I made the claim about fairy tale. I thought it wouldn't be over the line to answer a question "What do you think about the Revelation?" I can make another claim: Little Red Riding Hood is a fairy tale. Now this is positive claim as well, so do I now have to prove that it isn't true?

[quote name='Machaira' timestamp='1311305863' post='4838764']
Doing something "in the name of God" doesn't mean God told them to do it or approved of it.

That doesn't matter. How can you tell the difference? How could they prove that he did? How would you prove that he didn't (hint: we have examples in the Bible of God commanding genocide, human sacrifice etc. so it's plausible for believers)?[/quote]
That was O.T. and done for a reason (to ensure God's people survived).

You can tell the difference by seeing if said people follow the example of Christ. For the record - neither the people responsible for the Crusades, nor Hitler nor David Koresh, nor ... followed this example.

That's not to say Christians are perfect, but it's rather obvious in situations like these.

It's very simple.

[quote name='Machaira' timestamp='1311305863' post='4838764']
That just makes them misguided or deceived.

I agree. Since there's no evidence for god, all believer are misguided or deceived.
[/quote]
There is evidence (note: I didn't say proof), but you just don't accept it.

I made the claim about fairy tale. I thought it wouldn't be over the line to answer a question "What do you think about the Revelation?"

There's a difference between making an absolute statement and giving an opinion.

I can make another claim: Little Red Riding Hood is a fairy tale. Now this is positive claim as well, so do I now have to prove that it isn't true?

Nope. I shouldn't have to explain why.

There is evidence (note: I didn't say proof), but you just don't accept it.

And that is?

Can you prove there is such thing as free will?

No.

Free will is an intresting one and I would argue that we don't have it, at least not completely.

If you like it or not, the fact is your choices and actions depend on the chemcial layout of your brain at the time you have to make the choice. I know this from experiance as I suffer from swings into depression and an action which seems perfectly clear and logical one day becomes not so the next once my mood shifts.

At best any choices we make depend on our mood/chemical levels and cultural contamination as well. There is also the question of determinism in the universe; if we had the maths to do it then could we simulate the universe from start to finish such that the same things happen in the simualtion as happened in reality? If so then there is no free will as you will always react the same given the same combination of inputs and outputs.

The introduction of an all knowing god just complicates things; how can god be all knowing if I have free will? If he knows the outcome of my actions before I have even come across them how can I have free will? And if he doesn't know then how could god be god as this lack of knowledge would break the ideal of being 'perfect'.

How about love?

No.
[/quote]

As mentioned 'love' is nothing more than a chemical state of the brain.

Something about someone trips off the correct chemical path ways which cause certain chemcials to be produced and induce a feeling of pleasure. Thus, because our brains are setup to react to these checmials and effectively seek out more, we spend more time with that person. Humans have called this attraction 'love' but the same pair bonding can be seen in animals making it a non-unique thing which is not exculsive to humans.

In essense, there is no 'self' either. It's all an illusion.
[/quote]

Pretty much, yes... at some point we become 'aware' that the creature doing the thinking is seperate from the others we are looking at and thus invest in this 'self' but it is something which arises from the way our brains are layed out and a learned condition; children when they are very young and are still forming their nurological connections have little to no concept of self, it is something which develops over time.

Free will is an intresting one and I would argue that we don't have it, at least not completely.

If you like it or not, the fact is your choices and actions depend on the chemcial layout of your brain at the time you have to make the choice. I know this from experiance as I suffer from swings into depression and an action which seems perfectly clear and logical one day becomes not so the next once my mood shifts.

At best any choices we make depend on our mood/chemical levels and cultural contamination as well. There is also the question of determinism in the universe; if we had the maths to do it then could we simulate the universe from start to finish such that the same things happen in the simualtion as happened in reality? If so then there is no free will as you will always react the same given the same combination of inputs and outputs.

The introduction of an all knowing god just complicates things; how can god be all knowing if I have free will? If he knows the outcome of my actions before I have even come across them how can I have free will? And if he doesn't know then how could god be god as this lack of knowledge would break the ideal of being 'perfect'.

I'd like to add that this argument was probably the one that broke the camel's back of my faith years ago. There's no way to reconcile determinism, free will and an all knowing god.

The way I see it, our actions are completely determined by historical information and the way your brain is laid out. Think of it this way, if you rewound your life to yesterday (having never experienced it at all), then wouldn't you go through it exactly the same way the second time? If not, why not? The things you have learned coupled with what you experienced that day would cause you to behave identically.

