[quote name='A Brain in a Vat' timestamp='1311370910' post='4839125']
[quote name='mikeman' timestamp='1311369377' post='4839120']
As for free will, the subject interests me very much, and it's one of the reasons I believe in God. You said it, without an extra-physical soul, there are only impersonal natural laws and randomness. I believe there is something more, hence, the Creator God and his gift to humanity, free will.

LMAO!!
[/quote]

Well at least you proved you are willing to converse as equals with your reply. Didn't you say you were leaving this thread? Were you upset that people were actually furthering the discussion and there wasn't enough bigotry motivated trolling going on?
[/quote]
What you said was funny so I laughed. You describe your belief in free will, admitted by you to be no more founded than my intuition that the world is flat, as one of the reasons you believe in God. That makes zero sense and is funny to me. The phrase "Creator God and his gift to humanity" is also pretty funny.

People keep using the word bigotry. In a free country you can, of course, continue to use it, but bigotry suggests intolerance, and I am very tolerant of the rights of others to believe what they want. I don't deny you or desire to deny you the right to your beliefs or practices. It's true that I have little respect for your beliefs, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who didn't think anyone else's beliefs are stupid. I'd guess you'd like me to use nicer words, but I prefer to be blunt because I don't really care what you think about my point of view or the way I express it. If my basic stance is that your position is one of extreme ignorance, what makes you think I'd value your opinion of the words I choose to use?

Converse as equals? I can converse with Christians as equals, but I can't do so with someone who lacks basic logic skills. It's not possible and it's not going to happen.

Converse as equals? I can converse with Christians as equals, but I can't do so with someone who lacks basic logic skills. It's not possible and it's not going to happen.

That's nice to know. So, in a case of time travel, you wouldn't want to converse with this man:

[font="sans-serif"]"Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion. God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done."[/font]
[font="sans-serif"][/quote]
[/font]

[font="sans-serif"]LMAO!!!
[/font]

[font="sans-serif"]Poor, poor, ignorant Isaac.[/font]

That's nice to know. So, in a case of time travel, you wouldn't want to converse with this man:

[font="sans-serif"]"Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion. God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done."[/font]
[font="sans-serif"]

[/font]

[font="sans-serif"]LMAO!!!
[/font]

[font="sans-serif"]Poor, poor, ignorant Isaac.[/font]
[/quote]



Steven Weinberg is an atheist. So what?
Read about argument from authority.

To prove there are things that are valid to believe in because your intuition pushes you there.

Intuition tells us the Sun revolves around the Earth.

I have no evidence, but empirically, that's what makes sense to me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirical
Empirical data is evidence.
However, read about argument from personal experience.

Regardless, if someone said clearly 'I believe in free will", would you say to him that it's as unproved as Santa or the Easter Bunny?

No, because, as I explained in earlier posts, we have evidence to points both ways. One that you've mentioned. On the other hand, the law of nature that we know are deterministic.

People do things without evidence, simply because of intuition. All the time. Countless man hours have been spent the last decades on string theory, regardless of it being mostly unverified and has yet to make predictions that can be experimentally tested.

Yes. And no one is saying the String Theory is true until it's verified.

Yet many many scientist go down that road, hoping that it'll get somewhere. Do you understand? Hard scientific work goes into it, without evidence that it will actually lead somewhere.

Are you kidding? They just sat and thought: let's find a new theory!
We have General Relativity that describes the world on a large scale. And we have Quantum Physics that describes the world on a small scale. Both theories have been verified in their domain. The String Theory is one of the attempts to unify those.

For all we know, it could be bollocks.

Yup. It's like proving a theorem. It could true or it could be false. You have to check to know.

The "God hypothesis", if you will, is falsifiable, at least for me. If you can prove that our brain functions are nothing more than products of deterministic natural laws, that is,say, build a machine/simulation that, given the correct data, can fully predict a human's behaviour, then it clearly follows that there is no such thing as a "soul", there is only matter, which settles the issue, as far as I'm concerned: There is nothing else but natural laws and matter. It proves the idea that "God breathed into [Adam's] nostrils the breath of life and he became a living soul" is simply false. I would give up the idea of God at that instant.

Ok. First define God, then define free will, the show how having free will requires God.

Speaking of scientists, people like Newton and Leibnitz were strong believers. Just a note.

