and rational decision and interaction with the external world that then leads to its mechanical and stochastic behaviour in response to the agent’s action, and also to interaction with other agents. KF

  21. 21
    kairosfocus says:

    PS: Plato’s Athenian Stranger et al on the self-moved, in The Laws Bk X:

    Ath. . . . when one thing changes another, and that another, of such will there be any primary changing element? How can a thing which is moved by another ever be the beginning of change? Impossible. But when the self-moved changes other, and that again other, and thus thousands upon tens of thousands of bodies are set in motion, must not the beginning of all this motion be the change of the self-moving principle? . . . . self-motion being the origin of all motions, and the first which arises among things at rest as well as among things in motion, is the eldest and mightiest principle of change, and that which is changed by another and yet moves other is second.

    [[ . . . .]

    Ath. If we were to see this power existing in any earthy, watery, or fiery substance, simple or compound-how should we describe it?

    Cle. You mean to ask whether we should call such a self-moving power life?

    Ath. I do.

    Cle. Certainly we should.

    Ath. And when we see soul in anything, must we not do the same-must we not admit that this is life?

    [[ . . . . ]

    Cle. You mean to say that the essence which is defined as the self-moved is the same with that which has the name soul?

    Ath. Yes; and if this is true, do we still maintain that there is anything wanting in the proof that the soul is the first origin and moving power of all that is, or has become, or will be, and their contraries, when she has been clearly shown to be the source of change and motion in all things?

    Cle. Certainly not; the soul as being the source of motion, has been most satisfactorily shown to be the oldest of all things.

    Ath. And is not that motion which is produced in another, by reason of another, but never has any self-moving power at all, being in truth the change of an inanimate body, to be reckoned second, or by any lower number which you may prefer?

    Cle. Exactly.

    Ath. Then we are right, and speak the most perfect and absolute truth, when we say that the soul is prior to the body, and that the body is second and comes afterwards, and is born to obey the soul, which is the ruler?

    [[ . . . . ]

    Ath. If, my friend, we say that the whole path and movement of heaven, and of all that is therein, is by nature akin to the movement and revolution and calculation of mind, and proceeds by kindred laws, then, as is plain, we must say that the best soul takes care of the world and guides it along the good path. [[Plato here explicitly sets up an inference to design (by a good soul) from the intelligible order of the cosmos.]

    –> Again, food for thought.

  22. 22
    kairosfocus says:

    F/N: Let us now refocus the OP:

    Armand Jacks says he has a knock down show stopping argument to rebut ID’s claim that intelligent agency is the only known cause of specified complexity.

    Get ready.

    Hold on to your hat.

    Here it is:

    Using the same argument, the only known causes of everything we have ever seen in the entire universe are material causes.

    Are blind unguided material forces capable of typing the post you just posted AJ? If you say “no” your argument is refuted. If you say “yes” you look like a fool or a liar or both. Talk about the Scylla and Charybdis.

    AJ, you really should stop and think for 10 seconds before you write something like that down. I know, I know. Thinking is hard, and 10 seconds is a long time. But still.

    As for the title of this post, on reflection maybe I overstated AJ’s accomplishment a little.

    Again, we have seen a tangent, but one that has in it A worldview level misconception that needs some response so that we can refocus the issue.

    Here, an objector has asserted that the only acting causes are material ones. That is, he sees the cosmos in physicalist terms as blind forces of chance and mechanical necessity acting on matter and energy in space-time, such that temporality and change emerge from chance and necessity, with agency squeezed out. (We can take it that he is not implying that only the materials that things are made of act, he is implying that agency and purpose are delusional; so that directly acting actuating causes trigger change by acting on the only components of reality he will accept in chains that must in the end come out of nothing or else must span the infinite traverse of time past in steps, as already described. [Both those options imply absurdities.] He does not see the grand delusion involved in implying that his fact no 1, self-conscious, reflexive, enconscienced awareness is an illusion.)

    We are back to the problem of computational substrates and how they act. If mind be reduced to such one way or another, whether an analogue or digital or neural network wetware machine, the inherent problem is that such are simply not rational, responsible entities. They are blind, cause-effect machines driven by GIGO-limited hard and soft ware. Which itself raises the further question as to how the required FSCO/I to effect such a machine comes from. In the case of he human brain and CNS as computing substrate, there is a serious issue of the sheer lack of materials to store the info content to account for hard and soft ware in the zygote.

    And, we need to understand that patching up an analogue computer or loading coded algorithms and data structure into a digital one, or wiring up a neural network are all forms of programming that express an inescapably information-rich, GIGO-limited content unto the hardware substrate. if your ball and disk naval gunlaying analogue computer is not set up to solve the right differential equations in the right way, it will fail; something that took decades to get right. If your Pentium has some flawed instructions, it will blindly execute its microcode without caring one way or another, it is a rock that has no dreams it is just executing organised cause-effect chains, hence the famous recall. And, a neural network, too is no magic, you do not get to a functioning computational substrate for free out of lucky noise filtered by incremental differential success.

    That should have been quite evident by the times of the kelvin tide prediction tables, not too many years after Darwin’s two books came out. And as I pointed out in my remarks in the other thread, Darwin himself ran straight into the problems as can be seen from his letter to Graham:

    . . . you have expressed my inward conviction, though far more vividly and clearly than I could have done, that the Universe is not the result of chance. But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind? . . . .

    Lastly I could show fight on natural selection having done and doing more for the progress of civilisation than you seem inclined to admit. Remember what risks the nations of Europe ran, not so many centuries ago of being overwhelmed by the Turks, and how ridiculous such an idea now is. The more civilised so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilised races throughout the world.

    That should give us serious pause.

    Instead of going to grand delusion, we should be willing to acknowledge the force of empirical fact no 1, we are self-aware, reflexive, self-moved agents with causal capability in the mechanical, embodied world, such as we express when we type and post a comment in this thread.

    Then, we need to ask, what sort of world must we be living in, to make such possible.

    And I assure you, it will not be a world of blind chance and necessity only acting on matter and energy in spacetime.

    Agency with responsible, rational freedom must be recognised for itself, as step no 1. And, our understanding of empirical observation must be broad enough to recognise WHO is observing, observations do not make themselves happen out of nothing and illusions.

    Where, again, the denial of self-moved, responsibly and rationally free agency instantly leads to grand delusion and collapses into absurdity.

    The ideologically rooted, institutionalised, entrenched denial of agency is at the heart of the problems we see.

    And Darwin himself should have seen that long since.

    Unfortunately, he resorted to logic with a swivel, selectively hyperskeptical rhetoric, which failed to ask, but what does the jumped up monkey mind picture I just painted mean for my own system of thought?

    We need to ask that question, and we need to note the implications that worked out across C20, as Darwin here foresaw, even a full decade after he published Descent of Man, with the remarks in Chs 5 – 7 esp at the beginning of Ch 6.

    No wonder H G Wells (a student of Huxley, Darwin’s Bulldog as he was called) warned us in no uncertain terms in several novels, especially the very opening words of War of the Worlds:

    No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water . . . No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us . . . . looking across space with instruments, and intelligences such as we have scarcely dreamed of, they see, at its nearest distance only 35,000,000 of miles sunward of them, a morning star of hope, our own warmer planet, green with vegetation and grey with water, with a cloudy atmosphere eloquent of fertility, with glimpses through its drifting cloud wisps of broad stretches of populous country and narrow, navy-crowded seas.

    And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them at least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us. The intellectual side of man already admits that life is an incessant struggle for existence, and it would seem that this too is the belief of the minds upon Mars. Their world is far gone in its cooling and this world is still crowded with life, but crowded only with what they regard as inferior animals. To carry warfare sunward is, indeed, their only escape from the destruction that, generation after generation, creeps upon them.

    And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?

    The horrors of the past 100 years did not come out of nothing, for no reason.

    KF

  23. 23

    Armand said:

    Using the same argument, the only known causes of everything we have ever seen in the entire universe are material causes.

    Let’s look at a leaf that falls from a tree; Armand claims that what we are observing is a material cause acting on the leaf that makes it fall to the earth.

    First, I’m certainly not “seeing” gravity do anything. I’m seeing an effect of a cause we erroneously refer to as “gravity”.

    Second, asserting that gravity is what is causing the leaf to fall is a categorical error; gravity is a description of a pattern of behavior. Gravity is a description of the behavior of the leaf, it is not the cause of the leaf falling.

    Third, what “causes” the pattern of behaviors we call “the effects of gravity” is utterly unknown; we know it usually occurs in conjunction with mass, but to say mass “causes” gravity begs the question of how mass causes gravity. A current theory claims that mass causes a distortion in space, but again, how does mass do that?

    As I pointed out in another thread,

    We call these observable, reliable and measurable effects physical laws, forces and universal constants, but those terms are misleading, much like referring to “chance” as a causal agency. Those terms do not represent causal objects or energies we can point at, but are rather descriptions (or models) of observed patterns of behavior of matter and energy for which there is no known or observable cause. The names of these patterns and models are used as if they apply to causal things, but this is a conceptual error. When we say “gravity causes X to fall”, it is not gravity causing it because gravity is the description of the physics of the event. Something “causes it to fall”, but it is not gravity; it is whatever causes the pattern of behavior we call “gravity”.

    What is the “natural world”?

    The natural world is the set of phenomena that can be described and predicted according to behavioral and interactive constants. However, those laws and constants do not describe where or how such laws and constants exist in the first place, or what they are, or even how they are affecting physical phenomena. These invisible and mysterious causes are supernatural both by definition and logically because they: (1) necessarily relate to an order of existence beyond the observable natural world (since they cause the behavior that defines what we call “the natural world”, (2) are unable to be explained by science or the laws of nature (since science depends upon observing behavioral patterns, and behavioral patterns cannot explain what causes such patterns in the first place), and (3) these patterns are attributed to invisible, unknown agents (which we erroneously refer to with objectifying terminology – forces, constants and laws).

    The science of the natural world depends upon an unknown, unseen superset of mysterious agencies causing the predictable, reliable, rationally understandable patterns of behavior we observe and describe as the set of natural-occurring phenomena.

    Armand Jacks is confusing a description of effects with the cause of those effects. Yes, when we experience these effects we do so in a framework we have come to call the physical or “material” world, which behaves in a law-like, predictable manner. In fact, we often use this very quality of law-like, predictable behavior as the definitive quality of what we refer to as the physical or material world.

    In other words, we refer to our experience of these patterns of behavior as an experience of the physical or material world. The problem for Armand, however, is that none of us experience the causes of the behaviors we are observing (setting aside our experience of our own will); we only observe effects.

    So Armand is entirely incorrect; we have never seen a cause; all we can observe are the effects of underlying causes that we have never seen and can only infer and measure via the pattern of effects. In fact, what we call the “natural” or “material” world is nothing but the experience of patterns of effects generated by causes that we do not directly experience at all (again, setting our will aside for the time being, which is the only cause we actually experience).

  24. 24
    Barry Arrington says:

    WJM, as Chesterton told us in the Ethics of Elfland, the leaf dropped to the ground because it is bewitched:

    http://www.uncommondescent.com.....n-elfland/

  25. 25
    Armand Jacks says:

    The accusation against any atheist/materialist/physicalist when discussing ID, religion, morality, etc. Is that we are hyperskeptical. The incompatability of an omniscient god and free will is no different. We are being asked to believe that our free will can affect the outcome of something that is already known to happen. If there is something that warrants skepticism, this is it. All of this nonsense about god being out of time etc. is nothing more than an attempt to dance around the irrefutable logic.

  26. 26
    Barry Arrington says:

    Boswell: “The argument for the moral necessity of human actions is always, I observe, fortified by supposing universal prescience to be one of the attributes of the Deity.”

    Johnson: “You are surer that you are free, than you are of prescience; you are surer that you can lift up your finger or not as you please, than you are of any conclusion from a deduction of reasoning. But let us consider a little the objection from prescience. It is certain I am either to go home tonight or not; that does not prevent my freedom.”

    Boswell: “That it is certain you are either to go home or not, does not prevent your freedom; because the liberty of choice between the two is compatible with that certainty. But if one of these events be certain now, you have no future power of volition. If it be certain you are to go home to-night, you must go home.”

    Johnson: “If I am well acquainted with a man, I can judge with great probability how he will act in any case, without his being restrained by my judging. God may have this probability increased to certainty.”

    Boswell: When it is increased to certainty, freedom ceases, because that cannot be certainly foreknown, which is not certain at the time; but if it be certain at the time, it is a contradiction in terms to maintain that there can be afterwards any contingency dependent on the exercise of will or anything else.”

    Johnson: “All theory is against the freedom of the will; all experience for it.”

  27. 27
    Barry Arrington says:

    The greatest intellects of history have struggled with the question of free will. Christians have the problem Boswell points out and Johnson is unable to refute. The materialist has the problems that we have pointed out many times in these pages: (1) it is absurd to say that a material object possesses a property called “freedom,” and (2) the idea that all effects are caused by particles moving in accordance with the laws of nature is irreconcilable with the idea that an amalgamation of those particles has freedom.

    But free will exists. As Johnson notes, all experience confirms it.

  28. 28
    john_a_designer says:

    If there is no or freewill or freedom of choice then there is no basis for morality… As someone has said, “ought implies can.”

    The clear teaching of Jesus parable of The Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) is that the son made a willful intentional moral choice to leave his father and then later, when he realized the consequences of his first choice, and an equally intentional choice to repent and return to his father. However, maybe we do use the word “free” and “freewill” a little too loosely, because the sons “willful” first decision actually led to him losing his freedom. Is that a contradiction or a paradox?

  29. 29
    Armand Jacks says:

    Barry:

    But free will exists.

    I am not arguing against free will. Or at least the possibility that the chemical and physical factors that trigger a decision being so numerous and complex that what we have is indistinguishable from free will. What I am arguing is that you can’t have an all knowing god and free will. You can certainly have a god that does not know the future, but that conflicts with some theistic teachings.

  30. 30
    kairosfocus says:

    F/N: Not all atheists resort to the error of selective hyperskepticism, as some are a lot more careful in argument and in standards of warrant. Unfortunately, the particular circle we face and have faced for years does have the problem and are often resistant to the comparative difficulties process that solves it. From the Elevatorgate controversy, the same problem has surfaced even in assessing complaints about misbehaviour of men in atheist conventions. The problem occurs when there is a double-standard of warrant, often expressed as “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” or in the claim “there is no evidence,” used to sweep away a case based on evidence that the atheist would dismiss. The answer is, that in real world cases we must recognise when we face a momentous, unavoidable choice (where dunno is not good enough) and where we must decide with much in the stakes, on the evidence we have or may access, not the evidence we could imagine or self-servingly demand. This means we need to look at adequate, consistent standards of warrant for comparable cases and responsible decision. Greenleaf’s observations have been noted long since. KF

    PS: Greenleaf, yet again:

    Evidence, in legal acceptation, includes all the means by which any alleged matter of fact, the truth of which is submitted to investigation, is established or disproved . . . None but mathematical truth is susceptible of that high degree of evidence, called demonstration, which excludes all possibility of error [–> Greenleaf wrote almost 100 years before Godel], and which, therefore, may reasonably be required in support of every mathematical deduction. [–> that is, his focus is on the logic of good support for in principle uncertain conclusions, i.e. in the modern sense, inductive logic and reasoning in real world, momentous contexts with potentially serious consequences.]

    Matters of fact are proved by moral evidence alone; by which is meant, not only that kind of evidence which is employed on subjects connected with moral conduct, but all the evidence which is not obtained either from intuition, or from demonstration. In the ordinary affairs of life, we do not require demonstrative evidence, because it is not consistent with the nature of the subject, and to insist upon it would be unreasonable and absurd. [–> the issue of warrant to moral certainty, beyond reasonable doubt; and the contrasted absurdity of selective hyperskepticism.]

    The most that can be affirmed of such things, is, that there is no reasonable doubt concerning them. [–> moral certainty standard, and this is for the proverbial man in the Clapham bus stop, not some clever determined advocate or skeptic motivated not to see or assent to what is warranted.]

    The true question, therefore, in trials of fact, is not whether it is possible that the testimony may be false, but, whether there is sufficient probability of its truth; that is, whether the facts are shown by competent and satisfactory evidence. Things established by competent and satisfactory evidence are said to be proved. [–> pistis enters; we might as well learn the underlying classical Greek word that addresses the three levers of persuasion, pathos- ethos- logos and its extension to address worldview level warranted faith-commitment and confident trust on good grounding, through the impact of the Judaeo-Christian tradition in C1 as was energised by the 500 key witnesses.]

    By competent evidence, is meant that which the very-nature of the thing to be proved requires, as the fit and appropriate proof in the particular case, such as the production of a writing, where its contents are the subject of inquiry. By satisfactory evidence, which is sometimes called sufficient evidence, is intended that amount of proof, which ordinarily satisfies an unprejudiced mind [–> in British usage, the man in the Clapham bus stop], beyond reasonable doubt.

    The circumstances which will amount to this degree of proof can never be previously defined; the only legal [–> and responsible] test of which they are susceptible, is their sufficiency to satisfy the mind and conscience of a common man; and so to convince him, that he would venture to act upon that conviction, in matters of the highest concern and importance to his own interest. [= definition of moral certainty as a balanced unprejudiced judgement beyond reasonable, responsible doubt. Obviously, i/l/o wider concerns, while scientific facts as actually observed may meet this standard, scientific explanatory frameworks such as hypotheses, models, laws and theories cannot as they are necessarily provisional and in many cases have had to be materially modified, substantially re-interpreted to the point of implied modification, or outright replaced; so a modicum of prudent caution is warranted in such contexts — explanatory frameworks are empirically reliable so far on various tests, not utterly certain. ] [A Treatise on Evidence, Vol I, 11th edn. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1888) ch 1., sections 1 and 2. Shorter paragraphs added. (NB: Greenleaf was a founder of the modern Harvard Law School and is regarded as a founding father of the modern Anglophone school of thought on evidence, in large part on the strength of this classic work.)]

  31. 31
    LocalMinimum says:

    AJ:

    We are being asked to believe that our free will can affect the outcome of something that is already known to happen. If there is something that warrants skepticism, this is it. All of this nonsense about god being out of time etc. is nothing more than an attempt to dance around the irrefutable logic.

    I have no idea how free will would operate, where it comes from, etc. I’m agnostic with respect to it; but this is really not as hard as you’re making it.

    Firstly, reduce free will to a cause. Secondly, insert it into a causal matrix. Thirdly, place that causal matrix within a structure of time that can be randomly accessed from some externality. BOOM! Free will independent from foreknowledge.

    Yes, it’s hypothetical; but it’s not at all contradictory.

  32. 32
    kairosfocus says:

    F/N: changes traceable to forces of blind chance and/or mechanical necessity acting on matter and energy in space-time cannot account for freedom in the relevant sense. No matter how complex or hard to specifically trace. Rise or fall of temperature in a body . . . a result traceable to an endlessly complex interaction of particles and their degrees of freedom to move in the mechanical sense . . . is not a subject of responsible, rational freedom. Nor, is the output of a computer programmed to print Hello World on pressing a certain key, or even one programmed to mimic Rogerian counselling techniques, etc. The decision as to what to type in a comment here is; and if it were instead reduced to blind factors, its rational and responsible sense would inevitably be lost. KF

  33. 33
    Origenes says:

    WJM @23 Barry @24

    This is an often overlooked but incredibly important topic. The article by theoretical physicist Paul Davies is IMHO a must read:
    Frozen Accidents: Can the Laws of Physics be Explained?

    excerpt:

    But what are these ultimate laws and where do they come from? Such questions are often dismissed as being pointless or even unscientific. As the cosmologist Sean Carroll has written, “There is a chain of explanations concerning things that happen in the universe, which ultimately reaches to the fundamental laws of nature and stops… at the end of the day the laws are what they are… And that’s okay. I’m happy to take the universe just as we find it.” Conventionally, the job of the scientist is to simply assume the laws and get on with the job of applying them to real problems.

    There has long been a tacit assumption that the laws of physics were somehow imprinted on the universe at the outset, and have remained immutable thereafter. Physical processes, however violent or complex, are thought to have absolutely no effect on the laws. There is thus a curious asymmetry: Physical processes depend on laws but the laws do not depend on physical processes. Although this statement cannot be proved, it is widely accepted.

  34. 34
    goodusername says:

    kf,

    The simple analogy of watching a video a second time after the fact not changing the reality of choices made by participants seen in the video then shows that knowledge of what will happen does not inherently force what happens. God would be in a position to see the video so to speak outside of our temporally constrained domain. I think you may imagine that as the future emerges through cause-effect bonds and chains, only an act in the present that utterly controls it to the point that agency is a delusion could lead to foreknowledge.

    I’m not saying that foreknowledge is causation – we agree that it isn’t.  What I’ve been saying is: If – in principle – there’s a future to know – then the future is already determined.

    If I’m watching a tape of a sporting event from last year, and someone asks “why are you watching that, you already know who won,” and I said that that isn’t determined, I’d get strange looks.

    If God could see the future as if watching a tape, then the future is determined (if the word has any meaning at all). OTOH, if the future isn’t determined, then there’s no future to see.
    (BTW, many scientists and philosophers make the same argument regarding time travel. Many would say that if, in principle, one could build a machine that will transport someone 1000 years into the future, then there is no free will, as it means that the future is determined – otherwise there would be no future to travel to. But they’re not saying, obviously, that the act of time traveling somehow determined the future.)

    The compatibilists, however, say that determinism is compatible with free will since foreknowledge is not causation nor coercion. But IMO that’s using “free will” in a much more restrictive sense than how most people use it.

  35. 35
    LocalMinimum says:

    Armand Jacks, I would like to have your definition of a “material cause”.

  36. 36
    Armand Jacks says:

    LM, as with you, I am agnostic to the existance of free will. Mostly because I can’t think of any way to test it without accepting that you are not controlling for millions of variables. No scientist would accept the outcome of such a test.

    Firstly, reduce free will to a cause. Secondly, insert it into a causal matrix. Thirdly, place that causal matrix within a structure of time that can be randomly accessed from some externality.

    I’m not sure I understand what you are suggesting here.
    If you reduce free will to a cause, are you not eliminating free will? I suspect that is not what you are saying. I am probably not understanding what you mean by reducing free will to a cause.

  37. 37

    Armand Jacks @ 25:

    You offer a false dichotomy without even realizing it because of your apparently limited exposure to theistic/existential alternatives. God may not be all-knowing or all-powerful in the sense that you might imagine or define it.

    So? Whether or not god is all-knowing doesn’t change the logical fact that materialism cannot ground free will. You’re either a meatbot, or you have a supernatural capacity. That is a true dichotomy which no amount of flowery terms or dodgy phrases can escape, and philosophers have realized this for centuries, and it is why atheistic materialists invented “compatibalism” – so they could redefine and thus simply use the term “free will” and not sound like blithering idiots when they had to admit they didn’t have free will by the old definition.

  38. 38
    Armand Jacks says:

    KF:

    changes traceable to forces of blind chance and/or mechanical necessity acting on matter and energy in space-time cannot account for freedom in the relevant sense.

    This is merely a bald assertion.

    No matter how complex or hard to specifically trace.

    This is simply not true. Computers that have beat the Turing test, or come close to beating it, do so because complexity in programming and shear force of computing power. The complexity and connections in the human brain dwarf the complexity of these computers. If the complexity in these computers can give the perception of free will, or at least come close to it, why can’t the brain?

    I am not saying that this is what actually happens, but simply dismissing it out of hand is an example of selective hyper skepticism.

    Rise or fall of temperature in a body . . . a result traceable to an endlessly complex interaction of particles and their degrees of freedom to move in the mechanical sense . . . is not a subject of responsible, rational freedom.

    Actually, there are studies to show that humans can use meditation techniques to modify body temperature, but that is an aside. I just mention it because I find it interesting.

    The decision as to what to type in a comment here is; and if it were instead reduced to blind factors, its rational and responsible sense would inevitably be lost. KF

    How do you know that my comments are not the results of a computer designed for a Turing test? 🙂

  39. 39
    Armand Jacks says:

    WJM:

    You offer a false dichotomy without even realizing it because of your apparently limited exposure to theistic/existential alternatives. God may not be all-knowing or all-powerful in the sense that you might imagine or define it.

    I believe that is what I said at comment 29.

    Whether or not god is all-knowing doesn’t change the logical fact that materialism cannot ground free will.

    That presupposes that free will as an absolute truly exists. It’s a circular argument. Our brains have 100 billion cells and 100 trillion synapses (1 trillion by some accounts). Can you say with certainty that this level of complexity cannot give us a perception of free will. We have come close to beating the Turing test (some say we have beaten it) with computer programming and power that is minuscule when compared to that of the brain. And before you say that a Turing test isn’t a test of free will, I suggest that you think hard about it.

  40. 40
    kairosfocus says:

    GUN, I note how you twisted we watch and know the outcome of a game on tape, into suggesting that the players involved in the live process had no freedom of action while they were playing. In short, there are ideologically loaded fatal ambiguities in your forced re-reading of what I wrote and the dynamics at work in a taped event. To loose the tangle, I again come back to: can we truly love? That is decisive. If your answer implies, no, your scheme of thought is patently absurd. If it is yes, then you face the need to adjust your worldview to one in which genuine freedom exists. KF

  41. 41
    Axel says:

    Yes. At bottom, Christianity, religion, are founded on great imponderable mysteries, paradoxes, oxymorons that just happen to be true. It’s perhaps the one thing our atheist interlocutors get right.

    But that is how it was meant to be, since it is the heart not the head that will see us in heaven or hell. God always leaves some wriggle-room for the malcontents. After all He could make it a ‘slam dunk’ for his worshippers to evangelise if He’d wished to, as He could have done, himself, while on earth.

    However, it’s noteworthy that Jesus (simultaneously, true God and true man) kept his most staggering miracles of unambiguously divine power for his small band of disciples, Peter, James and John and sometimes one or two others. That is to say, all of them except his raising the already-putrifying Lazarus from the dead ; which was probably necessary to bring about his crucifixion.

    And even then, though the politico-religious authorities must have know its implication of uniquely-divine power, they were only concerned with its possible political, worldly implications.

  42. 42
    kairosfocus says:

    F/N: It seems that someone refuses to study computational substrates and how they work, imagining that calling things bare assertions is enough to avoid thinking through what is involved. Likewise, that person refuses to ponder the forces and factors at work in the physical world, once agency is ruled out: blind chance working through stochastic and chaotic butterfly effect factors and/or mechanical necessity. neither of these can properly account for rational insight, choice and action. The real bare assertion is that one can do so, which was made in the name of the poof magic of emergence. It is time for serious rethinking. KF

    PS: An illustrative case in point, from Reppert:

    . . . let us suppose that brain state A, which is token identical to the thought that all men are mortal, and brain state B, which is token identical to the thought that Socrates is a man, together cause the belief that Socrates is mortal. It isn’t enough for rational inference that these events be those beliefs, it is also necessary that the causal transaction be in virtue of the content of those thoughts . . . [[But] if naturalism is true, then the propositional content is irrelevant to the causal transaction that produces the conclusion, and [[so] we do not have a case of rational inference. In rational inference, as Lewis puts it, one thought causes another thought not by being, but by being seen to be, the ground for it. But causal transactions in the brain occur in virtue of the brain’s being in a particular type of state that is relevant to physical causal transactions.

    PPS: Modifying bodily temp set-point in an endothermic individual is not to be confused with the underlying process that emerges — proper sense — as temperature. That is, the average random energy per degree of molecular scale particle level freedom as further adjusted i/l/o quantum considerations. Where a typical body in that sense has 10^20 – 10^26 or so particles in it.

    PPS: No, the Turing test is not a proper test of understanding, responsible rational freedom or of many other things. It is a functional test that in effect says you cannot tell the difference between performance of a live individual and that of a suitably programmed machine under certain rather restricted circumstances.

  43. 43

    AJ @ 25 said: “The accusation against any atheist/materialist/physicalist when discussing ID, religion, morality, etc. Is that we are hyperskeptical.”

