View Poll Results: Which do you believe to be true? Note: public poll and multiple choice.

Voters
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  • Free Will

    6 37.50%
  • Determinism

    8 50.00%
  • Fate

    1 6.25%
  • Unsure

    2 12.50%
Multiple Choice Poll.
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Thread: Free Will or Determinism? Poll Included.

  1. #1

    Free Will or Determinism? Poll Included.

    http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...e-will/480750/

    There’s No Such Thing as Free Will, But we’re better off believing in it anyway.


    Edmon de Haro

    For centuries, philosophers and theologians have almost unanimously held that civilization as we know it depends on a widespread belief in free will—and that losing this belief could be calamitous. Our codes of ethics, for example, assume that we can freely choose between right and wrong. In the Christian tradition, this is known as “moral liberty”—the capacity to discern and pursue the good, instead of merely being compelled by appetites and desires. The great Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant reaffirmed this link between freedom and goodness. If we are not free to choose, he argued, then it would make no sense to say we ought to choose the path of righteousness.

    Today, the assumption of free will runs through every aspect of American politics, from welfare provision to criminal law. It permeates the popular culture and underpins the American dream—the belief that anyone can make something of themselves no matter what their start in life. As Barack Obama wrote in The Audacity of Hope, American “values are rooted in a basic optimism about life and a faith in free will.”

    So what happens if this faith erodes?

    The sciences have grown steadily bolder in their claim that all human behavior can be explained through the clockwork laws of cause and effect. This shift in perception is the continuation of an intellectual revolution that began about 150 years ago, when Charles Darwin first published On the Origin of Species. Shortly after Darwin put forth his theory of evolution, his cousin Sir Francis Galton began to draw out the implications: If we have evolved, then mental faculties like intelligence must be hereditary. But we use those faculties—which some people have to a greater degree than others—to make decisions. So our ability to choose our fate is not free, but depends on our biological inheritance.
    From Our June 2016 Issue

    Galton launched a debate that raged throughout the 20th century over nature versus nurture. Are our actions the unfolding effect of our genetics? Or the outcome of what has been imprinted on us by the environment? Impressive evidence accumulated for the importance of each factor. Whether scientists supported one, the other, or a mix of both, they increasingly assumed that our deeds must be determined by something.

    In recent decades, research on the inner workings of the brain has helped to resolve the nature-nurture debate—and has dealt a further blow to the idea of free will. Brain scanners have enabled us to peer inside a living person’s skull, revealing intricate networks of neurons and allowing scientists to reach broad agreement that these networks are shaped by both genes and environment. But there is also agreement in the scientific community that the firing of neurons determines not just some or most but all of our thoughts, hopes, memories, and dreams.

    We know that changes to brain chemistry can alter behavior—otherwise neither alcohol nor antipsychotics would have their desired effects. The same holds true for brain structure: Cases of ordinary adults becoming murderers or pedophiles after developing a brain tumor demonstrate how dependent we are on the physical properties of our gray stuff.

    Many scientists say that the American physiologist Benjamin Libet demonstrated in the 1980s that we have no free will. It was already known that electrical activity builds up in a person’s brain before she, for example, moves her hand; Libet showed that this buildup occurs before the person consciously makes a decision to move. The conscious experience of deciding to act, which we usually associate with free will, appears to be an add-on, a post hoc reconstruction of events that occurs after the brain has already set the act in motion.

    The 20th-century nature-nurture debate prepared us to think of ourselves as shaped by influences beyond our control. But it left some room, at least in the popular imagination, for the possibility that we could overcome our circumstances or our genes to become the author of our own destiny. The challenge posed by neuroscience is more radical: It describes the brain as a physical system like any other, and suggests that we no more will it to operate in a particular way than we will our heart to beat. The contemporary scientific image of human behavior is one of neurons firing, causing other neurons to fire, causing our thoughts and deeds, in an unbroken chain that stretches back to our birth and beyond. In principle, we are therefore completely predictable. If we could understand any individual’s brain architecture and chemistry well enough, we could, in theory, predict that individual’s response to any given stimulus with 100 percent accuracy.

    This research and its implications are not new. What is new, though, is the spread of free-will skepticism beyond the laboratories and into the mainstream. The number of court cases, for example, that use evidence from neuroscience has more than doubled in the past decade—mostly in the context of defendants arguing that their brain made them do it. And many people are absorbing this message in other contexts, too, at least judging by the number of books and articles purporting to explain “your brain on” everything from music to magic. Determinism, to one degree or another, is gaining popular currency. The skeptics are in ascendance.

    This development raises uncomfortable—and increasingly nontheoretical—questions: If moral responsibility depends on faith in our own agency, then as belief in determinism spreads, will we become morally irresponsible? And if we increasingly see belief in free will as a delusion, what will happen to all those institutions that are based on it?

    In 2002, two psychologists had a simple but brilliant idea: Instead of speculating about what might happen if people lost belief in their capacity to choose, they could run an experiment to find out. Kathleen Vohs, then at the University of Utah, and Jonathan Schooler, of the University of Pittsburgh, asked one group of participants to read a passage arguing that free will was an illusion, and another group to read a passage that was neutral on the topic. Then they subjected the members of each group to a variety of temptations and observed their behavior. Would differences in abstract philosophical beliefs influence people’s decisions?

    Yes, indeed. When asked to take a math test, with cheating made easy, the group primed to see free will as illusory proved more likely to take an illicit peek at the answers. When given an opportunity to steal—to take more money than they were due from an envelope of $1 coins—those whose belief in free will had been undermined pilfered more. On a range of measures, Vohs told me, she and Schooler found that “people who are induced to believe less in free will are more likely to behave immorally.”

    It seems that when people stop believing they are free agents, they stop seeing themselves as blameworthy for their actions. Consequently, they act less responsibly and give in to their baser instincts. Vohs emphasized that this result is not limited to the contrived conditions of a lab experiment. “You see the same effects with people who naturally believe more or less in free will,” she said.
    Edmon de Haro

    In another study, for instance, Vohs and colleagues measured the extent to which a group of day laborers believed in free will, then examined their performance on the job by looking at their supervisor’s ratings. Those who believed more strongly that they were in control of their own actions showed up on time for work more frequently and were rated by supervisors as more capable. In fact, belief in free will turned out to be a better predictor of job performance than established measures such as self-professed work ethic.

    Another pioneer of research into the psychology of free will, Roy Baumeister of Florida State University, has extended these findings. For example, he and colleagues found that students with a weaker belief in free will were less likely to volunteer their time to help a classmate than were those whose belief in free will was stronger. Likewise, those primed to hold a deterministic view by reading statements like “Science has demonstrated that free will is an illusion” were less likely to give money to a homeless person or lend someone a cellphone.

    Further studies by Baumeister and colleagues have linked a diminished belief in free will to stress, unhappiness, and a lesser commitment to relationships. They found that when subjects were induced to believe that “all human actions follow from prior events and ultimately can be understood in terms of the movement of molecules,” those subjects came away with a lower sense of life’s meaningfulness. Early this year, other researchers published a study showing that a weaker belief in free will correlates with poor academic performance.

    The list goes on: Believing that free will is an illusion has been shown to make people less creative, more likely to conform, less willing to learn from their mistakes, and less grateful toward one another. In every regard, it seems, when we embrace determinism, we indulge our dark side.

    Few scholars are comfortable suggesting that people ought to believe an outright lie. Advocating the perpetuation of untruths would breach their integrity and violate a principle that philosophers have long held dear: the Platonic hope that the true and the good go hand in hand. Saul Smilansky, a philosophy professor at the University of Haifa, in Israel, has wrestled with this dilemma throughout his career and come to a painful conclusion: “We cannot afford for people to internalize the truth” about free will.

    Smilansky is convinced that free will does not exist in the traditional sense—and that it would be very bad if most people realized this. “Imagine,” he told me, “that I’m deliberating whether to do my duty, such as to parachute into enemy territory, or something more mundane like to risk my job by reporting on some wrongdoing. If everyone accepts that there is no free will, then I’ll know that people will say, ‘Whatever he did, he had no choice—we can’t blame him.’ So I know I’m not going to be condemned for taking the selfish option.” This, he believes, is very dangerous for society, and “the more people accept the determinist picture, the worse things will get.”

    Determinism not only undermines blame, Smilansky argues; it also undermines praise. Imagine I do risk my life by jumping into enemy territory to perform a daring mission. Afterward, people will say that I had no choice, that my feats were merely, in Smilansky’s phrase, “an unfolding of the given,” and therefore hardly praiseworthy. And just as undermining blame would remove an obstacle to acting wickedly, so undermining praise would remove an incentive to do good. Our heroes would seem less inspiring, he argues, our achievements less noteworthy, and soon we would sink into decadence and despondency.

    Smilansky advocates a view he calls illusionism—the belief that free will is indeed an illusion, but one that society must defend. The idea of determinism, and the facts supporting it, must be kept confined within the ivory tower. Only the initiated, behind those walls, should dare to, as he put it to me, “look the dark truth in the face.” Smilansky says he realizes that there is something drastic, even terrible, about this idea—but if the choice is between the true and the good, then for the sake of society, the true must go.
    When people stop believing they are free agents, they stop seeing themselves as blameworthy for their actions.

    Smilansky’s arguments may sound odd at first, given his contention that the world is devoid of free will: If we are not really deciding anything, who cares what information is let loose? But new information, of course, is a sensory input like any other; it can change our behavior, even if we are not the conscious agents of that change. In the language of cause and effect, a belief in free will may not inspire us to make the best of ourselves, but it does stimulate us to do so.

    Illusionism is a minority position among academic philosophers, most of whom still hope that the good and the true can be reconciled. But it represents an ancient strand of thought among intellectual elites. Nietzsche called free will “a theologians’ artifice” that permits us to “judge and punish.” And many thinkers have believed, as Smilansky does, that institutions of judgment and punishment are necessary if we are to avoid a fall into barbarism.

