Sunday School

[PopeBeanieModerator]

So I’m devil’s advocate for both sides, now.

For believers in free will, I ask, do you believe you have power over determinism, or is determinism not even a thing?

For those arguing against free will, is there any harm in others believing in it?

I’m not on the fence. I don’t believe it exists in an absolute sense, but I’m happy to ride as if it does, like enjoying fictional stories or movies with “What if…?” scenarios.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

PopeBeanie wrote:

For believers in free will, I ask, do you believe you have power over determinism, or is determinism not even a thing?

It depends on how binding the restrictions are.

[_Robert_Participant]

PopeBeanie wrote:

So I’m devil’s advocate for both sides, now. For believers in free will, I ask, do you believe you have power over determinism, or is determinism not even a thing? For those arguing against free will, is there any harm in others believing in it? I’m not on the fence. I don’t believe it exists in an absolute sense, but I’m happy to ride as if it does, like enjoying fictional stories or movies with “What if…?” scenarios.

I have no choice but to agree with this.

[jakelafortParticipant]

Seems to me that all JP was saying is that for him, stating a belief in God is hypocritical unless he can actually fully walk the walk of what a truly dedicated belief would require, e.g. in some form of heretofore unattainable perfection. [and I have the impression he’s caught up in his ability to out-intellectualize even some of the most intellectual]

Pope’s take on the Peterson vid is above.

Your ability to distill his rubbish into something understandable is an exhibition of intellect. Peterson’s penchant for taking straightforward issues and transforming them into amorphous and ambiguous nonsense is anti-intellectual.

So one must be an ascetic monk surviving alone in the Himalayas contemplating belief to have the standing to say whether she believes?

One must be a dedicated quantum physicist to opine in regards to the spooky action?

Reg included another Peterson vid in today’s sunday school. Listen to it if you will. He is an embarrasment. Him v. Harris is such a mismatch. A sophist, a charlatan v. an intellectual and for me that means one who is not embedded in ideology which constrains the thinker to the strictures of the ideology.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

I included the video of JP and Harris today to show how Harris uses plain English to make his points and JP, while he has an extensive vocabulary, never take a straight line to make his. If I was to describe him in his own terminology, he tergiversates and is the personification of an ultracrepidarian, roughly speaking.

Here is an interesting review of his new book.

[PopeBeanieModerator]

Take the example of playing a game, and you know you’re making a mistake when you push that button when you shouldn’t have, but your mind can’t stop your finger in time.

To me, that sounds similar to when your mind has made a decision before you’re conscious of it. And then some outsider know-it-all scientist or philosopher says “See, your brain’s deterministic circuitry was deciding something for you. It wasn’t really you making the decision.”

So here’s where I have a problem with that statement. “Hey, you dumb brain circuits, that’s NOT what I wanted you to do! I’ll teach you… next time we won’t make that mistake again.” And then “we”, i.e. me and my brain circuits, proceed to adapt and “we” eventually behave the way I willed us to behave.

I’m playing with the definition of I and we, now. I and we cannot be separated from our brain circuitry. We are one in the same. So I am in control after all! We are in control.

I’m just messing with y’all. I still don’t believe in free will, since our circuitries behave completely deterministically. I’m messing with the definition of I and me. I and my brain circuits are inseparable, but still, we only make mistakes before we’ve adequately trained ourselves.

(Robert, I/we just had to write this!)

[_Robert_Participant]

Well said Pope. I am mildly dyslexic and have had to retrain my brain circuits my entire life. I learned to check for certain oddities in my work. For example, when I was a kid 2+2=A. I would interchange 4’s for A’s and never know. Even as an engineer, decibels are called dBs and I would always write Bds. I would also stutter as a kid as did my brother and mother. We learned to “sing” our way out of it, and this resulted in my becoming a musician. I think we are way more hard-wired than we believe. This is why behavioral problems are so hard to change. Even if the actions can be muted, the thoughts or impulses are still there.

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