Food for Thought: A Discourse on Deities

[Dad_Scaper]

Originally Posted by Aldin

ETA Re-reading your final paragraph, yes, I think that is exactly what I was alluding to with "but the absence of genuine choice is irrelevant because it is not what is consciously experienced". In other words, we all experience making choices everyday. It is only at the philosophical level that it matters whether or not they arise from something other than deterministic physical law.

You would think, with my degree in philosophy and my second degree in the law, I would like to entertain myself by arguing points such as these.

I believe, as I've hinted earlier in the thread, that some things that matter "only at the philosophical level" are extremely important. If something that matters only at the philosophical level, for instance, tells you that your world view is one that you must impose on others, then that's a problem. But I don't see those types of implications on this point, so I think you understand me rightly. Whether "choice" is divine or generated by firing synapses or whatever, makes no difference, and need not be a "premise" of an atheist's argument, though I think you'll likely find it's a likely a naturally flowing consequence of it.

[Aldin]

Originally Posted by Tornado

So belief is different because you are following a path of faith even though it may not be your choice (or maybe better, what you would choose by default)?

Belief is for external things. Knowledge is for internal ones. I know I like ice cream. I believe that you like ice cream. I don't choose whether or not I like ice cream any more than you choose whether or not you do. However, while I can know my own preference, I can only have belief about what yours might be. And that belief is a choice. I could just as easily decide that I thought the whole ice cream thing was just to make an example and you really didn't care for it. So in theory, you could like ice cream and I could believe that you don't. I'd be wrong, but I'd believe it, and I would have the ongoing choice of whether or not to continue to believe it. At no point would I stop "believing" I like ice cream because I don't "believe" I like ice cream, I know I like ice cream.

@Dad_Scaper Well, yes, things that are "only important at a philosophical level" can be extremely important. It's just that their extreme importance doesn't necessarily change how we live from day to day. And as long as we're worrying this particular bone, I think it is a pretty mandatory premise for a logically consistent atheist. Once choice starts deriving from a non-physical, non-measurable source it allows for other non-physical, non-measurable things to exist.

~Aldin, measurelessly

[Tornado]

So if you are an atheist you have to concede that you are essentially a pre-programed?
That feels bleak.

[Dad_Scaper]

Originally Posted by Tornado

So if you are an atheist you have to concede that you are essentially a pre-programed?
That feels bleak.

Oh, that's baloney. I suppose it's a slight reskinning of the "atheists can't have morals" argument. These things that supposedly come from the deity must, I suppose, in the eyes of some, not exist in the world of an atheist. No free choice, no moral direction, etc.

It's hooey. Of course you have free choice, whether you are an atheist or an evangelical, or anything in between. Whether your free choice is related to a divine spark or firing synapses makes no difference. I can choose to get out of bed and go to work or not. Either a divine being knew I would or would not, and either the synapses fired or they did not. Either way, I made the choice.

[Dysole]

I feel like quantum mechanics would have something to say about naturalism requiring determinism. Also there was an article I read about time not really existing.

~Dysole, more versed on the sci fi nature of these concepts

[Dr.Goomonkey]

Originally Posted by Dysole

I feel like quantum mechanics would have something to say about naturalism requiring determinism. Also there was an article I read about time not really existing.

~Dysole, more versed on the sci fi nature of these concepts

Quantum mechanics works the exact way it does in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, right?

Somewhat more seriously, I think Aldin and DS are both interpreting my views correctly. And I certainly agree that whether or not we actually have choice doesn't practically matter, and that it is possible that we do have true free will.

[Dysole]

First off, that is awesome that you've read Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. I hope you've also read the Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul.

Quantum mechanics works in ways that are not very intuitive and which don't make sense compared to the rest of the sciences. This is the best summation.

"Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it." ~Niels Bohr

~Dysole, who still can't fully wrap her head around a lot of it

[Joseph Sweeney]

Okay so firstly, &*%#!$# this, that and the other thing.

I wrote up a post for and entire two hours, and screwed up with the copy and paste and now all my work is gone.