    Smilansky is not advocating policies of Orwellian thought control. Luckily, he argues, we don’t need them. Belief in free will comes naturally to us. Scientists and commentators merely need to exercise some self-restraint, instead of gleefully disabusing people of the illusions that undergird all they hold dear. Most scientists “don’t realize what effect these ideas can have,” Smilansky told me. “Promoting determinism is complacent and dangerous.”

    Yet not all scholars who argue publicly against free will are blind to the social and psychological consequences. Some simply don’t agree that these consequences might include the collapse of civilization. One of the most prominent is the neuroscientist and writer Sam Harris, who, in his 2012 book, Free Will, set out to bring down the fantasy of conscious choice. Like Smilansky, he believes that there is no such thing as free will. But Harris thinks we are better off without the whole notion of it.

    “We need our beliefs to track what is true,” Harris told me. Illusions, no matter how well intentioned, will always hold us back. For example, we currently use the threat of imprisonment as a crude tool to persuade people not to do bad things. But if we instead accept that “human behavior arises from neurophysiology,” he argued, then we can better understand what is really causing people to do bad things despite this threat of punishment—and how to stop them. “We need,” Harris told me, “to know what are the levers we can pull as a society to encourage people to be the best version of themselves they can be.”

    According to Harris, we should acknowledge that even the worst criminals—murderous psychopaths, for example—are in a sense unlucky. “They didn’t pick their genes. They didn’t pick their parents. They didn’t make their brains, yet their brains are the source of their intentions and actions.” In a deep sense, their crimes are not their fault. Recognizing this, we can dispassionately consider how to manage offenders in order to rehabilitate them, protect society, and reduce future offending. Harris thinks that, in time, “it might be possible to cure something like psychopathy,” but only if we accept that the brain, and not some airy-fairy free will, is the source of the deviancy.

    Accepting this would also free us from hatred. Holding people responsible for their actions might sound like a keystone of civilized life, but we pay a high price for it: Blaming people makes us angry and vengeful, and that clouds our judgment.

    “Compare the response to Hurricane Katrina,” Harris suggested, with “the response to the 9/11 act of terrorism.” For many Americans, the men who hijacked those planes are the embodiment of criminals who freely choose to do evil. But if we give up our notion of free will, then their behavior must be viewed like any other natural phenomenon—and this, Harris believes, would make us much more rational in our response.

    Although the scale of the two catastrophes was similar, the reactions were wildly different. Nobody was striving to exact revenge on tropical storms or declare a War on Weather, so responses to Katrina could simply focus on rebuilding and preventing future disasters. The response to 9/11, Harris argues, was clouded by outrage and the desire for vengeance, and has led to the unnecessary loss of countless more lives. Harris is not saying that we shouldn’t have reacted at all to 9/11, only that a coolheaded response would have looked very different and likely been much less wasteful. “Hatred is toxic,” he told me, “and can destabilize individual lives and whole societies. Losing belief in free will undercuts the rationale for ever hating anyone.”

    Whereas the evidence from Kathleen Vohs and her colleagues suggests that social problems may arise from seeing our own actions as determined by forces beyond our control—weakening our morals, our motivation, and our sense of the meaningfulness of life—Harris thinks that social benefits will result from seeing other people’s behavior in the very same light. From that vantage point, the moral implications of determinism look very different, and quite a lot better.

    What’s more, Harris argues, as ordinary people come to better understand how their brains work, many of the problems documented by Vohs and others will dissipate. Determinism, he writes in his book, does not mean “that conscious awareness and deliberative thinking serve no purpose.” Certain kinds of action require us to become conscious of a choice—to weigh arguments and appraise evidence. True, if we were put in exactly the same situation again, then 100 times out of 100 we would make the same decision, “just like rewinding a movie and playing it again.” But the act of deliberation—the wrestling with facts and emotions that we feel is essential to our nature—is nonetheless real.

    The big problem, in Harris’s view, is that people often confuse determinism with fatalism. Determinism is the belief that our decisions are part of an unbreakable chain of cause and effect. Fatalism, on the other hand, is the belief that our decisions don’t really matter, because whatever is destined to happen will happen—like Oedipus’s marriage to his mother, despite his efforts to avoid that fate.
    Most scientists “don’t realize what effect these ideas can have,” Smilansky told me. It is “complacent and dangerous” to air them.

    When people hear there is no free will, they wrongly become fatalistic; they think their efforts will make no difference. But this is a mistake. People are not moving toward an inevitable destiny; given a different stimulus (like a different idea about free will), they will behave differently and so have different lives. If people better understood these fine distinctions, Harris believes, the consequences of losing faith in free will would be much less negative than Vohs’s and Baumeister’s experiments suggest.

    Can one go further still? Is there a way forward that preserves both the inspiring power of belief in free will and the compassionate understanding that comes with determinism?

    Philosophers and theologians are used to talking about free will as if it is either on or off; as if our consciousness floats, like a ghost, entirely above the causal chain, or as if we roll through life like a rock down a hill. But there might be another way of looking at human agency.

    Some scholars argue that we should think about freedom of choice in terms of our very real and sophisticated abilities to map out multiple potential responses to a particular situation. One of these is Bruce Waller, a philosophy professor at Youngstown State University. In his new book, Restorative Free Will, he writes that we should focus on our ability, in any given setting, to generate a wide range of options for ourselves, and to decide among them without external constraint.

    For Waller, it simply doesn’t matter that these processes are underpinned by a causal chain of firing neurons. In his view, free will and determinism are not the opposites they are often taken to be; they simply describe our behavior at different levels.

    Waller believes his account fits with a scientific understanding of how we evolved: Foraging animals—humans, but also mice, or bears, or crows—need to be able to generate options for themselves and make decisions in a complex and changing environment. Humans, with our massive brains, are much better at thinking up and weighing options than other animals are. Our range of options is much wider, and we are, in a meaningful way, freer as a result.

    Waller’s definition of free will is in keeping with how a lot of ordinary people see it. One 2010 study found that people mostly thought of free will in terms of following their desires, free of coercion (such as someone holding a gun to your head). As long as we continue to believe in this kind of practical free will, that should be enough to preserve the sorts of ideals and ethical standards examined by Vohs and Baumeister.

    Yet Waller’s account of free will still leads to a very different view of justice and responsibility than most people hold today. No one has caused himself: No one chose his genes or the environment into which he was born. Therefore no one bears ultimate responsibility for who he is and what he does. Waller told me he supported the sentiment of Barack Obama’s 2012 “You didn’t build that” speech, in which the president called attention to the external factors that help bring about success. He was also not surprised that it drew such a sharp reaction from those who want to believe that they were the sole architects of their achievements. But he argues that we must accept that life outcomes are determined by disparities in nature and nurture, “so we can take practical measures to remedy misfortune and help everyone to fulfill their potential.”

    Understanding how will be the work of decades, as we slowly unravel the nature of our own minds. In many areas, that work will likely yield more compassion: offering more (and more precise) help to those who find themselves in a bad place. And when the threat of punishment is necessary as a deterrent, it will in many cases be balanced with efforts to strengthen, rather than undermine, the capacities for autonomy that are essential for anyone to lead a decent life. The kind of will that leads to success—seeing positive options for oneself, making good decisions and sticking to them—can be cultivated, and those at the bottom of society are most in need of that cultivation.

    To some people, this may sound like a gratuitous attempt to have one’s cake and eat it too. And in a way it is. It is an attempt to retain the best parts of the free-will belief system while ditching the worst. President Obama—who has both defended “a faith in free will” and argued that we are not the sole architects of our fortune—has had to learn what a fine line this is to tread. Yet it might be what we need to rescue the American dream—and indeed, many of our ideas about civilization, the world over—in the scientific age.
    Line from the movie Starship Troopers,
    Jean Rasczak: "Figuring things out for yourself is the only freedom anyone really has. Use that freedom. Make up your own mind, Rico."
    Quote Originally Posted by BuddyRey View Post
    Do you think it's a coincidence that the most cherished standard of the Ron Paul campaign was a sign highlighting the word "love" inside the word "revolution"? A revolution not based on love is a revolution doomed to failure. So, at the risk of sounding corny, I just wanted to let you know that, wherever you stand on any of these hot-button issues, and even if we might have exchanged bitter words or harsh sentiments in the past, I love each and every one of you - no exceptions!

    "When goods do not cross borders, soldiers will." Frederic Bastiat

    Peace.



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  3. #2
    Hooboy... the few lines I have read here have the scent of FAIL about them. Let us see what the experts have to say on the matter.

    Quote Originally Posted by Henry Rogue View Post
    There’s No Such Thing as Free Will,
    Depends on the precise definition of the term. The assertion seems to assume the meaning without stating it. This does not bode well.

    But we’re better off believing in it anyway.
    Why? The possible answers are manifold, none of them good as far as I can see.

    As for me, I prefer ugly truth to pretty lies. Call me crazy. Others do.


    For centuries, philosophers and theologians have almost unanimously held that civilization as we know it depends on a widespread belief in free will—and that losing this belief could be calamitous. Our codes of ethics, for example, assume that we can freely choose between right and wrong. In the Christian tradition, this is known as “moral liberty”—the capacity to discern and pursue the good, instead of merely being compelled by appetites and desires. The great Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant reaffirmed this link between freedom and goodness. If we are not free to choose, he argued, then it would make no sense to say we ought to choose the path of righteousness.
    The truth of this seems plain enough through everyday experience, leading me to wonder what flavor of butt-holery awaits us.

    Today, the assumption of free will runs through every aspect of American politics, from welfare provision to criminal law. It permeates the popular culture and underpins the American dream—the belief that anyone can make something of themselves no matter what their start in life. As Barack Obama wrote in The Audacity of Hope, American “values are rooted in a basic optimism about life and a faith in free will.”
    Quoting Obama? I see.


    The sciences have grown steadily bolder...
    "Science" does no such thing. People may have, but science is naught but a scripted tool for discovering certain categories of truth. Attributing boldness to "science" is not at all unlike making reference to "states' rights" and "interests". No such things exist, save as notions within the confines of people's skulls.

    ...in their claim that all human behavior can be explained through the clockwork laws of cause and effect.
    A mostly meaningless assertion, sans substantially greater context in which to couch it.