    Wrong. The accusation is NOT that you are hyper-skeptical. The accusation is that you are a religious zealot of a faith-based philosophical worldview (atheism/materialism)…PRETENDING to be objective.

    You are a deeply religious person with a tremendous amount of faith…in atheism/materialism.

  44. 44
    john_a_designer says:

    You may want to look at the following article which looks at the Eastern Orthodox view of freewill. (The author’s quotes are from the 1672 Synod of Jerusalem document the “Confession of Dositheus.”)

    “We believe the most good God to have from eternity predestinated unto glory those whom He has chosen, and to have consigned unto condemnation those whom He has rejected; but not so that He would justify the one, and consign and condemn the other without cause.”

    The key here is that while believing in predestination, they do not believe that it is “without cause.” The agent of the cause is not God’s sovereign will, as is the case in the “unconditional predestination” of Calvinists, but in man’s free will.

    “But since He foreknew the one would make a right use of their free-will, and the other a wrong, He predestinated the one, or condemned the other.”

    http://www.reclaimingthemind.o.....stination/

    Personally I think Christian theology across the spectrum gets a little too presumptive, especially when it comes to questions of God’s foreknowledge, predestination and human freewill. We humans are not God, and while the Bible is very clear that we are made in the image of God and that we can relate to God in personal way as children to a father, it is also is very clear that we cannot understand the mind of God or what it is to be God (See Isaiah 55:8-9, Romans 11:34, I Corinthians 10-16.)

  45. 45

    Armand said:

    That presupposes that free will as an absolute truly exists.

    No, it does not. Good lord. Please think before you write. Try to understand – actually understand – what is being written. **IF** free will exists, materialism cannot logically ground it. That doesn’t “presuppose” that free will exists.

    It’s a circular argument.

    No, it is not. If free will exists, materialism cannot account for it. It is a true dichotomy which is why compatibalism was invented.

    Our brains have 100 billion cells and 100 trillion synapses (1 trillion by some accounts). Can you say with certainty that this level of complexity cannot give us a perception of free will.

    Please try and understand how utterly irrelevant this is. It doesn’t matter in this argument one iota if materialism can give us the illusion that we have free will; the argument here is about the logical consequences between (1) having actual free will, and (2) not having actual fee will. Whether the feeling or sensation or perception that one has free will is produced as a kind of illusion is meaningless.

    We have come close to beating the Turing test (some say we have beaten it) with computer programming and power that is minuscule when compared to that of the brain. And before you say that a Turing test isn’t a test of free will, I suggest that you think hard about it.

    The turing test is not a test of free will, Armand. Oh, Jeez. Please, please try and understand this. It doesn’t matter one bit if we can create a robot that there is absolutely no way for us to determine if it has free will/independent consciousness or not. It’s utterly irrelevant to the point.

    The point is the difference between what it means (logical ramifactions) of actually having free will and actually not having free will. A thing being able to give the impression of having free will doesn’t change the logical ramifications of not having actual free will.

    If we do not actually have free will, then we are all meatbots that think and say whatever physical processes dictate, whether or not they have anything to do with truth and reality because we have no supernatural capacity (meaning, power over the dictates of the physical) to discern truth or to impose that truth upon the physical nature of our physical systems.

  46. 46
    asauber says:

    The other thing that gets me with materialists and atheists is their beliefs about the universe based on really really small sample sizes.

    Based on the tiny speck of evidence their sphere of perception yields, they can determine, somehow, what’s not out there somewhere, and it’s God that’s the only thing that is not Out There. Everything else could be out there though, from the boring to the unimaginable, to peanut butter pancakes.

    Undefinable, undetectable, and in infinite numbers, there are multiverses acting in combinations that All Things emerge from. Heavens Yes and Amen! God? Nah.

    Andrew

  47. 47
    EricMH says:

    The argument that God’s omniscience invalidates free will is dependent upon a hidden premise, that God *in the past* infallibly knows what will happen in the future. However, traditional accounts of omniscience also claim that God is not within time, and consequently it cannot be said that God is in the past.

    As we see with the videotape example, if the knower’s knowledge does not temporally precede the event, then the knowledge does not impinge on anyone’s free will. Likewise, if God is outside of time, then it is a category error to say His knowledge precedes any event. Thus, the dilemma of omniscience and free will disappears.

  48. 48
    PaV says:

    Armand Jack:

    Of course it does. If I know that the Toronto Maple Leafs are going to win the next game, the free will of the players on both teams mean absolutely nothing. If god knows that the Maple Leafs will win the next game, the same applies. Free will is dead.

    Here is the nub of your error in thinking.

    Consider this: I’m out for the day. I’ve taped the Maple Leaf hockey game. On the way home, I hear the final score. Does this mean that when I watch the game on replay, there is no free will involved at all, e.g., the losing side pulling its goalie?

    This makes no sense in terms of the normal persons everyday experience of things. You need to make some sensible statement of how ‘free will’ is absent here.

  49. 49
    Origenes says:

    AJ: The complexity and connections in the human brain dwarf the complexity of these computers. If the complexity in these computers can give the perception of free will, or at least come close to it, why can’t the brain?

    Who is duped by the brain here? You are pulling a consciousness which has perceptions out of thin air. How do you ground this consciousness?
    It reminds me of the writings of A.Rosenberg

    FOR SOLID EVOLUTIONARY REASONS, WE’VE BEEN tricked into looking at life from the inside. Without scientism, we look at life from the inside, from the first-person POV (OMG, you don’t know what a POV is?—a “point of view”). The first person is the subject, the audience, the viewer of subjective experience, the self in the mind.
    Scientism shows that the first-person POV is an illusion.

    Who has been tricked, Rosenberg? Who is “we”? If consciousness is an illusion, who is having the illusion?

  50. 50
    john_a_designer says:

    Andrew @ 46,

    “Based on the tiny speck of evidence their sphere of perception yields, they can determine, somehow, what’s not out there somewhere, and it’s God that’s the only thing that is not Out There.”

    Not only that but AJ, according to his own worldview, IS just an insignificant speck. How can one speck another speck what to think and believe? Isn’t that a little bit presumptive?

    I actually agree with Bill Nye on this point.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kBbEQvgJec

  51. 51
    asauber says:

    JAD,

    You are correct, sir. There are many levels of wrongness with the Atheist/Materialist religion.

    Andrew

  52. 52
    Armand Jacks says:

    WJM:

    No, it does not. Good lord. Please think before you write. Try to understand – actually understand – what is being written. **IF** free will exists, materialism cannot logically ground it. That doesn’t “presuppose” that free will exists.

    Good lord. Please read the comment I am responding to before you criticize others. There was no **IF** anywhere in that comment. All you said was that materialism can’t ground free will. And that is definitely a circular argument. It presupposes that true free will exists. And by free will I mean that the thought/decision precedes the chemical changes in the brain that result in our action.

    Please try and understand how utterly irrelevant this is. It doesn’t matter in this argument one iota if materialism can give us the illusion that we have free will; the argument here is about the logical consequences between (1) having actual free will, and (2) not having actual fee will. Whether the feeling or sensation or perception that one has free will is produced as a kind of illusion is meaningless.

    Of course it is relevant. Do you have any evidence that the thought precedes the chemical change in the brain? If you do, I would love to read the paper. If not, the inevitable logical conclusion is that the thought and decision are the result of theses changes rather than being caused by them.

    The turing test is not a test of free will, Armand. Oh, Jeez. Please, please try and understand this.

    Oh, Jeez. Please, please stop being such a condescending little child and attempt to have a civil discussion. A Turing test attempts to use a computer to fool a person into thinking they are having a real conversation with a person rather than a program. Perceiving free will in the responses is definitely one of the ways we decide whether we are talking to a person or a program.

    if we can create a robot that there is absolutely no way for us to determine if it has free will/independent consciousness or not. It’s utterly irrelevant to the point.

    Bolding the last sentence doesn’t make it any more valid.

    If we do not actually have free will, then we are all meatbots that think and say whatever physical processes dictate, whether or not they have anything to do with truth and reality because we have no supernatural capacity (meaning, power over the dictates of the physical) to discern truth or to impose that truth upon the physical nature of our physical systems.

    Nonsense. My brain has trillions of synapses that can react in trillions of different ways to trillions of different inputs. If you can devise a test to control for the trillions (-1) inputs so that you can demonstrate that free will is real, you would have a point. Until then, the best you can say is “I don’t know”. As I do.

    If this brain pattern and process couldn’t discern between what is to our advantage and what is not, we would long be extinct. Notice that I didn’t say “truth” because “truth” is the pervue (and delusion) of the theist.

  53. 53
    Armand Jacks says:

    PaV:

    Consider this: I’m out for the day. I’ve taped the Maple Leaf hockey game. On the way home, I hear the final score. Does this mean that when I watch the game on replay, there is no free will involved at all, e.g., the losing side pulling its goalie?

    So you believe that god has no knowledge of the future? If he exists, I agree with that assumption. Unfortunately, you would be at odds with many Christians (and Jews and Muslims).

  54. 54

    Oh dear Lord the things meatbots say.

  55. 55
    Armand Jacks says:

    WJM:

    Oh dear Lord the things meatbots say.

    I guess it was too much to expect that WJM could rise above the level of childish taunting.

  56. 56
    goodusername says:

    kf,

    GUN, I note how you twisted we watch and know the outcome of a game on tape, into suggesting that the players involved in the live process had no freedom of action while they were playing.

    No, what I actually said is that things on a tape are determined. (Is there anyone that would disagree with that?)

    Although, I think most would, indeed, say that if it were possible, in principle, to watch a tape of the game before the game was played then the players didn’t actually have free will. The players certainly felt as though they did, but that it was an “illusion” as everything was already determined before the game was played (otherwise, how would it be possible to watch such a tape? And what sense would it make to say that the outcome of the game was decided by decisions the players made if everything was determined before the decisions?) Compatibilists would differ, and argue that even though everything was, indeed, determined, that the players still had free will as such foreknowledge didn’t cause their decisions.

    From your responses I can’t tell what, if anything, you actually disagree with in my posts. I also can’t tell what your position. Are you saying that events on a tape aren’t determined? If you agree that they are determined, in what way aren’t you a compatibilist?

  57. 57
    Armand Jacks says:

    Gun, maybe the omniscient god crowd could benefit from the multiverse theory. But I have not seen it supported here at UD.

  58. 58
    Florabama says:

    AJ, isn’t your premise self refuting?

    “If this brain pattern and process couldn’t discern between what is to our advantage and what is not, we would long be extinct. Notice that I didn’t say “truth” because “truth” is the pervue (and delusion) of the theist.”

    How do you know what is advantageous and what is not, if truth is a delusion? If column “A” is “Advantageous” and column “B” is “Detrimental” how does the brain decide, “Column A is advantageous,” without truth? Why not pick “Detrimental,” since the truth of one being better than the other, is delusion? Are you not trying to use truth while denying that truth exists? How can “advantageous” or “detrimental” even exist if truth is a delusion? Why do you even bother to argue here that your position is the “right” one if truth is a delusion. Have you not argued vehemently that you are “right,” while WJM is “wrong?” Why are you arguing for your position if there is no truth? Are you not, by arguing for your position, making the statement that there exists a standard of truth that matches your position. If truth doesn’t exist, why bother arguing? How can one ever be right or wrong if there is no truth?

  59. 59
    goodusername says:

    PaV,

    Consider this: I’m out for the day. I’ve taped the Maple Leaf hockey game. On the way home, I hear the final score. Does this mean that when I watch the game on replay, there is no free will involved at all, e.g., the losing side pulling its goalie?
    This makes no sense in terms of the normal persons everyday experience of things. You need to make some sensible statement of how ‘free will’ is absent here.

    I would say that what’s on the tape has been determined. I would also say, at the moment they pulled the goalie, that they did so out of free will. On a related note – I would say that it is probably impossible to get a tape of them pulling the goalie before they actually did so. That is something well outside the normal persons everyday experience of things. If it turns out that it’s possible to get such a tape, I would rethink whether they pulled the goalie out of free will. I’m not sure what I’d believe about free will at that moment. Perhaps I’d become a compatibilist. I think such a discovery would have most people rethinking what they believe about free will.

  60. 60
    Armand Jacks says:

    F:

    AJ, isn’t your premise self refuting?

    Quite possibly. Now maybe you can get WJM and KF to admit the same. Do you want to put money on them making this admission?

    Sorry. You don’t deserve that.

    What is advantageous and not is not a “truth”. Conditions change, as do advantageous decisions. Surely “truth” does not change.

    How can “advantageous” or “detrimental” even exist if truth is a delusion?

    “Truth” is inerrant. Or so I have been told on repeated occasions here. Advantageous and detremental are not. Avoiding excess heat may be advantageous under one circumstance, detrimental under another.

    Have you not argued vehemently that you are “right,” while WJM is “wrong?”

    Yes. But I admit that I do that for fun because WJM repeatedly acts as a child. I am not proud of it, but it is what it is.

    Are you not, by arguing for your position, making the statement that there exists a standard of truth that matches your position.

    No. I am arguing for a view that better explains reality. That doesn’t mean that we are talking about “truth”. A prime example is WJM’s insistence of objective morality. Personally, I would love to believe that it existed. But I haven’t seen any evidence of it. And neither has he. Yet he hangs on to it like a kid hangs on to a security blanket.

  61. 61
    Origenes says:

    Amand Jacks @60

    How can you prove that there is any truth in what you’re saying?

  62. 62
    Armand Jacks says:

    O:

    How can you prove that there is any truth in what you’re saying?

    I like your sense of humour. 🙂

  63. 63
    Macauley86 says:

    Using the same argument, the only known causes of everything we have ever seen in the entire universe are material causes.

    Material causes that only act because of specific governing parameters, which, in turn, postulate a mind. You can’t get away from the obvious conclusion.

  64. 64
    PaV says:

    Armand Jack:

    So you believe that god has no knowledge of the future?

    You either completely ‘missed’ the point I was making, or you simply ‘side-stepped’ it.

    The point clearly is that my prior knowledge of the result of a hockey game does not affect its outcomes. If hockey players have ‘free will’ before the hockey game, then they have it during the hockey game. If I know the outcome of the hockey–or if God knows the outcome of the hockey game–the ‘free will’ of the players is not affected in any way by this knowledge.

    You’re taking the position that God’s Will obviates human will. That’s a theological and moral position that needs defending. You’re not allowed to simply posit your theology like that.

  65. 65
    Armand Jacks says:

    PaV:

    If hockey players have ‘free will’ before the hockey game, then they have it during the hockey game.

    Agreed.

    If I know the outcome of the hockey–or if God knows the outcome of the hockey game–the ‘free will’ of the players is not affected in any way by this knowledge.

    But their free will can not affect the outcome of the game. Given that their entire purpose is to win the game. They might be a tad pissed off to find out that their free will can’t impact it.

  66. 66
    AnimatedDust says:

    WJM. I really am hoping you’ll respond to AJ at 52 and not leave it at 53.

  67. 67
    rvb8 says:

    ‘The Elect’, is a Protestant belief? Is that right? That before creation, those who would live in eternity with God had all ready been chosen? These are (not were, or will be), the ‘elect’.

    This being the case, and knowing (hoping), myself not to be amongst them, where is ‘free will’?

    You can not have an all ‘knowing’ God, who is everywhere, and controls everything, without removing mortal choice, or as we know it, free will.

    The point is inescapable, either God controls everything, and if He does not, He is a kind of semi-God, or more accurately, not there at all.

    And yes, WJM, please respond to Armand, @52. The chemicals in my brain have come together to reach this decision, they also are giving me a headache, as I had one too many last night; chemicals are so predictable; God is far more difficult!

  68. 68
    Armand Jacks says:

    AD:

    WJM. I really am hoping you’ll respond to AJ at 52 and not leave it at 53.

    Do you really need WJM to speak for you? If so, I suggest picking a better spokesperson. He is woefully inadequate.

  69. 69
    Macauley86 says:

    rvb8 @ 67

    I’m not sure what your point is. What does the Calvinist God have to do with the original post?

    And doesn’t materialistic atheism have a free-will problem as well?
    https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/experiments-in-philosophy/200901/can-atheist-believe-in-free-will

  70. 70
    PaV says:

    Armand Jack:

    But their free will can not affect the outcome of the game. Given that their entire purpose is to win the game. They might be a tad pissed off to find out that their free will can’t impact it.

    The atomic bomb works by the cascading of neutrons through enriched radioactive compounds. The release of ‘one’ neutron triggers the release of more than ‘one’ neutron in adjacent atoms, with an exponential release of neutrons and energy.

    Now, the release of the energy of ‘one’ neutron is minimal; but that of trillions of trillions of them is quite powerful.

    The individual ‘will’ of ‘one’ hockey player is not going to directly affect the final outcome as the final outcome is a resultant sum of every player’s ‘free will,’ just as the destructive force of an atomic bomb isn’t the result of the decay of a single atom but that of an astronomically high number of neutrons released from the entire ensemble of atoms.

  71. 71

    Animated Dust @66:

    Armand’s post #52 is written from the erroneous perspective that I have made a claim that free will exists and that I am attempting to prove or provide evidence that it does. At least, I think that’s what he’s doing, since he asks me for a scientific paper to support something he thinks is related to some claim he think’s I’ve made.

    As far as materialism not being able to ground acausal free will – that’s hardly worth debating it’s so trivially accepted and actually self-evident. That’s the whole reason materialists came up with compatibalism. I don’t know of a single materialist philosopher who claims materialism can ground true free will since it requires acausal intention as a causal property affecting the physical world. I have no idea what he means when he says “materialism cannot ground free will is a circular argument”.

    Is a materialist here going to claim that physical materials and forces cause a thing that is required to be acausal? You realize that’s self-contradictory; material forces cannot cause a thing to exist that is necessarily acausal. You get that, right? This form of free will (premised by non-materialists, not asserted or proven) literally means that it is not caused, so physical forces cannot cause it or else it cannot be acausal free will.

    It is definitionally self-evident (like “there are no married bachelors”) that libertarian or acausal free will cannot be caused to exist by material forces – or any forces, material or supernatural. If it was caused, it’s not free.

    So, materialism cannot by definition ground an acausal cause like free will. That’s not a circular argument; that’s a definitional certainty, like “there are no married bachelors”. Does Armand need evidence that there are no married bachelors?

    Now, materialism can ground an illusion (or, as Armand says, a percpetion of) of free will; it might be able to produce creatures that can pass the Turing test without actually having it; or, we might not actually have real free will, only the illusion of it as chemical forces put that sensation and idea in our head. But, materialism cannot give us actual libertarian/acausal free will because it cannot exist in a materialist world.

    But I’m not arguing about any of that. None of that is the issue I am addressing. There are logical consequences if libertarian free will does not exist. That is the issue I and others are trying (in vain) to draw Armand’s attention to – the logical consequences of an existence without libertarian free will.

    If Armand asserts that we materialism can cause libertarian/acausal free will, I challenge him to explain how the material world can cause an acausal (uncaused) phenomena.

    Since that is an absurd proposition, then I would once again ask Armand (or any other materialist) to explain what their materialist “free will” is free from. What makes materialist will “free”? How are we going to avoid the problem of being programmed or caused by physical forces to believe untrue or even absurd things?

  72. 72
    LocalMinimum says:

    AJ @ 36:

    What I meant by reduce it to a cause is to simply forget what you’re handling and just consider what it does. Black box it. Make it the output of an uninvestigable function. This does not eliminate it, of course, as you’re assuming its existence for the sake of argument if you’re looking for anything more than a vacuous contradiction leading from an a priori denial.

  73. 73
    LocalMinimum says:

    RVB8:

    Again, you’re equating omniscience and an enforcing action to omniscience alone. Omniscience alone does not produce your conundrum.

    Moreover, we can preserve free will even with God tuning everything provided God operates with “intent preserving” operations, i.e. optimizing results or even framing circumstances in such a way that it produces desirable results without compromising the character of the subjects.

  74. 74
    Armand Jacks says:

    WJM:

    Armand’s post #52 is written from the erroneous perspective that I have made a claim that free will exists and that I am attempting to prove or provide evidence that it does.

    I don’t know how anyone could jump to that conclusion from this statement:

    Whether or not god is all-knowing doesn’t change the logical fact that materialism cannot ground free will.

  75. 75
    AnimatedDust says:

    AJ @ 68:

    He doesn’t speak for me. I learn from him. His subsequent post makes perfect sense. You on the other hand, are amusing. Like a monkey in a cage, who’s sure he’s smarter than everyone, so he throws poop to show just how much. He just can’t see the cage that imprisons him, and thinks it’s not there…

  76. 76
    john_a_designer says:

    Besides freewill, atheistic materialism/naturalism cannot provide an explanation or grouding for any of following:

    1. An ultimate explanation for existence. Why does anything at all exist?

    2. An explanation for the nature of existence. Why does the universe appear to exhibit teleology, or design and purpose?

    3. A sufficient foundation for truth, knowledge and meaning.

    4. A sufficient foundation for moral values and obligations.

    Compared to any form of theism (including non-religious philosophical forms of theism) atheistic M/N is not the best explanation for our existence. Any form of atheistic M/N leads to any infinite regress which cannot be proven to be true scientifically, metaphysically or logically. Oh sure you can claim there is a contingent explanation but that explanation will always need another contingent explanation and so on and so on… It is logically impossible for atheist to reach any kind of ultimate explanation– that’s impossible. The only option for someone who believes in atheistic M/N is to accept it by faith. That seems like a very irrational kind of faith, especially since atheists make the pretense of rejecting faith.

  77. 77
    kairosfocus says:

    F/N: The endless loop of rhetorical talking points continues while side-stepping the comparative difficulties challenge.

    As one aspect, I see the turnabout projection, oh yes I may be in self-referential incoherence, but you need to get your side to admit much the same. Which, takes advantage of thread jumping the discussion so that it is not readily seen that after showing why evo mat scientism (and fellow travellers) invariably ends in self refutation as a chance and mechanical necessity driven computational substrate is simply not carrying out a rational, insight driven ground-consequent process but a blind causal chain, the alternative is sought starting from recognising that just to have a responsible, reason-driven, meaningful discussion we must be significantly free.

    So, as we obviously cannot avoid such discussion, on pain of reduction to absurdity, we must accept the massive evidence of agency. Indeed, even those who are trying to talk us out of such a view implicitly assume that we have an inner voice of conscience urging us to the truth and the right, and that if we can at least find something appearing to be that, we are moved towards it. Never mind that on evo mat and fellow traveller schemes, such is viewed as a convenient delusion to be manipulated to gain the advantage. (So, you wondered about the rise of cultural marxist identity-victim politics, astro turfed agit prop movements, turning every body they disagree with into a “fascist” and linked media shadow show narratives? No prizes for guessing why and how they came to be so dominant, post Frankfurt School, post the subsequent rise of so-called Critical Studies and post the the rise of the Alinsky Chicago School of Community Organisers. Tut, tut, how naive we have been, Plato warned about this sort of strategy 2350+ years ago in The Laws, Bk X.)

    By contrast, a sounder approach then proceeds to address, what sort of world must we inhabit if we are to be significantly free, self-moved responsible and rational agents? Notice, it BUILDS on recognising a self evident reality and then proceeds to use coherence at worldview level as a crucial guiding light, applying comparative difficulties and grand inference to best explanation (which brings up, that’s how question-begging . . . the failed rhetorical gambit in the other thread . . . is resolved). Which of course is why this approach is far more likely to be coherent.

    This is where the IS-OUGHT gap becomes pivotal, as post Hume et al, it is clear that these can only be properly fused at world root level. That calls for a root-level IS that inherently is capable of grounding ought. So, let’s clip that other thread that was run away from, at 219.

    Pardon, necessary length to be responsible rather than playing at mere rhetorical sniping:

    219
    kairosfocusApril 12, 2017 at 9:23 pm (Edit)

    FFT6B: At 178 above, we looked at a key question for comparative difficulties analysis:

    What sort of world do we have to live in for there to be creatures like us?

    This surfaces a key issue, that two truths x and y must be such that we never have y = NOT-x; that is in a coherent world all true statements — those that accurately describe facets of reality — will be mutually compatible. I note this, fully recognising that for many, this is actually quite a difficult point today; as, various ideologies have led to a conflation of truth with perception or opinion. Hence, a conversation I had today that turned on the concept, “my truth.” Language decay is an old problem, and Orwell pointed out what could be done through new-speak and double-talk. How many are two plus two, Mr Smith?

    My answer was and is, that we already have perfectly adequate words for opinions and perceptions; so, there is no need to corrupt the meaning of the precious or even vital word, truth. The truth — as Ari noted long ago in Metaphysics 1011b — says of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not.

    This in turn brings us to the question of being and non-being, of possible and impossible being, of contingent and necessary being. Thus, of causal roots of the world, of reality. And it points to the issue of possible worlds: comprehensive enough descriptions of how things could be or are.

    Impossible beings such as a square circle cannot exist in any possible world. As, core characteristics stand in mutual contradiction and cannot hold of the same thing, X, under the same circumstances. Here, squarishness and circularity.

    By contrast, possible beings could exist in at least one possible world. Contingent ones would not do so in all possible worlds but would exist in at least one. I think, in 100 years there will be unicorns, as biotech will be there and people will be willing to pay to have one. Just as we seem to be seeing ever more miniature sized horses already.

    Necessary beings must exist in any possible world, as they are frameworking requisites of a world existing. For instance, two-ness or distinct identity (equivalent) must be there for a distinct world to be. This is non-trivial, as distinct identity has three immediate corollaries: Law of Identity, Law of Excluded Middle, Law of Non-Contradiction.

    That is, core logic is built into any possible world; including of course the logic of structure and quantity, i.e. mathematical realities. (NB: We already see here, a key reason for the awesome power of Mathematics in our world and especially in scientific work. [So much for the sneer that this thread has little or no relevance to Science.])

    Back to us, as being able to significantly freely discuss our concerns responsibly and rationally, and having an inner compass-sense that insistently points to the truth and the right — conscience.

    What sort of world must this be to allow such. and what must be in its frameworking structure?

    First, we already saw that the denial of responsible, rational, significant freedom lets grand delusion loose and instantly ends in absurdity. Self-evidently, this is a world in which responsibly rational and significantly free, morally governed creatures are possible and in fact actual.

    That’s already a huge result and it sweeps away all worldviews — their name is legion — that are incompatible with such creatures. This of course includes evolutionary materialistic scientism, its fellow travellers, radical subjectivism and radical relativism. (Cf. the chain of comments here on, above.)

    Next, we face the implication of the IS-OUGHT gap, on many levels. A world with moral government has to be such that OUGHT is well-rooted in the fabric and framework of reality. Post Hume et al and post Euthyphro et al, that can only be in the very root of reality, i.e. there must be a necessary being that so fuses IS-ness and OUGHT-ness, that they are inextricably entangled in the roots of reality.

    What sort of being is capable of such?

    The answer is utterly challenging, and I have long thought it is best posed in light of comparative difficulties and worldview level inference to the best candidate explanation.

    We need to look at serious candidates (as opposed to something like a flying spaghetti monster, which will not be a necessary being — made up from bits and pieces, i.e. composite.)

    There is just one serious candidate, after centuries of debate: the inherently good Creator God, a necessary and maximally great being, worthy of loyalty and the responsible, reasonable service of doing the good in accord with our evident nature (thus, the law of our nature).

    This is not an arbitrary imposition, if you doubt, simply put up a viable alternative: ________ (this is after all comparative difficulties analysis).

    Prediction: hard to do.

    This also has a further highly relevant implication. For a serious candidate necessary being will either be impossible as a square circle is, or else it will be possible thus would exist in at least one world. And, as it would be a frameworking reality, it would be present in every possible world, including our own — an actual world. (And yes, I am not saying THE actual world.)

    The God of ethical theism as described, is a serious candidate [e.g. NB’s have no beginning or end, are eternal]. This means that God is either impossible as a square circle is impossible, or he is actual. And decades ago, the problem of evils used to be trotted out to make that argument, but that option is effectively dead post-Plantinga and in fact post Boethius.