That's determinism. Our futures are laid out in such a way that we never really had a choice in it. We're slaves to circumstance. You could argue that God set out the circumstances, but then that basically means that He chose what you were going to do and you still had no free will.

So as I said before, is God a little sinister in reality (creates people He knows will burn in Hell forever) or not omniscient (has no idea what your future is)?

Think of it this way, if you rewound your life to yesterday (having never experienced it at all), then wouldn't you go through it exactly the same way the second time? If not, why not?

The things you have learned coupled with what you experienced that day would cause you to behave identically.

You don't know this to be true and there's no way to know it. That's poor logic.

[quote name='Ftn' timestamp='1311323691' post='4838812']
I can make another claim: Little Red Riding Hood is a fairy tale. Now this is positive claim as well, so do I now have to prove that it isn't true?

Nope. I shouldn't have to explain why.
[/quote]
I hope that explanation is not: "Because some guy made it up in his head and wrote it in a book." I certainly don't want people to have to pointing to the Odyssey, Iliad, and the Trojan War.

And yes, I am Christian.

Revelation is almost (like 007, Bourne, Da Vinci Code) code and is, for me, fascinating piece of work to understand and note all of the references and allegories in it.

I used to think that "free will" had something to do with determinism, but now I realize that it really doesn't. First, any non-deterministic system can in fact be represented as a deterministic system with hidden variables. There's a common misconception that quantum mechanics somehow precludes the latter from being true, but that relies on certain assumptions about the nature of such hidden variables among other things.

More importantly, though, how can a non-deterministic universe be compatible with free will? If you "rewound life to yesterday," to borrow the phrase from Telgin, and you didn't make the same choice, would that be "free will"? "Free," maybe. "Will," absolutely not. A willful decision has to do with a person's emotions, a person's state of mind, and a person's understanding of his or her surroundings. If decisions are completely independent of these things, that is, "randomly" (at least from our perspective) then in what sense is it "will" at all?

On the other hand, it's often said that in the alternative, if everything is uniquely determined by past states, then there cannot be "free will" either. I'm not fully convinced of why this precludes "free will" from existing, but if it does, then "free will" doesn't simply not exist; it's logically incoherent. Neither determinism nor non-determinism, then, look like the "free will" that people want to believe exists.

I used to think that "free will" had something to do with determinism, but now I realize that it really doesn't. First, any non-deterministic system can in fact be represented as a deterministic system with hidden variables. There's a common misconception that quantum mechanics somehow precludes the latter from being true, but that relies on certain assumptions about the nature of such hidden variables among other things.

More importantly, though, how can a non-deterministic universe be compatible with free will? If you "rewound life to yesterday," to borrow the phrase from Telgin, and you didn't make the same choice, would that be "free will"? "Free," maybe. "Will," absolutely not. A willful decision has to do with a person's emotions, a person's state of mind, and a person's understanding of his or her surroundings. If decisions are completely independent of these things, that is, "randomly" (at least from our perspective) then in what sense is it "will" at all?

On the other hand, it's often said that in the alternative, if everything is uniquely determined by past states, then there cannot be "free will" either. I'm not fully convinced of why this precludes "free will" from existing, but if it does, then "free will" doesn't simply not exist; it's logically incoherent. Neither determinism nor non-determinism, then, look like the "free will" that people want to believe exists.

You're mistaken on the perception of free will. Free will is defined as a conscious decision, where you are free to choose what you decide. In a purely deterministic universe, you are not free to choose. It is already chosen. In a non-deterministic universe, you may or not be free to choose. For some reason, you're conflating free will with determinism. A willful decision has to do with nothing but what the decider chooses to do. By tying it solely to state of mind, emotions, and other temporally fixed variables, you're asserting a form of determinism already. There's nothing wrong with doing so, but in doing so in a hypothetical, you don't really have an accurate assessment of both types of universes.

I once saw a psychology experiment that tried to denounce free will. The idea was that the test subjects were instructed to press a button "the moment they think about it" every time they do so, over the course of several minutes. Analysis of brain activity showed a sudden spike quite some time before people press the button. I can't remember exactly what results were drawn from it, but the experimenter tried to use it to justify an absence of free will. It seemed.... shaky at best. That said, it's still the only experiment I've ever seen that made any real attempt to address this question of free will.