    This shift in perception is the continuation of an intellectual revolution that began about 150 years ago, when Charles Darwin first published On the Origin of Species. Shortly after Darwin put forth his theory of evolution, his cousin Sir Francis Galton began to draw out the implications: If we have evolved, then mental faculties like intelligence must be hereditary.
    Define "hereditary". Almost regardless of the definition, barring some truly mangled versioning, all one need do is walk down that chain to the "beginning". What is there? Whence did the first intelligent being inherit its "intelligence"? And what defines "intelligence", rigorously speaking?

    I am already establishing a pattern of FAIL, not only of the author, but of all those loverly "scientists". But let me not jump the gun. There is a lot left to chisel.

    But we use those faculties—which some people have to a greater degree than others—to make decisions. So our ability to choose our fate is not free, but depends on our biological inheritance.
    Well now there's a mash of nonsensical, seeming-non-sequitur. Lets resect this horrid little sentence to get to its apparent message:

    "We use our intelligence to make decisions. Therefore, our ability to choose our fate is not free, but depends on our biological inheritance."

    Well that just FAILs miserably. I think I understand what the author is saying, but not only is the sentence and its logic miserably constructed, I believe he is as dead wrong as it gets on the issue. For one thing, the question of whence our intelligence is orthogonal to the question of free will. The two are separate issues, so what then is this author attempting to do here, other than waste readers' time?


    Galton launched a debate that raged throughout the 20th century over nature versus nurture.
    Demonstrating the miserably deficient habits of even the so-called "learned" in terms of how they think, not to mention that the question itself is something of a waste of time pursuing, IMO - the fact that it was pursued for so long serving as the proof positive by which those sectors of the "scientific" community is largely assessed as being populated by morons.

    Are our actions the unfolding effect of our genetics?
    The question presupposes that all actions are equivalent as actions. This is pure FAIL. It is readily demonstrated that if I take a pin and jab a fetching young lassie in her boottucks, she will jump as if to soar to heaven itself. That is pure genetic desigh at work. It has been demonstrated beyond doubt that the nerve/muscle complexes are structured such that the musculature goes into action prior to the pain impulse reaching the brain. Genetic design of flesh clear for anyone to observe.

    Place before me vanilla and a chocolate ice cream cones and I am able to make any of several choices. I may choose to consume the chocolate cone. I may choose the vanilla. I might choose them both. I might choose to abstain from consuming either. Perhaps I will choose to smush one or the other onto my nose that I might have a pointy new nose full of creamy goodness.

    Once again, we must also consider the rigorous definitions of "free will", "choice", and so on in order to make the various determinations. The more deeply down we go into the philosophical rabbit hole, the more important semantic rigor becomes. This is trebly so where the considerations at hand hold implications for one set of men placing restrictions upon the rest.

    Or the outcome of what has been imprinted on us by the environment?
    Implication of a false dichotomy fails.

    Impressive evidence accumulated for the importance of each factor. Whether scientists supported one, the other, or a mix of both, they increasingly assumed that our deeds must be determined by something.
    The hell? I'm not even sure what to say in the face of statements this stupid. The boy buried his little weenie into the obvious, puffing nobly away at it.

    In recent decades, research on the inner workings of the brain has helped to resolve the nature-nurture debate—and has dealt a further blow to the idea of free will. Brain scanners have enabled us to peer inside a living person’s skull, revealing intricate networks of neurons and allowing scientists to reach broad agreement that these networks are shaped by both genes and environment. But there is also agreement in the scientific community that the firing of neurons determines not just some or most but all of our thoughts, hopes, memories, and dreams.
    Yet another statement that talks much, but fails to get to the punchline. Even assuming that what was written was true, so far as it went (and that is being very generous), the author fails to follow through with the next salient query: what prompts the neurons to "fire"? Whence the impulse to function in that manner? "It's a neuron's nature to do that", or some similar such cuts no muster in the Department of Valid Answers.


    We know that changes to brain chemistry can alter behavior—otherwise neither alcohol nor antipsychotics would have their desired effects. The same holds true for brain structure: Cases of ordinary adults becoming murderers or pedophiles after developing a brain tumor demonstrate how dependent we are on the physical properties of our gray stuff.
    And yet, this doesn't explain the source of intelligence, its fundamental "inner" nature, or anything else that would speak to the question of free will.

    Many scientists say that the American physiologist Benjamin Libet demonstrated in the 1980s that we have no free will. It was already known that electrical activity builds up in a person’s brain before she, for example, moves her hand; Libet showed that this buildup occurs before the person consciously makes a decision to move. The conscious experience of deciding to act, which we usually associate with free will, APPEARS TO BE an add-on, a post hoc reconstruction of events that occurs after the brain has already set the act in motion.
    Note the caps. Disease APPEARED to be the effects of evil humors, for which bleeding was prescribed in order to vent them away.


    The 20th-century nature-nurture debate prepared us to think of ourselves as shaped by influences beyond our control. But it left some room, at least in the popular imagination, for the possibility that we could overcome our circumstances or our genes to become the author of our own destiny. The challenge posed by neuroscience is more radical: It describes the brain as a physical system like any other, and suggests that we no more will it to operate in a particular way than we will our heart to beat.
    Some saddhus do, in fact, will their hearts to beat at a given rate. Even I have been able to do this to some degree, back when I was into that sort of thing and practicing daily. I trained myself on a 2 minute breath cycle as well - one minute in and one out.




    The contemporary scientific image of human behavior is one of neurons firing, causing other neurons to fire, causing our thoughts and deeds, in an unbroken chain that stretches back to our birth and beyond.
    These are, at best, mere observations devoid of any root-cause explanations. OK, we see neurons doing their things, but WHY do they do them?

    To take mere observation and attempt to elevate it to the rank and status of explanation is FAIL of one of the worst sorts. It is the lie that masquerades as scientific truth, the implications being that it is therefore unassailable by questioning.

    In principle, we are therefore completely predictable. If we could understand any individual’s brain architecture and chemistry well enough, we could, in theory, predict that individual’s response to any given stimulus with 100 percent accuracy.
    This is the same notion as that of the 19th century mechanists who believed that if you had sufficient knowledge of all the matter in the universe, you could predict every future event from moment to moment. This is nonsense from several perspectives, the most significant being that the universe is perfectly predictable because it is naught but physicality. This is an ultra-myopic view. It is, in fact, damned nearly blind.

    This research and its implications are not new. What is new, though, is the spread of free-will skepticism beyond the laboratories and into the mainstream. The number of court cases, for example, that use evidence from neuroscience has more than doubled in the past decade—mostly in the context of defendants arguing that their brain made them do it. And many people are absorbing this message in other contexts, too, at least judging by the number of books and articles purporting to explain “your brain on” everything from music to magic. Determinism, to one degree or another, is gaining popular currency. The skeptics are in ascendance.
    And that is because idiocy is also in ascendance. There appears these days to be a great raft of mediocre, ill-adept "scientists" out there with neither the knowledge nor the moral/ethical constitution for proper scientific inquiry. Just consider all those rocket surgeons out of East Anglia who were cold-busted doctoring climate data and then destroying the raw. This brand of chicanery goes on all the time and in virtually all corners of the earth. Science in sé cannot save men from their own corruption and in ability. Beating them with iron bars or relegating them to flame, OTOH, might. 1/2

    This development raises uncomfortable—and increasingly nontheoretical [sic]—questions: If moral responsibility depends on faith in our own agency, then as belief in determinism spreads, will we become morally irresponsible? And if we increasingly see belief in free will as a delusion, what will happen to all those institutions that are based on it?
    Finally, a valid passage. Firstly, it seems to me that everything we are and do as creatures depends upon faith. That is why I believe there is no such thing as a generally faithless man. The intercession of our perceptual faculties as gateways from what we might call our "inner reality" to that of what we may similarly call the "outside world" pretty well constrains us to faith that what we see, taste, feel, smell, and hear are in fact what we think they are at the level of practical daily living. Without faith, a man wouls surely die in short order. The question, then, becomes not one of faith in sé, but of what it is in which we will choose to place it.

    [snip]

    Yes, indeed. When asked to take a math test, with cheating made easy, the group primed to see free will as illusory proved more likely to take an illicit peek at the answers. When given an opportunity to steal—to take more money than they were due from an envelope of $1 coins—those whose belief in free will had been undermined pilfered more. On a range of measures, Vohs told me, she and Schooler found that “people who are induced to believe less in free will are more likely to behave immorally.”
    Seems to indicate free will to me. Had they cheated universally, I might see differently. Had they cheated universally despite the presence of an AK-armed goon, fully determined to blow the test takers' brains all over the wall if they cheated, then I'd be even more inclined to believe that free will is an illusion.

    It seems that when people stop believing they are free agents, they stop seeing themselves as blameworthy for their actions.
    Makes perfect sense, but note that this is how they CHOOSE to see themselves. They are open to choose otherwise. Were it not so, we would not be having the debate because the free-will notion would not even arise in a world of pre-fated automatons.

    No no... there is no valid debate here. What I do see, however, is a result that stands to bring even greater harm to a world already seriously damaged by the insane and inane ideas of ill-adepts who were apparently unable to make their bones in real science and therefore fell back into this idiotic nonsense. I could easily see unsavory political motives at work here. It would make perfect sense in the same way that all the other stupidities foisted upon us do in terms of gaining political power. When distinction is blurred to the point that people can no longer tell left from right, up from down, their asses from their elbows, tyrants are so much more able to control their behaviors. This is Enlightened Tyranny 001: Remedial Techniques For Those Who Slept Through Basic Tyranny Class At Tyrant High.

    Consequently, they act less responsibly and give in to their baser instincts.
    Still a choice because when I show up with my .45 at their heads, I would bet billions I don't have and give 100:1 that when they are certain in their thoughts that I will with glee shoot the ghosts from their miserable carcasses, the cheating will come to a predictable end, probably in all cases. That is choice, PRIMA FACIE.