    Then, too, if one claims to be an atheist or agnostic, s/he implies knowing good reason to doubt or dismiss the God of ethical theism as impossible even as a square circle is impossible. It would be interesting to hear what such a reason is: _______ (esp. post, problem of evils as a serious view as opposed to a handy piece of intimidatory rhetoric).

    So, now, we are at a very important threshold, the God of ethical theism is on the table as a serious candidate necessary being, root of reality that grounds a world in which responsibly and rationally free creatures such as ourselves are possible and indeed actual.

    That is a momentous turning-point, and it would be interesting to see if we will hear of the viable alternatives, including reasons why such a God is an impossible being.

    Yup, the argument is put on the table, and objectors are invited, twice, to put up a serious alternative. Unsurprisingly, ducked.

    No prizes for guessing that, that’s because the discussion circle in the penumbra of attack sites and associated private forums does not have a handy refutation or link to such.

    That’s also why the dismissal tactics above are in play.

    We are dealing with agit prop in support of a manipulative, decades long now ruinous civilisational march of folly, now reaching flash-point at Berkeley.

    If we are going to successfully step back from the cliff-edge, we are going to have to take the time to use our responsible rational freedom to understand and respond by moving towards the truth and the right.

    Where, time is running out.

    KF

  78. 78
    kairosfocus says:

    Macauley86, 69: The attempt is being made to suggest that the major alternative worldview available to us, ethical theism, does not make good sense, runs into similar difficulties with freedom. Hence my response to thread jumping just now, on one track of the discussion. On the other track, I have already pointed to the videotape analogy. If you have a tape of a game and watch it, does your knowledge of how the game plays out rob the players of their agency and freedom of action? Patently, no. Just so, God uses his sovereign power to enable us to be creatures capable of love — the pivot of the virtues; which requires radical freedom. In that context, God is also beyond temporality and so has the tape in hand so to speak. That does not rob us of our ability to love and thus to really be able to choose. So, we need to challenge objectors: are we genuinely able to love? To answer no is absurd given, say, mothers. To recognise the reality of love implies that we have to face radical freedom, genuine self-moved agency, responsibility and rationality. Thence, the crucial challenge: what sort of world enables creatures like that? KF

    PS: Back on focal topic, designers as observed give every appearance of agency. And, even though the design inference, strictly does not require a commitment on this point, people who instinctively or upon reflection recognise it, will be much more open to see that there are strong, empirically reliable signs of intelligently directed configuration, such as functionally specific, complex organisation and associated information (which I sum up FSCO/I for short). Then, when we look at a world of life based on DNA carrying text expressing coded algorithms and data, we will be far more willing to see it for what it is and where it points. Likewise when we see a cosmos that is fine tuned in ways that support c-chemistry, aqueous medium cell based life.

  79. 79
    kairosfocus says:

    WJM, 71: Well said — as usual. KF

  80. 80
    kairosfocus says:

    JAD, 76: You too. Notice, how scarce objectors are in these parts these days — when they are perfectly free, even invited to come here and substantially refute us? (Don’t forget, the UD pro-darwinism essay challenge is still open after I forget how many years. Apart from an unsatisfactory composite after a year and apart from Wiki as stand-in, there has been a strange want of objectors wishing to pony up with a 6,000 word or so essay that can link copiously but needs to make the case in a nutshell.) KF

  81. 81
    Origenes says:

    Armand Jacks: … the only known causes of everything we have ever seen in the entire universe are material causes.

    I have news for you: matter is directed by immaterial laws of nature.

    Theoretical physicist Paul Davies recently wrote:

    There has long been a tacit assumption that the laws of physics were somehow imprinted on the universe at the outset, and have remained immutable thereafter.

    Davies goes on to acknowledge that there is no bottom-up explanation, from the level of say bosons, for the laws of nature, since such an explanation should be expected to give rise to innumerable different ever-changing laws — different circumstances, different laws.
    But this is not what we find. Again, Paul Davies:

    Physical processes, however violent or complex, are thought to have absolutely no effect on the laws. There is thus a curious asymmetry: physical processes depend on laws but the laws do not depend on physical processes. Although this statement cannot be proved, it is widely accepted. …

    Where do the “physical” laws come from?

    Davies: Trying to explain the origin of the amazing laws of physics may lie beyond the scientific enterprise, and at the end of the day we may just have to accept them as an unexplained mystery. …
    What is the origin of these laws? Why do they have the form that they do, as opposed to a limitless number of other forms?

    Indeed. And a naturalistic answer is not forthcoming. Looking for it is even considered “unscientific”. Davies:

    But what are these ultimate laws and where do they come from? Such questions are often dismissed as being pointless or even unscientific. As the cosmologist Sean Carroll has written, “There is a chain of explanations concerning things that happen in the universe, which ultimately reaches to the fundamental laws of nature and stops… at the end of the day the laws are what they are… And that’s okay. I’m happy to take the universe just as we find it.”

    So how do the laws work? How are they enforced? Cosmologist Joel Primack, a cosmologist once posed the question:

    “What is it that makes the electrons continue to follow the laws?”

    Indeed, what power compels physical objects to follow the laws of nature?
    – – – –
    See also W J Murray #23

  82. 82

    Can anyone explain to me what Armand means in #74? Is he being sarcastic – does he think the quoted statement of mine is, or implies, a claim that free will factually exists, or that I’m trying to support such a claim with evidence? Or is he saying that I was clear in that statement that that I was making no such claim?

    I can’t see how the statement he quoted has anything at all to do with the question of whether or not I have asserted and am arguing that free will exists. Seriously, can someone explain it to me?

    Is it just me, or is everyone else here clear that I’m only arguing about the logical consequences of materialism and how – logically – such a state would disallow true free will, and also explaining the devastating consequential effects such a state would have with regards to our existence if we do not have acausal free will?

  83. 83
    john_a_designer says:

    I think your logic and argument is “airtight” WJM. Either AJ doesn’t understand logic or he doesn’t respect it.

    From what I can see for AJ and most of our other regular interlocutors, winning is being able to either to deflect from, derail or shut down the discussion and debate. So when you try to reason with them they don’t see it as an offer to play fair but an opportunity to obstruct and obfuscate. Again if they are able undermine the discussion in any way they see that as winning.

    Apparently, Armand Jacks is latest incarnation of a sock puppet who keeps showing up here. I keep wondering about this:

    http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-629372

    Is that true? If it’s not why hasn’t he said anything? If it is, we are pretty much wasting our time trying to reason with him. Again, he apparently doesn’t really understand or respect reason, let alone have any respect for his fellow man.

    It doesn’t take much intelligence, talent or skill to do what AJ is doing. However, it does require being dishonest, disingenuous and unethical– something most people recognize as morally wrong. Sadly AJ’s behavior is something we are seeing more and more of in our society, especially on the internet.

  84. 84

    Andrew @ 46: Well said!

  85. 85
    Florabama says:

    “‘The Elect’, is a Protestant belief? Is that right? That before creation, those who would live in eternity with God had all ready been chosen? These are (not were, or will be), the ‘elect’.”

    rvb8, I would say that election/predestination, is biblical idea that found its resurrection in the Protestant Reformation, at least in regard to understanding it as a refutation of man’s ability to choose God via man’s own free will. Predestination/election is, and has always been, found in all versions, translations and ancient texts that make up the Bible.

    How people understand it, is different across denominations with Roman Catholics rejecting it for the reasons you describe, and various other denominations accepting or rejecting it to one degree or another, so one can still be “Christian,” and reject the idea that predestination overrides man’s free will, but the fact remains that people who claim a felicity to the Bible, must do something with the verses that touch on it. Explanations range from, “those verses are just talking about God making the Hebrews His ‘chosen’ people,” to a fully fatalistic belief that, as you put it, raises the question, “where is the free will?”

    The fact remains that there are many verses that speak to God choosing “before the foundation of the world.” If you are interested, Bible Gateway offers a search function. Search the words, “chose, chosen, elect, election and predestined,” to see the how pervasively the idea runs through scripture. It’s in nearly every book of the NT. https://www.biblegateway.com

    Here is one of the more famous passages: Ephesians 1:3-14 (NIV)

    “3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. 4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace 8 that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, 9 he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, 10 to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.

    11 In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, 12 in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. 13 And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.”

    Yes, passages like this open up a can of worms, and your question below, nails it.

    “This being the case, and knowing (hoping), myself not to be amongst them, where is ‘free will’?”

    My answer is a simple one — dead men don’t have ANY will — free or otherwise. If the Bible is a consistent continuum, from beginning to end, and I believe it is, we all died in the garden. The joke is, “Adam, you had one job!” And you blew it.

    I know, I know. You’re not dead, right? You’re a living breathing organism.

    In answer to this valid objection, I would say first, far smarter men and women than me have wrestled with the implications of these verses, and as far as I’m concerned, none of them have solved the mystery that you have hit upon.

    As for me, I’m content to understand it as a spiritual reality. Adam was made to live forever physically and spiritually. When he sinned, he died spiritually (with death being synonymous with being separated from God) and he began to die physically. l think most people have a intuitive understanding that death is foreign to us as human beings. When someone dies, it shocks us, even though we know it is inevitable. I believe we still retain the ancient understanding, although its been long reduced to a shadow, that human beings should not die.

    Man was created to be in eternal communion with his creator. This fits with what we see. Man is far different than any other creature. Man was the pinnacle of God’s creation. Man was made, “like God,” with a spiritual, mental, moral, volitional, creative, component like no other creature. No other creature is like man. There is still a chasm between man and his closest animal relatives. There is no evolutionary explanation for this.

    Anyway, my simple answer, that I have become comfortable with, is that, after the fall, God HAD TO choose those who would be “made alive.” If you invented a miraculous medicine that brought the dead back to life, and you brought it to your brother’s funeral, and set it on the edge of the open casket, and said, “take it brother, and you will be alive again,” your brother would still lay dead for all eternity.

    The only way for your miracle medicine to work on your dead brother, would be for you to force it into his cells, cell by cell, until all the cells were finally reanimated.

    I believe that’s what happened when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, Jesus was giving us an illustration of what He has done for those whom He has chosen to live, and of course, Jesus’ own resurrection was among other things, a “victory over death,” which is the great hope of those of us who look to Christ. Death is not the end for us. When we are “born again,” we are born into a life that will go on forever, physically and spiritually, and in every other way, I believe. But a “new birth” is necessary because we are dead, and because we are dead, we cannot choose the medicine that will reanimate our cells. We must be made alive to live. We must be born “from above.” It is interesting to me that with all of our modern scientific prowess, life only comes from life, and I think that applies to spiritual life as well.

    And yes, that opens another whole can of worms. Is God a monster because He doesn’t choose all, to which I give the same answer, Paul gave:

    “10 Not only that, but Rebekah’s children were conceived at the same time by our father Isaac. 11 Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad—in order that God’s purpose in election might stand: 12 not by works but by him who calls—she was told, “The older will serve the younger.” 13 Just as it is written: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”

    14 What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! 15 For he says to Moses,

    “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
    and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”
    16 It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.” Romans 9:10-16 (NIV)

    God does not need my approval to do as He chooses with His creation. He is God and we are His creatures. Whether we understand God’s purposes is another question. I don’t for a second claim to understand God’s purposes, but I do believe that God is good, and God’s good purpose for me is beyond my wildest imagination.

    As far as your last point,

    “You can not have an all ‘knowing’ God, who is everywhere, and controls everything, without removing mortal choice, or as we know it, free will.

    The point is inescapable, either God controls everything, and if He does not, He is a kind of semi-God, or more accurately, not there at all.”

    I think you are absolutely right, and the view that God is sort of a half human demigod like the Greek gods, is a grave error. God is bigger than we can ever imagine. Take a look at the scale of just our solar system. http://joshworth.com/dev/pixel.....ystem.html

    The universe with all its billions of galaxies, was just tossed out from the fingertips of God (figuratively of course). Why would you think that God and His purposes could be understood by our puny brains or that He even wants us to understand them? When we have created a god that we can understand, we have created a tiny god in our own image. There are things that we will probably never understand even in eternity. I’m ok with that, but God has given us much we can understand, and what we can understand is enough to know that there is a God who cares about us and has redeemed a race of people to fulfill His original purposes of creation. I am glad that I will be among them.

  86. 86
    mk says:

    lets say that scientists will create a robot with a living traits like self replication and may contain even DNA. i guess we may all agree that this kind of speciel robot will be evidence for design and not a natural process like evolution. if so: why not human itself that have the same traits?

  87. 87
    PaV says:

    Armand Jack:

    You apparently missed the point of my last post. If there were only ONE player in a hockey game, then either there will be a ‘tie,’ or there will be a ‘win.’ If it’s a scoring player, since his ‘intention’ is to score–his ‘free will’ has chosen to do this–then he will score since there is no goalie to stop him. He can score as many times as he likes.

    OTOH, if the player is a ‘goalie’, then no one can score against him–which, presumably, is the ‘choice’ he has made using his ‘free will’. The result is a tie: 0 – 0.

    However, when a game involves multiple players, each exercising their own ‘free will,’ then conflicts arise, and split-second decisions are made, and the result is somewhat in question (unless the Russian hockey team is playing Miami high school).

    IOW, no one person, in a game that involves multiple persons, determines the outcome: it is a ‘summation’ of all the individual ‘free will’ decisions the players make (and, of course, luck [bad bounce off the board]).

    In physics, it is virtually impossible to know the exact movements of a particular gas molecule; however, the statistical average of an ensemble of gas molecules can be known.

    So, we’re back to where we started: knowing the outcome of a game does not vitiate the free will of the players.

  88. 88
    harry says:

    Florabama @ 85

    How people understand it, is different across denominations with Roman Catholics rejecting it for the reasons you describe, and various other denominations accepting or rejecting it to one degree or another, so one can still be “Christian,” and reject the idea that predestination overrides man’s free will, but the fact remains that people who claim a felicity to the Bible, must do something with the verses that touch on it. Explanations range from, “those verses are just talking about God making the Hebrews His ‘chosen’ people,” to a fully fatalistic belief that, as you put it, raises the question, “where is the free will?”

    Those who are guided by the Bible regarding predestination need to take into consideration the following regarding our free will:

    The man who has sinned is the one who must die; a son is not to suffer for the sins of his father, nor a father for the sins of his son.

    To the upright man his integrity will be credited, to the wicked his wickedness. But if the wicked man renounces all the sins he has committed, respects my laws and is law-abiding and honest, he will certainly live; he will not die. All the sins he committed will be forgotten from then on; he shall live because of the integrity he has practised.

    What! Am I likely to take pleasure in the death of a wicked man – it is the Lord Yahweh who speaks – and not prefer to see him renounce his wickedness and live?

    But if the upright man renounces his integrity, commits sin, copies the wicked man and practises every kind of filth, is he to live? All the integrity he has practised shall be forgotten from then on; but this is because he himself has broken faith and committed sin, and for this he shall die.

    But you object, “What the Lord does is unjust”. Listen, you House of Israel: is what I do unjust? Is it not what you do that is unjust? When the upright man renounces his integrity to commit sin and dies because of this, he dies because of the evil that he himself has committed. When the sinner renounces sin to become law-abiding and honest, he deserves to live. He has chosen to renounce all his previous sins; he shall certainly live; he shall not die.
    — Ezekiel 18:21-28

    The Lord is not slow about his promise as some count slowness, but is forbearing toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
    — 2 Peter 3:9

    This is good, and it is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
    — 1 Timothy 2:3-4

    However one understands predestination, one should assume that it is one’s own choices that will determine how one spends eternity. One should never assume that it was the will of God that they be lost.

  89. 89
    john_a_designer says:

    In the same way that WJM argues that there is no way that materialism can logically ground human freewill, there is also no way for atheistic materialism to provide an ultimate explanation for the universes’ existence or for our existence. Some atheists will try to argue that the universe could be the ultimate explanation for its own existence (it has always existed) therefore we don’t need to appeal any kind of eternally-existing transcendent intelligent creator (God.) However, even setting aside the glaring problems caused by big-bang cosmology, there are intrinsic logical problems with the idea that the universe could be the ultimate explanation for everything that exists. The giveaway is the word could. If it is possible that it could be the ultimate explanation, it is also possible that it could not.

    Putting the problem in more technical terms, everything we know about the universe is contingent– stars, planets, rocks, trees, petunias and people etc. are all contingent (their existence was caused by something else.) Can a finite collection of contingent things be non-contingent or necessary? That leaves us with a logical dilemma: as long as it is possible for the universe to be contingent it is not logically necessary for it to be ontologically necessary.

    However, there is nothing logically impossible that a necessary (or self-existing) being actually exists, nor that it is logically necessary for it to be ontologically necessary. Clearly there would be no question such a being would be the ultimate explanation for the existence of everything else. (I am not arguing that this proves that such a being exists.) However, it should be obvious that there is nothing that we know about the universe that requires us to think that it is logically necessary to conceive of it as the ultimate explanation for the existence of everything including itself.

    With that in mind how do we now evaluate Armand Jack’s knock down single proposition “argument?”

    “the only known causes of everything we have ever seen in the entire universe are material causes.”

    A home run? Or a swing and a miss?

  90. 90

    JAD,

    With that in mind how do we now evaluate Armand Jack’s knock down single proposition “argument?”

    “the only known causes of everything we have ever seen in the entire universe are material causes.”

    A home run? Or a swing and a miss?

    It assumes its conclusion (against evidence to the contrary). It’s as simple as that.

  91. 91
    Phinehas says:

    GUN:

    I’m not saying that foreknowledge is causation – we agree that it isn’t. What I’ve been saying is: If – in principle – there’s a future to know – then the future is already determined.

    If you are defining “determined” in a way in which whatever is known is determined, then you’ve merely defined your way to winning the argument. But let’s run with it anyway.

    The past is known, therefore the past is determined. But what does this mean? It means the past cannot be altered at this point, but that’s not particularly surprising since choice and free will only happen in the present. When the past was present, it could have been altered via free will, in which case our knowledge about the past would be different than what it is.

    I do not see an reason why knowledge about the future must necessarily be different.

    The future is known, therefore the future is determined. But what does this mean? It means the future cannot be altered at this point, but that’s not particularly surprising since choice and free will only happen in the present. When the future is present, it could be altered via free will, in which case our knowledge about the future would be different than what it is.

    Until the above can be shown to not be the case, it cannot be claimed that free will is necessarily incompatible with foreknowledge.

  92. 92
    Axel says:

    ‘It assumes its conclusion. It’s as simple as that.’

    Another hilariously pithy ‘home run’, Upright BiPed. A bit like Dirac’s reply to a journalist’s request, could he explain it (what Dirac had just stated) in layman’s terms. Simply :’No’.

  93. 93
    Armand Jacks says:

    Phinehas:

    Until the above can be shown to not be the case, it cannot be claimed that free will is necessarily incompatible with foreknowledge.

    I’m still confused. Let’s use my Maple Leafs example again. Let’s assume that it is known that they will win Lord Stanley’s cup in 2017. If all of the players decided to exert their free will to go out for a drink rather than play the last game in the playoffs, then the future was not known. If they can’t choose to skip the game, then they have no free will.

    On a related subject, if they win the cup, I might start believing in miracles.

  94. 94
    Axel says:

    Interesting take on the atheist’s perverse kind of blindness by the great preacher, Bossuet, at the link below:

    http://aleteia.org/2017/04/17/.....tent=NL_en

  95. 95
    kairosfocus says:

    F/N: While, occasionally issues of theology, exegesis or Bible text etc come up at UD, let us remember the actual focus of this thread. Namely, a claimed knock-down answer to the design inference:

    Using the same argument, the only known causes of everything we have ever seen in the entire universe are material causes.

    Notice, BA’s response in the OP: Are blind unguided material forces capable of typing the post you just posted AJ? If you say “no” your argument is refuted. If you say “yes” you look like a fool or a liar or both.

    This is absolutely pivotal, and it seems the issue has in the main been slid away from rather than squarely faced.

    KF

  96. 96
    Armand Jacks says:

    UB:

    It assumes its conclusion (against evidence to the contrary). It’s as simple as that.

    Finally, someone got it. Of course it assumes its own conclusion. It only took two days and ~90 comments. Yet, it is the same argument used by KF and others as a so called irrefutable argument for ID.

  97. 97
    kairosfocus says:

    PS: At 22, I posed a response:

    we have seen a tangent, but one that has in it A worldview level misconception that needs some response so that we can refocus the issue.

    Here, an objector has asserted that the only acting causes are material ones. That is, he sees the cosmos in physicalist terms as blind forces of chance and mechanical necessity acting on matter and energy in space-time, such that temporality and change emerge from chance and necessity, with agency squeezed out. (We can take it that he is not implying that only the materials that things are made of act, he is implying that agency and purpose are delusional; so that directly acting actuating causes trigger change by acting on the only components of reality he will accept in chains that must in the end come out of nothing or else must span the infinite traverse of time past in steps, as already described. [Both those options imply absurdities.] He does not see the grand delusion involved in implying that his fact no 1, self-conscious, reflexive, enconscienced awareness is an illusion.)

    We are back to the problem of computational substrates and how they act. If mind be reduced to such one way or another, whether an analogue or digital or neural network wetware machine, the inherent problem is that such are simply not rational, responsible entities. They are blind, cause-effect machines driven by GIGO-limited hard and soft ware. Which itself raises the further question as to how the required FSCO/I to effect such a machine comes from. In the case of he human brain and CNS as computing substrate, there is a serious issue of the sheer lack of materials to store the info content to account for hard and soft ware in the zygote.

    And, we need to understand that patching up an analogue computer or loading coded algorithms and data structure into a digital one, or wiring up a neural network are all forms of programming that express an inescapably information-rich, GIGO-limited content unto the hardware substrate. if your ball and disk naval gunlaying analogue computer is not set up to solve the right differential equations in the right way, it will fail; something that took decades to get right. If your Pentium has some flawed instructions, it will blindly execute its microcode without caring one way or another, it is a rock that has no dreams it is just executing organised cause-effect chains, hence the famous recall. And, a neural network, too is no magic, you do not get to a functioning computational substrate for free out of lucky noise filtered by incremental differential success.

    That should have been quite evident by the times of the kelvin tide prediction tables, not too many years after Darwin’s two books came out. And as I pointed out in my remarks in the other thread, Darwin himself ran straight into the problems as can be seen from his letter to Graham:

    . . . you have expressed my inward conviction, though far more vividly and clearly than I could have done, that the Universe is not the result of chance. But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind? . . . .

    Lastly I could show fight on natural selection having done and doing more for the progress of civilisation than you seem inclined to admit. Remember what risks the nations of Europe ran, not so many centuries ago of being overwhelmed by the Turks, and how ridiculous such an idea now is. The more civilised so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilised races throughout the world.

    That should give us serious pause.

    Instead of going to grand delusion, we should be willing to acknowledge the force of empirical fact no 1, we are self-aware, reflexive, self-moved agents with causal capability in the mechanical, embodied world, such as we express when we type and post a comment in this thread.

    Then, we need to ask, what sort of world must we be living in, to make such possible.

    And I assure you, it will not be a world of blind chance and necessity only acting on matter and energy in spacetime.

    Agency with responsible, rational freedom must be recognised for itself, as step no 1. And, our understanding of empirical observation must be broad enough to recognise WHO is observing, observations do not make themselves happen out of nothing and illusions.

    Where, again, the denial of self-moved, responsibly and rationally free agency instantly leads to grand delusion and collapses into absurdity.

    The ideologically rooted, institutionalised, entrenched denial of agency is at the heart of the problems we see.

    And Darwin himself should have seen that long since.

    Unfortunately, he resorted to logic with a swivel, selectively hyperskeptical rhetoric, which failed to ask, but what does the jumped up monkey mind picture I just painted mean for my own system of thought?

    We need to ask that question, and we need to note the implications that worked out across C20, as Darwin here foresaw, even a full decade after he published Descent of Man, with the remarks in Chs 5 – 7 esp at the beginning of Ch 6.

    No wonder H G Wells (a student of Huxley, Darwin’s Bulldog as he was called) warned us in no uncertain terms in several novels, especially the very opening words of War of the Worlds:

    No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water . . . No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us . . . . looking across space with instruments, and intelligences such as we have scarcely dreamed of, they see, at its nearest distance only 35,000,000 of miles sunward of them, a morning star of hope, our own warmer planet, green with vegetation and grey with water, with a cloudy atmosphere eloquent of fertility, with glimpses through its drifting cloud wisps of broad stretches of populous country and narrow, navy-crowded seas.

    And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them at least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us. The intellectual side of man already admits that life is an incessant struggle for existence, and it would seem that this too is the belief of the minds upon Mars. Their world is far gone in its cooling and this world is still crowded with life, but crowded only with what they regard as inferior animals. To carry warfare sunward is, indeed, their only escape from the destruction that, generation after generation, creeps upon them.

    And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?

    The horrors of the past 100 years did not come out of nothing, for no reason.

    Notice, how studiously this is avoided.

  98. 98
    Armand Jacks says:

    KF:

    F/N: While, occasionally issues of theology, exegesis or Bible text etc come up at UD, let us remember the actual focus of this thread. Namely, a claimed knock-down answer to the design inference:

    Still building that strawman up higher I see. Please go to my original comment and point out where I made any such claim. You can access it from the link Barry put in the OP. Well, you could if Barry actually put a link rather than just quote mine.

    But, being the honest man that you claim to be, I’m sure that an apology, or a retraction, will follow shortly now that I have applied this corrective.

  99. 99
    Axel says:

    Interesting take on the atheist’s perverse kind of blindness by the great preacher, Bossuet, at the link below:

    http://aleteia.org/2017/04/17/.....tent=NL_en

    The constantly recurring theme of our praise, glorification, etc, of God, is not a mark of narcissism on God’s part – infinitely far from it, of course – but are means whereby we can express our love for Him. It’s taken me most of my life to understand such a simple ploy made a available to us, but which evidently has been at least unconsciously understood for millennia. In heaven, it will also be a love of our brothers and sisters in Christ, and theirs for us ! Quite self-serving in the long run, as is our adherence to our faith, anyway. But not pusillanimously inspired by ourselves !

  100. 100

    Armand, there is a vast difference when it comes to the origin of life on earth. The last science-based inference before events disappear into the forever unknown is an inference to design – an impenetrable and unambiguous inference to design.

    If materialist wish to acknowledge that inference, yet maintain their belief in materialism, that is perfectly okay — BUT — they cannot legitimately ignore the evidence, then claim science to themselves, and denigrate all those who disagree with them — as they do now. It is suicide for science.

  101. 101
    Armand Jacks says:

    UB:

    Armand, there is a vast difference when it comes to the origin of life on earth.

    How so? kF’s inference is still one that assumes its own conclusion. Just as mine was. Thank you for pointing it out. If I had have brought it out I would have been accused of projecting, or distracting, or strawmanning, or raising a red herring, whatever.

    UB, I would like to apologize to you personally for the sarcasm above. You do not deserve it. It is aimed at one or two there. You have always debated honestly.

  102. 102

    How so?

    Because:

    The last science-based inference before events disappear into the forever unknown is an inference to design – an impenetrable and unambiguous inference to design.

  103. 103
    Armand Jacks says:

    UB, an inference that assumes its own conclusion, as mine did, is not scientific. I admit it. But you are suggesting that an inference such as that repeatedly presented by KF, which also assumes its own conclusion, is scientific? I honestly don’t see how you can defend that logic.

  104. 104

    Armand,

    Life requires the ability to specify something among alternatives and instantiate that specification in a transcribable memory. The very first things that must be specified at the origin of life are the set of non-integrable constraints that are required to interpret the description. Without this, there is no life. There is no cell. There is no cell cycle. And for those married to evolution, there is no informational medium of heritable variation, and nothing to be selected. Open-ended evolutionary potential does not exist until the system can describe itself in a spatially-oriented memory (i.e. a code) and successfully interpret the description.

    We look at this and say that it seems that intelligent action is somehow necessary for life, because it is the only thing we know of that is rich enough to specify the system in this manner. But then we actually study the system from a physicalist perspective, and we find that (among all other material systems in the cosmos) the only other place we can identify such a physical system as genetic translation is in the use of language and mathematics — two unambiguous correlates of intelligence.

    I would appreciate it if you’d stop using me to attack Kairos. This is the point he is making to you.