Albert Einstein was against capitalism. Just a note.

So, yeah, due to being busy etc I've got behind on the thread so I wont' retrace things but I do have a pondering about the belief in 'free will'.

Last I checked the bible only mentions giving man free will; to those who believe in it do you believe this is the case?

The "God hypothesis", if you will, is falsifiable, at least for me. If you can prove that our brain functions are nothing more than products of deterministic natural laws, that is,say, build a machine/simulation that, given the correct data, can fully predict a human's behaviour, then it clearly follows that there is no such thing as a "soul", there is only matter, which settles the issue, as far as I'm concerned: There is nothing else but natural laws and matter. It proves the idea that "God breathed into [Adam's] nostrils the breath of life and he became a living soul" is simply false. I would give up the idea of God at that instant.

So do you feel about AI? There is AI right now that can read an instruction manual and on the fly come up with strategies to play Civilization 2. This mind you is external from the game itself. So when we get to the point of sentient AI (which we will), will your stance change?

Link to abstract and code

Article on Civ 2 AI

[quote name='mikeman' timestamp='1311432357' post='4839287']
The "God hypothesis", if you will, is falsifiable, at least for me. If you can prove that our brain functions are nothing more than products of deterministic natural laws, that is,say, build a machine/simulation that, given the correct data, can fully predict a human's behaviour, then it clearly follows that there is no such thing as a "soul", there is only matter, which settles the issue, as far as I'm concerned: There is nothing else but natural laws and matter. It proves the idea that "God breathed into [Adam's] nostrils the breath of life and he became a living soul" is simply false. I would give up the idea of God at that instant.

So do you feel about AI? There is AI right now that can read an instruction manual and on the fly come up with strategies to play Civilization 2. This mind you is external from the game itself. So when we get to the point of sentient AI (which we will), will your stance change?

Link to abstract and code

Article on Civ 2 AI
[/quote]

Turing test vs chinese box experiment. As unresolvable as nature vs nurture et al really. We cannot define our own sentience well enough to make a meaningful comparison.

[quote name='Alpha_ProgDes' timestamp='1311461967' post='4839397']
[quote name='mikeman' timestamp='1311432357' post='4839287']
The "God hypothesis", if you will, is falsifiable, at least for me. If you can prove that our brain functions are nothing more than products of deterministic natural laws, that is,say, build a machine/simulation that, given the correct data, can fully predict a human's behaviour, then it clearly follows that there is no such thing as a "soul", there is only matter, which settles the issue, as far as I'm concerned: There is nothing else but natural laws and matter. It proves the idea that "God breathed into [Adam's] nostrils the breath of life and he became a living soul" is simply false. I would give up the idea of God at that instant.

So do you feel about AI? There is AI right now that can read an instruction manual and on the fly come up with strategies to play Civilization 2. This mind you is external from the game itself. So when we get to the point of sentient AI (which we will), will your stance change?

Link to abstract and code

Article on Civ 2 AI
[/quote]

Turing test vs chinese box experiment. As unresolvable as nature vs nurture et al really. We cannot define our own sentience well enough to make a meaningful comparison.
[/quote]
Being unable to fully explanation something shouldn't stop us from trying. With that said, I don't think what you said really addresses what I'm asking of him.

So do you feel about AI? There is AI right now that can read an instruction manual and on the fly come up with strategies to play Civilization 2. This mind you is external from the game itself. So when we get to the point of sentient AI (which we will), will your stance change?

Link to abstract and code

Article on Civ 2 AI

If we create sentient AI that acts significantly differently than humans would that change your stance? There's no saying what will happen when we reach that point, so it makes just as much sense to look at it from either side of the coin.

Reminds me of this:

Not necessarily God related, but very free will/AI vs human knowledge oriented. Putting aside that I like anything the tachikoma say because I think they are adorable, I really like the explanation. Not sure if I agree with it yet, but it's fun to think about.

RE: Free will...

On very rare occasions (usually at 4am), I get into some weird mental state where I'm doing things (usually mundane such as using the restroom) seemingly on full autopilot, without conciously making myself do anything. Think of sleepwalking, except you're completely aware what you're doing. Possibly http://en.wikipedia....personalization

I thought it was kind of disturbing, but also very interesting. How much of people's beliefs are based on experiencing non-standard mental states like that?

Has anyone else here experienced depersonalization or something like it?