    Vohs emphasized that this result is not limited to the contrived conditions of a lab experiment. “You see the same effects with people who naturally believe more or less in free will,” she said.
    STILL failing to say anything of definite value in pursuit of the question at hand. FAIL^FAIL

    Crikey, man... The scary bit, thus far, is that people will read this and actually believe this apparent nonsense.

    In another study, for instance, Vohs and colleagues measured the extent to which a group of day laborers believed in free will, then examined their performance on the job by looking at their supervisor’s ratings. Those who believed more strongly that they were in control of their own actions showed up on time for work more frequently and were rated by supervisors as more capable. In fact, belief in free will turned out to be a better predictor of job performance than established measures such as self-professed work ethic.
    Correlation <> causality. More FAIL. Oy.

    Another pioneer of research into the psychology of free will, Roy Baumeister of Florida State University, has extended these findings. For example, he and colleagues found that students with a weaker belief in free will were less likely to volunteer their time to help a classmate than were those whose belief in free will was stronger. Likewise, those primed to hold a deterministic view by reading statements like “Science has demonstrated that free will is an illusion” were less likely to give money to a homeless person or lend someone a cellphone.
    This one REALLY gets me to wondering what the working definition of "free will" was in these cases. I can just imagine how such students may have been primed. Reminds me of that daycare facility in CA where the children were coached into recounting rapes that never happened, ending the owners and other employees in prison, only later to be exonerated, yet ruined for life in any event.

    Further studies by Baumeister and colleagues have linked a diminished belief in free will to stress, unhappiness, and a lesser commitment to relationships. They found that when subjects were induced to believe that “all human actions follow from prior events and ultimately can be understood in terms of the movement of molecules,” those subjects came away with a lower sense of life’s meaningfulness. Early this year, other researchers published a study showing that a weaker belief in free will correlates with poor academic performance.
    Uh huh... this sounds more like a belief in "God". This author has done an absolutely terrible job, thus far. Will there be a punchline to make the booboos all better? Let me dare not hope.

    The list goes on: Believing that free will is an illusion has been shown to make people less creative, more likely to conform, less willing to learn from their mistakes, and less grateful toward one another. In every regard, it seems, when we embrace determinism, we indulge our dark side.

    Few scholars are comfortable suggesting that people ought to believe an outright lie. Advocating the perpetuation of untruths would breach their integrity and violate a principle that philosophers have long held dear: the Platonic hope that the true and the good go hand in hand. Saul Smilansky, a philosophy professor at the University of Haifa, in Israel, has wrestled with this dilemma throughout his career and come to a painful conclusion: “We cannot afford for people to internalize the truth” about free will.
    OK, that's the BIG-ASS clue. If true, then free-will must perforce exist because there is palpable, identifiable good in the world. "Good" has a definition and it describes things extant in our lives. "Good" is generally life-affirming. Therefore, if truth and goodness go hand in hand, then belief in free will must be true because it manifests the good, whereas the absence of that belief erodes and perhaps even destroys it.

    Smilansky is convinced that free will does not exist in the traditional sense—and that it would be very bad if most people realized this. “Imagine,” he told me, “that I’m deliberating whether to do my duty, such as to parachute into enemy territory, or something more mundane like to risk my job by reporting on some wrongdoing. If everyone accepts that there is no free will, then I’ll know that people will say, ‘Whatever he did, he had no choice—we can’t blame him.’ So I know I’m not going to be condemned for taking the selfish option.” This, he believes, is very dangerous for society, and “the more people accept the determinist picture, the worse things will get.”
    OK, so now this Smilansky character is doing the typical political ploy of word-gaming the issue. This is ULTRA-MEGA-FAIL. This is FAIL so gross, do dangerous, as to make the man candidate for a very serious caning with an iron wire. 3/8 rebar, 18" long will suffice. Here I am joking less than previously. Best, however, would be for him to meet with widespread ridicule, ignominy, shunning, and the consequent decline in his quality of life until such time as he chose to make amends and become serious about his career.

    I will say right here, right now, that based solely on what is written here, this guy is completely full of feces. All his credit should be gone, all else equal. If all else is not equal, schedule that caning for the author, instead.

    Determinism not only undermines blame, Smilansky argues; it also undermines praise. Imagine I do risk my life by jumping into enemy territory to perform a daring mission. Afterward, people will say that I had no choice, that my feats were merely, in Smilansky’s phrase, “an unfolding of the given,” and therefore hardly praiseworthy. And just as undermining blame would remove an obstacle to acting wickedly, so undermining praise would remove an incentive to do good. Our heroes would seem less inspiring, he argues, our achievements less noteworthy, and soon we would sink into decadence and despondency.
    Rocket surgery at its best in yet another example of some tool exercising his toolette within the folds of the obvious. I am distinctly unimpressed.

    Smilansky advocates a view he calls illusionism—the belief that free will is indeed an illusion, but one that society must defend. The idea of determinism, and the facts supporting it, must be kept confined within the ivory tower. Only the initiated, behind those walls, should dare to, as he put it to me, “look the dark truth in the face.” Smilansky says he realizes that there is something drastic, even terrible, about this idea—but if the choice is between the true and the good, then for the sake of society, the true must go.
    OK, so Smilansky first says not to cleave to a lie, and in the next breath says to cleave to that very lie.

    Is this article from The Onion? Have you, Henry de Rogue, pulled my central leg with heavy equipment otherwise suited to moving aircraft carriers and similarly small objects (by comparison)?

    When people stop believing they are free agents, they stop seeing themselves as blameworthy for their actions.

    Smilansky’s arguments may sound odd at first, given his contention that the world is devoid of free will: If we are not really deciding anything, who cares what information is let loose? But new information, of course, is a sensory input like any other; it can change our behavior, even if we are not the conscious agents of that change. In the language of cause and effect, a belief in free will may not inspire us to make the best of ourselves, but it does stimulate us to do so.
    This is some of the most retarded $#@! I've ever read. Did these guys get PhDs in being retarded or did their mothers forgo those costs by dropping them all on their heads when they were infants?

    Illusionism is a minority position among academic philosophers
    I bet it is. Nobody but a hoomering imbecile would go for this third-rate, back-of-the-bus, rank buffoonery.

    most of whom still hope that the good and the true can be reconciled. But it represents an ancient strand of thought among intellectual elites. Nietzsche called free will “a theologians’ artifice” that permits us to “judge and punish.” And many thinkers have believed, as Smilansky does, that institutions of judgment and punishment are necessary if we are to avoid a fall into barbarism.
    Not even worth addressing the problems there. I'd add, however, that Nietzsche was not the most mentally sound intellect. I've read his works - some good bits and a lot no so hot.

    Smilansky is not advocating policies of Orwellian thought control. Luckily, he argues, we don’t need them. Belief in free will comes naturally to us. Scientists and commentators merely need to exercise some self-restraint, instead of gleefully disabusing people of the illusions that undergird all they hold dear. Most scientists “don’t realize what effect these ideas can have,” Smilansky told me. “Promoting determinism is complacent and dangerous.”

    Yet not all scholars who argue publicly against free will are blind to the social and psychological consequences. Some simply don’t agree that these consequences might include the collapse of civilization. One of the most prominent is the neuroscientist and writer Sam Harris, who, in his 2012 book, Free Will, set out to bring down the fantasy of conscious choice. Like Smilansky, he believes that there is no such thing as free will. But Harris thinks we are better off without the whole notion of it.

    “We need our beliefs to track what is true,” Harris told me. Illusions, no matter how well intentioned, will always hold us back. For example, we currently use the threat of imprisonment as a crude tool to persuade people not to do bad things. But if we instead accept that “human behavior arises from neurophysiology,” he argued, then we can better understand what is really causing people to do bad things despite this threat of punishment—and how to stop them. “We need,” Harris told me, “to know what are the levers we can pull as a society to encourage people to be the best version of themselves they can be.”
    My head hurts. There is much that could be written about this passage - the utter FAIL it represents in implicitly contradictory nature of what is written, but I just don't have the oomph to do it. I have a water heater to install today and even so would perhaps rather set myself on fire in preference to addressing such artless stupidity as this.

    According to Harris, we should acknowledge that even the worst criminals—murderous psychopaths, for example—are in a sense unlucky. “They didn’t pick their genes. They didn’t pick their parents. They didn’t make their brains, yet their brains are the source of their intentions and actions.” In a deep sense, their crimes are not their fault. Recognizing this, we can dispassionately consider how to manage offenders in order to rehabilitate them, protect society, and reduce future offending. Harris thinks that, in time, “it might be possible to cure something like psychopathy,” but only if we accept that the brain, and not some airy-fairy free will, is the source of the deviancy.

    Accepting this would also free us from hatred. Holding people responsible for their actions might sound like a keystone of civilized life, but we pay a high price for it: Blaming people makes us angry and vengeful, and that clouds our judgment.
    Tell me that when, after having accepted it with all sincerity, you get the call that your 8 year old daughter was abducted, maimed, then raped as she died, her remains consumed in a large pot of Little Girl Stew (Tips hat to Shel Silverstein). Show us your conscience, clean of hatred.

    Malarky.

    “Compare the response to Hurricane Katrina,” Harris suggested, with “the response to the 9/11 act of terrorism.” For many Americans, the men who hijacked those planes are the embodiment of criminals who freely choose to do evil. But if we give up our notion of free will, then their behavior must be viewed like any other natural phenomenon—and this, Harris believes, would make us much more rational in our response.

    Although the scale of the two catastrophes was similar, the reactions were wildly different. Nobody was striving to exact revenge on tropical storms or declare a War on Weather, so responses to Katrina could simply focus on rebuilding and preventing future disasters. The response to 9/11, Harris argues, was clouded by outrage and the desire for vengeance, and has led to the unnecessary loss of countless more lives. Harris is not saying that we shouldn’t have reacted at all to 9/11, only that a coolheaded response would have looked very different and likely been much less wasteful. “Hatred is toxic,” he told me, “and can destabilize individual lives and whole societies. Losing belief in free will undercuts the rationale for ever hating anyone.”