    EDIT: By the way, the core claim of biological ID is that a universal correlate of intelligence can be detected in the origin of life on earth, That claim has been validated by physics. The empirical observations that validate the claim are not even controversial. It is hardly a case of assuming a conclusion.

  105. 105
    Phinehas says:

    AJ:

    I’m still confused. Let’s use my Maple Leafs example again. Let’s assume that it is known that they will win Lord Stanley’s cup in 2017. If all of the players decided to exert their free will to go out for a drink rather than play the last game in the playoffs, then the future was not known. If they can’t choose to skip the game, then they have no free will.

    Imagine being able to see the future in exactly the same way you see the past. Now take a look at your question above, but apply it to 2016.

    It is known that the Penguins won Lord Stanley’s cup in 2016. If all the players decided to exert their free will to go out for a drink rather than play the last game in the playoffs, then the past is not known. If they couldn’t skip the game, they had no free will.

    Does this make sense? Not really. Of course the players don’t have free will about the past now. But that doesn’t preclude them having free will when the past was present. If they had done something different, then we would know something different. Only the present is contingent, because choice only happens in the present. We only know what did happen, but that doesn’t mean there was no free will at the time.

    In a similar way, of course if the future is known in the same way we know the past then we don’t have free will concerning it now. But that doesn’t preclude us having free will when the future is present. If at that point we do something different, then that something different is what we would have pre-known. Only the present is contingent, because choice only happens in the present. We only knew what would happen, but that doesn’t mean there would be no free will at the time.

    Think of it as a bit like Heisenberg’s Uncertainty. At time t we can have choice about what happens at t but no knowledge (it’s contingent). At t+n we can have knowledge about what happened at t, but no choice about what happened at t.

    Why is it not possible that at t-n one could also have knowledge about what will happen at t, but no choice about what will happen at t?

  106. 106
    kairosfocus says:

    F/N: Of course, the above saying a dismissive but fallacious assertion over and over does not lend it the truth it never had to begin with. Instead, there is need to address the comparative difficulties challenge that is being ducked. And we need to ask: is it credible that the objecting comments were produced by blind chance and/or mechanical necessity? Patently, not. And that carries us to the heart of the design inference on tested, reliable sign. Show us a reliable case of blind forces doing what intelligently directed configuration routinely does: ___ The objector cannot properly fill that in, and he knows it, he is forced to show yet again how FSCO/I arises by design simply to try to object to it. The rhetorical resorts to dismiss actually imply the strength of the claim by revealing the weakness of the attempts to oppose it. KF

  107. 107
    Armand Jacks says:

    Phinehas, I am afraid that your argument is more about dancing around the logic than it is about presenting a logically consistent arguement. We might as well be talking about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

    You can’t treat the future in the same way we do the past. With respect to the past we know what happened and (potentially) all of the decisions made by individuals that led up to the past event. Even though the past is known, we can’t infer from this that the people involved did not have free will.

    However, if the future is known, with the same accuracy that we know the past, we can’t infer that the people involved, will have free will. Every human made event is dependent on the decisions of the people linked and leading up to that event.

    Let’s keep this as simple as possible. Let’s assume that it is known that you will kill KF on Friday in a homosexual lovers dispute. If you kill him, what free will did you have? If you dont kill him, then the knowledge of the future is flawed.

  108. 108
    Armand Jacks says:

    KF:

    Of course, the above saying a dismissive but fallacious assertion over and over does not lend it the truth it never had to begin with. Blah, blah, blah.

    BS. An inference is either logically sound or it is not. Putting a bunch of words around it does not change this. Since my inference is identical to yours, just seen from the opposite side, either they are both logically sound or they are not. It has already been pointed out by UB that mine assumes it’s own conclusion. Which it does. As does yours.

    Now, I expect a response with a bunch of accusations, followed by a cut and pasta fest that would put Bornagain77 to shame. But none of that changes the fact that the inference you have been using for years is fatally flawed.

  109. 109
    Florabama says:

    Harry @ 88, I agree with you. Joseph’s brothers tried to murder him and then sold him into slavery where he ended up in prison for years before being named Pharaoh’s second in command where he was able to save fledgling Israel from starving to death. When he saw his brothers again for the first since they betrayed him, he said, “you meant it for evil but God meant it for good.” (Gen 50:20). Their actions were still evil and they were still accountable for their evil at the same time God was sovereignly using the situation for His own purposes.

    This is beyond human understanding.

  110. 110
    AnimatedDust says:

    AJ at 103:

    Is it possible that the rules you depend on to reach your conclusion in this post are purposely constructed so as to allow any theory, even untestable, to be fair game, but not “God” (as you understand the term and apply it to your worldview) so as not to “allow a divine foot in the door?” You’ve been really honest and forthright a few times in this thread.

    But are you Lewontin honest?

    IOW, does the playbook you adhere to possibly proscribe the conclusions KF reaches?

    If you declare his conclusions outside the realm of acceptable thought, i.e. outside of science, you are relieved from any substantive retort, no?

    Is that the slightest bit possible?

  111. 111
    goodusername says:

    Phinehas,

    If you are defining “determined” in a way in which whatever is known is determined, then you’ve merely defined your way to winning the argument.

    Close – I would say that, in principle, if the future is “knowable”, than it is determined.

    That’s an important distinction, because I’ve seen many people (some here at UD) who recognize the problem I’m describing and try to work around it by saying that God grants us free will by purposely limiting his own foreknowledge of what we will choose.

    Putting aside the issue of whether an omniscient Being can choose to not have certain knowledge, that doesn’t address the issue, IMO, because that wouldn’t mean that the future isn’t determined, it would merely mean that God has chosen not to know what it is that has already been determined.

    On a side note, I think from a logical standpoint, it may not be contradictory to say that God doesn’t know the future, and yet is still omniscient, since omniscience means “knowing all there is know” – and if the future hasn’t yet been determined yet, then there is nothing to actually know.

    The future is known, therefore the future is determined. But what does this mean? It means the future cannot be altered at this point, but that’s not particularly surprising since choice and free will only happen in the present. When the future is present, it could be altered via free will, in which case our knowledge about the future would be different than what it is.

    Until the above can be shown to not be the case, it cannot be claimed that free will is necessarily incompatible with foreknowledge.

    I think it’s trivially simple to show that the above is not the case. It’s a self-contradictory statement to say that God knows that “X” will occur tomorrow, and thus it’s determined that X will occur tomorrow, but that that doesn’t mean that X will occur tomorrow.

  112. 112
    AnimatedDust says:

    GUN @111: I just don’t have a problem with seeing omniscience as limiting free choice. What am I missing? Can’t you know the future without causing it, thereby limiting free will?

  113. 113
    Armand Jacks says:

    AD:

    You’ve been really honest and forthright a few times in this thread.

    Thank you for the good words. Actually, I have always been honest. Not always convincing, but honest.

    IOW, does the playbook you adhere to possibly proscribe the conclusions KF reaches?

    No. KF’s lack of logical consistency proscribes his conclusions. I only pointed it out. Using the same rules and logic as he does.

  114. 114
    goodusername says:

    AnimatedDust,

    GUN @111: I just don’t have a problem with seeing omniscience as limiting free choice. What am I missing? Can’t you know the future without causing it, thereby limiting free will?

    I’m not sure if you’re missing anything. I have stated several times, though, that foreknowledge doesn’t mean causation. OTOH a consequence of foreknowledge is determinism.

    There are many that would argue that determinism is compatible with free will for the reason you just gave – i.e. compatibilism – but that seems to be dirty word for many at UD, which I find a bit odd since, IMO, the worldview of most here pretty much demands it. I’m not sure that compatibilism is necessarily wrong, but it does lead to some strange consequences – such as your free choices being determined before you were even born.

  115. 115
    LocalMinimum says:

    People are getting their agents and their observers confused. If the agent is the observer, then knowing what you’re necessarily going to do before you to decide to do it….well, actually, that is pretty weird, but maybe it’s weird in an infinite causal chain/first cause sort of way rather than a necessary contradiction?

    In any case, it’s unnecessary to consider in this case, as our omniscient observer and our free will endowed observed agent are separate.

  116. 116
    kairosfocus says:

    AD, our freedom is substantial but limited. We need to be very clear that without substantial responsible rational freedom, we can neither be rational nor morally governed. A key test is, can we love? __________ . If one says, not, then I think our mothers have somewhat to say to us. If so, love requires freedom. From that we can then ponder the various worldview challenges with a more balanced stance. KF

  117. 117
    kairosfocus says:

    F/N: it seems that somewone above refuses to recognise that, first, we must be significantly and responsibly free to be rational and morally governed.

    Then, he repeatedly fails to attend to a simple technological fact that has been discussed in this and other threads but consistently ducked: no computational substrate is a rational entity in itself. it is merely a glorified, GIGO-limited calculator or estimator using analogue and/or digital signal processing to generate outputs on inputs plus noise and stochastic behaviour.

    As a reminder, I again call attention to Reppert, which is being consistently adroitly side-stepped:

    . . . let us suppose that brain state A, which is token identical to the thought that all men are mortal, and brain state B, which is token identical to the thought that Socrates is a man, together cause the belief that Socrates is mortal. It isn’t enough for rational inference that these events be those beliefs, it is also necessary that the causal transaction be in virtue of the content of those thoughts . . . [[But] if naturalism is true, then the propositional content is irrelevant to the causal transaction that produces the conclusion, and [[so] we do not have a case of rational inference. In rational inference, as Lewis puts it, one thought causes another thought not by being, but by being seen to be, the ground for it. But causal transactions in the brain occur in virtue of the brain’s being in a particular type of state that is relevant to physical causal transactions.

    So, first, any such objector advocating evolutionary materialistic scientism and fellow travellers needs to explain and justify how he can appeal to logic on his worldview foundations: ____________

    The persistent side-stepping of this crucial issue shows beyond doubt that they have no cogent answer, they just want to ride piggyback on our recognition that we are in fact responsibly and rationally free.

    Even, as they try to manipulate that recognition to undermine our understanding of what sort of world we must inhabit for that to be so.

    The incoherence and in the end utterly amoral or even nihilistic manipulativeness are patent.

    The only answer to such is to consistently call their attention and that of onlookers tot his fallacious tactic, and to insist that the issue be frankly faced, on pain of drawing very stringent conclusions about those who indulge such cynical rhetoric.

    Remember, such play by the reprobate’s rule, if I can get away with it, it is “good” enough and “true” enough.

    Meanwhile, they will try to project irrationality and worse to those who challenge them. As we have repeatedly seen.

    Game over.

    KF

  118. 118
    kairosfocus says:

    F/N2: Now, back on focal topic, we have clear evidence that FSCO/I is routinely and reliably produced by intelligently directed configuration, aka design. We have every good reason to understand that computational substrates are actually incapable of rational contemplation, insight and resulting rational inference, never mind repeated bare assertions to the contrary. By abduction on empirically tested reliable signs (trillions of cases in point) we can safely infer that FSCO/I is a signature of design. this would not even be controversial, apart from one issue: the living cell is based on copious coded text in its DNA, a linguistic phenomenon. this strongly supports the inference that the living cell is designed, and that is backed up by the further fact that a self replication facility per von Neumann, requires further FSCO/I. As we look above, we see no cogent counter-example to this, just sophistry that tries to divert us from this straightforward inference. So, we can see the issue is not science, but worldview-driven ideology and socio-cultural agendas tied to evolutionary materialistic scientism and associated fellow traveller ideologies. Going further, we can see that the search challenge posed by FSCO/I leads to a very good reason for our observations. namely, blind search on sol system or cosmic scale is not a credible means of finding FSCO/I rich islands of function in a large config space beyond 500 – 1,000 bits. Again no counter-examples are forthcoming. going yet further, our observed cosmos shows itself to be fine tuned in ways that support C-Chemistry, aqueous medium cell based life. All of this points to coherent purpose behind the cosmos, which is exactly what evo mat advocates do not want us to even think about. the problem is not scientific at root, it is ideological, given that there has been a clear domination of science and culture alike by that inherently self-refuting and amoral ideology. It has to be answered on several levels, but the first and pivotal one is that of how science works through inductive reasoning and what the observations that ground the design inference point to. And, we must not allow ourselves to be distracted from this. KF

  119. 119
    StephenB says:

    Armand Jacks

    What I am arguing is that you can’t have an all knowing god and free will.

    Strictly speaking, God does not “foreknow,” God simply knows because He is outside of time. In other words, it is more accurate to say that God knows what *is* not what is *going to be.* Everything is in the present to Him. That is why His knowledge (which we informally — and inaccurately — characterize as foreknowledge) does not determine the future that we experience in time. We are free will causal agents because God made us that way. Indeed, God knew you were going to write that sentence, but He didn’t cause you to write it. There is no causal connection between God’s knowing and our doing. Put simply, God’s knowledge of how we use our free will does not prevent its exercise in any way.

  120. 120
    Origenes says:

    Boethius’ solution: God knows our future choices because He can see the past, present and future from a timeless vantage point:

    [excerpt:]

    The Boethian account has been defended by John Wesley and C. S. Lewis, and it is also popular among Christian laypeople. Strangely, most Christian theologians have rejected the Boethian account for a variety of reasons, none of which I find convincing.

    According to the Boethian account, God timelessly knows everything we will do, but He is still dependent on us for this information: from His timeless standpoint, He has to “see” – or more accurately, be informed of – what we in fact decide to do. Certain theologians object to the notion of God’s depending on creatures for anything. In reply, it could be argued that this “limitation” is self-imposed: in creating free agents, God timelessly chooses to rely on them for His knowledge of what they do.

    Another point that needs to be made in this context is that God’s depending on others for information is actually a perfection on that God’s part, rather than an imperfection. For this dependency is what enables intercessory prayer to occur. Prayer is a conversation between two parties: God and the creature praying to Him. If God is pulling the strings, either by making us act (and pray) as we do, then we are not really conversing with Him, and His responsiveness to His creatures’ needs cannot be made manifest.

    Vincent J. Torley

  121. 121
    Origenes says:

    Armand Jacks: … Since my inference is identical to yours, just seen from the opposite side, either they are both logically sound or they are not. It has already been pointed out by UB that mine assumes it’s own conclusion. Which it does. As does yours.

    When the design inference speaks of ‘one known cause’ it does so wrt causal adequacy. So, it speaks of the one known cause that can account for a particular effect.
    In your “inference” there is no such relationship to the effect. Your “inference” is the unproven claim that we know just one cause (period) — irrespective of causal adequacy.

    Both philosophers of science and leading historical scientists have emphasized causal adequacy as the key criterion by which competing hypotheses are judged. But philosophers of science have insisted that assessments of explanatory power lead to conclusive inferences only when there is just one known cause for the effect or evidence.
    [Stephen Meyer]

  122. 122
    kairosfocus says:

    Origines, hence my double emphasis on the inductive pattern and the analysis of search challenge. Let’s see if some light bulbs will go on. KF

  123. 123
    kairosfocus says:

    SB & O: Hence the video tape analogy I made at crude level. KF

  124. 124
    mugwump3 says:

    Reading through all of the above posts, I get the old familiar feeling that hardly anyone really understands the Augustinian/Calvinist/Lutheran/Pauline/biblical understanding of free will. As a proponent of said understanding, the key issue is not over whether man has a free will, but over whether man can be considered culpable for his actions if God has elected some for mercy and others for wrath. The argument is a theodical one, not a question of decision-making.

    I’ll try to use a brief analogy. For every decision we make, we are, to some degree, restricted from a full autonomy. We operate in linear time and space. We haven’t comprehensive knowledge or infinite time in order to make decisions, so, as we often experience, decisions regularly are second-guessed as we look back with more time and more knowledge. That doesn’t negate free will, but it definitely suggests a restricted definition of “free.” We are, of necessity, forced to choose what we believe to be the best choice IN THE MOMENT…in bondage to, again, our limited time and knowledge.

    If, as Christians believe, our will is determined by the effect of the Fall, then, without new information, we will always choose among a limited set of options. We still have free will. We just lack comprehensive or sufficient knowledge to make, ultimately, the right decision with regard to trust in Christ.

    If we found ourselves chained to a wall in some dank and dark dungeon, we would still have choices. We wouldn’t, by default, revert to automatons just because we couldn’t break free. Again, the theological question is not over free will but over culpability. And again, human free will is always restricted by time and available knowledge at any and all nodes of decision. If we were suddenly loosed from our bonds, we wouldn’t suddenly move from a state of mindless automation to a state of omniscience and omnipotence. It would just mean that our set of options has expanded.

    The Augustinian/Calvinist/Lutheran/Pauline/biblical view of irresistible grace refers to the idea that, once man is loosed from the bondage of a fallen will, he cannot be rechained to a lesser set of known truths, or, better, would no longer have any desire to be restricted thusly. Each subsequent choice, still limited by time and a lack of omniscience and omnipotence, is now reframed. The set of options for each new choice has been expanded by a higher order or magnitude..just as Plato’s man in the cave, once he has been brought outside, has an expanded understanding.

    I have never struggled with God’s foreknowledge precisely because I wasn’t privy to that knowledge. That doesn’t in any way negate my freedom to make choices, nor does it mean I merited being loosed from my bonds by any choices I made. Both before and after being freed from a fallen state, I make choices…choosing the best option restricted by time and available knowledge…which I all too often second-guess, especially when it comes to split-second choices like cursing out the guy doing 50 in the fast lane.

    All of our choices, I believe both sides ought to be able to concede, are at the very least determined by varying degrees by: an assessment of outcomes of prior choices, limited time, limited knowledge set, physical conditions and laws, idiosyncratic traumae and skill sets, emotional status, sickness, fatigue, habit, training, chemical conditions, both native and artificial…etc…

    The notion of free will seems to be weighed down most by irrational definitions of “free” and “will.” And, by irrational, I mean that most argue with a notion that simply doesn’t correspond with how we experience free will…which is also why no Turing test or robotics/AI genius will ever actually crack the nut of self-awareness or mind. They presuppose naturalist reductionism and will to settle for the illusion of mind, as if tricking minds proves minds are just algorithms.

    And, I’m too tired to choose to crawl down the rabbit hole of the self-defeating defenders of atheism right now…

  125. 125
    tjguy says:

    AJ @7

    If this type of argument is valid to make an ID inference, why isn’t it valid when making a materialism inference? Especially when there are trillions and trillions of examples.

    Because you are comparing apples and orange!

    AJ, you have to understand that life from life is very well understood. We know much about how life is produced by things that are alive, but comparing life from life with life from non-life and saying it’s the same is, well, let’s just say a matter of comparing apples and oranges. That is an assertion with nothing to back it up.

    The life from life thing is something that we can experiment with, research, study, observe, and reproduce over and over and test our hypotheses, etc.

    The other – life from non-life – is totally unknown. We have no scientific theory that can explain it. In fact, we don’t even know if such a thing is possible. It’s never been observed and cannot be observed or tested. So there are huge differences.

    One has to explain the origin of languages, codes, information, machines, complex inter-dependent systems, etc., while the other simply follows the instructions found in the software encoded in their DNA.

    In abiogenesis, we can study stuff that we think might be related to it, but not abiogenesis itself. We can’t reproduce it. It’s extremely complex and seems irreducibly complex. If it happened, we have no idea how because we know of no natural process/processes that are capable of such a thing.

    But sure, if you want to gloss over these huge differences and claim they are of no significance, that’s up to you. That logic does not compute for us. From our point of view, the abiogenesis belief is so incredible and anti-logical that surely it would seem it would need at least some kind of scientific evidence to support it, but we have none.

    You can, of course, simply dismiss the lack of evidence by saying that it must exist and we’ll find it somehow some day we hope. It’s a free world and no one can prove you wrong.

    If abiogenesis were indeed possible, you would think that we would see other examples of that around us. But we don’t. We only observe the opposite – that life always originates from life and that languages and codes and information always originate in a mind. We know of no exceptions.

    But still, that doesn’t mean we are right. It’s strong enough evidence for me to believe I’m right, but proof is impossible.

    So, that means that you are free to believe whatever you want to about origins. If you have faith enough to believe that natural processes could and did produce the original life, go for it. No one can prove you right or wrong. If, using the brain that evolution gave you, abiogenesis makes the most sense, then what can we say. It’s futile to argue with the chemical processes that are going on in your brain anyway.

    However, I think you can easily understand the ID argument as well. I think you can see why many people see codes, languages, and information as evidence for intelligent design. Although you may not agree, at least you cannot deny that ID is a possible and seemingly logical interpretation of the facts. It’s not proof, but you can hardly fault anyone for interpreting the data in this way. Since you can’t prove it wrong and since it matches our experience in life, it certainly seems like a very possible option – that is, unless you are a Materialist.

    Since neither side can prove their belief, in the end, we all have to look at the data and choose for ourselves what makes the most sense and what we will believe about origins.

    Go ahead and make your arguments and try and support your choice/conclusion. We will do the same and remain convinced that we have the stronger argument – as you also believe. Good luck with your beliefs!

  126. 126
    kairosfocus says:

    F/N: Again, Greenleaf on evidence and warrant:

    Evidence, in legal acceptation, includes all the means by which any alleged matter of fact, the truth of which is submitted to investigation, is established or disproved . . . None but mathematical truth is susceptible of that high degree of evidence, called demonstration, which excludes all possibility of error [–> Greenleaf wrote almost 100 years before Godel], and which, therefore, may reasonably be required in support of every mathematical deduction. [–> that is, his focus is on the logic of good support for in principle uncertain conclusions, i.e. in the modern sense, inductive logic and reasoning in real world, momentous contexts with potentially serious consequences.]

    Matters of fact are proved by moral evidence alone; by which is meant, not only that kind of evidence which is employed on subjects connected with moral conduct, but all the evidence which is not obtained either from intuition, or from demonstration. In the ordinary affairs of life, we do not require demonstrative evidence, because it is not consistent with the nature of the subject, and to insist upon it would be unreasonable and absurd. [–> the issue of warrant to moral certainty, beyond reasonable doubt; and the contrasted absurdity of selective hyperskepticism.]

    The most that can be affirmed of such things, is, that there is no reasonable doubt concerning them. [–> moral certainty standard, and this is for the proverbial man in the Clapham bus stop, not some clever determined advocate or skeptic motivated not to see or assent to what is warranted.]

    The true question, therefore, in trials of fact, is not whether it is possible that the testimony may be false, but, whether there is sufficient probability of its truth; that is, whether the facts are shown by competent and satisfactory evidence. Things established by competent and satisfactory evidence are said to be proved. [–> pistis enters; we might as well learn the underlying classical Greek word that addresses the three levers of persuasion, pathos- ethos- logos and its extension to address worldview level warranted faith-commitment and confident trust on good grounding, through the impact of the Judaeo-Christian tradition in C1 as was energised by the 500 key witnesses.]

    By competent evidence, is meant that which the very-nature of the thing to be proved requires, as the fit and appropriate proof in the particular case, such as the production of a writing, where its contents are the subject of inquiry. By satisfactory evidence, which is sometimes called sufficient evidence, is intended that amount of proof, which ordinarily satisfies an unprejudiced mind [–> in British usage, the man in the Clapham bus stop], beyond reasonable doubt.

    The circumstances which will amount to this degree of proof can never be previously defined; the only legal [–> and responsible] test of which they are susceptible, is their sufficiency to satisfy the mind and conscience of a common man; and so to convince him, that he would venture to act upon that conviction, in matters of the highest concern and importance to his own interest. [= definition of moral certainty as a balanced unprejudiced judgement beyond reasonable, responsible doubt. Obviously, i/l/o wider concerns, while scientific facts as actually observed may meet this standard, scientific explanatory frameworks such as hypotheses, models, laws and theories cannot as they are necessarily provisional and in many cases have had to be materially modified, substantially re-interpreted to the point of implied modification, or outright replaced; so a modicum of prudent caution is warranted in such contexts — explanatory frameworks are empirically reliable so far on various tests, not utterly certain. ] [A Treatise on Evidence, Vol I, 11th edn. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1888) ch 1., sections 1 and 2. Shorter paragraphs added. (NB: Greenleaf was a founder of the modern Harvard Law School and is regarded as a founding father of the modern Anglophone school of thought on evidence, in large part on the strength of this classic work.)]

    KF

  127. 127
    Armand Jacks says:

    KF:

    Now, back on focal topic, we have clear evidence that FSCO/I is routinely and reliably produced by intelligently directed configuration, aka design.

    That is not the focal topic of this OP. Let me remind you of the first line says:

    Armand Jacks says he has a knock down show stopping argument to rebut ID’s claim that intelligent agency is the only known cause of specified complexity.

    This is a big heaping pile of strawman heavily soaked in oil of red herring, ready to be set ablaze. In short, it is a complete fabrication. When you repeated this later in the thread, I pointed this out to you and politely requested an apology or a retraction. Something that you have not done.

    You frequently chastise others for not speaking with a care to truth. It appears that this standard does not apply to you. Your lack of response to my request for an apology or a retraction speaks volumes about your character. And not in your favour. If you simply missed my request in this thread, I do apologize. If you saw it and ignored it, then you are willfully speaking in directed to the truth.

  128. 128
    mikeenders says:

    Premise defeated in one sentence

    We have never seen in the entire universe a material cause for any law of the Universe.

    EVERYTHING is based on uncauselessness or the rabbit hole goes on forever and is itself self defeating being therefore causeless.

    as to the argument about free will – also ended in one sentence (as someone else has already alluded to).

    God’s foreknowledge is only in respect to humans in time and has nothing to do with HIS sense of time because he knows nothing of past or future living in a constant now. I AM that I AM

    second sentence for clarity. God’s knowledge does not interfere with my choice. he knew about it the same time he knew about everything – right now as far as he is concerned.

    Its hard to get materialists minds around theology. They are so awful at understanding anything out of their comfort zone.

  129. 129
    mikeenders says:

    “Let’s keep this as simple as possible. Let’s assume that it is known that you will kill KF on Friday in a homosexual lovers dispute. If you kill him, what free will did you have? If you dont kill him, then the knowledge of the future is flawed.”

    your confusion is genuine but the problem is you are including the entity knowing as being in the timeline and looking ahead. That is NOT what Christianity or Judaism teaches. If God has to look ahead to find something out then he is at that point not all knowing and therefore lacking a divine quality religions have always maintained he has.

    As a crude perhaps flawed analogy consider that you are on ship in space and hit the speed of light and assume as Hollywood does that the time slow down is oblivious to you AND you can still see/hear whats happening on earth. KF is killed and you are watching/hearing it in the “now” but to KF’ murderer he has already spent twenty years of a life sentence OR depending on when you hit the speed of light you may even know of the violence in the now but it appear to KF as being before it happened.

    Its all now to you and does nothing whatsoever to affect free will.

  130. 130
    Phinehas says:

    GUN:

    I think it’s trivially simple to show that the above is not the case. It’s a self-contradictory statement to say that God knows that “X” will occur tomorrow, and thus it’s determined that X will occur tomorrow, but that that doesn’t mean that X will occur tomorrow.

    Of course X will occur tomorrow. But that isn’t the same as saying that it must occur tomorrow as though there is no free will.

    From a article on this subject at Standford (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/free-will-foreknowledge/):

    Let “now-necessary” designate temporal necessity, the type of necessity that the past is supposed to have just because it is past. We will discuss this type of necessity in sections 2.3 and 2.6, but we can begin with the intuitive idea that there is a kind of necessity that a proposition has now when the content of the proposition is about something that occurred in the past. To say that it is now-necessary that milk has been spilled is to say nobody can do anything now about the fact that the milk has been spilled.

    It may be true that foreknowledge means it is now-necessary that X will occur tomorrow, but the question is whether it is then-necessary.

    What do I mean by then-necessary? Well, that nobody can do anything now about the fact that the milk has been spilled does not deny that they could do something then about actually spilling the milk. They don’t have free will about spilling the milk now but that doesn’t mean they didn’t have free will about spilling the milk then. We can clearly see regarding past events that now-necessary does not entail then-necessary. But we seem to assume regarding future events that X being known and thus being now-necessary entails it being then-necessary as well. Why assume this?