That said, I apologize if I come off as frustrated, know that it is not directed at anyone, and I will do my best to edit it out. If you see something slightly inflammatory, I beg your pardon and ask that you see it as frustration at having to type for an additional hour or two, and not at those participating. Perhaps you will all be blessed with a much shorter version.

@Aldin

If we have choice in belief, of something's existence, then my argument technically doesn't fail, it only makes it more round-about. But in addition, you'll also create a bigger monster for yourself to cut down if you choose to assert that belief is a choice, and I'll get to that.

I don't think this topic is pointless. If belief isn't a choice, as I assert, that doesn't mean that belief cannot be changed by an introduction of new knowledge. In fact, I contend that belief is determined by knowledge, and if that is the case, then this discussion is still fruitful.

If belief is a choice, then we have an issue and this conversation is actually pointless. But I'll address this towards the end.

Now you're referring to determinism there at the end, and I want to quell this before it gets out of hand and bites me in the ass. I am neither advocating for nor fighting against universal determinism. I need to do more research into the subject (and I am currently doing so) but even then, the issue isn't so cut and dry.

But my argument never has relied on the truthfulness of universal determinism in order to function. If people make choices, belief is not something people can choose. If people make no choices, then belief is still not something people can choose.

My argument is that belief is deterministic based on acquired knowledge, but that need not be applied to all human choices. I am only applying it to belief, because belief is not a choice.

Why can I separate belief as a choice from other things that are a choice? How is your choice in belief different from other choices? Simple. Ice cream exists, my significant other exists, houses exist. So I can choose to eat chocolate ice cream on occasion despite the fact that I like vanilla more. This isn't a belief choice, this is a choice of what I want to do given the knowledge of a things existence. All of these things I already know exist, so the question of choice is fundamentally different for things of which I do not know to exist. The existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, disembodied mind with moral concerns is a question of existence. Which ice cream flavor I want is a choice of preference. You're conflating the two and trying to turn belief into a type of preference. The two cannot be compared.

One final kick at universal determinism -- although I'd like to leave it alone for the discussion of the argument from non-belief, as it isn't related -- even if we are fully deterministic in nature, and all my choices are made by a predictable physical reaction in my brain, that does not render this discussion meaningless. Because, if our brains are more or less super computers reacting in an ordained way to certain variables, this discussion is another variable that your brain has to handle. And this variable may be enough to trigger your preset reaction that convinces you of the truth of my claims.

Originally Posted by Aldin

Where it becomes a crucial point is in cases like this one. When JS proposes that God would need to cause people to choose to acknowledge His existence, it is grounded in the atheistic philosophy that genuine choice does not exist. If genuine choice exists, the argument fails. Basically, the atheistic assumption going in produces a result which would disprove God.

There exist a number of atheists who defend the notion that consciousness is not physical or deterministic in nature, and I am by no means suggesting it is or isn't nor is my argument based off the notion that it is.

My argument is based off of the simple fact that belief (and belief alone, as far as I know) is not a choice, and that "forced belief" would not hinder freewill. I have provided multiple examples as to why this is so, and rebutted hypotheticals on your part trying to demonstrate otherwise, like the couple demonstrating their love to the world example.

I will demonstrate again. Do I have a choice to reject the existence of my girlfriend? No, I cannot blatantly deny what knowledge I have. (One cannot reject what one knows to be true, nor know something of which one does not know to be true) But her existence does not hinder my freewill, rather it provides me with a chance to exercise freewill. That is to say -- as I have been saying all along -- the knowledge of her existence allows me the choice of accepting her love. It almost seems needless to say that if I knew not of her existence, choosing to accept her love would be impossible. But having known of her existence, I cannot choose to reject her existence. Hence, existential belief is not a choice.

But my refutations have gone unanswered to a large extent, so I must ask again, Aldin, that you try my experiment. Believe a family member does not exist, make that conscious choice. Choose to believe that Santa Clause, Shiva, or Sauron exists.

The issue here is simple, really. If you run this experiment and find I am correct, which I have no doubt you will, then you've falsified your own argument and my syllogism follows coherently without any flaws.