    Whereas the evidence from Kathleen Vohs and her colleagues suggests that social problems may arise from seeing our own actions as determined by forces beyond our control—weakening our morals, our motivation, and our sense of the meaningfulness of life—Harris thinks that social benefits will result from seeing other people’s behavior in the very same light. From that vantage point, the moral implications of determinism look very different, and quite a lot better.

    What’s more, Harris argues, as ordinary people come to better understand how their brains work, many of the problems documented by Vohs and others will dissipate. Determinism, he writes in his book, does not mean “that conscious awareness and deliberative thinking serve no purpose.” Certain kinds of action require us to become conscious of a choice—to weigh arguments and appraise evidence. True, if we were put in exactly the same situation again, then 100 times out of 100 we would make the same decision, “just like rewinding a movie and playing it again.” But the act of deliberation—the wrestling with facts and emotions that we feel is essential to our nature—is nonetheless real.

    The big problem, in Harris’s view, is that people often confuse determinism with fatalism. Determinism is the belief that our decisions are part of an unbreakable chain of cause and effect. Fatalism, on the other hand, is the belief that our decisions don’t really matter, because whatever is destined to happen will happen—like Oedipus’s marriage to his mother, despite his efforts to avoid that fate.
    Most scientists “don’t realize what effect these ideas can have,” Smilansky told me. It is “complacent and dangerous” to air them.

    When people hear there is no free will, they wrongly become fatalistic; they think their efforts will make no difference. But this is a mistake. People are not moving toward an inevitable destiny; given a different stimulus (like a different idea about free will), they will behave differently and so have different lives. If people better understood these fine distinctions, Harris believes, the consequences of losing faith in free will would be much less negative than Vohs’s and Baumeister’s experiments suggest.

    Can one go further still? Is there a way forward that preserves both the inspiring power of belief in free will and the compassionate understanding that comes with determinism?

    Philosophers and theologians are used to talking about free will as if it is either on or off; as if our consciousness floats, like a ghost, entirely above the causal chain, or as if we roll through life like a rock down a hill. But there might be another way of looking at human agency.

    Some scholars argue that we should think about freedom of choice in terms of our very real and sophisticated abilities to map out multiple potential responses to a particular situation. One of these is Bruce Waller, a philosophy professor at Youngstown State University. In his new book, Restorative Free Will, he writes that we should focus on our ability, in any given setting, to generate a wide range of options for ourselves, and to decide among them without external constraint.

    For Waller, it simply doesn’t matter that these processes are underpinned by a causal chain of firing neurons. In his view, free will and determinism are not the opposites they are often taken to be; they simply describe our behavior at different levels.

    Waller believes his account fits with a scientific understanding of how we evolved: Foraging animals—humans, but also mice, or bears, or crows—need to be able to generate options for themselves and make decisions in a complex and changing environment. Humans, with our massive brains, are much better at thinking up and weighing options than other animals are. Our range of options is much wider, and we are, in a meaningful way, freer as a result.

    Waller’s definition of free will is in keeping with how a lot of ordinary people see it. One 2010 study found that people mostly thought of free will in terms of following their desires, free of coercion (such as someone holding a gun to your head). As long as we continue to believe in this kind of practical free will, that should be enough to preserve the sorts of ideals and ethical standards examined by Vohs and Baumeister.

    Yet Waller’s account of free will still leads to a very different view of justice and responsibility than most people hold today. No one has caused himself: No one chose his genes or the environment into which he was born. Therefore no one bears ultimate responsibility for who he is and what he does. Waller told me he supported the sentiment of Barack Obama’s 2012 “You didn’t build that” speech, in which the president called attention to the external factors that help bring about success. He was also not surprised that it drew such a sharp reaction from those who want to believe that they were the sole architects of their achievements. But he argues that we must accept that life outcomes are determined by disparities in nature and nurture, “so we can take practical measures to remedy misfortune and help everyone to fulfill their potential.”

    Understanding how will be the work of decades, as we slowly unravel the nature of our own minds. In many areas, that work will likely yield more compassion: offering more (and more precise) help to those who find themselves in a bad place. And when the threat of punishment is necessary as a deterrent, it will in many cases be balanced with efforts to strengthen, rather than undermine, the capacities for autonomy that are essential for anyone to lead a decent life. The kind of will that leads to success—seeing positive options for oneself, making good decisions and sticking to them—can be cultivated, and those at the bottom of society are most in need of that cultivation.

    To some people, this may sound like a gratuitous attempt to have one’s cake and eat it too. And in a way it is. It is an attempt to retain the best parts of the free-will belief system while ditching the worst. President Obama—who has both defended “a faith in free will” and argued that we are not the sole architects of our fortune—has had to learn what a fine line this is to tread. Yet it might be what we need to rescue the American dream—and indeed, many of our ideas about civilization, the world over—in the scientific age.
    OK, I just could not read any further. If someone has found a punchline, please point it out because the "stupid people are stupid" tautology is one of the unforgivable wastes of time, the pursuance of which would qualify my for a good iron-bar caning.
    freedomisobvious.blogspot.com

    There is only one correct way: freedom. All other solutions are non-solutions.

    It appears that artificial intelligence is at least slightly superior to natural stupidity.

    Our words make us the ghosts that we are.

    Convincing the world he didn't exist was the Devil's second greatest trick; the first was convincing us that God didn't exist.

  4. #3

  5. #4
    This sums up the questions for me lol:

    There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.
    -Major General Smedley Butler, USMC,
    Two-Time Congressional Medal of Honor Winner
    Author of, War is a Racket!

    It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours.
    - Diogenes of Sinope

  6. #5
    If you make me choose, then I have to choose determinism. But why isn't there an option for both?

  7. #6
    Perhaps my understanding is somewhat different,, But I see "Free Will" as an essential and central part of God's plan.
    Liberty is lost through complacency and a subservient mindset. When we accept or even welcome automobile checkpoints, random searches, mandatory identification cards, and paramilitary police in our streets, we have lost a vital part of our American heritage. America was born of protest, revolution, and mistrust of government. Subservient societies neither maintain nor deserve freedom for long.
    Ron Paul 2004

    Registered Ron Paul supporter # 2202
    It's all about Freedom

  8. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Henry Rogue View Post
    http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...e-will/480750/



    Line from the movie Starship Troopers,
    Jean Rasczak: "Figuring things out for yourself is the only freedom anyone really has. Use that freedom. Make up your own mind, Rico."
    The title of this article pretty much sums up my beliefs. There's no free will, but we might as well believe in it because we simply don't know what we were predetermined for, so effort is still necessary since knowing that you are determined for something doesn't really help you know just what that is.
    I'm an adventurer, writer and bitcoin market analyst.

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  9. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    Hooboy... the few lines I have read here have the scent of FAIL about them. Let us see what the experts have to say on the matter.



    Depends on the precise definition of the term. The assertion seems to assume the meaning without stating it. This does not bode well.



    Why? The possible answers are manifold, none of them good as far as I can see.

    As for me, I prefer ugly truth to pretty lies. Call me crazy. Others do.




    The truth of this seems plain enough through everyday experience, leading me to wonder what flavor of butt-holery awaits us.



    Quoting Obama? I see.




    "Science" does no such thing. People may have, but science is naught but a scripted tool for discovering certain categories of truth. Attributing boldness to "science" is not at all unlike making reference to "states' rights" and "interests". No such things exist, save as notions within the confines of people's skulls.



    A mostly meaningless assertion, sans substantially greater context in which to couch it.



    Define "hereditary". Almost regardless of the definition, barring some truly mangled versioning, all one need do is walk down that chain to the "beginning". What is there? Whence did the first intelligent being inherit its "intelligence"? And what defines "intelligence", rigorously speaking?

    I am already establishing a pattern of FAIL, not only of the author, but of all those loverly "scientists". But let me not jump the gun. There is a lot left to chisel.



    Well now there's a mash of nonsensical, seeming-non-sequitur. Lets resect this horrid little sentence to get to its apparent message:

    "We use our intelligence to make decisions. Therefore, our ability to choose our fate is not free, but depends on our biological inheritance."

    Well that just FAILs miserably. I think I understand what the author is saying, but not only is the sentence and its logic miserably constructed, I believe he is as dead wrong as it gets on the issue. For one thing, the question of whence our intelligence is orthogonal to the question of free will. The two are separate issues, so what then is this author attempting to do here, other than waste readers' time?




    Demonstrating the miserably deficient habits of even the so-called "learned" in terms of how they think, not to mention that the question itself is something of a waste of time pursuing, IMO - the fact that it was pursued for so long serving as the proof positive by which those sectors of the "scientific" community is largely assessed as being populated by morons.



    The question presupposes that all actions are equivalent as actions. This is pure FAIL. It is readily demonstrated that if I take a pin and jab a fetching young lassie in her boottucks, she will jump as if to soar to heaven itself. That is pure genetic desigh at work. It has been demonstrated beyond doubt that the nerve/muscle complexes are structured such that the musculature goes into action prior to the pain impulse reaching the brain. Genetic design of flesh clear for anyone to observe.

    Place before me vanilla and a chocolate ice cream cones and I am able to make any of several choices. I may choose to consume the chocolate cone. I may choose the vanilla. I might choose them both. I might choose to abstain from consuming either. Perhaps I will choose to smush one or the other onto my nose that I might have a pointy new nose full of creamy goodness.

    Once again, we must also consider the rigorous definitions of "free will", "choice", and so on in order to make the various determinations. The more deeply down we go into the philosophical rabbit hole, the more important semantic rigor becomes. This is trebly so where the considerations at hand hold implications for one set of men placing restrictions upon the rest.



    Implication of a false dichotomy fails.



    The hell? I'm not even sure what to say in the face of statements this stupid. The boy buried his little weenie into the obvious, puffing nobly away at it.



    Yet another statement that talks much, but fails to get to the punchline. Even assuming that what was written was true, so far as it went (and that is being very generous), the author fails to follow through with the next salient query: what prompts the neurons to "fire"? Whence the impulse to function in that manner? "It's a neuron's nature to do that", or some similar such cuts no muster in the Department of Valid Answers.




    And yet, this doesn't explain the source of intelligence, its fundamental "inner" nature, or anything else that would speak to the question of free will.