    So, if by X being determined by foreknowledge you mean that it is now-necessary for X to occur, then I agree. (Exactly the same as I would if X was determined by being in the known past.) But if by X being determined by foreknowledge you mean that X must be then-necessary, then I don’t think that has been sufficiently demonstrated.

  131. 131
    JoshRob says:

    Wow, is it so difficult to understand that taping a baseball game in progress does not later invalidate the players’ choices ex post facto?

    Or that rolling a weighted die and getting a 6 is vastly different than rolling a truly random die and simply possessing the knowledge that you will get a 6? Do we not know what the outcomes of past events are, regardless of their mechanisms at the time? Knowledge is all that is being discussed here, after all.

    These are not dreadfully difficult concepts once they’re presented – perhaps difficult to come upon on one’s own, but easy once clarified.

    Here’s another point: whatever activities I set out to do today will become immutable history when today has become yesterday. Does this somehow mean I was bound hopelessly to do these things? No, it means I was bound only to do as I chose. One cannot eliminate free will simply because our choices are permanent.

    Every person naturally sees the past as filled with choices yet immovable. Simply remove such person from the timeline, as if all future history had already past, and that person would just as naturally see innumerable choices, all of them immutable. No choice can be revoked, so one should be careful what choices he makes – not simply shrug his shoulders and pretend that they were not his own choices in the first place.

    If God knows you’re going to say something dreadfully stupid, He simply has the displeasure of knowing it ahead of time, not a hand in determining it. Whether He could, would, or has exerted any power to change that is another, unrelated subject altogether. The fact is, foreknowledge is a mere matter of knowledge, having no impact on the course of things foreknown.

  132. 132
    PaV says:

    Armand Jack:

    In Back to the Future, Part II, Biff takes Marty’s copy of the 2017 Sports almanac back to 1957, whereupon, Biff of 1957 makes a huge fortune betting on games.

    What further proof is needed? 🙂

    Let me relate a personal experience. When I was 24, I dreamed a variation of a dream for over a month straight. It was a series of related dreams I would never forget; and, it was about a very large house on an isolated hilltop, one which I’d never seen before in my life. And, in the dream, an ‘angel’ told me I lived there, but didn’t own it, even pointing out where in the large building I lived.

    Nine years later, I ended up living in this large building set upon a hilltop—just as I had seen in my series of dreams. I had seen the building coming at it from the front and from the back. It was exactly as I had seen.

    Now, there were a whole host of individual decisions that I made that brought me to live in that building. So, who other than God could have ‘foreseen’ where I would live 9 years hence? And, I assure you, the individual decisions I made in the intervening years had nothing whatsoever to do with those dreams.

    So, you can either call me a ‘kook’–the cheap way of dealing with this–or reach the conclusion that the future can be known by God without ‘free will’ being compromised.

    I could tell you other stories that reach similar conclusions.

  133. 133
    PaV says:

    goodusername:

    I just ran across your reply.

    Two Superbowls ago, the Seattle Seahawks were on the goalline with seconds left in the game. A pass was thrown to the tight end, who cut right over the center. He caught the ball, but was immediately hit by a Patriot defensive back, coughing up the ball, and letting the Patriots win.

    When he was interviewed about the ‘hit,’ which was incredible because he really shouldn’t have been in a position to hit the pass catcher, he said that he had “dreamed” of it the night before. He had ‘seen’ it.

    Now, I would have to say that this ‘knowledge’ of his did influence his free will in that he reacted to the play in an almost superhuman way. But, how did that knowledge affect anyone else? How did it interfere with their free will? And I bet he experienced that ‘dream’ as being the “game-winning” hit. Hence, he ‘knew’ the outcome. But it only affected his free will, and no one else’s.

    God doesn’t usually play defensive back. If He knows who will win, in that instance, no one’s ‘free will’ is interfered with.

  134. 134
    Few Words says:

    Matter does not have a material cause.
    2 Possibilities
    A. Matter always existed, therefore no cause
    B. Something created matter which we have not seen.

    Other things that exist that you cannot see
    1. Freewill. You must admit that it exists. You enter into a debate. You expect people to freely change their beliefs. If you assume it, I don’t have to defend it.
    2. The laws of physics. No material cause, but you must admit they exist or there is not point talking about material causes.
    3. The rules of logic. No point in debate without them. You must admit they exist or there is no debate. You can’t see them, Yet they exist.

  135. 135
    Armand Jacks says:

    FW:

    Matter does not have a material cause.
    Except for most of the elements in the periodic table.

  136. 136
    AnimatedDust says:

    Matter can be neither created nor destroyed.

    I learned this in grade school. The periodic table doesn’t help you.

  137. 137
    Armand Jacks says:

    AD:

    Matter can be neither created nor destroyed.

    I learned this in grade school. The periodic table doesn’t help you.

    Really? Are you sure you don’t want to reconsider? Or would you like to explain where the gold in your ring came from. Or the carbon in your body. All of these elements were created through stellar fusion processes. Material processes.

  138. 138
    AnimatedDust says:

    Disappointed that you skipped over my main question in 110.

    “Is it possible that the rules you depend on to reach your conclusion in this post are purposely constructed so as to allow any theory, even untestable, to be fair game, but not “God” (as you understand the term and apply it to your worldview) so as not to “allow a divine foot in the door?”

    Not even the slightest bit possible?

    I am hoping against hope for some Lewontinesque honesty.

  139. 139
    Armand Jacks says:

    AD:

    Disappointed that you skipped over my main question in 110.

    Sorry, I thought that when you started the second last sentence at 110 with IOW, you were introducing your main point. And I answered that question quite adequately.

  140. 140
    kairosfocus says:

    AJ, I think you also needed to have been taught the significance of E = m*c^2 in grade school, as the simplistic summary of matter given has been off the table for a century and more. Stars work off the impermanence of matter via binding energy per nucleon shifts with fusion reactions. Beyond, the evidence points to our cosmos originating in a singularity some 13.8 BYA, with all sorts of sticky onward questions about origin. Those were compounded by the discoveries over the past 60+ years that the laws and circumstances of our observed cosmos are exceedingly fine tuned relative to requisites of C-chemistry, aqueous medium, terrestrial planet, spiral galaxy habitable zone, cell based life. Which in turn is rooted in the use of encoded information bearing text strings in D/RNA. Where said text is an algorithmic and linguistic phenomenon. So, contrary to your attempted dismissive quip above, FSCO/I is at the heart of the focal issues for this thread, for it points strongly to intelligent causes of both information in cell based life and the observed fine tuned cosmos that supports it. Where, we already have excellent reason in hand to confidently conclude that computational substrates (such as analog or digital or neural network machines) are FSCO/I-rich, organised, blindly mechanical systems (open to stochastic factors too)that inherently cannot in themselves ground rational insight, meaning and warrant etc, not to mention moral government. Your claim that we only observe [effects of — we never observe a cause directly] material causes is an ill-founded hasty and faulty generalisation driven by evident a priori evolutionary materialist scientism as ideology or at least a fellow traveller scheme of thought. KF

  141. 141
    kairosfocus says:

    AD,

    Lewontin:

    . . . to put a correct view of the universe into people’s heads [==> as in, “we” have cornered the market on truth, warrant and knowledge] we must first get an incorrect view out [–> as in, if you disagree with “us” of the secularist elite you are wrong, irrational and so dangerous you must be stopped, even at the price of manipulative indoctrination of hoi polloi] . . . the problem is to get them [= hoi polloi] to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the world, the demons that exist only in their imaginations,

    [ –> as in, to think in terms of ethical theism is to be delusional, justifying “our” elitist and establishment-controlling interventions of power to “fix” the widespread mental disease]

    and to accept a social and intellectual apparatus, Science, as the only begetter of truth

    [–> NB: this is a knowledge claim about knowledge and its possible sources, i.e. it is a claim in philosophy not science; it is thus self-refuting]

    . . . . To Sagan, as to all but a few other scientists [–> “we” are the dominant elites], it is self-evident

    [–> actually, science and its knowledge claims are plainly not immediately and necessarily true on pain of absurdity, to one who understands them; this is another logical error, begging the question , confused for real self-evidence; whereby a claim shows itself not just true but true on pain of patent absurdity if one tries to deny it . . . and in fact it is evolutionary materialism that is readily shown to be self-refuting]

    that the practices of science provide the surest method of putting us in contact with physical reality [–> = all of reality to the evolutionary materialist], and that, in contrast, the demon-haunted world rests on a set of beliefs and behaviors that fail every reasonable test [–> i.e. an assertion that tellingly reveals a hostile mindset, not a warranted claim] . . . .

    It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us [= the evo-mat establishment] to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes [–> another major begging of the question . . . ] to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute [–> i.e. here we see the fallacious, indoctrinated, ideological, closed mind . . . ], for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door . . . [–> irreconcilable hostility to ethical theism, already caricatured as believing delusionally in imaginary demons]. [Lewontin, Billions and billions of Demons, NYRB Jan 1997,cf. here. And, if you imagine this is “quote-mined” I invite you to read the fuller annotated citation here.]

    KF

  142. 142
    AnimatedDust says:

    KF, yes, hardly correct to credit Lewontin with honesty. I think what he articulated is so pervasive and endemic, that it wouldn’t be overstatement to characterize this as the underlying scaffolding of the majority of scientific thought.

    If ever there was evidence of truth suppression, this is it. And the worst part is that they really and truly believe it. Blind faith, so to speak.

  143. 143
    kairosfocus says:

    AJ,

    I tire of the repeated attempt to duck addressing an inductive inference to best current empirically grounded explanation — as in, provide an observed counter-example to overthrow it — by asserting question-begging.

    That rhetorical tactic seems to ignore things like, say, how the three key laws of thermodynamics: energy conservation, entropy and inaccessibility of T = 0 in any finite refrigeration process — stand on exactly the same logical foundation.

    You are either attacking what you don’t like by exerting a selectively hyperskeptical double standard of warrant, or else you need to accept that you have spoken in ignorance and need to do some basic homework, apologise for wasting our time and effort then actually say something cogent.

    In the meanwhile, UB has aptly commented:

    Life requires the ability to specify something among alternatives and instantiate that specification in a transcribable memory. The very first things that must be specified at the origin of life are the set of non-integrable constraints that are required to interpret the description. Without this, there is no life. There is no cell. There is no cell cycle. And for those married to evolution, there is no informational medium of heritable variation, and nothing to be selected. Open-ended evolutionary potential does not exist until the system can describe itself in a spatially-oriented memory (i.e. a code) and successfully interpret the description.

    We look at this and say that it seems that intelligent action is somehow necessary for life, because it is the only thing we know of that is rich enough to specify the system in this manner. But then we actually study the system from a physicalist perspective, and we find that (among all other material systems in the cosmos) the only other place we can identify such a physical system as genetic translation is in the use of language and mathematics — two unambiguous correlates of intelligence.

    I would appreciate it if you’d stop using me to attack Kairos. This is the point he is making to you.

    EDIT: By the way, the core claim of biological ID is that a universal correlate of intelligence can be detected in the origin of life on earth, That claim has been validated by physics. The empirical observations that validate the claim are not even controversial. It is hardly a case of assuming a conclusion.

    The evidence on trillions of cases is that FSCO/I is only actually observed to arise from intelligently directed configuration. The blind chance and mechanical necessity searching a config space of at least 3.27*10^150 to 1.07*10^301 y/n possibilities on the scope of sol sys or observed cosmos at known fast atomic interaction rates for 10^17 or so s, leads to only being able to see a negligible fraction. And searching for a golden search requires, for a space of n possibilities, a secondary search in one of 2^n possibilities; as a search is a subset so the set of subsets scales the S4GS space, i.e. the power set.

    Thus, we have an observed adequate cause, its reliability established on trillions of observed cases. We have an alternative never seen to be causally adequate. We have an analysis that shows why blind processes are not likely to be adequate. This gives us every epistemic right to hold FSCO/I a reliable sign of design as relevant cause.

    We have a world of cell based life that is chock full of FSCO/I, and this is backed by the evident failure of abiogenesis, OoL research after nearly a century of trying. Ditto for computational sims that routinely reduce to illustrating that the cause of desired results, reliably, is intelligently injected active information. To top off, we find ever growing evidence that the physics of the observed cosmos is also full of functionally specific complex organisation that sets it to a fine-tuned operating point that facilitates C-chemistry, aqueous medium, cell based life.

    The inference to design is serious and well warranted on the uncensored methods of science. Sneaking in a priori evolutionary materialist scientism and/or fellow travellers by the back door and exerting ideological domination may be many things, but true, sound science it is not.

    So,

    A: you are challenged to show us by empirical cases how FSCO/I can and does come about by blind processes: _______

    You are challenged,

    B: to show how this accounts (on empirical evidence rooted in observation) for a fine tuned cosmos: ______

    You are challenged,

    C: to show on the same basis, how such blind causes account for OOL: __________

    You are challenged, similarly,

    D: to account for OO body plans, dozens of times over: _________ , including our own: ________

    I hereby extend, again, the UD Pro-Darwinism Essay challenge, to address A through D in a summary of some 6,000 words — upper length for a reasonable feature article. You can link elsewhere to heart’s content but must provide a responsible summary case that does not play rhetorical stunts such as you have too often indulged.

    I predict: just like the case that covered B to D, there will be no take-up from you or any other significant objector from the circle of objector sites. Never mind, boastful titles like the IDiots of ID.

    The shoe is on the other foot now.

    Put up, or stand exposed.

    KF

  144. 144

    JoshRob asks:

    Wow, is it so difficult to understand that taping a baseball game in progress does not later invalidate the players’ choices ex post facto?

    It’s impossible to understand if your existential narrative is dedicated to not understanding it and to believing that theism is foolish because of certain supposed paradoxes. Those “god paradoxes” are like talking point memes people can use to support their preferred atheist narrative (like the “hands up don’t shoot” meme supports a certain social view) and block out reasoned discussion.

  145. 145
    kairosfocus says:

    WJM & JR, ‘fraid so. Sad, really. KF

  146. 146
    kairosfocus says:

    AD, very sadly, yes. Lewontin is a senior academic in the leading scientific country. This is his cat out of the bag moment when he likely was still processing the passing of Sagan. I have seen much to support it, and nothing to show me a significant dissent, save those fringe schools spoken against and marginalised everywhere. This is the state of the turn-of-C21 mind, and it is still so. A devastating, though obviously by and large inadvertent, indictment. KF

  147. 147
    Armand Jacks says:

    KF:

    So, contrary to your attempted dismissive quip above, FSCO/I is at the heart of the focal issues for this thread,

    No. You are diverting from the focal issue of this thread. Let me repeat again the first line of the OP.

    Armand Jacks says he has a knock down show stopping argument to rebut ID’s claim that intelligent agency is the only known cause of specified complexity.

    As previously mentioned, this is a heaping pile of bovine excrement. At no point in the comment I made, the comment that forms the basis of this thread, did I suggest that I had a show stopping argument to rebut ID. In addition, I pointed this out to you twice after you repeated the same claim, asking for an apology or a retraction. Neither of which you have offered. As such, you have demonstrated yourself to be speaking in disregard to the truth.

    Since you obviously demand a higher level of honesty from others than you demand of yourself, discussing anything with you is pointless.

  148. 148
    kairosfocus says:

    AJ, at this point, I have little reason to pay much attention to your remarks due to a pattern of speaking to hoped for rhetorical advantage by speaking in disregard for truth. KF

  149. 149
    goodusername says:

    JoshRob asks:

    Wow, is it so difficult to understand that taping a baseball game in progress does not later invalidate the players’ choices ex post facto?

    It’s impossible to understand if your existential narrative is dedicated to not understanding it and to believing that theism is foolish because of certain supposed paradoxes. Those “god paradoxes” are like talking point memes people can use to support their preferred atheist narrative (like the “hands up don’t shoot” meme supports a certain social view) and block out reasoned discussion.

    No one is suggesting that taping a game in progress is an issue for free will. Nothing about recording a game in progress suggests that our choices were pre-determined.

    People accept that the past is determined, and that what is on tape is determined. But most people believe that the future isn’t determined. Ergo, most people would assume that producing a ten year old tape of a game currently in progress would be impossible. The ramifications of such a tape on free will are obvious. It would mean that the future is as determined as the past, and that events were determined long before the choices were made that were supposed to influence such events. IOW, does it make sense to speak of “determined free choices”?

    And, no, this isn’t about attacking theism. IMO, such a suggestion is itself an attempt to block out reasoned discussion. Many theists see the same issues and either don’t believe in free will (because they believe it conflicts with God’s foreknowledge) or don’t believe that God has foreknowledge (at least, not total foreknowledge).

    And the issue of foreknowledge and free will is hardly restricted to theology. As I mentioned above it’s a common topic, for instance, in discussions about time travel.

  150. 150
    Armand Jacks says:

    KF:

    AJ, at this point, I have little reason to pay much attention to your remarks due to a pattern of speaking to hoped for rhetorical advantage by speaking in disregard for truth. KF

    I sincerely apologize. You obviously acknowledged that I never claimed to have a knock down refutation of ID. Could you please link to it? I must have missed it. Or are you still claiming that my original comment claimed that I had a knock down refutation of ID? If that is the case, could you please link to it?

    If you can’t do either, I stand by the one claim that I have made. You have spoken in diregard to the truth. Some would call it lying, but I will use your term if it makes you happy.

  151. 151
    Armand Jacks says:

    GUN, I agree. I honestly don’t see what is so controversial. If the future is know with certain by any entity (god, Cap’n Crunch or some clairavoyant), we are talking about determinism/fate. And if that is the case then those involved in the known events did not have free will.

    If there is a god, which I don’t rule out, she either knows the future and we don’t have free will, or she doesn’t know the future and we have free will.

    But this raises another issue. If free will was a gift that god gave to us, do animals have free will?

  152. 152
    kairosfocus says:

    AJ, it is now too late, this is just a notice. KF

  153. 153
    mike1962 says:

    Forget about the ‘God omniscient’ discussion.

    Please

    Even us ID-friendly types get tired of that.

  154. 154
    kairosfocus says:

    M62, I think enough of an answer was long since given. KF

  155. 155
    Armand Jacks says:

    KF:

    AJ, it is now too late, this is just a notice. KF

    Too late for what? To admit that you made an error? I always thought that it was never too late for that.

    You are a real mystery. You accuse other people of lying at the drop of a hat. But when it is pointed out that you have made a false statement about someone, one that can be confirmed by anyone here, you go on the attack. Rather than admit an honest error, something that we all do, you go into lock-down denial mode and blame me for it.

  156. 156
    Eric Anderson says:

    Armand Jacks:

    If the future is know with certain by any entity (god, Cap’n Crunch or some clairavoyant), we are talking about determinism/fate. And if that is the case then those involved in the known events did not have free will.

    This is nonsense. Why do you keep pushing this?

    Why is it hard to acknowledge that there is a difference between the knowledge of party A and the action of party B?

    What is your causal link between A knowing something and B doing something? Please outline the cause-effect chain.

  157. 157
    kairosfocus says:

    NOTICE: The commenter now using AJ as monicker has now again played the troll. KF

  158. 158
    asauber says:

    Armand,

    Just think of God as having a 100% prediction rate.

    Andrew

  159. 159
    Armand Jacks says:

    Eric:

    What is your causal link between A knowing something and B doing something? Please outline the cause-effect chain.

    If the knowledge has nothing to do with the consequences of B’s action, then I agree with you. Knowing that KF will continue to speak in disregard to the truth is not going to affect the options available to me for tomorrow’s breakfast. But if you or god or KF know with certainty that I am going to order bacon and eggs, sunnyside up (not predict. Know), where is my free will? If I then order pancakes, you, god and KF really had no knowledge of this.

  160. 160
    Armand Jacks says:

    KF:

    NOTICE: The commenter now using AJ as monicker has now again played the troll. KF

    If a troll is a person who points out when someone has repeatedly lied about having answered a question that they have not, and then falsely accuses the truth teller of lying about it, then I accept the assignation gladly.

    Have you found your comment that answers my question yet? Have you found the comment where I claimed to have a knock down refutation of ID yet?

  161. 161
    asauber says:

    (not predict. Know)

    Armand,

    You are equating knowledge of an outcome with forcing an outcome. Two different things.

    But I suspect you know that already and are trolling. Imagine that.

    Andrew

  162. 162
    Armand Jacks says:

    Andrew:

    You are equating knowledge of an outcome with forcing an outcome. Two different things.

    No, I am talking about knowledge of an outcome limiting the choices of those responsible for the outcome.

    Let’s look at my breakfast example. It is possible to know the outcome without limiting my choice in this case only if the waiter screwed up my order. But that still assumes that I would not complain about the mixed up order.

  163. 163
    Eric Anderson says:

    AJ @159:

    Don’t tie yourself into intellectual and philosophical knots over this fun freshman-level “paradox” — they are a dime a dozen. We need to stay focused on the causal chain.

    If the knowledge has nothing to do with the consequences of B’s action, then I agree with you.

    Agreed.

    Further, if the knowledge is not causally linked to B’s action — never mind the consequences, look at the action itself — then there is no issue.

    But if you or god or KF know with certainty that I am going to order bacon and eggs, sunnyside up (not predict. Know), where is my free will?

    What caused the order of bacon and eggs? Did you choose to order bacon and eggs? If not you, then are you claiming God* caused you to order bacon and eggs? Are you claiming it was a pre-determined outcome of chemistry and physics? Are you claiming it was a random occurrence?

    Those are your four options: (1) God caused it; (2) you caused it; (3) it happened by inevitable force of physics; or (4) it was a random occurrence.

    Which is it?

    If I then order pancakes, you, god and KF really had no knowledge of this.

    Agreed. All it means is that there wasn’t “certain” knowledge. Nothing more; nothing less. It doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not you have free will.

    So, again, in this second case what was the cause of you ordering pancakes: God, you, physics, or chance?

    Is the cause different in the second case than the first case? If so, why?

    —–

    Incidentally, I haven’t pored through this whole thread to know what everyone is discussing. I just saw your prior comment on a quick pass and wanted to correct the record. Thus, if you’ve already answered the following question, I apologize:

    Does this “paradox” of prior knowledge of events only concern you in the context of free will, or do you think it also relates to inanimate objects — hurricanes, floods, a rock rolling down a hill, and so on.

    In other words, does prior knowledge (say, God’s, for example) of an event somehow implicate God’s involvement in the event?

    —–

    * For ease of further discussion, we’ll focus on one individual and I’ll grant that KF and I don’t know anything about your breakfast.

  164. 164
    Armand Jacks says:

    Eric, thank you for honestly discussing this.

    Agreed. All it means is that there wasn’t “certain” knowledge. Nothing more; nothing less. It doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not you have free will.

    That is all I have been arguing. Either god has inerrant foreknowledge, in which case there is no free will, or god is not omniscient. Frankly, I don’t see how a non omniscient god is any less impressive.

  165. 165
    Eric Anderson says:

    AJ @164:

    I’m sorry. You seem to be making two contrary claims.

    I have argued the knowledge is separate from the free will, and, to your second pancake example, that lack of knowledge doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not you have free will. It only has to do with the level of the knowledge.

    You say you agree and that this is indeed your point.

    Then you turn around in the same paragraph and seem to say exactly the opposite. Namely, that inerrant knowledge means no free will.

    You haven’t provided any basis for your claim that foreknowledge means no free will. Your breakfast example certainly doesn’t support that claim.

    —–

    If the pancakes example is mixing you up, stick with the bacon and eggs.

    Let’s say you order bacon and eggs for breakfast.

    Again, I repeat — and please don’t avoid the issue that is central to the whole claim you are making:

    What caused the order of bacon and eggs? Did you choose to order bacon and eggs? If not you, then are you claiming God caused you to order bacon and eggs? Are you claiming it was a pre-determined outcome of chemistry and physics? Are you claiming it was a random occurrence?

    Those are your four options: (1) God caused it; (2) you caused it; (3) it happened by inevitable force of physics; or (4) it was a random occurrence.

    Which is it?

  166. 166
    Eric Anderson says:

    BTW, would you mind clarifying where you are headed with this interim argument about knowledge and free will.

    I take it you think you have free will.

    Are you saying this shows that although God exists, God doesn’t have foreknowledge (based on your claim that foreknowledge and free will are incompatible)?

    or

    Are you saying that God doesn’t exist, because God must have foreknowledge (based on some definition of God and based on your claim that foreknowledge and free will are incompatible)?

    —–

    Also, let me know your thoughts on my question at the end of 163 regarding non-free-will situations.

    Thanks,

  167. 167
    juwilker says:

    EA @ 163,

    Hello again. I enjoyed conversing with you about the freewill/foreknowledge debate in another post several months back. I like the way you approach this subject and I have learned from your insights. Also, I have enjoyed reading this blog post. You, Mugwump3, Phinehas and others offer thought-provoking posts.

    I also think that the materialists (GUN, AJ, and RVB8) are making some good points about foreknowledge and predestination. Their line of thinking is that if something is known in the future, then the knower has some implication, some affect in that future.

    You, on the other hand, try to completely remove the knower (God in this case) from any cause of the future event. And you are very sure of yourself that you label it a “freshman-level paradox” that can easily understood. I do take issue with that statement. I think people over the centuries with much more time and smarts than you and I to expend on this subject have not resolved it.

    As Mugwump3 (post 124) said, “Freewill” is difficult to define. “Free” is not has free as we think for various reasons and “will” might not be always attributed to ourselves. I would agree with you that the knower has no involvement of the outcome of the future IF he had no ability to interfere with that future. If God were somehow constrained to remain in a spaceship (for lack of a better term) that was floating outside of time and that God had omniscience, then I would agree with your contention that knowledge and causation are completely separate. But when you free God from this spaceship and allow any intervention, then I would claim that the knower is instantly, inseparably, and imputably tied with the outcome of the event.

    I know you will object. But let me explain. I see God as the ultimate “filter”, in the allowance of events to occur. If God sees that AJ is going to order bacon and eggs tomorrow (based on freewill of AJ) but God does not like that outcome, he may override AJ’s will and cause him to order pancakes. Or God may allow the outcome to occur and AJ eats his bacon and eggs. In the first case, you will say that we are talking about God’s will, not AJs will and that you are not addressing this situation. In the second case you might retort that allowance is not the same as causation. Agreed, they are not technically the same. But allowance does impute affect on the event in question. And I think this is what our materialist interlocutors are saying.

    You can dismiss this idea and claim that causation is different from allowance. And technically I think you are correct. But you won’t help resolve the intuitive sense that knowledge (in some way) is linked with causation.

    Justin

  168. 168
    Eric Anderson says:

    Justin @167:

    Thank you for your kind thoughts. This is indeed an interesting topic and I’m glad you recall the prior conversation. I’ve been meaning to go back and look at that thread, but it was really focused on non-free-will situations for the most part. Hence my repeated question to Armand Jacks as to whether he thinks his concern about knowledge and free will also extends to inanimate objects.

    I also think that the materialists (GUN, AJ, and RVB8) are making some good points about foreknowledge and predestination. Their line of thinking is that if something is known in the future, then the knower has some implication, some affect in that future.

    Yes, it appears to be the line of thinking in part, although usually stated much more strongly than “some implication.” In Armand Jack’s mind, it completely voids the concept of free will, rendering it completely absent as to the particular event in question.

    In any case, this claimed “affect in that future” of the knowledge is precisely the point I am trying to pin down. That is why have directly focused on causation. Unfortunately, without hearing any response. It is one thing to claim that knowledge – in and of itself – must cause some future state. It is quite another to show that this claim is the case. Which no-one has been able to do thus far. Thus, unfortunately all we are dealing with so far is a bald-faced claim without support.

    I do take issue with that statement. I think people over the centuries with much more time and smarts than you and I to expend on this subject have not resolved it.

    I’m certainly willing to grant that people with more time and more smarts than I have thought about this. And what aspect, specifically, do you think they have focused on and have not been able to resolve?

    As Mugwump3 (post 124) said, “Freewill” is difficult to define. “Free” is not has free as we think for various reasons and “will” might not be always attributed to ourselves.

