God is responsible for all the bad stuff that happens

[numinus]

You do not claim to be all-powerful and all-knowing, as you claim your God to be. Therefore, you have no foreknowledge of what choices your children will make. Your analogy fails.

The analogy is spot-on.

Human choices are finite, and they are made in space and time that are also finite -- hence subject to a certain degree of predictability.

What the analogy is saying is that one's ability to predict the choices of one's children does not make these choices any less free.

 

[numinus]

Matter / energy is one substance. Or it is God, if you chose to see it that way.

That may be convenient to believe given your pantheistic leanings but it really is more complicated than that.

If the entire universe is the summation of a single manifest being called god, then the obvious conclusion is that natural law that governs all substances are merely properties of this substance, no?

And if they are merely properties of substance, then logic itself is merely a way to describe these properties, no?

Which begs the question -- from where does fallacy come from? In fact, one can ask basically the same question regarding all ideas that arise independent of any empirical phenomena -- mathematics, ethics, aesthetics, etc.

Or the void from which the Big Bang came, if you can see it that way. All the same.

The problem with the word 'void' is that there is nothing in the human experience quite like it. Personally, it vexes me just thinking about this concept of absolute nothingness.

If you imagine void as the empty space inside, say, a box, then you are imagining it as merely a property of the box. Without the box to describe it, what exactly is that empty space?

And if you imagine it to be vacuum, then, it contains very small irregularities akin to the grain or texture of a blank sheet of paper -- these irregularities obviously being 'something' that is supposed to be describing 'nothing'.

And if you have given up looking for an example in nature, you go to the realm of ideas and you get euclidean space -- a nothingness that extends infinitely in all directions. Except that a cardinal direction is itself, something, and this alleged nothing has an infinite number of cardinal directions to describe it.

And so, you try to compress euclidean space to a single dimensionless point, except, we simply cannot comprehend such a point without the region of nothing that surrounds it.

So, when you've gotten around this logical dilemma, please let me know.

 

[GenSeneca]

The universe is expanding...

For this to happen, there must be "nothingness" surrounding the universe... The universe itself is surrounded by the "void" out of which the universe burst forth.

Perhaps I should have warned people to duct tape their head before pondering that reality.

 

[numinus]

The universe is expanding...

For this to happen, there must be "nothingness" surrounding the universe... The universe itself is surrounded by the "void" out of which the universe burst forth.

Perhaps I should have warned people to duct tape their head before pondering that reality.

And perhaps I should warn you to take your own advice before shooting off with your mouth.

What is expanding is SPACE-TIME.

Imagine 2 point-objects that are stationary relative to one another. The space between them is expanding. That is certainly very much different from saying they are moving away from each other and occupying the 'nothingess' in a particular direction.

How can it, if that nothingness has no spatial dimensions that a point-object can 'occupy', hmmm?

But then again, ignorance is bliss, eh?

 

[samsara15]

zero dimensional space can be seen as a void.

 

[numinus]

zero dimensional space can be seen as a void.

Let me put it this way. A zero dimensional space is a point or a singularity.

In physics, a singularity is the situation where no physical laws apply.

In mathematics, the point corresponding to zero on the number line has restrictions on algebraic operations.

In euclidean and non-euclidean geometry, a point has meaning only relative to a fixed coordinate system in uniform or curved space.

In set theory, the null set is the only set wherein no set condition and all set conditions apply at the same time.

This void or absolute nothingness is queer, it has, at most, a fluid existence, it is an idea that has no manifestation in the real, common-sense world, and yet, it is necessary to any self-coherent logical conception.

 

[samsara15]

I have no issues with your comments, numinus. I even thought uncertainty that was what I was alluding to and describing. If I failed in my presentation, I apologize.

 

[numinus]

I have no issues with your comments, numinus. I even thought uncertainty that was what I was alluding to and describing. If I failed in my presentation, I apologize.

And uncertainty is the manifestation of a free and creative will.

 

[samsara15]

I do have an issue with the assertion that we have Free Will. I think we only have the appearance of Free Will.

 

[PLC1]

I do have an issue with the assertion that we have Free Will. I think we only have the appearance of Free Will.

And yet, I am posting this of my own free will. No one made me do it.

 

[samsara15]

Were you biologically disposed to make that post, PLC1, due to certain chemical reactions within some of the cells in your body, or perhaps by the overall structure of your mind? How could anyone determine the truth or falsehood of that, one way or the other? Is it merely your preference to believe that you have free will, an idea you will defend tooth and nail, simply because it meets some psychological needs of your own to believe the illusion that you do have free will?

Clearly no outside force makes your choices, but is that free will, if the choices you will make are chemically predictable?

 

[numinus]

I do have an issue with the assertion that we have Free Will. I think we only have the appearance of Free Will.

You are aware that you are messing with one of the most self-evident truths around, aren't you?

 

[Ronaldus Magnus]

You are aware that you are messing with one of the most self-evident truths around, aren't you?

I don't really see how this fits under the House of Politics title, but I will make one assertion. It is evident to me by the title of this thread that one thing is absolutely 100% true. People in this world have no concept of taking responsibility for themselves or their actions. So therefore they must find someone, something, or God to blame for things that happen. It cannot surely be us that is to blame for the wrong that is in the world, for the "bad stuff". It is always easier to blame someone else, and this is to be expected because we are a flawed sinful creature.

One final observation....Some of you claim to have read the Bible (some multiple times), and yet your accounting of Bible facts doesn't remotely match anything that I've read in the Bible. I figure this is just like some of you get on here and claim to have read the Qur'an (Koran), and yet your account of that is wrong as well. Which goes back to the whole reading comprehension problem that many that post here seem to have developed.

 

[samsara15]

Are you familiar with the concept of Predestination?

What I am saying is that it is not clear whether or not we have free Will in the classical sense of the word, and that it may not be posible to determine whether or not we do have free will anytime soon at the present state of human scientific knowledge. Many other people besides myself consider that to be an open question.

I believe that we, as a society, purely for the self-protection of the members of our society, have no choice but to hold people responsible for their actions. Free Will or not. That much is straightforward prudence.

 

[PLC1]

Were you biologically disposed to make that post, PLC1, due to certain chemical reactions within some of the cells in your body, or perhaps by the overall structure of your mind? How could anyone determine the truth or falsehood of that, one way or the other? Is it merely your preference to believe that you have free will, an idea you will defend tooth and nail, simply because it meets some psychological needs of your own to believe the illusion that you do have free will?

Clearly no outside force makes your choices, but is that free will, if the choices you will make are chemically predictable?

No doubt a complex chemical reaction took place in my fingers and led to them making certain keystrokes.

Or, perhaps the devil made me do it.

My mother used to ask me, many years ago when I would engage in some kind of juvenile foolishness, "whatever possessed you...".
I really don't think she believed me to be the subject of demonic possession, but rather didn't agree with the choices I made using my free will.
What do you think?