    Note the caps. Disease APPEARED to be the effects of evil humors, for which bleeding was prescribed in order to vent them away.




    Some saddhus do, in fact, will their hearts to beat at a given rate. Even I have been able to do this to some degree, back when I was into that sort of thing and practicing daily. I trained myself on a 2 minute breath cycle as well - one minute in and one out.






    These are, at best, mere observations devoid of any root-cause explanations. OK, we see neurons doing their things, but WHY do they do them?

    To take mere observation and attempt to elevate it to the rank and status of explanation is FAIL of one of the worst sorts. It is the lie that masquerades as scientific truth, the implications being that it is therefore unassailable by questioning.



    This is the same notion as that of the 19th century mechanists who believed that if you had sufficient knowledge of all the matter in the universe, you could predict every future event from moment to moment. This is nonsense from several perspectives, the most significant being that the universe is perfectly predictable because it is naught but physicality. This is an ultra-myopic view. It is, in fact, damned nearly blind.



    And that is because idiocy is also in ascendance. There appears these days to be a great raft of mediocre, ill-adept "scientists" out there with neither the knowledge nor the moral/ethical constitution for proper scientific inquiry. Just consider all those rocket surgeons out of East Anglia who were cold-busted doctoring climate data and then destroying the raw. This brand of chicanery goes on all the time and in virtually all corners of the earth. Science in sé cannot save men from their own corruption and in ability. Beating them with iron bars or relegating them to flame, OTOH, might. 1/2



    Finally, a valid passage. Firstly, it seems to me that everything we are and do as creatures depends upon faith. That is why I believe there is no such thing as a generally faithless man. The intercession of our perceptual faculties as gateways from what we might call our "inner reality" to that of what we may similarly call the "outside world" pretty well constrains us to faith that what we see, taste, feel, smell, and hear are in fact what we think they are at the level of practical daily living. Without faith, a man wouls surely die in short order. The question, then, becomes not one of faith in sé, but of what it is in which we will choose to place it.

    [snip]



    Seems to indicate free will to me. Had they cheated universally, I might see differently. Had they cheated universally despite the presence of an AK-armed goon, fully determined to blow the test takers' brains all over the wall if they cheated, then I'd be even more inclined to believe that free will is an illusion.



    Makes perfect sense, but note that this is how they CHOOSE to see themselves. They are open to choose otherwise. Were it not so, we would not be having the debate because the free-will notion would not even arise in a world of pre-fated automatons.

    No no... there is no valid debate here. What I do see, however, is a result that stands to bring even greater harm to a world already seriously damaged by the insane and inane ideas of ill-adepts who were apparently unable to make their bones in real science and therefore fell back into this idiotic nonsense. I could easily see unsavory political motives at work here. It would make perfect sense in the same way that all the other stupidities foisted upon us do in terms of gaining political power. When distinction is blurred to the point that people can no longer tell left from right, up from down, their asses from their elbows, tyrants are so much more able to control their behaviors. This is Enlightened Tyranny 001: Remedial Techniques For Those Who Slept Through Basic Tyranny Class At Tyrant High.



    Still a choice because when I show up with my .45 at their heads, I would bet billions I don't have and give 100:1 that when they are certain in their thoughts that I will with glee shoot the ghosts from their miserable carcasses, the cheating will come to a predictable end, probably in all cases. That is choice, PRIMA FACIE.



    STILL failing to say anything of definite value in pursuit of the question at hand. FAIL^FAIL

    Crikey, man... The scary bit, thus far, is that people will read this and actually believe this apparent nonsense.



    Correlation <> causality. More FAIL. Oy.



    This one REALLY gets me to wondering what the working definition of "free will" was in these cases. I can just imagine how such students may have been primed. Reminds me of that daycare facility in CA where the children were coached into recounting rapes that never happened, ending the owners and other employees in prison, only later to be exonerated, yet ruined for life in any event.



    Uh huh... this sounds more like a belief in "God". This author has done an absolutely terrible job, thus far. Will there be a punchline to make the booboos all better? Let me dare not hope.



    OK, that's the BIG-ASS clue. If true, then free-will must perforce exist because there is palpable, identifiable good in the world. "Good" has a definition and it describes things extant in our lives. "Good" is generally life-affirming. Therefore, if truth and goodness go hand in hand, then belief in free will must be true because it manifests the good, whereas the absence of that belief erodes and perhaps even destroys it.



    OK, so now this Smilansky character is doing the typical political ploy of word-gaming the issue. This is ULTRA-MEGA-FAIL. This is FAIL so gross, do dangerous, as to make the man candidate for a very serious caning with an iron wire. 3/8 rebar, 18" long will suffice. Here I am joking less than previously. Best, however, would be for him to meet with widespread ridicule, ignominy, shunning, and the consequent decline in his quality of life until such time as he chose to make amends and become serious about his career.

    I will say right here, right now, that based solely on what is written here, this guy is completely full of feces. All his credit should be gone, all else equal. If all else is not equal, schedule that caning for the author, instead.



    Rocket surgery at its best in yet another example of some tool exercising his toolette within the folds of the obvious. I am distinctly unimpressed.



    OK, so Smilansky first says not to cleave to a lie, and in the next breath says to cleave to that very lie.

    Is this article from The Onion? Have you, Henry de Rogue, pulled my central leg with heavy equipment otherwise suited to moving aircraft carriers and similarly small objects (by comparison)?



    This is some of the most retarded $#@! I've ever read. Did these guys get PhDs in being retarded or did their mothers forgo those costs by dropping them all on their heads when they were infants?



    I bet it is. Nobody but a hoomering imbecile would go for this third-rate, back-of-the-bus, rank buffoonery.



    Not even worth addressing the problems there. I'd add, however, that Nietzsche was not the most mentally sound intellect. I've read his works - some good bits and a lot no so hot.



    My head hurts. There is much that could be written about this passage - the utter FAIL it represents in implicitly contradictory nature of what is written, but I just don't have the oomph to do it. I have a water heater to install today and even so would perhaps rather set myself on fire in preference to addressing such artless stupidity as this.



    Tell me that when, after having accepted it with all sincerity, you get the call that your 8 year old daughter was abducted, maimed, then raped as she died, her remains consumed in a large pot of Little Girl Stew (Tips hat to Shel Silverstein). Show us your conscience, clean of hatred.

    Malarky.



    OK, I just could not read any further. If someone has found a punchline, please point it out because the "stupid people are stupid" tautology is one of the unforgivable wastes of time, the pursuance of which would qualify my for a good iron-bar caning.
    I would like to note in amendment to my previous post that I am speaking from a position of faith. I believe that we should choose to act morally because we do not know what we are predestined for. That is, I think we will eventually be judged by God based on our moral character.

    However, in seeing this particular post by osan, I noticed that he took for granted Kant's argument that "if we are not free to choose, then it is meaningless to say we should choose to behave morally." I, however, disagree with that notion. It may appear to be a logical contradiction on the face of it, but if you consider the context, it becomes clear that the existence of an illusion separate from reality does not preclude the validity of illusory experiences. Although the illusion isn't real, per se, it does not necessarily mean that the illusion should be treated as a falsehood. Rather, it should be treated as a designated component of the overall reality. We should not simply assume that the illusion is meaningless, for it could have a purpose, and that purpose can be explained as such: We don't know what the future will hold for us because we don't know God's plan, so it follows that we cannot assume any particular outcome in reality just by virtue of knowing that we live in an illusion. Therefore, we should treat the illusion of free will as valid because, although anything we "choose" to do will have been pre-destined when we actually do it, we could not have assumed that outcome, so we are forced to behave morally even given the knowledge that our experiences are illusory.

    This explanation would be incomplete, however, if it did not include the intent of God. The explanation given in the article that notes that people who read articles pro-deterministic would behave less morally than those who read neutral articles does not consider the intent angle, which is an extremely important angle to consider if one truly wants to understand the reason why the subjects reacted to the articles in such a way. It very well could be that the article, speaking from a secular point of view, instilled or somehow introduced the view that determinism is true, but left out the intent. In this way, the reader was swayed to assume that, not just determinism, but secular determinism, was favored.

    Without intent, it would indeed seem that life was basically pointless and choosing to behave morally was futile, but knowing that there is intent behind the illusion created provides one with the knowledge that they have a purpose despite the fact that their life is already determined, and faced with the ultimate realization that they don't know what they are determined to be, they must choose to act morally within the illusion so that they can ensure that their experience within the illusion matches to the written intent of God so as to make sure that they do not end up rebelling and finding out that they were one of the unfortunate ones who were determined for the lesser fate come the day of judgment when they finally see what the reality was.

    Note, however, that I said "lesser fate" and not "damnation" because I do not actually believe in eternal hell fire or damnation, which is another interesting topic to consider at another time, but is not necessary for the purpose of proving my point here, which is that it is most definitely possible to know you are in an illusion and still have the capacity to act morally as if the illusion were real because you know that there is intent behind the illusion and not just a vast expanse of meaningless nothingness.
    Last edited by PaulConventionWV; 05-24-2016 at 05:06 AM.
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  11. #9
    I voted for Free Will, but that was kinda predetermined.

    Would I have voted for it if I hadn't been given the option though?
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  12. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by idiom View Post
    I voted for Free Will, but that was kinda predetermined.

    Would I have voted for it if I hadn't been given the option though?
    Feel free to choose determinism.

  13. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by PaulConventionWV View Post
    I would like to note in amendment to my previous post that I am speaking from a position of faith. I believe that we should choose to act morally because we do not know what we are predestined for. That is, I think we will eventually be judged by God based on our moral character.

    However, in seeing this particular post by osan, I noticed that he took for granted Kant's argument that "if we are not free to choose, then it is meaningless to say we should choose to behave morally." I, however, disagree with that notion. It may appear to be a logical contradiction on the face of it, but if you consider the context, it becomes clear that the existence of an illusion separate from reality does not preclude the validity of illusory experiences. Although the illusion isn't real, per se, it does not necessarily mean that the illusion should be treated as a falsehood. Rather, it should be treated as a designated component of the overall reality. We should not simply assume that the illusion is meaningless, for it could have a purpose, and that purpose can be explained as such: We don't know what the future will hold for us because we don't know God's plan, so it follows that we cannot assume any particular outcome in reality just by virtue of knowing that we live in an illusion. Therefore, we should treat the illusion of free will as valid because, although anything we "choose" to do will have been pre-destined when we actually do it, we could not have assumed that outcome, so we are forced to behave morally even given the knowledge that our experiences are illusory.