    I’m not sure why you quoted this. We can certainly wring our hands over whether we are as “free” as we would like to think or whether life is all an illusion and we don’t really have free will. But free will as a concept is pretty basic. Fundamentally, it has to do with an ability to choose. Either you have an ability to choose in a particular case or you don’t. (As mentioned previously, this is also intimately tied to the concept of intelligence, which means “to choose between” contingent possibilities.)

    I would agree with you that the knower has no involvement of the outcome of the future IF he had no ability to interfere with that future.

    It doesn’t have anything to do with whether the knower had an ability to interfere. The question is whether the knower actually, in real space and time used that ability and did interfere. The very concept of ability to do something includes the ability to not do something. There is no other rational or logical meaning of the concept of “ability”.

    Ironically, this also highlights another problem. Namely, anyone who conflates having an ability with exercising that ability is saying that not only did the poor human not have free will in a particular case, but God didn’t have any free will either. God had an ability, thus God was forced to use that ability. So now no-one has free will!

    If this strikes us as strange – as it most assuredly should – then we need to get back to a rational definition of terms. Having an ability means being able to do something. It inherently includes choice. It doesn’t mean had to do something, or was forced to, or couldn’t act otherwise.

    But when you free God from this spaceship and allow any intervention, then I would claim that the knower is instantly, inseparably, and imputably tied with the outcome of the event.

    I know we’ve discussed this before, but why on Earth would you think that allowing involvement means being instantly, inseparably, and imputably tied with the outcome of something? Why would you conflate allowing something to happen with causing something to happen. You’ve seen a thousand examples in your own life where this isn’t true.

    The only thing I can figure out, after various discussions across various threads is that people must have some unusual perception of God that makes them think God is “instantly, inseparably, and imputably tied with the outcome” of everything that happens. Again, probably because they also conflate having an ability with exercising it. That is strange theology and even stranger logic.

    . . . you might retort that allowance is not the same as causation. Agreed, they are not technically the same.

    Thank you.

    But allowance does impute affect on the event in question. And I think this is what our materialist interlocutors are saying.

    If we are talking about affecting an event, then we are talking about causation. And if no-one can point to any chain of causation, then there is no reason to think there is causation.

    Also, you are being too kind to the claim being made (whether by materialists or others).

    The claim on the table is not that God, by allowing us to exercise our free will, is following some long-term master plan and exercising indirect “influence” over the ultimate outcome of future events.

    The claim on the table is that God’s mere possession of knowledge about a current event completely and utterly eliminates my free will as to that event.

    The former might be a reasonable position to take. At least one that is rational and merits consideration.

    The latter is complete nonsense.

    But you won’t help resolve the intuitive sense that knowledge (in some way) is linked with causation.

    What is intuitive about it? It completely contradicts our own experience in the real world. It denies the plain meaning of words in the English language. And it fails as a logical exercise because it smuggles in through the back door the very thing it claims doesn’t exist (choice).

    —–

    Let’s keep our eye on the ball. Look back at Armand Jack’s claim in a more obvious form:

    God knows AJ will choose eggs => AJ chooses eggs => AJ has no free will.

    This is the essence of Armand Jack’s claim. It is self contradictory.

    If he has no free will, then the second part of the equation never occurred – he couldn’t have chosen eggs. Without his free will we must look to some other cause for the order of eggs. So I ask again, what is the cause of him getting eggs for breakfast? Is he claiming God caused it, that it was an inevitable outcome of physics, or that it was a random chance? Those are the three possibilities left on the table.

    And none of those three makes the slightest bit of sense. Everyone knows that he got eggs precisely because he chose to get eggs. He exercised his free will. A small school child could see the chain of causation and get this one right.

    This is incredibly simple and rational and confirmed by our daily experience. There is no mystery here.

    The only thing that is going on is that some people are tying themselves in philosophical knots over a simple perceived “paradox” because (a) they conflate terminology, (b) smuggle in the very thing they are trying to deny,* and (c) don’t carefully think through the chain of causation.

    —–

    * Incidentally, smuggling in as a precedent the very thing one is trying to deny exists is also quite common in materialist arguments against the existence of design, perhaps the most famous example being Berra’s Blunder.

  169. 169
    Seversky says:

    juwilker @ 167

    I also think that the materialists (GUN, AJ, and RVB8) are making some good points about foreknowledge and predestination. Their line of thinking is that if something is known in the future, then the knower has some implication, some affect in that future

    Not quite. An omniscient knower might be able to affect the future but it is the knowledge alone that undermines the possibility of free will.

    Remember Matthew 26: 33-34

    Peter replied, “Even if all fall away on account of you, I never will.” “I tell you the truth,” Jesus answered, “This very night, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times.”

    Jesus didn’t say “There is a good chance you will disown me three times…” or “I estimate there is a 95.9% probability you will disown me…”. He said to Peter, “You will…” and Peter did. Even more significantly Peter disowned Jesus three times even though he had been warned that’s what would happen. Peter’s supposed free will made no difference.

    An omniscient God is one who knows, at the least, all that exists to be known. Whether He caused it to be thus is irrelevant to the question of free will. If He knows of an event that means that it exists, even if it is in our future. That means that, as with Peter’s denials, it will happen and there is nothing we can do about it, so, to that extent, we have no free will.

  170. 170
    Eric Anderson says:

    Seversky:

    Whether He caused it to be thus is irrelevant to the question of free will. If He knows of an event that means that it exists, even if it is in our future. That means that, as with Peter’s denials, it will happen and there is nothing we can do about it, so, to that extent, we have no free will.

    No.

    Whether [God] caused it is precisely the issue in whether there is free will. You are just playing games with the definition of free will. You can’t just define it away by saying, “well, if there is knowledge, then there isn’t free will.”

    Show the causal chain between the knowledge and the event. Show why the individual, who would have free will in every other situation suddenly doesn’t just because someone knows what he will do.

    Otherwise you fall straight into the intellectual trap I previously described:

    The only thing that is going on is that some people are tying themselves in philosophical knots over a simple perceived “paradox” because (1) they conflate terminology, (2) smuggle in the very thing they are trying to deny, and (3) don’t carefully think through the chain of causation.

  171. 171
    juwilker says:

    EA,

    I’m agreeing with you that knowledge is not the “cause” of the event. And I do believe that most of the time the creature does have freewill and God will not override it (in my example, rarely would God override AJ’s decision to order eggs). But AJs freewill is “filtered” through God’s knowledge and allowance. Most of the time the freewill operates as we envision and experience.

    I also disagree with AJ’s claim that God caused AJ to order eggs because God knew that AJ would order eggs. What I am saying is that it is reasonable to consider that God is “instantly, inseparably, and imputably” tied to the outcome through His filtering or allowance of creature choice. And yes, my own life has analogous examples. If I allow my son to reject an offer from his grandmother to watch a movie with her because he wants to stay home and study for exams, then I am partly responsible for the better grade (hopefully) that he achieves on tomorrow’s final exam. Or a negative example, if I allow my son to partake in some ruinous activity where I had the ability to stop it, then I have in some measure affected the outcome of my son’s freewill choice.

    You say I’m conflating causation with knowledge. Maybe I am, but I’m trying to say that knowledge and allowance/filtering IS affecting the outcome. I’m not sure why you are not seeing this. It seems rational to me. I do not claim what I’m saying is “the truth” because I can’t be sure. I’m kind of groping in the dark on this one.

    You say, “The claim on the table is that God’s mere possession of knowledge about a current event completely and utterly eliminates my free will as to that event.”

    And, like you, I reject this strong claim. I still think that most of the time, the creature has freewill wrt to the event in question even when God has knowledge of that event.

    Sev @ 169

    You make the strong claim that EA just mentioned. The mere knowledge of an event eliminates all freewill. You provide Peter as an example. How do you know that God didn’t override Peter’s freewill? You just assume that Peter (and all creatures) never did, never does, and never will have freewill. There’s no way to prove this assumption. I wouldn’t use this “one-off” example to explain how freewill works in all situations. You say that if God knows of an event (future), then the event exists and it will happen. Again, this is an assumption. God might see a choice that you are going to make and overrides it. And in that case, yes, you have no freewill. But if He does not override it, then your freewill stands unimpeded and you are none the wiser.

  172. 172
    goodusername says:

    juwilker,

    I also think that the materialists (GUN, AJ, and RVB8) are making some good points about foreknowledge and predestination. Their line of thinking is that if something is known in the future, then the knower has some implication, some affect in that future.

    I haven’t followed every discussion going on here, so I’m not sure about AJ and RVB8, but in my case I’ve explicitly stated that foreknowledge does not imply causation. I’ve only argued that if there’s a future to know (for example, if God has foreknowledge, or if future time-travel is possible), then that means that the future is determined.

    The reason I can say this is because it only makes sense to say that the future can be known, if, in fact, it’s already determined. For example, would it make sense to say that God (or a time traveler) knows that I will do “X” tomorrow, and yet say that it’s yet to be determined whether I will do “X” tomorrow?

    Whether that means there’s no free will is a separate issue. Compatibilists, for example, would say that foreknowledge is compatible with free will as long as the foreknowledge is separate from the causation.

    But I think most people would also say that my having free will means that things aren’t determined until I make my choice.

    The example of a tape has been used to argue that knowledge is not a threat to free will. The (obvious) problem with the argument is that anything we’ve ever seen on tape has already occurred, and so, yes, what is on tape is determined and not a problem for free will – but it’s post-determined. No one has ever found post-determinism as a threat to free will – but if one had a tape of future events, then that’s not post-determinism, that’s pre-determinism. And that would beg the question: Are my choices determining/causing anything if everything was determined before I even existed?

  173. 173
    juwilker says:

    Hi GUN @ 172

    If anyone had or could preview a “tape of future events”, then I agree that the event is predetermined. And I think that God might be reviewing many of these tapes and allows many of those tapes to “play as normal”. But every once in a while, He overrides some of those tapes and creates one of his own. We don’t know which of those tapes He interfered with. So from our point of view, freewill operates as envisioned/experienced.

    Does that make sense?

  174. 174
    Eric Anderson says:

    All:

    Don’t get confused by the temporality.

    If AJ orders eggs for breakfast and God makes either of the following statements:

    1. AJ is ordering eggs (present tense); or

    2. AJ ordered eggs (past tense),

    no-one would have the slightest discomfort with these statements. No-one in their right mind would suggest that God’s knowledge of the event meant AJ didn’t have free will. No-one would dig in their heels and argue that there was any other cause to the ordering of eggs than AJ’s choice, his exercise of his own free will.

    The whole mental block some people seem to be having is that because there is a statement about a future event, then somehow (unexplained and unarticulated, as of now, I might add) this means AJ has no free will.

    So for anyone who thinks free will readily exists with a statement about the past or the present, but that it evaporates in the future, please explain the basis for such a claim. What is it that permits me to have free will if someone has absolute, incontrovertible knowledge about past or present events, but prevents me from having free will if they have knowledge of future events?

    Again, I apologize if this is getting repetitive, but this issue inevitably boils down to causation. Not some alleged indirect involvement; not some “allowance”; not some vague “intuition” that there must be a connection due to a perceived paradox about how we view time.

    We need to talk about real causation, as it is effected in the physical world in which we live.

    ——

    juwilker @173:

    This is an interesting thought.

    If what you mean is that God has more ability to influence events than we do and that God can influence things in a certain direction, then, sure, I can agree.

    In those cases God is acting and can be said to be the legitimate, bona-fide cause of a particular action he took through his own free will (whatever specific thing He did to tweak your timeline).

    Again, however, this does not address the issue on the table. The claim on the table is that God’s mere knowledge of what I will do means I have no free will. This is the claim that is subject to all the definitional, practical and logical problems I’ve outlined.

    —–

    On a broader note, I should add that I haven’t yet heard where Armand Jacks and Seversky are heading with such a claim. When I’ve heard this stuff before, it typically is focused on some attempt to indirectly prove that God doesn’t exist. Something like: God has foreknowledge => foreknowledge means no free will => we have free will => therefore, no God.

    I sincerely hope this isn’t where they are heading, but that hasn’t been clarified yet.

    But it might help explain why someone would stick to such an argument constructed with basic definitional and logical errors — sometimes the philosophy comes first, and then an argument is cobbled together to try to support the philosophy.

    Again, I hope that isn’t the case here and am hoping for some clarification.

  175. 175
    Origenes says:

    Many here assume that free will is akin to throwing a fair dice — that an act of free will is unpredictable. But is an act of free will of person A in circumstances X unpredictable even for an omniscient being with a complete knowledge of person A and circumstances X? Isn’t it true that, if we know a person well enough, we are able to predict many of his/her (free) choices?

    Free will is not something like quantum randomness. In my opinion unpredictability is not the essence of freedom. In my book a free decision has to with awareness, control and self-causation.

  176. 176
    vividbleau says:

    EA

    Hi Eric

    I think that not only do people conflate their terms they also often don’t define their terms as well. Take the term “free will”. What do we mean when we say we have “free will”? Free will gets bandied about as if it is obvious what it is and what we mean when we claim it for ourselves.I am not even sure the term itself is very helpful I think “free choice” is a much more accurate description. The best definition of free choice I have seen is the freedom to choose what one most wants to choose, given the options available at the time the choice is made.

    As to the objection that to know with certainty what choice one will make destroys that persons free choice in the matter just doesn’t follow. For instance with enough knowledge about someone I can know with certainty what choice they will freely make. For instance I know with certainty that loving parents are going to jump into the pool to save their baby if I throw it into a swimming pool. My knowledge of their future action does not nullify their free choice to jump in and save it does it?

    Oops I just saw that Origines beat me to the punch by making the same point.

    Vivid

  177. 177
    jstanley01 says:

    It is understandable, I suppose, that the notion of a God Almighty who “inhabits eternity” — and who therefore knows every thought and action that every human being will ever think or do, while He also preserves every human being’s free will and the rights and responsibilites that pertain thereto — throws human logic into a state of cognitive dissonance. Conniption fits, even.

    But consider the statement, “Henry knew everything about the Ford, but the Ford never comprehended Henry.”

    Hopefully this helps. Good luck!

  178. 178
    kairosfocus says:

    GUN, you are apparently locked into seeing only causally successive temporality. God is outside of time inherently and sees all times and spaces and yes the inner secrets of our hearts. As pointed out way above, that is akin to seeing after the fact [future to us is also present to him], not to forcing the fact so that responsible, rational freedom is a grand delusion. I am just astonished at how hard it is to acknowledge a simple thing, different worldviews work differently and should be understood in their terms, not by imposing an alien constraint from a different worldview assumed to be truth beyond dispute. On ethical theism, time is part of reality, not its whole. KF

  179. 179

    juwilker said;

    I know you will object. But let me explain. I see God as the ultimate “filter”, in the allowance of events to occur. If God sees that AJ is going to order bacon and eggs tomorrow (based on freewill of AJ) but God does not like that outcome, he may override AJ’s will and cause him to order pancakes. Or God may allow the outcome to occur and AJ eats his bacon and eggs. In the first case, you will say that we are talking about God’s will, not AJs will and that you are not addressing this situation. In the second case you might retort that allowance is not the same as causation. Agreed, they are not technically the same. But allowance does impute affect on the event in question. And I think this is what our materialist interlocutors are saying.

    As EA has said very well, it’s important to unpack terminology and think the logic through. Free will is not free action nor is it a power to determine of outcomes of one’s actions. IMO, “will” = “intent”; we can intend whatever is possible to imagine. We can intend (will) utterly unrealistic things in situations where what one intends has virtually no chance of occurring other than bare possibility.”

    When God “intervenes” (hardly an “intervention” when you’re the basis for the whole thing anyway), there is no need to intervene in a person’s intention (will), there is only a need to arrange the situation or the outcome in order to advance God’s purpose. IOW, AJ may order bacon and eggs, but there may be no bacon and eggs left. Or, a thought may occur to AJ or an event occur that influences him to change his mind about what to do at that time.

    Furthermore, I don’t consider “ordering eggs and bacon” to be an accurate or true description of intent/will, but rather a description of the outcome of of intent/will as that intent/will is translated by AJ’s mind and situation into the physical actuality. I don’t think we ever have an intention, at the level of intention, of “ordering eggs and bacon”, but rather the intention itself is rather something more primordial – pre-language, so to speak – that gets translated by the mind/brain/situation into something specific physically.

    Let’s say the intent is the pre-language equivalent of “sustenance”; that intent is translated by the various personal, psychological aspects of AJ’s mind at the time, filtered down through the physical interface of the brain into an actuality that happens to be, at that time and place in that situation, ordering bacon and eggs.

    Putting a thought in AJ’s mind or altering the chemistry of the brain or hiding the bacon and eggs temporarily is not interfering with the intent/will, it’s just modifying how it will be actualized in physical reality.

    Other unpacking necessary: mind and will are not the same thing, IMO. Will/intent is the pure aspect of who we are as our connection to God. I consider it the essence of the soul. I think of the mind as a kind of supernatural skin for the soul as the intent expresses itself as an individual, while the body/brain is an interface the soul/mind in order to function in the physical world.

    IOW, who/what we are in essence is the intent/soul; but that intent (free will, self-mover) is pre-language, primordial, divine. It is then housed and filtered through mind, body and brain into thoughts and actions. God influencing the final outcome of an actualized intent is not the same thing as God changing the intent.

  180. 180
    Armand Jacks says:

    Hi Eric. I apologize for not responding earlier but I was busy watching KF implode. You might say that I knew it would happen and he had no free will to do otherwise.

    Whether [God] caused it is precisely the issue in whether there is free will.

    No, the issue is whether god can actually have full knowledge if we have free will. There is no causation. They are just mutually incompatible.

    If god knows with certainty that I am going to have bacon and eggs tomorrow, am I capable of changing my mind at the last minute? If not, I don’t have free will. If I can, god does not have infallible foreknowledge.

    By the way. My bacon and eggs this morning were great. So maybe I don’t have free will.

  181. 181
    asauber says:

    They are just mutually incompatible.

    Armand,

    This is just an assertion. Can you demonstrate how you know it’s true?

    You make the choices. God knows the choices you make. There’s nothing logically incompatible with that at all.

    Andrew

  182. 182
    Armand Jacks says:

    Andrew:

    You make the choices. God knows the choices you [will] make. There’s nothing logically incompatible with that at all.

    Only a theist would believe this.
    If he knows the choices I am going to make, how can I possibly change my mind? If I can’t change my mind then I don’t have free will.

    Unless I have missed it, I haven’t read an answer to my earlier question. Why is it so important that god be omniscient?

  183. 183
    asauber says:

    Only a theist would believe this.

    Ya think?

    If he knows the choices I am going to make, how can I possibly change my mind?

    The way you always do.

    If I can’t change my mind then I don’t have free will.

    We have established you can change your mind.

    Why is it so important that god be omniscient?

    There is no value judgment needed here. That God is omniscient is His nature. Rating the importance of it seems like a futile exercise.

    Andrew

  184. 184
    Armand Jacks says:

    Andrew:

    Ya think?

    As often as I can. I recommend it for everyone.

    We have established you can change your mind.

    Then god’s knowledge is faulty. One minute he knows I am going to have bacon and eggs. When I change it he knows that I am going to have pancakes. That isn’t foreknowledge, that is a parlour trick.

    There is no value judgment needed here. That God is omniscient is His nature. Rating the importance of it seems like a futile exercise.

    That certainly explains the pains that theists go through to rationalize an obvious inconsistency.

  185. 185
    goodusername says:

    kf,

    GUN, you are apparently locked into seeing only causally successive temporality.

    I’m not sure what you mean by that. I do believe that we can’t alter the past.

    God is outside of time inherently and sees all times and spaces and yes the inner secrets of our hearts. As pointed out way above, that is akin to seeing after the fact [future to us is also present to him], not to forcing the fact so that responsible, rational freedom is a grand delusion. I am just astonished at how hard it is to acknowledge a simple thing, different worldviews work differently and should be understood in their terms, not by imposing an alien constraint from a different worldview assumed to be truth beyond dispute. On ethical theism, time is part of reality, not its whole. KF

    Is there something there that disagrees with anything I’ve said?

  186. 186
    juwilker says:

    EA @ 174,
    We are agreeing with the first case in my post in 167 reposted here:

    “I know you will object. But let me explain. I see God as the ultimate “filter”, in the allowance of events to occur. If God sees that AJ is going to order bacon and eggs tomorrow (based on freewill of AJ) but God does not like that outcome, he may override AJ’s will and cause him to order pancakes. Or God may allow the outcome to occur and AJ eats his bacon and eggs. In the first case, you will say that we are talking about God’s will, not AJs will and that you are not addressing this situation. In the second case you might retort that allowance is not the same as causation. Agreed, they are not technically the same. But allowance does impute affect on the event in question. And I think this is what our materialist interlocutors are saying.”

    We are in agreement with the first case. The knower is using ability to interfere (override) and can be easily assigned as the cause of AJ ordering pancakes. It is the second case that we are debating.

    Ok, so the heart of the issue is whether “allowance” can in anyway be tied to the event in question (AJ ordering bacon and eggs). You say no way. From the way you see it, the knower’s “ability” has nothing to with causation of the event unless actually used. Or in your words @ 168: “It doesn’t have anything to do with whether the knower had an ability to interfere. The question is whether the knower actually, in real space and time used that ability and did interfere.”

    This is the sticking point. You assert that having the ability to interfere has nothing to with the causation of that event. In a limited and technical sense, I agree with that statement. The knower, with ability to stop/modify that event in question, does not actually cause the event. AJ’s freewill reigns as he orders bacon and eggs. And the jury in the courtroom who reads the detective’s report titled “Who Caused the Ordering of Bacon and Eggs On April 23rd 2017 at around 8:00 AM” will agree and assign cause to the competently endowed freewill agent AJ.

    You are correct on causation. And the jury made the right decision given the facts they have. But the jury knew nothing about the knower. The way I see it, the knower’s ability to modify the event does implicate the knower. If I stand by and watch a woman get raped and do nothing, my allowance is part of the outcome. I didn’t cause it, but I’m implicated. Summarizing what mugwump3 stated in @124 often the freewill/foreknowledge debate is not about decision-making but culpability (and I’m not meaning culpability in the negative sense). Why is this sentiment or chain of argument tying allowance to the event so unreasonable in your mind?

    WJM @ 179 I would like to respond more in-depth with what you are saying. But you are digging in much deeper about this subject than where I wish to go. I’m not disagreeing with what you are saying, I’m just not wanting to parse these ideas into too many pieces. I start getting lost.

    Justin

  187. 187
    Eric Anderson says:

    Since today is Sunday, I will add one additional important problem with the claim that foreknowledge means no free will.

    This is, at least partially, a theological argument (although the principle applies much more broadly), so I didn’t bring it up before, because I thought it might be unpersuasive to Armand Jacks and Seversky and I preferred to focus on the definitional and logical problems. However, for any theists reading this thread, particularly anyone from a Judeo-Christian bent, this is an important point to keep in mind.

    One of the central themes of scripture, indeed, one of the great overarching principles, is that individuals have free will and the ability to choose. “Choose you this day whom ye will serve,” is but one example of the scriptural injunction. The entire concept of an individual’s relationship with deity is dependent upon an individual’s ability to choose: how to act, what to do, whether to heed, whether to follow God or mammon, whether to embrace good or evil, whether to serve and uplift, how to treat others, and on and on.

    Whatever concept we may have about blessings and rewards also depends upon a recognition that the individual had a choice in the matter and that the Lord’s “judgment is just”. Yes, there are some corner cases – on the one hand cases in which we might think the judgment too harsh or on the other hand in which unwarranted mercy was received by the individual. But the overarching theme across the ages of Judeo-Christian scripture is clear: use your free will to make the right choices and good consequences will follow, if not here, then at least in the hereafter.

    The claim that God’s mere knowledge of the future robs us of our free will is not only inconsistent with this doctrine, it is diametrically opposed to this very central tenet of Judeo-Christian faith.

    Anyone who believes God has foreknowledge and that this foreknowledge eliminates our free will must reject this most basic and fundamental doctrine of free will set forth throughout scripture, embracing instead a kind of determinism or fatalism in which we are but unwitting pawns, without real ability to act and instead carried along by every wind as we are acted upon by forces outside our control – a view little different in substance from the materialistic claim that free will is an illusion and we are but pawns to the blind forces of physics and our genes.

  188. 188
    Eric Anderson says:

    Another Key Point:

    The chain of cause and effect is a key issue some people still struggle to get their minds around.

    The claim on the table goes like this: If God knew AJ was going to order eggs, then AJ must order eggs and, ergo, AJ has no free will in the matter.

    This mistakenly views the knowledge as arising first, largely independent of AJ’s actions, and that the action flows later from the knowledge. In other words it essentially views the knowledge as the cause, and the choice as the effect. This is not what is going on. This is exactly backwards.

    The knowledge of the action arises as a result of the action, just like it always does.

    If AJ instead decided to order pancakes, then the knowledge would be that he will order pancakes. Where would that knowledge come from? It would come from the fact that he ordered pancakes, instead of eggs. It wouldn’t just pop into existence out of the blue on its own.

    The knowledge* of AJ’s action arises — as it always and inevitably must — from AJ’s action. It doesn’t matter whether the action was past, present or future. The knowledge of the action depends upon and arises from the action, not the other way around.

    —–

    What some seem to be getting hung up about is whether someone could indeed have the ability to know the outcome of future actions. If you don’t think God is omniscient, or you don’t think time travel exists, or you don’t think knowledge of the future is possible, in and of itself, fine. That is a somewhat separate discussion.

    But the idea that knowledge of the future causes that future or eliminates free will is based on a misunderstanding that the knowledge arises from the knower, prior to the action, rather than arising, as it always does, from the action.

    —–

    * Note here that we are talking about actual knowledge, acquired however you want to imagine it: through clairvoyance, through time travel, through God’s ability to see the future — it doesn’t matter.

    If we are instead just proposing some pretty capable predictive skills, which although excellent might be less than 100% sure, I take it people would drop the claim about loss of free will anyway and could find comfort in the idea that free will exists in this tiny space of uncertainty between the excellent predictive skills and the actual outcome.

  189. 189
    Eric Anderson says:

    Armand Jacks @180:

    No, the issue is whether god can actually have full knowledge if we have free will. There is no causation.

    Of course it is about causation. It is all about causation. Whether the knowledge causes some change or elimination of my free will. What causes the outcome, given that we have taken free will off the table.

    Why do you keep repeating this bald-faced claim about foreknowledge and free will being inherently incompatible? Is this just some materialist talking point you picked up along the way, or can you actually give some reasons for your position?

    I have given you detailed reasons why this is nonsense. Reasons based on the plain definitions of words in the English language, based on our practical experience, based on logic, based on the chain of causation.

    You have steadfastly refused to answer the questions posed to you. You apparently fail to recognize that if you have no free will in the matter then there must be some other cause for the outcome. And you have failed to think through the implications of your claim, thus avoiding the perfectly reasonable and logical follow-up questions to your claim.

    If god knows with certainty that I am going to have bacon and eggs tomorrow, am I capable of changing my mind at the last minute? If not, I don’t have free will.

    Of course you’re capable of ordering what you want at the last minute. Why would you think otherwise?

    Again, you misunderstand the chain of events and when the knowledge arises. The knowledge of what you do* arises only once you do it. It is your action that gives us knowledge about what you did. The knowledge doesn’t arise first and then the action later.

    My guess is that your failure to comprehend the basic issues is tied to the fact that you have a mental block against the possibility that anyone could actually know the future. Fine. That is a separate discussion, and you can disbelieve in such a being all you want.

    But please, for the love of basic logic, stop pushing this nonsense that foreknowledge automatically means no free will.

    Either put up and demonstrate the causal chain that (a) eliminates your free will if there is foreknowledge, and (b) causes the thing to occur (the thing that it looks like you did, but you didn’t, because you have no free will), or be intellectually honest enough to admit that you are just making a naked assertion without evidentiary or logical support.

    —–

    * Again, if we are talking about actual knowledge, as opposed to predictive probability.

  190. 190
    Eric Anderson says:

    Justin @186:

    You are correct on causation.

    Thank you.

    The way I see it, the knower’s ability to modify the event does implicate the knower. If I stand by and watch a woman get raped and do nothing, my allowance is part of the outcome. I didn’t cause it, but I’m implicated. Summarizing what mugwump3 stated in @124 often the freewill/foreknowledge debate is not about decision-making but culpability (and I’m not meaning culpability in the negative sense). Why is this sentiment or chain of argument tying allowance to the event so unreasonable in your mind?

    If your point is that God allows certain things to happen that he could have prevented had he wanted to exercise his free will to do so, then sure. I don’t have a problem with that. This is undoubtedly the case on a regular basis.

    If your point is further that we exercise our free will within larger bounds and parameters that have been set, whether by God, our circumstances, our physical capabilities, the time in which we live, the impact of others’ decisions on us, and a hundred other factors, then yes, I agree. There are limits to our free will. It is not absolute. It can be impacted.

    If your point is even that God could, if he wanted to, prevent me from doing something in a particular instance, then I can even agree with that in many cases, perhaps most.

    So I don’t disagree with you on these key points.

    —–

    Now, do you recognize that these do not address the claim put forth by Armand Jacks and Seversky, namely that foreknowledge of the future means there can be no free will exercised as to those events, even in principle?

    Maybe you are already on board with my responses to them in that regard and agree their claim is nonsense and you are now trying to focus on more interesting nuances of the things listed above. If so, great.

    But in that case, I’m simply pointing out that your mild and reasonable view of how one being’s exercise of free will (“allowing” in your case) might interact with another being’s free will, is most certainly not the point being made by our materialist interlocutors.

    To use your example, the claim on the table is that if you knew the rapist was going to rape then the rapist has no free will. And, we might add, should reasonably be absolved from any responsibility for the actions he was “forced” to take without free will. Forced, presumably by your knowledge (although this cause-effect relationship has conveniently been completely ignored and unexplained by those making the claim in these pages).

    —–

    We are responsible for our actions (what we do) and God is responsible for his actions (allowing us to do what we do). That is all fine and good.

    But this is a completely separate question from whether mere foreknowledge eliminates free will.

  191. 191

    juwilker,

    Often one can gauge one’s desire to maintain a worldview by how far they are willing to examine their views.

    Let’s take for instance someone who intends to only wash their hands once, but because of OCD cannot stop themselves from washing their hands 10 times. Or, an addict who intends to get clean, but the power of their addiction overwhelms their intent. What of other mental/physical illnesses that act as a barrier between intent and an action that correctly interprets that intent?

    I disagree that we are responsible for our actions; we are responsible for our intentions. The path from an intention to action is not a direct one by any means. For instance, we may intend to to do good, but because of social conditioning and other factors we can be doing harm. Are we then responsible for that harm?

    Then we come to consequences, and I refer to the adage “Man proposes, God disposes”. We can intend whatever we want, and then actions will be whatever they are, but what is forming the ultimate consequences of our actions?

    When one deeply examines the issue, there is plenty of room between the free will intent of an individual and the consequence of action for God to do whatever it wishes and arrange whatever outcomes it desires without interfering in anyone’s free will.

  192. 192
    kairosfocus says:

    GUN, that illustrates my point. KF

  193. 193
    kairosfocus says:

    Re AJ:

    This objector would do well to ponder the demonic folly inadvertently revealed by Alinsky in his:

    4. “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”

    5. “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counteract ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.” . . . .

    13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. [NB: Notice the evil counsel to find a way to attack the man, not the issue. The easiest way to do that, is to use the trifecta stratagem: distract, distort, demonise.] In conflict tactics there are certain rules that [should be regarded] as universalities. One is that the opposition must be singled out as the target and ‘frozen.’…

    “…any target can always say, ‘Why do you center on me when there are others to blame as well?’ When your ‘freeze the target,’ you disregard these [rational but distracting] arguments…. Then, as you zero in and freeze your target and carry out your attack, all the ‘others’ come out of the woodwork very soon. They become visible by their support of the target…’

    “One acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angels are on one side and all the devils on the other.”

    He would be better advised to sort out his many worldviews problems, starting with first setting aside the use of crooked yardsticks that only impose error and lock out the true, the sound, the right . . . for such already conform to reality and will never align with error.

    When error becomes the yardstick, folly follows and leads to ruin.

    Hence, again, the failure inadvertently highlighted by Lewontin:

    . . . to put a correct view of the universe into people’s heads [==> as in, “we” have cornered the market on truth, warrant and knowledge] we must first get an incorrect view out [–> as in, if you disagree with “us” of the secularist elite you are wrong, irrational and so dangerous you must be stopped, even at the price of manipulative indoctrination of hoi polloi] . . . the problem is to get them [= hoi polloi] to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the world, the demons that exist only in their imaginations,

    [ –> as in, to think in terms of ethical theism is to be delusional, justifying “our” elitist and establishment-controlling interventions of power to “fix” the widespread mental disease]

    and to accept a social and intellectual apparatus, Science, as the only begetter of truth

    [–> NB: this is a knowledge claim about knowledge and its possible sources, i.e. it is a claim in philosophy not science; it is thus self-refuting]

    . . . . To Sagan, as to all but a few other scientists [–> “we” are the dominant elites], it is self-evident

    [–> actually, science and its knowledge claims are plainly not immediately and necessarily true on pain of absurdity, to one who understands them; this is another logical error, begging the question , confused for real self-evidence; whereby a claim shows itself not just true but true on pain of patent absurdity if one tries to deny it . . . and in fact it is evolutionary materialism that is readily shown to be self-refuting]

    that the practices of science provide the surest method of putting us in contact with physical reality [–> = all of reality to the evolutionary materialist], and that, in contrast, the demon-haunted world rests on a set of beliefs and behaviors that fail every reasonable test [–> i.e. an assertion that tellingly reveals a hostile mindset, not a warranted claim] . . . .

    It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us [= the evo-mat establishment] to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes [–> another major begging of the question . . . ] to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute [–> i.e. here we see the fallacious, indoctrinated, ideological, closed mind . . . ], for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door . . . [–> irreconcilable hostility to ethical theism, already caricatured as believing delusionally in imaginary demons]. [Lewontin, Billions and billions of Demons, NYRB Jan 1997,cf. here. And, if you imagine this is “quote-mined” I invite you to read the fuller annotated citation here.]

    A word to the wise . . .

    KF

    PS: Notice, the hang-up on a distractive point triggered by Seversky.

  194. 194
    Eugen says:

    Eric to Apple Jack

    “Is this just some materialist talking point you picked up along the way, or can you actually give some reasons for your position?”

    I had foreknowledge that AJ wouldn’t give reasons and logic for his position.
    😀

    Merriam-Webster

    Definition of free will
    1
    : voluntary choice or decision “I do this of my own free will”
    2
    : freedom of humans to make choices that are not determined by prior causes or by divine intervention

  195. 195
    Armand Jacks says:

    Eugen:

    Eric to Apple Jack

    If you prefer to make fun of my name, I prefer not to talk with you. Have a nice life.

    Eric:

    The claim that God’s mere knowledge of the future robs us of our free will is not only inconsistent with this doctrine, it is diametrically opposed to this very central tenet of Judeo-Christian faith.

    Anyone who believes God has foreknowledge and that this foreknowledge eliminates our free will must reject this most basic and fundamental doctrine of free will set forth throughout scripture, embracing instead a kind of determinism or fatalism in which we are but unwitting pawns, without real ability to act and instead carried along by every wind as we are acted upon by forces outside our control – a view little different in substance from the materialistic claim that free will is an illusion and we are but pawns to the blind forces of physics and our genes.

    This is the most honest thing I have heard from your side of the discussion. Thank you for this.

    The belief that god’s foreknowledge and free will are not incompatable is just that, a religious belief. I don’t have any problem with this as I think that the free will debate is one that can’t be won by either side because there is no way to prove that it exists. You either take it on faith or you don’t. At best, it is a debate whose merit lies in the fact that it is more interesting than debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

    KF:

    Re AJ:

    This objector would do well to ponder the demonic folly inadvertently revealed by Alinsky in his:…

    KF would do well to address the actual issues rather than taking personal offence from anyone who has the audacity to disagree with him. As well, he would do well to stop telling everyone who opposes then how they can do well. That smacks of condescending and sermonizing. If I wanted that, I would go to church.

  196. 196
    Eugen says:

    Do you need a hug and a safe space AJ?
    😀

    Just kidding, I really don’t care about you but just letting you know about my foreknowledge: you’ll embarrass yourself over basic logic and reason in the future.

  197. 197
    asauber says:

    If you prefer to make fun of my name, I prefer not to talk with you. Have a nice life.

    Armand,

    If you are going to run with the Big Trolls, you need a thicker skin.

    Andrew

  198. 198
    Armand Jacks says:

    Andrew:

    Armand,

    If you are going to run with the Big Trolls, you need a thicker skin.

    Sorry. But life is too short to spend it dealing with childish behaviour. If I wanted that I would be a school teacher.

  199. 199
    juwilker says:

    EA @ 190

    We have hit common ground!

    You post “If your point is that God allows certain things to happen that he could have prevented had he wanted to exercise his free will to do so, then sure. I don’t have a problem with that. This is undoubtedly the case on a regular basis.”

    That’s exactly my point. And that is how allowance is tied to the event. As I’ve said several times, I’m not arguing that we have no freewill because of this fact. Our will is as free as a bird, most of the time.

    WJM @ 191

    Thank for the more direct and less complicated thought. I am in agreement that there can be a lot of obstacles between intent and action. Mugwump3 @ 124 summarizes your sentiment nicely. And I think our judge (God) would consider these obstacles in assigning culpability.

    All, great discussion. Really enjoy everyone’s honest effort to try and understand these difficult issues.

    Justin

  200. 200
    Pindi says:

    Eugen:

    Apple Jack”. Ha ha ha, that’s really funny. Pretty clever to change “Armand Jacks” to “Apple Jack”. Are you a professional stand up comedian by any chance? If not, you should think about. I reckon you would kill on stage.

  201. 201
    kairosfocus says:

    I have discussed Alinskyite, trollish misbehaviour exemplified by AJ et al here, a little while ago: http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-630182 AJ et al would be well advised to pay close heed. KF

  202. 202
    kairosfocus says:

    FTR: let us recall the actual OP:

    Armand Jacks Destroys ID in One Sentence
    April 16, 2017 Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design
    201 Comments

    Armand Jacks says he has a knock down show stopping argument to rebut ID’s claim that intelligent agency is the only known cause of specified complexity.

    Get ready.

    Hold on to your hat.

    Here it is:

    Using the same argument, the only known causes of everything we have ever seen in the entire universe are material causes.

    Are blind unguided material forces capable of typing the post you just posted AJ? If you say “no” your argument is refuted. If you say “yes” you look like a fool or a liar or both. Talk about the Scylla and Charybdis.

    AJ, you really should stop and think for 10 seconds before you write something like that down. I know, I know. Thinking is hard, and 10 seconds is a long time. But still.

    As for the title of this post, on reflection maybe I overstated AJ’s accomplishment a little.

    To this, I counterpose Plato, as a start point for not only speaking to agent cause and its implications but also through the concept of reflexive internal cause in an agent — the self-moved — we may better understand responsible, rational freedom:

    Athenian Stranger: [[The avant garde philosophers, teachers and artists c. 400 BC] say that the greatest and fairest things are the work of nature and of chance, the lesser of art [[ i.e. techne], which, receiving from nature the greater and primeval creations, moulds and fashions all those lesser works which are generally termed artificial . . . They say that fire and water, and earth and air [[i.e the classical “material” elements of the cosmos], all exist by nature and chance, and none of them by art, and that as to the bodies which come next in order-earth, and sun, and moon, and stars-they have been created by means of these absolutely inanimate existences. The elements are severally moved by chance and some inherent force according to certain affinities among them-of hot with cold, or of dry with moist, or of soft with hard, and according to all the other accidental admixtures of opposites which have been formed by necessity. After this fashion and in this manner the whole heaven has been created, and all that is in the heaven, as well as animals and all plants, and all the seasons come from these elements, not by the action of mind, as they say, or of any God, or from art, but as I was saying, by nature and chance only . . . .

    [[T]hese people would say that the Gods exist not by nature, but by art, and by the laws of states, which are different in different places, according to the agreement of those who make them; and that the honourable is one thing by nature and another thing by law, and that the principles of justice have no existence at all in nature, but that mankind are always disputing about them and altering them; and that the alterations which are made by art and by law have no basis in nature, but are of authority for the moment and at the time at which they are made.– [[Relativism, too, is not new; complete with its radical amorality rooted in a worldview that has no foundational IS that can ground OUGHT. (Cf. here for Locke’s views and sources on a very different base for grounding liberty as opposed to license and resulting anarchistic “every man does what is right in his own eyes” chaos leading to tyranny.)] These, my friends, are the sayings of wise men, poets and prose writers, which find a way into the minds of youth. They are told by them that the highest right is might [[ Evolutionary materialism leads to the promotion of amorality], and in this way the young fall into impieties, under the idea that the Gods are not such as the law bids them imagine; and hence arise factions [[Evolutionary materialism-motivated amorality “naturally” leads to continual contentions and power struggles; cf. dramatisation here], these philosophers inviting them to lead a true life according to nature, that is, to live in real dominion over others [[such amoral factions, if they gain power, “naturally” tend towards ruthless tyranny; here, too, Plato hints at the career of Alcibiades], and not in legal subjection to them . . . . [[I]f impious discourses were not scattered, as I may say, throughout the world, there would have been no need for any vindication of the existence of the Gods-but seeing that they are spread far and wide, such arguments are needed; and who should come to the rescue of the greatest laws, when they are being undermined by bad men, but the legislator himself? . . . .

    Ath. Then, by Heaven, we have discovered the source of this vain opinion of all those physical investigators; and I would have you examine their arguments with the utmost care, for their impiety is a very serious matter; they not only make a bad and mistaken use of argument, but they lead away the minds of others: that is my opinion of them.

    Cle. You are right; but I should like to know how this happens.

    Ath. I fear that the argument may seem singular.

    Cle. Do not hesitate, Stranger; I see that you are afraid of such a discussion carrying you beyond the limits of legislation. But if there be no other way of showing our agreement in the belief that there are Gods, of whom the law is said now to approve, let us take this way, my good sir.

    Ath. Then I suppose that I must repeat the singular argument of those who manufacture the soul according to their own impious notions; they affirm that which is the first cause of the generation and destruction of all things, to be not first, but last, and that which is last to be first, and hence they have fallen into error about the true nature of the Gods.

    Cle. Still I do not understand you.

    Ath. Nearly all of them, my friends, seem to be ignorant of the nature and power of the soul [[ = psuche], especially in what relates to her origin: they do not know that she is among the first of things, and before all bodies, and is the chief author of their changes and transpositions. And if this is true, and if the soul is older than the body, must not the things which are of the soul’s kindred be of necessity prior to those which appertain to the body?

    Cle. Certainly.

    Ath. Then thought and attention and mind and art and law will be prior to that which is hard and soft and heavy and light; and the great and primitive works and actions will be works of art; they will be the first, and after them will come nature and works of nature, which however is a wrong term for men to apply to them; these will follow, and will be under the government of art and mind.

    Cle. But why is the word “nature” wrong?

    Ath. Because those who use the term mean to say that nature is the first creative power; but if the soul turn out to be the primeval element, and not fire or air, then in the truest sense and beyond other things the soul may be said to exist by nature; and this would be true if you proved that the soul is older than the body, but not otherwise.

    [[ . . . .]

    Ath. . . . when one thing changes another, and that another, of such will there be any primary changing element? How can a thing which is moved by another ever be the beginning of change? Impossible. But when the self-moved changes other, and that again other, and thus thousands upon tens of thousands of bodies are set in motion, must not the beginning of all this motion be the change of the self-moving principle? . . . . self-motion being the origin of all motions, and the first which arises among things at rest as well as among things in motion, is the eldest and mightiest principle of change, and that which is changed by another and yet moves other is second.

    [[ . . . .]

    Ath. If we were to see this power existing in any earthy, watery, or fiery substance, simple or compound-how should we describe it?

    Cle. You mean to ask whether we should call such a self-moving power life?

    Ath. I do.

    Cle. Certainly we should.

    Ath. And when we see soul in anything, must we not do the same-must we not admit that this is life?

    [[ . . . . ]

    Cle. You mean to say that the essence which is defined as the self-moved is the same with that which has the name soul?

    Ath. Yes; and if this is true, do we still maintain that there is anything wanting in the proof that the soul is the first origin and moving power of all that is, or has become, or will be, and their contraries, when she has been clearly shown to be the source of change and motion in all things?

    Cle. Certainly not; the soul as being the source of motion, has been most satisfactorily shown to be the oldest of all things.

    Ath. And is not that motion which is produced in another, by reason of another, but never has any self-moving power at all, being in truth the change of an inanimate body, to be reckoned second, or by any lower number which you may prefer?

    Cle. Exactly.

    Ath. Then we are right, and speak the most perfect and absolute truth, when we say that the soul is prior to the body, and that the body is second and comes afterwards, and is born to obey the soul, which is the ruler?

    [[ . . . . ]

    Ath. If, my friend, we say that the whole path and movement of heaven, and of all that is therein, is by nature akin to the movement and revolution and calculation of mind, and proceeds by kindred laws, then, as is plain, we must say that the best soul takes care of the world and guides it along the good path. [[Plato here explicitly sets up an inference to design (by a good soul) from the intelligible order of the cosmos.]

    FFT.

    KF

  203. 203
    kairosfocus says:

    Strange, isn’t it, how this all connects and how if we would focus core issues the secondary ones would take care of themselves.

  204. 204
    kairosfocus says:

    Onward, why not let us try to ponder what Plato meant by speaking of the self-moved entity.

  205. 205
    kairosfocus says:

    And let us ask, could it by any chance be linked to the Smith cybernetic model with a two-tier controller with an internal interface and shared resources, especially memory?

  206. 206
    kairosfocus says:

    Also, what about the possibility of a quantum influence interface to the brain and CNS as i/o front end computational substrate cybernetic loop controller?

    –> And if that does not pull out BA77, let’s put up an APB on him as a missing person. (I am wondering if he is ill. Anybody out there has a good contact?)

  207. 207
    kairosfocus says:

    oh, and what about this slice of Plato in The Laws Bk X:

    Ath. Then I suppose that I must repeat the singular argument of those who manufacture the soul according to their own impious notions; they affirm that which is the first cause of the generation and destruction of all things, to be not first, but last, and that which is last to be first, and hence they have fallen into error about the true nature of the Gods.

    Cle. Still I do not understand you.

    Ath. Nearly all of them, my friends, seem to be ignorant of the nature and power of the soul [[ = psuche], especially in what relates to her origin: they do not know that she is among the first of things, and before all bodies, and is the chief author of their changes and transpositions. And if this is true, and if the soul is older than the body, must not the things which are of the soul’s kindred be of necessity prior to those which appertain to the body?

    Cle. Certainly.

    Ath. Then thought and attention and mind and art and law will be prior to that which is hard and soft and heavy and light; and the great and primitive works and actions will be works of art; they will be the first, and after them will come nature and works of nature, which however is a wrong term for men to apply to them; these will follow, and will be under the government of art and mind.

    Cle. But why is the word “nature” wrong?

    Ath. Because those who use the term mean to say that nature is the first creative power; but if the soul turn out to be the primeval element, and not fire or air, then in the truest sense and beyond other things the soul may be said to exist by nature; and this would be true if you proved that the soul is older than the body, but not otherwise.

    [[ . . . .]

    Ath. . . . when one thing changes another, and that another, of such will there be any primary changing element? How can a thing which is moved by another ever be the beginning of change? Impossible. But when the self-moved changes other, and that again other, and thus thousands upon tens of thousands of bodies are set in motion, must not the beginning of all this motion be the change of the self-moving principle? . . . . self-motion being the origin of all motions, and the first which arises among things at rest as well as among things in motion, is the eldest and mightiest principle of change, and that which is changed by another and yet moves other is second.

    [[ . . . .]

    Ath. If we were to see this power existing in any earthy, watery, or fiery substance, simple or compound-how should we describe it?

    Cle. You mean to ask whether we should call such a self-moving power life?

    Ath. I do.

    Cle. Certainly we should.

    Ath. And when we see soul in anything, must we not do the same-must we not admit that this is life?

    [[ . . . . ]

    Cle. You mean to say that the essence which is defined as the self-moved is the same with that which has the name soul?

    Ath. Yes; and if this is true, do we still maintain that there is anything wanting in the proof that the soul is the first origin and moving power of all that is, or has become, or will be, and their contraries, when she has been clearly shown to be the source of change and motion in all things?

    Cle. Certainly not; the soul as being the source of motion, has been most satisfactorily shown to be the oldest of all things.

    Ath. And is not that motion which is produced in another, by reason of another, but never has any self-moving power at all, being in truth the change of an inanimate body, to be reckoned second, or by any lower number which you may prefer? . . .

  208. 208
    Armand Jacks says:

    AJ is no longer with us.

    UD Editors

  209. 209
    kairosfocus says:

    AJ, you came here to UD and offered that as one of your arguments. Are you now willing to acknowledge that this claim — which, were it really true WOULD indeed actually demolish ID in one argument — is fundamentally fallacious? Namely: Using the same argument, the only known causes of everything we have ever seen in the entire universe are material causes. Or, are you able to back up your implication that it all boils down to leptons, quarks, bosons and fermions etc interacting blindly through chance and mechanical necessity and that this is all that WE (presumably, meatbots . . . ) have EVER seen ANYWHERE in the universe . . . including the WE’s in question? KF

  210. 210
    Eric Anderson says:

    Armand Jacks @195:

    The belief that god’s foreknowledge and free will are not incompatable is just that, a religious belief.

    This is incredibly disappointing.

    Why would you twist my words and lie?

    I have given you definitional, practical, and logical reasons why your claim fails. You have given zero reason why we should take your claim seriously. Instead, you have just kept repeating it, all the while avoiding the basic questions.

    Do you understand what it means for me to give an additional argument for those who are religiously inclined?

    I stated that I didn’t bring it up earlier because I suspected it would be unpersuasive to you. I was spot on.

    Unfortunately, what I didn’t anticipate is that you would twist my additional argument as though it were the only argument, continue to dig in your heels, and then lie about the state of the debate at hand.

    You have been asked politely and repeatedly to support your position with some evidence or at least some reasoned argumentation.

    If you cannot do so or don’t have the intellectual integrity to do so, fine. My point is made, my argument stands, and there is little value in continuing.

  211. 211
    Armand Jacks says:

    KF:

    AJ, you came here to UD and offered that as one of your arguments.

    Again you are speaking in disregard to the truth. The current thread arose from a comment I made at another thread. It is available for all to read. Barry mischaracterized it with his first sentence when he said:

    Armand Jacks says he has a knock down show stopping argument to rebut ID’s claim that intelligent agency is the only known cause of specified complexity.

    If you read the original comment, I did not make any such claim and I did not infer it. Your continuing to repeat this false claim is deplorable. Especially after its falsehood has been repeatedly pointed out to you.
    My original claim was:

    Using the same argument, the only known causes of everything we have ever seen in the entire universe are material causes.

    This is not incompatible with ID because we do not know the cause of the universe. We do not know the cause of life. We do not know the cause of DNA. As such, if my claim is true, which I think it is, this would have very little impact on the veracity of ID.

    So, again, I ask you. Please link to the comment where I claimed to have a knockdown rebuttal of ID or apologize for repeatedly spreading a falsehood.

  212. 212
    asauber says:

    Armand indeed has not explained how foreknowledge in party A and freewill in party B are mutually exclusive.

    His beliefs about this topic are just as religious as anyone else’s.

    Andrew

  213. 213
    Armand Jacks says:

    Eric:

    This is incredibly disappointing.

    Why would you twist my words and lie?

    I apologize. That was not my intent. My only excuse is that my response was based on a cursory read of your comment.

    The claim on the table goes like this: If God knew AJ was going to order eggs, then AJ must order eggs and, ergo, AJ has no free will in the matter.

    This mistakenly views the knowledge as arising first, largely independent of AJ’s actions, and that the action flows later from the knowledge. In other words it essentially views the knowledge as the cause, and the choice as the effect. This is not what is going on. This is exactly backwards.

    The knowledge of the action arises as a result of the action, just like it always does.

    But then, this is not foreknowledge, it is just knowledge of what I am doing in present time. If this is the power you claim that god has, I have no problem with this. But this is not what I was talking about. I was talking about the concept of god knowing what I am going to do before I make that decision.

    But again, if you are just saying that god is limited to the knowledge of the present, then it is not incompatible with free will. It is only incompatible if he knows what I will do in the future.

  214. 214
    asauber says:

    Maybe this will help explain what is going on here:

    Humans have never experienced the foreknowledge that God possesses, so Armand doesn’t understand what it even is. It’s theology and Armand has no interest in understanding it.

    Armand’s duty as an Atheist Troll is to try and undermine belief in God, so that’s his motivation to string this out. That’s what trolls do.

    Andrew

  215. 215
    kairosfocus says:

    AJ, just earlier today, you were cautioned on your behavour. I noted that you came to UD, check. I noted, you presented an argument, check. earlier, I noted the OP was as presented, check. I pointed out if true, it would be a knockdown argument, check. I then challenged your earlier talking point. Instead of acknowledging that you made an untrustworthy argument or else substantiating — the latter I believe impossible due to implicit incoherence, you tried to double down on accusations. i take that as de facto proof that you offered a fallacious talking point and hoped to brazen it out with rhetoric — which is what BA called you on in the OP in any case. KF

  216. 216
    Phinehas says:

    AJ:

    I note that you have not responded to this, from Eric:

    Eric:
    The whole mental block some people seem to be having is that because there is a statement about a future event, then somehow (unexplained and unarticulated, as of now, I might add) this means AJ has no free will.

    So for anyone who thinks free will readily exists with a statement about the past or the present, but that it evaporates in the future, please explain the basis for such a claim. What is it that permits me to have free will if someone has absolute, incontrovertible knowledge about past or present events, but prevents me from having free will if they have knowledge of future events?

    It is your inability or refusal to address this that makes you say silly things like:

    AJ:

    But then, this is not foreknowledge, it is just knowledge of what I am doing in present time. If this is the power you claim that god has, I have no problem with this. But this is not what I was talking about. I was talking about the concept of god knowing what I am going to do before I make that decision.

    You keep asserting that knowledge of future events must be seen as different than knowledge of present or past events while giving no support or even an attempt to support this assertion. Please explain the basis for your claim. As Eric asked, “What is it that permits me to have free will if someone has absolute, incontrovertible knowledge about past or present events, but prevents me from having free will if they have knowledge of future events?”

    Do you have an answer?

    BTW, I made similar points and asked similar questions @91, 105, and 130, so it isn’t as though ignoring salient questions would be new and surprising behavior. 😛

  217. 217
    hammaspeikko says:

    I did a little digging into AJ’s assertion that he didn’t claim to have an iron clad rebuttal of ID. I looked through all of his comments on this thread as well as the original comment from the other threat. I hate to say it, but I think that he has a point.

  218. 218
    john_a_designer says:

    I did a little digging into AJ’s assertion that he didn’t claim to have an iron clad rebuttal of ID… I hate to say it, but I think that he has a point.

    Okay. So why is that such a bad thing?

  219. 219
    hammaspeikko says:

    John_a_designer: “Okay. So why is that such a bad thing?
    I don’t know. I am a sucker for the underdog and I thought that Kairosfocus took AJ’s pointing out that he was wrong a little personally. But I guess AJ can speak for himself. I am sure that he will respond.

  220. 220
    Phinehas says:

    219:

    I am sure that he will respond.

    I predict he will respond as well (using his free will, of course). AJ seems to prefer stirring up controversy while avoiding addressing salient questions. The disagreement with KF is a golden opportunity for him to do both.

  221. 221
    hammaspeikko says:

    Phinehas: “I predict he will respond as well (using his free will, of course). AJ seems to prefer stirring up controversy while avoiding addressing salient questions. The disagreement with KF is a golden opportunity for him to do both.
    I agree. If nothing else, he appears to stimulate conversation.