    This explanation would be incomplete, however, if it did not include the intent of God. The explanation given in the article that notes that people who read articles pro-deterministic would behave less morally than those who read neutral articles does not consider the intent angle, which is an extremely important angle to consider if one truly wants to understand the reason why the subjects reacted to the articles in such a way. It very well could be that the article, speaking from a secular point of view, instilled or somehow introduced the view that determinism is true, but left out the intent. In this way, the reader was swayed to assume that, not just determinism, but secular determinism, was favored.

    Without intent, it would indeed seem that life was basically pointless and choosing to behave morally was futile, but knowing that there is intent behind the illusion created provides one with the knowledge that they have a purpose despite the fact that their life is already determined, and faced with the ultimate realization that they don't know what they are determined to be, they must choose to act morally within the illusion so that they can ensure that their experience within the illusion matches to the written intent of God so as to make sure that they do not end up rebelling and finding out that they were one of the unfortunate ones who were determined for the lesser fate come the day of judgment when they finally see what the reality was.

    Note, however, that I said "lesser fate" and not "damnation" because I do not actually believe in eternal hell fire or damnation, which is another interesting topic to consider at another time, but is not necessary for the purpose of proving my point here, which is that it is most definitely possible to know you are in an illusion and still have the capacity to act morally as if the illusion were real because you know that there is intent behind the illusion and not just a vast expanse of meaningless nothingness.
    Bump for this post, which I think is interesting.
    Quote Originally Posted by TheCount View Post
    ...I believe that when the government is capable of doing a thing, it will.
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    which one of yall fuckers wrote the "ron paul" racist news letters
    Quote Originally Posted by Dforkus View Post
    Zippy's posts are a great contribution.




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  14. #12
    I clicked unsure, because it is manifest that a combination exists.

    If you accept the most ancient legends, there was a fall of man, and a fall of the devil. This means free will is a creation of God.
    On the other hand, our free wills are corrupt. The world and its nature is under punishment. This restricts our free will in operation
    in things pertianing to this world - but concerning the soul's final resting place, we decide individually, and that grace is poured forth
    to all men and women - not just an elect number.
    "When Sombart says: "Capitalism is born from the money-loan", I should like to add to this: Capitalism actually exists only in the money-loan;" - Theodor Fritsch

  15. #13
    I clicked predetermined. Because it is predetermined. By me.
    It's all about taking action and not being lazy. So you do the work, whether it's fitness or whatever. It's about getting up, motivating yourself and just doing it.
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  16. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Snowball View Post
    If you accept the most ancient legends, there was a fall of man, and a fall of the devil. This means free will is a creation of God.
    But surely that fall was (or those falls were) predestined. These were creatures choosing precisely what God planned for them to choose having the natures that he created them with and being in the circumstances he placed them in.
    There is nothing to fear from globalism, free trade and a single worldwide currency, but a globalism where free trade is competitively subsidized by each nation, a continuous trade war is dictated by the WTO, and the single currency is pure fiat, fear is justified. That type of globalism is destined to collapse into economic despair, inflationism and protectionism and managed by resurgent militant nationalism.
    Ron Paul
    Congressional Record (March 13, 2001)

  17. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by Invisible Man View Post
    But surely that fall was (or those falls were) predestined. These were creatures choosing precisely what God planned for them to choose having the natures that he created them with and being in the circumstances he placed them in.
    That is a lie from the pit of hell. God precisely created angels and men with free will so He could be loved.
    It is our free will that makes salvation possible. If God destroyed our free will, by say, appearing in force so atheists
    would have no choice to not believe, then the instrument of our salvation would disappear. This is why Judgement comes at the parousia.
    "When Sombart says: "Capitalism is born from the money-loan", I should like to add to this: Capitalism actually exists only in the money-loan;" - Theodor Fritsch

  18. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by Snowball View Post
    That is a lie from the pit of hell. God precisely created angels and men with free will so He could be loved.
    Did God ever tell us this?

    And haven't the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all loved one another with a perfect love for all eternity?

    Quote Originally Posted by Snowball View Post
    It is our free will that makes salvation possible. If God destroyed our free will, by say, appearing in force so atheists
    would have no choice to not believe, then the instrument of our salvation would disappear. This is why Judgement comes at the parousia.
    Again, why would God have neglected to reveal such an important doctrine as that?

    And consider the point that if salvation of fallen souls is essential to God's plan in creation, then the Fall must also be essential to that same plan.

    Also, please notice that I have never said a word against the concept of free will. I don't know either way about free will (aside from the fact that I find it odd that the Bible never mentions it, if indeed it's as important as some make it out to be). What I do know is that all things are predestined. If there can be a concept of free will that is compatible with that, then I see no reason to reject that concept. But only as long as the claim that choices were made by free will can be held as compatible with the claim that they were also predestined.
    Last edited by Invisible Man; 02-03-2022 at 07:42 AM.
    There is nothing to fear from globalism, free trade and a single worldwide currency, but a globalism where free trade is competitively subsidized by each nation, a continuous trade war is dictated by the WTO, and the single currency is pure fiat, fear is justified. That type of globalism is destined to collapse into economic despair, inflationism and protectionism and managed by resurgent militant nationalism.
    Ron Paul
    Congressional Record (March 13, 2001)



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  20. #17
    This is what I believe.

    Catholic teaching always condemned double predestination:

    "I condemn with you that view which states that Christ our Lord and Savior did not incur death for the salvation of all"
    St. Gelasius I in the Fifth Century

    #167 Denzinger, H., & Rahner, K. (Eds.). (1954). The sources of Catholic dogma. (R. J. Deferrari, Trans.) (p. 65). St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co.

    The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) teaches that only those who obstinately reject God’s grace will end up in Hell.

    God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end. (CCC 1037)

    The Catechism cites the Council of Orange which considers anathema embracing this double predestination.

    We not only do not believe that any are foreordained to evil by the power of God, but even state with utter abhorrence that if there are those who want to believe so evil a thing, they are anathema.

    The Canons of the Second Council of Orange (529)

    And The Council of Trent also condemned the idea:

    CANON XVII. If any one shall say, that the grace of justification only befalleth those who are predestined unto life; but that all others who are called, are called indeed, but receive not grace, as being, by the divine power, predestined unto evil; let him be anathema.
    "When Sombart says: "Capitalism is born from the money-loan", I should like to add to this: Capitalism actually exists only in the money-loan;" - Theodor Fritsch

  21. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by Snowball View Post
    This is what I believe.

    Catholic teaching always condemned double predestination:

    "I condemn with you that view which states that Christ our Lord and Savior did not incur death for the salvation of all"
    St. Gelasius I in the Fifth Century

    #167 Denzinger, H., & Rahner, K. (Eds.). (1954). The sources of Catholic dogma. (R. J. Deferrari, Trans.) (p. 65). St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co.

    The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) teaches that only those who obstinately reject God’s grace will end up in Hell.

    God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end. (CCC 1037)

    The Catechism cites the Council of Orange which considers anathema embracing this double predestination.

    We not only do not believe that any are foreordained to evil by the power of God, but even state with utter abhorrence that if there are those who want to believe so evil a thing, they are anathema.

    The Canons of the Second Council of Orange (529)

    And The Council of Trent also condemned the idea:

    CANON XVII. If any one shall say, that the grace of justification only befalleth those who are predestined unto life; but that all others who are called, are called indeed, but receive not grace, as being, by the divine power, predestined unto evil; let him be anathema.
    Do you affirm all of the canons of the Synod of Orange? Or just certain select ones that you like?

    The Canons of the Council of Orange (529 AD)

    CANON 1. If anyone denies that it is the whole man, that is, both body and soul, that was "changed for the worse" through the offense of Adam's sin, but believes that the freedom of the soul remains unimpaired and that only the body is subject to corruption, he is deceived by the error of Pelagius and contradicts the scripture which says, "The soul that sins shall die" (Ezek. 18:20); and, "Do you not know that if you yield yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are the slaves of the one whom you obey?" (Rom. 6:126); and, "For whatever overcomes a man, to that he is enslaved" (2 Pet. 2:19).
    CANON 2. If anyone asserts that Adam's sin affected him alone and not his descendants also, or at least if he declares that it is only the death of the body which is the punishment for sin, and not also that sin, which is the death of the soul, passed through one man to the whole human race, he does injustice to God and contradicts the Apostle, who says, "Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned" (Rom. 5:12).
    CANON 3. If anyone says that the grace of God can be conferred as a result of human prayer, but that it is not grace itself which makes us pray to God, he contradicts the prophet Isaiah, or the Apostle who says the same thing, "I have been found by those who did not seek me; I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me" (Rom 10:20, quoting Isa. 65:1).
    CANON 4. If anyone maintains that God awaits our will to be cleansed from sin, but does not confess that even our will to be cleansed comes to us through the infusion and working of the Holy Spirit, he resists the Holy Spirit himself who says through Solomon, "The will is prepared by the Lord" (Prov. 8:35, LXX), and the salutary word of the Apostle, "For God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure" (Phil. 2:13).
    CANON 5. If anyone says that not only the increase of faith but also its beginning and the very desire for faith, by which we believe in Him who justifies the ungodly and comes to the regeneration of holy baptism-if anyone says that this belongs to us by nature and not by a gift of grace, that is, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit amending our will and turning it from unbelief to faith and from godlessness to godliness, it is proof that he is opposed to the teaching of the Apostles, for blessed Paul says, "And I am sure that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ" (Phil. 1:6). And again, "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God" (Eph. 2:8). For those who state that the faith by which we believe in God is natural make all who are separated from the Church of Christ by definition in some measure believers.
    CANON 6. If anyone says that God has mercy upon us when, apart from his grace, we believe, will, desire, strive, labor, pray, watch, study, seek, ask, or knock, but does not confess that it is by the infusion and inspiration of the Holy Spirit within us that we have the faith, the will, or the strength to do all these things as we ought; or if anyone makes the assistance of grace depend on the humility or obedience of man and does not agree that it is a gift of grace itself that we are obedient and humble, he contradicts the Apostle who says, "What have you that you did not receive?" (1 Cor. 4:7), and, "But by the grace of God I am what I am" (1 Cor. 15:10).
    CANON 7. If anyone affirms that we can form any right opinion or make any right choice which relates to the salvation of eternal life, as is expedient for us, or that we can be saved, that is, assent to the preaching of the gospel through our natural powers without the illumination and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, who makes all men gladly assent to and believe in the truth, he is led astray by a heretical spirit, and does not understand the voice of God who says in the Gospel, "For apart from me you can do nothing" (John 15:5), and the word of the Apostle, "Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God" (2 Cor. 3:5).
    CANON 8. If anyone maintains that some are able to come to the grace of baptism by mercy but others through free will, which has manifestly been corrupted in all those who have been born after the transgression of the first man, it is proof that he has no place in the true faith. For he denies that the free will of all men has been weakened through the sin of the first man, or at least holds that it has been affected in such a way that they have still the ability to seek the mystery of eternal salvation by themselves without the revelation of God. The Lord himself shows how contradictory this is by declaring that no one is able to come to him "unless the Father who sent me draws him" (John 6:44), as he also says to Peter, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven" (Matt. 16:17), and as the Apostle says, "No one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor. 12:3).
    CANON 9. Concerning the succor of God. It is a mark of divine favor when we are of a right purpose and keep our feet from hypocrisy and unrighteousness; for as often as we do good, God is at work in us and with us, in order that we may do so.
    CANON 10. Concerning the succor of God. The succor of God is to be ever sought by the regenerate and converted also, so that they may be able to come to a successful end or persevere in good works.
    CANON 11. Concerning the duty to pray. None would make any true prayer to the Lord had he not received from him the object of his prayer, as it is written, "Of thy own have we given thee" (1 Chron. 29:14).
    CANON 12. Of what sort we are whom God loves. God loves us for what we shall be by his gift, and not by our own deserving.
    CANON 13. Concerning the restoration of free will. The freedom of will that was destroyed in the first man can be restored only by the grace of baptism, for what is lost can be returned only by the one who was able to give it. Hence the Truth itself declares: "So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed" (John 8:36).
    CANON 14. No mean wretch is freed from his sorrowful state, however great it may be, save the one who is anticipated by the mercy of God, as the Psalmist says, "Let thy compassion come speedily to meet us" (Ps. 79:8), and again, "My God in his steadfast love will meet me" (Ps. 59:10).
    CANON 15. Adam was changed, but for the worse, through his own iniquity from what God made him. Through the grace of God the believer is changed, but for the better, from what his iniquity has done for him. The one, therefore, was the change brought about by the first sinner; the other, according to the Psalmist, is the change of the right hand of the Most High (Ps. 77:10).
    CANON 16. No man shall be honored by his seeming attainment, as though it were not a gift, or suppose that he has received it because a missive from without stated it in writing or in speech. For the Apostle speaks thus, "For if justification were through the law, then Christ died to no purpose" (Gal. 2:21); and "When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men" (Eph. 4:8, quoting Ps. 68:18). It is from this source that any man has what he does; but whoever denies that he has it from this source either does not truly have it, or else "even what he has will be taken away" (Matt. 25:29).
    CANON 17. Concerning Christian courage. The courage of the Gentiles is produced by simple greed, but the courage of Christians by the love of God which "has been poured into our hearts" not by freedom of will from our own side but "through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us" (Rom. 5:5).
    CANON 18. That grace is not preceded by merit. Recompense is due to good works if they are performed; but grace, to which we have no claim, precedes them, to enable them to be done.
    CANON 19. That a man can be saved only when God shows mercy. Human nature, even though it remained in that sound state in which it was created, could be no means save itself, without the assistance of the Creator; hence since man cannot safe- guard his salvation without the grace of God, which is a gift, how will he be able to restore what he has lost without the grace of God?
    CANON 20. That a man can do no good without God. God does much that is good in a man that the man does not do; but a man does nothing good for which God is not responsible, so as to let him do it.
    CANON 21. Concerning nature and grace. As the Apostle most truly says to those who would be justified by the law and have fallen from grace, "If justification were through the law, then Christ died to no purpose" (Gal. 2:21), so it is most truly declared to those who imagine that grace, which faith in Christ advocates and lays hold of, is nature: "If justification were through nature, then Christ died to no purpose." Now there was indeed the law, but it did not justify, and there was indeed nature, but it did not justify. Not in vain did Christ therefore die, so that the law might be fulfilled by him who said, "I have come not to abolish them <the law and prophets> but to fulfill them" (Matt. 5:17), and that the nature which had been destroyed by Adam might be restored by him who said that he had come "to seek and to save the lost" (Luke 19:10).
    CANON 22. Concerning those things that belong to man. No man has anything of his own but untruth and sin. But if a man has any truth or righteousness, it from that fountain for which we must thirst in this desert, so that we may be refreshed from it as by drops of water and not faint on the way.
    CANON 23. Concerning the will of God and of man. Men do their own will and not the will of God when they do what displeases him; but when they follow their own will and comply with the will of God, however willingly they do so, yet it is his will by which what they will is both prepared and instructed.
    CANON 24. Concerning the branches of the vine. The branches on the vine do not give life to the vine, but receive life from it; thus the vine is related to its branches in such a way that it supplies them with what they need to live, and does not take this from them. Thus it is to the advantage of the disciples, not Christ, both to have Christ abiding in them and to abide in Christ. For if the vine is cut down another can shoot up from the live root; but one who is cut off from the vine cannot live without the root (John 15:5ff).
    CANON 25. Concerning the love with which we love God. It is wholly a gift of God to love God. He who loves, even though he is not loved, allowed himself to be loved. We are loved, even when we displease him, so that we might have means to please him. For the Spirit, whom we love with the Father and the Son, has poured into our hearts the love of the Father and the Son (Rom. 5:5).
    CONCLUSION. And thus according to the passages of holy scripture quoted above or the interpretations of the ancient Fathers we must, under the blessing of God, preach and believe as follows. The sin of the first man has so impaired and weakened free will that no one thereafter can either love God as he ought or believe in God or do good for God's sake, unless the grace of divine mercy has preceded him. We therefore believe that the glorious faith which was given to Abel the righteous, and Noah, and Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and to all the saints of old, and which the Apostle Paul commends in extolling them (Heb. 11), was not given through natural goodness as it was before to Adam, but was bestowed by the grace of God.
    And we know and also believe that even after the coming of our Lord this grace is not to be found in the free will of all who desire to be baptized, but is bestowed by the kindness of Christ, as has already been frequently stated and as the Apostle Paul declares, "For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake" (Phil. 1:29). And again, "He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ" (Phil. 1:6). And again, "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and it is not your own doing, it is the gift of God" (Eph. 2:8). And as the Apostle says of himself, "I have obtained mercy to be faithful" (1 Cor. 7:25, cf. 1 Tim. 1:13). He did not say, "because I was faithful," but "to be faithful." And again, "What have you that you did not receive?" (1 Cor. 4:7). And again, "Every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights" (Jas. 1:17). And again, "No one can receive anything except what is given him from heaven" (John 3:27). There are innumerable passages of holy scripture which can be quoted to prove the case for grace, but they have been omitted for the sake of brevity, because further examples will not really be of use where few are deemed sufficient.
    According to the catholic faith we also believe that after grace has been received through baptism, all baptized persons have the ability and responsibility, if they desire to labor faithfully, to perform with the aid and cooperation of Christ what is of essential importance in regard to the salvation of their soul. We not only do not believe that any are foreordained to evil by the power of God, but even state with utter abhorrence that if there are those who want to believe so evil a thing, they are anathema. We also believe and confess to our benefit that in every good work it is not we who take the initiative and are then assisted through the mercy of God, but God himself first inspires in us both faith in him and love for him without any previous good works of our own that deserve reward, so that we may both faithfully seek the sacrament of baptism, and after baptism be able by his help to do what is pleasing to him. We must therefore most evidently believe that the praiseworthy faith of the thief whom the Lord called to his home in paradise, and of Cornelius the centurion, to whom the angel of the Lord was sent, and of Zacchaeus, who was worthy to receive the Lord himself, was not a natural endowment but a gift of God's kindness.
    http://www.crivoice.org/creedorange.html

    Notice especially Canons 4-8.

    As I read these canons, they strike me as a good example of the thinking of someone who believes that free will and predestination are compatible with one another and that both are true doctrines.
    There is nothing to fear from globalism, free trade and a single worldwide currency, but a globalism where free trade is competitively subsidized by each nation, a continuous trade war is dictated by the WTO, and the single currency is pure fiat, fear is justified. That type of globalism is destined to collapse into economic despair, inflationism and protectionism and managed by resurgent militant nationalism.
    Ron Paul
    Congressional Record (March 13, 2001)

  22. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by Invisible Man View Post
    Do you affirm all of the canons of the Synod of Orange? Or just certain select ones that you like?


    http://www.crivoice.org/creedorange.html

    Notice especially Canons 4-8.

    As I read these canons, they strike me as a good example of the thinking of someone who believes that free will and predestination are compatible with one another and that both are true doctrines.
    Yes, I do. But I don't agree that any of it suggests there is divine predestination regarding the fate of individual souls.
    "When Sombart says: "Capitalism is born from the money-loan", I should like to add to this: Capitalism actually exists only in the money-loan;" - Theodor Fritsch

  23. #20
    All of you are just doing what I programmed you to do, 875 years from now
    It's all about taking action and not being lazy. So you do the work, whether it's fitness or whatever. It's about getting up, motivating yourself and just doing it.
    - Kim Kardashian

    Donald Trump / Crenshaw 2024!!!!

    My pronouns are he/him/his



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