  222. 222
    john_a_designer says:

    hammaspeikko,

    Underdog? In your research did you uncover the fact that Armand Jacks is latest incarnation of a “sock puppet” who keeps showing up here? Did you notice this? (comment #30)

    http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-629372

    Is that true? If it’s not why hasn’t he said anything? (Like, “that’s not me. I’m new here.”) If it is, we are pretty much wasting our time trying to reason with him. Personally I have little respect for people like AJ or whoever he really is. So obviously I don’t see him as an underdog. I definitely don’t sympathize with him.

  223. 223
    hammaspeikko says:

    john_a_designer, he did say that he wasn’t acartia bogart, mark franks or William spearshake. Other than that, I can’t comment. But I assume that these people were banned. That is before my time so I can’t judge.

  224. 224
    Eric Anderson says:

    hammaspeikko @219:

    I did a little digging into AJ’s assertion that he didn’t claim to have an iron clad rebuttal of ID. I looked through all of his comments on this thread as well as the original comment from the other threat. I hate to say it, but I think that he has a point.

    You mean that he doesn’t have an iron clad rebuttal or that the didn’t claim to?

    We know he doesn’t actually have one. 🙂

  225. 225
    kairosfocus says:

    HS, there is a difference between you are wrong and you are a liar, esp. when the latter is a false accusation after a long series of others. It has been clear for a long time that AJ has played the troll. As for his assertion at head of this thread, notice that he offered the claim as a knockdown argument meant to dismiss the design inference on FSCO/I. and, were his claim true it would have had that effect. As the merits are, his assertion is a failure, and utterly misrepresents inductive reasoning in the modern sense. BA was in full right of fair comment to headline and comment on it as a striking example of too much of what we see as ID objectionism. KF

    PS: I noticed just now the no longer with us, from the Mods. On track record, till he retools with a new sock puppet. A pity as were he to comment with seriousness, a real discussion could be had. As it is, there just plain is too much of the Alinsky spirit in current online discussion.

  226. 226
    Eric Anderson says:

    Armand Jacks @213:

    I apologize. That was not my intent. My only excuse is that my response was based on a cursory read of your comment.

    Thank you for your kind apology. No problem. Apology accepted.

    But then, this is not foreknowledge, it is just knowledge of what I am doing in present time. If this is the power you claim that god has, I have no problem with this. But this is not what I was talking about. I was talking about the concept of god knowing what I am going to do before I make that decision.

    You are still missing the point.

    The thing that produces the knowledge of how your order of eggs turned out is the fact that you ordered eggs. Yes, using your free will. The knowledge doesn’t just pop into existence in a vacuum. Whatever you do in the future – through the exercise of your free will – will determine the knowledge related to that event.

    You seem to be stuck on the issue of whether it is possible for anyone to look into the future. As I’ve said over and over, that is a separate question and you can certainly dispute whether such a being exists. But it has no impact on your free will.

    I’ll try one more time and then I think there is probably little point in continuing, unless you are willing to go back and examine the chain of causation and actually think through and answer, rather than dismissing, the critical definitional and logical questions I have posed in this thread.

    —–

    So here goes, one last attempt to get this through:

    Assume you and God are here in the present, right now. You have no ability to gaze into the future. Your vision of time is limited to the present and the past. On the other hand, assume God has the ability, standing right here from his present position, to gaze into the future and see what you are going to do. For some reason, God wants to share this information with you and says “you will order eggs for breakfast”.

    Now, you start thinking in your head, “Wow this foreknowledge stuff is pretty crazy; what if I changed my mind and ordered pancakes instead?” But you won’t. If you are going to change your mind and order pancakes, then God would have said “you will order pancakes for breakfast”.

    Now at this point in the example I know you will jump up and say, “Aha, then I couldn’t change my decision, because God told me what I was going to do! I don’t have any free will!”

    But you are looking at it completely backwards. No. You have free will just as much as you always did. You can change your mind a hundred times and order whatever you want. And it is your exercise of free will that determines what God will know about the future, not the other way around. That is where the causal chain takes its path. Your exercise of free will is the decision node along the path of history.

    Finally, just to drive the point home, let’s add one more factor to the example. Let’s assume that God, for some reason, were required right now to tell you what you were going to have for breakfast tomorrow. Let’s say he had to utter the words about what you were going to have for breakfast. It is now clear that you, by the exercise of your free will tomorrow, will cause God to say particular words. It is you who decides what God sees when he peers into the future.

    Here is the ultimate bottom line:

    When talking about how foreknowledge and free will interact, it is the free will that causes the foreknowledge, not the other way around.

    —-

    Well, that is about it. If it still isn’t clear, then you just need to spend some more time thinking through the questions I’ve posed previously in this thread. If you are genuinely interested in this topic, I recommend taking time to go back through my comments, jot the questions down, and this time really think through them in detail.

    And regarding one question I posed in particular, I’m not sure what your point with all of this was. If you are just confused about the logical and temporal aspects, fine. We’re all here learning together. Spend some time to think through it. On the other hand, if this was an attempt at some kind of atheist argument against the existence of God, then by all means, feel free to continue arguing against God’s existence, but in the future at least choose a different argument, because this one doesn’t hold water.

  227. 227
    hammaspeikko says:

    Kairosfocus: HS, there is a difference between you are wrong and you are a liar, esp. when the latter is a false accusation after a long series of others.”
    This may be true. But he did originally ask you to retract or apologize. In my mind, a retraction would have been a reasonable course of action.

    Rather a moot point now as he is gone.

  228. 228
    kairosfocus says:

    HS, I am not aware of any action on my part that needed either. I am very aware that AJ indulged a lot of trollishness that included all sorts of misrepresentations and unjustified demands. This is now trending tangential-distractive and I have simply spoken once for record. KF

  229. 229
    hammaspeikko says:

    Kairosfocus: “HS, I am not aware of any action on my part that needed either.

    That is painfully obvious. But my review of his comments, as a new comer here with no skin in the game, clearly shows that he never made a claim that he had an iron clad rebuttal of ID. A claim that you repeated more than once. I am not saying that you owe him an apology. But when he points out that you said something so glaringly wrong, a retraction would have been appropriate. It shouldn’t matter what you think of the person personally. An error, regardless of the circumstance, is still an error.

    But this is just the opinion of a person who tries to lead an honest life.

  230. 230
    jdk says:

    in 227, the guy with the long name says of Armand Jacks, “Rather a moot point now as he is gone.”

    Is this true? Has Armand Jacks been banned from here?

  231. 231
    hammaspeikko says:

    Jdk: “Is this true? Has Armand Jacks been banned from here?
    I can’t say for sure. But Kairosfocus says he has. I assume he would know.

    Why? Should he be allowed to accuse people of lying?

  232. 232
    Seversky says:

    Armand Jacks @ 208

    AJ is no longer with us.

    UD Editors

    AJ is dispatched to the Village of the Banned.

  233. 233
    hammaspeikko says:

    Seversky: “AJ is dispatched to the Village of the Banned.

    Apparently. But, frankly, I don’t see the point. His comments did more to ridicule evolutionists than they did IDists. I would have let him continue to rant. But it’s not my site.

  234. 234
    Eric Anderson says:

    AJ is no longer with us.

    Rats.

    I was hoping to continue a discussion. He was a pain, yes. Stubborn, yes. Recalcitrant at times, yes. Refused to address specific questions posed, yes.

    But I’m not a fan of banning generally . . .

    —–

    hammaspeikko @233:

    Well said.

  235. 235
    hammaspeikko says:

    Eric: “hammaspeikko @233:

    Well said.”

    Does UD accept petitions to reinstate someone who has been banned? I agree that AJ was abrasive and a pain in the ass, but he really only latched on to Kairosfocus, for whatever reason. And, i must say, Kairosfocus did not acquit himself any better.

    But, regardless, as a newbie, I did notice that the more popular threads of late are the ones where AJ was the instigator. I don’t know whether that is good or bad but the question must be asked, Is it more important to stimulate discussion or to protect the sensitive feelings of one or two individuals?

    Just food for thought.

  236. 236
    Bob O'H says:

    Kairosfocus – just a footnote: I assume by ‘HS’ you mean hammaspeikko, but that makes no sense in Finnish (unless hammaspeikko is a Hessari journalist). hammaspeikko is a compound of hammas and peikko, so HP would be more accurate. This is obvious if you know some Finnish, but if you don’t know Finnish then it’s utterly mysterious.

    Sorry, as you were. 🙂

  237. 237
    kairosfocus says:

    BO’H: Thanks for the short lesson in Finnish, a language I have only heard of in passing. My sole item of Finnish vocabulary, I confess, is that rapala primarily means mud and should be pronounced with a rolled initial R, near as I can make out. of course, I know of it from the famous tackle firm; whose lures I admire. HP, henceforth. KF

  238. 238
    Eric Anderson says:

    hammaspeikko @235:

    Unfortunately, I don’t know anything about the banning or un-banning particulars, so I can’t help there.

    Ironically (and amusingly, I suppose), I was even “banned” for over a year. 🙂

    I couldn’t post or comment and long-time regulars may have noticed I dropped off the radar for a while.

    I think it was under prior management and I still choose to believe it was due to a technical glitch, rather than purposeful, so I don’t get too worried about it and haven’t spent time to track down what really happened.

  239. 239
    asauber says:

    I’m generally not a fan of banning either, but…

    There has to be a line somewhere in regards to blog commenter maintenance. If the ban isn’t permanent and the commenter is agreeable to helping maintain reasonable discussion at some further date, a reinstatement could be good.

    Sometimes people just need a vacation. Armand was clearly trolling whatever else he might have been doing.

    Andrew

  240. 240
    hammaspeikko says:

    Andrew: “Sometimes people just need a vacation. Armand was clearly trolling whatever else he might have been doing.”

    I’m not sure. He definitely had a hard-on for Kairosfocus for some reason, but when he wasn’t sparring with him I thought that he presented some reasonable argument.

    But, he was given a warning. Does anyone know what comment he made that triggered the final solution?

  241. 241
    Phinehas says:

    Too often, it seems to me that banning provides interlocutor’s an easy way out of debates they are losing. Sometimes, I wonder whether they don’t start pushing buttons for this very reason. Personally, I’d much rather see them stick around to continue providing examples of the poverty of materialism and the irrationality of its supporters.

  242. 242
    asauber says:

    Well, Armand gave me the impression that he knew he was being deliberate in his hostility, but wouldn’t use the word ‘trolling’ to describe it. I also get the impression this has happened to him before under a different moniker.

    These things are judgement calls by blog moderators, anyway.

    Andrew

  243. 243
    john_a_designer says:

    Here is something which I have said before which is worth repeating here:

    I can spot a trolls like AJ from almost the moment they arrive. They always start from a contrarian, even hostile, stance and a condescending tone, from which never back off. And they never ever try to establish any kind of common ground. They appear to believe that high-minded but otherwise vacuous rhetoric is equivalent to good reasoning. Apart from a few occasional glib comments I no longer engage with people who seem to be motivated only by this kind of smugness. You cannot reason with people who do not understand what reasoning is.

    Unfortunately, too many people on my side (and you don’t need to be an ID’ist to be on my side) enable these peoples smugness by trying to reason with them. Like I said above, they aren’t interested in truth, reason or establishing any kind of common ground. For them winning is being able to shut down the discussion and debate. So when you try to reason with them they don’t see it as an offer to play fair but an opportunity to obstruct and obfuscate. Again if they are able undermine the discussion in any way they see that as winning.

    They especially love it– indeed, I think it’s something they try to provoke– when they are criticized personally and, under the pretense of defending themselves, can trade insults. Why? Because that is one of the things that plays into their hands. Smug people crave being noticed, even if it’s negative. If nothing else they can feign being offended and that gives an opportunity to counter attack with sarcasm, mockery and ridicule… which causes frustration on the ID side… which cause retaliation, which then gets the discussion going in the direction the want it to go– downhill.

    Is this really the way these people “think?” Just look at what is currently happening on college campuses where invited speakers (usually conservatives) are having their lectures shut down, sometimes with (or the threat of) violence.

    I think we are seeing the same kind of disruptive tactics here. And, make no mistake, they would be more extreme if they could.

  244. 244
    hammaspeikko says:

    JaD: “I can spot a trolls like AJ from almost the moment they arrive.”

    Forgive me if I am skeptical. Exactly when did you suspect that AJ was a troll? Is rvb8 a troll? JDK? Myself? Kairosfocus? UB?

    All I am suggesting is that if you eliminate AJ’s interactions with Kairosfocus, would you label him a troll? I don’t think I could.

  245. 245
    Eric Anderson says:

    hammaspeikko @244:

    One hint may be the following:

    If they make a claim, without support, and then — after multiple explanations of why their claim is suspect and multiple requests for them to provide some evidence actual and rational argument to support their claim — they steadfastly refuse to do so, continue to assert their claim, and then do the same thing on multiple threads.

    I don’t have to agree with their evidence or argument, and there is much that can be a matter of debate, but the failure to actually engage with the issues once they’ve jumped in and made their provocative initial comment is concerning.

    Is that trolling? I don’t know. But it is annoying and unhelpful to genuine debate.

    Their provocative comment may, as you note, help get the discussion going, but they are then largely unhelpful, or even a hindrance, in moving the discussion forward.

    —–

    In the end, though, absent some actual malice or egregious behavior that merits a ban, I tend to agree with Phinehas:

    Personally, I’d much rather see them stick around to continue providing examples of the poverty of materialism and the irrationality of its supporters.

  246. 246
    john_a_designer says:

    Fair minded criticism using valid arguments, which begin with fact based premises, is acceptable, disruptive behavior is not. Persistently taking threads off topic is being disruptive. There is no justifiable reason for being disruptive.

  247. 247
    hammaspeikko says:

    I’m not saying that AJ wasn’t a troll. He definitely was with regard to Kairosfocus. I’m just not sure that he was, even by Eric’s definition, with others. Does anyone have any examples?

  248. 248
    Eric Anderson says:

    You don’t have to look any further than this thread for an example. At least by the description I gave.

    Again, I’m not saying he should have been banned; I might have preferred otherwise.

    But this is at least the second thread in recent weeks in which he has prattled on with his dubious argument about no free will under traditional theism, this despite detailed rebuttals and polite requests for him to address the logical follow-up questions. He provided little evidence or rational argument — just endless repeats of the claim over and over, all the while steadfastly refusing to address the follow-up issues that would have made for a deepening and beneficial discussion.

    I should add that I don’t know if this was the cause of his dismissal. His argument started with KF, but he was mostly arguing with me by the end.

  249. 249
    hammaspeikko says:

    Eric, what I saw was one side arguing from philosophy and the other from observation of the world, neither side really addressing the other’s argument on their respective terms. If this were an evolution sight I dare say that it would be some of the theists who would be accused of being trolls.

    I guess my only point is that we are all too quick to level the troll accusation. I think in many cases this is done to justify to oneself and others why the person being labelled a troll does not deserve to be treated fairly and honestly. And, in some cases it is levelled when someone doesn’t have a rational response to what is being argued.

  250. 250
    kurx78 says:

    Hi! I’m new to this site and finally decided to register and post something.
    AJ was very hostile sometimes from what I can see in previous posts.
    AJ modus operandi is very similar to a youtube user/troll called nickolasgaspar who likes to harass other people and start pointless discussions, being extremely hostile to people who are not materialists/monists

  251. 251
    john_a_designer says:

    Hammaspeikko @ 249,

    You can’t have a discussion or a debate without some kind of interpersonal objective standard of honesty that everyone recognizes.

    About a year ago I asked this question:

    How can you have an honest conversation with someone who does not believe in moral truth? That is why over the past couple years, aside from occasional glib comments, I no longer engage with these anonymous internet “know-it-alls.” Is it too much to ask for some basic honesty?

    http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-608450

    (There were a number of good points made in the OP and in the discussion that followed in that thread. It is well worth taking a look at.)

    More recently I wrote:

    To enter into an honest debate one must be able to give honest arguments. An honest argument begins with premises which are, in some sense, either self-evidently true (as in mathematics,) probably true or at the very least plausibly true. In other words, your argument is a waste of everyone’s time unless there really is something or some things which are really true. That begins with the idea of truth itself. Notice the absurdity of the argument that some students at Pomona College recently made, which succeeded in shutting down a lecture by Manhattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald. They were arguing that there is no “truth — ‘the Truth’ — “. But that is self-refuting, because their claim, there is no truth, is a truth claim– a universal truth claim. You can’t even begin to talk rationally about something like universal human rights (as they are trying to do) until you recognize there are moral truths that are universal. Indeed, the idea of truth itself is universal– it must be.

    Truth and honesty, which requires the idea of objective truth, cannot be rationally defended or demanded by moral subjectivists. Incredibly they don’t seem to comprehend this.

    For example on an earlier thread Armand Jacks @ 49 responded to Origenes :

    “O, thank you for engaging in an honest discussion. I do not get that from WJM or KF.”

    To which I commented:

    Based on materialism how can someone like Armand even talk about honesty? Honesty based on what standard? Whose standard? Some of our other atheist interlocutors insist that moral values and obligations are totally subjective. But how do they know this? How can they prove this? But if they are subjective, whose moral standard is everyone else obligated to follow?

    Ironically, we can’t even have an honest discussion about honesty with these people.

    http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-629358

    How did Armand Jacks respond? If you are interested see his comment @ #65 of that thread.

    Again, my main point is this: you can’t have an honest discussion or debate without some kind of interpersonal objective standard which everyone involved recognizes.

  252. 252
    kairosfocus says:

    JAD, correct. Your snippet also shows the tendency of denigratory projection that too often is used by polarised objectionists as a rhetorical substitute for cogent argument. KF

  253. 253
    Eric Anderson says:

    hammaspeikko @249:

    Eric, what I saw was one side arguing from philosophy and the other from observation of the world, neither side really addressing the other’s argument on their respective terms.

    Well, I can’t comment on all the back and forth between AJ and KF, so perhaps you’re right on that front.

    But I’m not sure your description matches my experience with AJ on this thread. In my exchange I detailed the definitional, practical and logical problems with his claim, all the while requesting — indeed, begging — him to address the most basic and foundational follow-up questions and to provide any substantive evidence or rational argument for why we should take his claim seriously. All of which he steadfastly refused to do.

    As to your other point, and as I’ve previously said, I’m not sure I would call his behavior trolling. Maybe just annoying. But I can certainly understand why some would view his behavior as trolling. Perhaps he wasn’t intentionally trying to troll and was just genuinely incapable of thinking through the issues in a logical manner. That’s fine. We all have our limitations.

    —–

    Again, just to be clear: As you know, I have not called AJ a troll. I’ve rarely called anyone a troll over the years, though it may have been justified in many cases. I’m not particularly interested in trying to define someone with a label to justify anything I’m doing or to justify my argument. I am interested only in a rational, objective, and logical discussion of the issues — something which is easier with some people than with others. That is not a label, nor a justification for banning in most cases. Just a factual observation.

  254. 254
    hammaspeikko says:

    JAD: “Again, my main point is this: you can’t have an honest discussion or debate without some kind of interpersonal objective standard which everyone involved recognizes.”

    Keep in mind, I say the following as someone who believes in objective morality, so please don’t shoot the messenger.

    I think many of the arguments used against subjective morality, including the one I quoted above, are caricatures and misrepresentations of what the subjective moralist argues. They have never argued that the moral value of being honest is not very common across cultures and over time. They just argue that it is easily explained as a necessity of living in social groups. Given the fact that honesty is not as universal as we would all like it to be, I think the subjectivist has a legitimate argument in this respect.

  255. 255
    Origenes says:

    hammaspeikko @254: I think many of the arguments used against subjective morality, including the one I quoted above, are caricatures and misrepresentations of what the subjective moralist argues. They have never argued that the moral value of being honest is not very common across cultures and over time.

    Where does john_a_designer state that subjective moralists argue that “being honest is not very common across cultures and over time”?
    My take is that John did not make that statement.

    What John did say is this:

    Some of our other atheist interlocutors insist that moral values and obligations are totally subjective.

    He is correct of course, since that’s exactly what subjective moralists say.

    IOWs you have made a caricature and misrepresentation of what john_a_designer argues — the very thing that you accuse John of.

  256. 256
    hammaspeikko says:

    Origene: “He is correct of course, since that’s exactly what subjective moralists say.”

    The ones I have read, which I admit are limited, are more nuanced than that. They don’t say that “moral values and obligations are totally subjective.”, they claim that the individual values are subjective. A small distinction I realize, but an important one. And, I apologize in advance for not phrasing this as well as I would like.

    My own personal belief is that our system of morality is a combination of objective and subjective. The most obvious objective aspect of our morality system is that the existance of this system appears to be universal amongst humans. Even psychopaths and sociopaths have a morality system. They just happen to be very different than that of the majority of the population. Of the other values (not killing, lying, stealing…) some may be objective and others subjective. Frankly, I don’t know. And I don’t really care. But the one thing that makes logical sense is that if there are objective morals, they are not independent of subjectivity. They are either strengthened by our experiences or they are weakened. Thus explaining the variations that we see in their application amongst different cultures.

  257. 257
    kairosfocus says:

    JAD,

    WJM here at UD, adapted, on April 3rd, 2015:

    If you do not assume the law of non-contradiction, you have nothing to argue about. If you do not assume the principles of sound reason, you have nothing to argue with. If logic is not assumed to be a causally independent, authoritative arbiter of true statements, there’s no reason to apply it. If you do not assume libertarian free will, you have no one to argue against. If you do not assume morality to be an objective commodity, you have no reason to argue in the first place. If you do not assume mind is primary, there is no “you” to make any argument at all.

    That’s the stark reality too many will revert to every type and degree of rhetorical subterfuge rather than honestly face. They want licence, not liberty.

    KF

  258. 258
    Origenes says:

    hammaspeikko: The ones I have read, which I admit are limited, are more nuanced than that. They don’t say that “moral values and obligations are totally subjective.”, they claim that the individual values are subjective. A small distinction I realize, but an important one.

    I have never heard about such a moral system. Individual values are subjective and non-individual values are not? Can you provide some more info?
    The matter seems very simple to me: because fermions and bosons are completely indifferent about morality, it is not possible to ground morality for atheists/materialists.

    Here is atheistic philosopher Alex Rosenberg:

    Scientism can’t avoid nihilism. We need to make the best of it….

    First, nihilism can’t condemn Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, or those who fomented the Armenian genocide or the Rwandan one. If there is no such thing as “morally forbidden,” then what Mohamed Atta did on September 11, 2001, was not morally forbidden. Of course, it was not permitted either. But still, don’t we want to have grounds to condemn these monsters? Nihilism seems to cut that ground out from under us. …

    To avoid these outcomes, people have been searching for scientifically respectable justification of morality for least a century and a half. The trouble is that over the same 150 years or so, the reasons for nihilism have continued to mount. Both the failure to find an ethics that everyone can agree on and the scientific explanation of the origin and persistence of moral norms have made nihilism more and more plausible while remaining just as unappetizing.

    [A. Rosenberg, ‘The Atheist’s Guide To Reality’, ch. 5]

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    Eric Anderson says:

    Origenes:

    The matter seems very simple to me: because fermions and bosons are completely indifferent about morality, it is not possible to ground morality for atheists/materialists.

    I think your point is well made, and should be sufficient to make any materialist squirm.

    However, the squirming can eventually follow the direction it does for the rest of the materialist creation story: namely, at some point Characteristic X didn’t exist, and then at some later point Characteristic X “evolved.”

    This may not seem very intellectually satisfactory to the objective observer, but the materialist is perfectly happy to argue that morality evolved as a result of [insert made-up reason here]. It isn’t fundamentally different than any other system or characteristic evolving. No details. No particular reason or direction. It just did.

    So while I agree with your general point, and Rosenberg’s frank admission, the entire issue becomes lost on the committed materialist. After all, the entire view of history and creation and all that this entails, is just — as you aptly noted — nothing more than a long accidental sequence of particles bumping into each other.

    And those particles, so the thinking does, don’t have to ground anything. Not design, not functional complexity, not information. Nothing. Just wait long enough for the particles to bump into each other enough times, and — Ta Da! — here we are. Whether we are talking about molecular machines or morality, it is all the same in the materialist creation story.

    Remember, this is all right in line with the Great Evolutionary Explanation for all things:

    Stuff Happens.

    It is really no more substantive than that.

  260. 260
    Eric Anderson says:

    Hey did we just lose the ability to edit comments for 20 minutes after we have posted them?

    Mods, please bring that back, if you can.

    Maybe it is just my machine acting up today . . . ?

  261. 261
    Seversky says:

    Origenes @ 258

    The matter seems very simple to me: because fermions and bosons are completely indifferent about morality, it is not possible to ground morality for atheists/materialists.

    You cannot logically derive “ought” from “is”. No one can, not even God. So, if our morality is God-given, how did He – or, indeed, any other being – derive it? Did He toss a coin?

  262. 262
    Origenes says:

    Eric Anderson @259

    Thank you for pointing out the typical materialistic response wrt morality.

    EA: However, the squirming can eventually follow the direction it does for the rest of the materialist creation story: namely, at some point Characteristic X didn’t exist, and then at some later point Characteristic X “evolved.”

    The majority of materialists fails to understand that materialism can only take us to the illusion of effective moral laws. Suppose that by ‘Characteristic X’ is meant organismal behavior which is consistent with the moral law “thou shall not steal”. Now, in a purely material universe, all sorts of physical stuff can contribute to X, but X can never be caused by the moral law “thou shall not steal”. The consistency with a moral law is happenstantial and not an intended result. There cannot be a moral law who is telling atoms how to behave. In a materialistic world the moral law “though shall not steal” has no power to reach down in the brain and rearrange neuronal behavior so as to comply with that moral law.

    Illusion.

    Given materialism, it can only be the case that it is as if a moral law is being respected. So, no, naturalism cannot get us to morality. It can only get us to the illusion of morality. It can result in behavior which, incidentally, is consistent with a moral law. But noticing this consistency is nothing more than the occasional observation of temporal happenstantial synchronicity between two totally unrelated things.

  263. 263
    kairosfocus says:

    Seversky, if you have been keeping track that is not what is at stake. The issue is, we are patently inescapably morally governed, as for instance you implied by trying to correct and by expecting us to have a sense of duty to the truth and the right. Either that speaks truly or mindedness collapses into grand delusion. As, if such is a delusional perception in an actually utterly amoral world then delusion is at the heart of attempts to reason and be responsible — as Rosenberg implies but tries to put a rosy picture on. Absurd. So, we need to ask, what sort of world must we be in for such moral government not to be rooted in grand delusion. This points to world-roots that cannot be infinite regress or a chicken-egg loop. Finitely remote, necessary being root. As, were there ever utter non-being (which can have no causal powers) such would forever obtain. The premise that, on pain of grand delusion and absurdity, we are responsibly and rationally significantly free and morally governed, self-moved creatures then leads to the world root being a necessary being that is at the same time inextricably the root of moral government. Where, if we are not self-moved initiating causal agents, we have no true freedom to draw a LOGICAL, meaningful inference from grounds and/or evidence to the consequent or a warranted conclusion, we would be trapped in a delusion of rationality while actually being the GIGO-limited playthings of our computational substrates and their blind, mechanically driven and/or stochastic cause effect chains. We must be free and self-moved to be rational or responsible. Is and ought are not IS–> OUGHT, but instead that they are inherently inextricably entangled and utterly fused at the world-root. There is one serious candidate (if you doubt, kindly provide a coherent alternative: _____ ) i.e. the inherently good creator God, a necessary and maximally great being, worthy of loyalty and the reasonable, responsible service of doing the good in accord with our evident nature. KF

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  265. 265
    Eric Anderson says:

    Origenes @262:

    I hear what you’re saying, and your point has merit. But I think the situation with the materialist position is slightly more nuanced than that. If I get time in the next few days I’ll put up an OP on this topic.

    —–

    Thanks, KF. I just noticed that for some reason my browser says “JavaScript is blocked on this page.” I’m guessing that is why I can’t edit right now. I’ll see if I can resolve it.

  266. 266
    Origenes says:

    Eric Anderson @265

    Looking forward to your OP on this topic.

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