If, by some strange process you do convince yourself, then perhaps my argument fails(disclaimer: it doesn't, and I'll get back to this). But in striking down my monster you have created one far worse. And here is where choice in belief comes to be very problematic, as mentioned earlier.

If belief is not determined by knowledge, if it is not the natural product of rationale and evidence, if it does not flow in a logical fashion to a logical conclusion, then it seems to wholly diverge from reason. If one can whimsically call upon belief in something previously held to be fictional by way of evidence and obtain belief in that thing, then belief doesn't do much at all. It takes you somewhere, for sure, but it doesn't take you to where you need to go: to the truth.

If belief in a deity is as you say, a choice made to accept some proposition of its existence -- something I can do despite a glaring deficit of evidence or misinterpretation of evidence -- then belief is a watch without hands, a map without a compass, a ship without a captain. If belief is merely the which-way-what-way of how we interpret evidence based on an arbitrary choice, then we have a major problem. My six infinite gamblers eternally rolling an infinite, insubstantial die with random characteristics of the universe taped to each side is simply rejected off of some arbitrary choice that you chose to believe. Belief in your view takes us to a thousand different roads and is no more informative or helpful for God's case than the original hole it is in.

If you're still unconvinced, let me attempt a syllogism:

Premise 1: The Six Eternal Gamblers are omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent
Premise 2: The Six Eternal Gamblers desires for all souls to know that they exists so that we may be saved
Premise 3 (from 1 and 2): There should be no reasonable doubt that the Six Eternal Gamblers exists.
Premise 4: Reasonable doubt for the existence of the Six Eternal Gamblers does exist
Conclusion (from 1, 2, 3, and 4): Either the Six Eternal Gamblers are not omniscient, not omnipotent, not all loving, there is no threat to humanity by way of non-belief, or the Six Eternal Gamblers do not exist.

Now I ask of you, on what grounds do you reject the claims of the existence the Six Eternal Gamblers? Well, choice of belief. But why? All the rejections you applied to my original argument apply to this one. You're just choosing to reject the evidence for the gamblers. Honestly, at this point it's entirely arbitrary. By rejecting my syllogism on grounds of belief being a choice, you give rise to a nearly infinite line of once previously considered fictitious characters being considered real not based on evidence, but based on an uninformed choice. Nothing makes your God more likely than my gamblers, so at this point you merely diverge to your preferred belief. All I need to do to prove the existence of any thing is to apply my confirmation bias and choose to interpret the evidence to justify the belief in said thing. Because belief is a choice.

So really, just how informative is belief by choice? And here's the kicker: it doesn't ruin my argument. Why? Well if, by way of reason, the Six Gamblers are just as likely as God.... well, then rational disbelief in God does exist. Because it is just as likely that your God exists, as do my Gamblers, the only difference is how we choose to interpret the evidence. There's no guiding principle to draw our reason along, which is exactly what I would argue there should be if premise 1 of my initial argument were true. Your choice is no better than mine. Mine no better than yours.

That said, if we accept the notion that belief is not a choice, but rather a natural product of knowledge, we can be assured that misplaced beliefs are due to gaps in a person's knowledge, or a hiccup in one of their syllogistic diagnoses they performed. We can also reason that, repairing or filling these gaps would allow for the person to reach an objectively correct belief. Whereas belief by choice leads to an obviously frayed understanding, as people can choose to believe anything with a confirmation bias rolled into it. Belief by choice makes it even harder for people to find God, let alone the right god.

So to recap main points:
1) Universal determinism is irrelevant to the argument from non-belief. If people can make choices in other areas, they still cannot make them in terms of existential-belief. If people lack the ability to choose, they still cannot choose in terms of existential-belief.
2) I have demonstrated with numerous examples how belief is not a choice. I feel it is our best bet to pursue this issue, including revisiting my exact examples that I have given. Such as choosing to reject the existence of a loved one by reinterpreting evidence. Or making yourself believe in my Six Gamblers.
3) If belief were a choice, then it still doesn't falsify the argument from non-belief, as some choices are no less likely than your solution. Additionally, it creates a whole string of new problems.
4) Belief as a choice is empirically and applicably less sound than belief as a necessary product of acquired knowledge. That said, even if it weren't, it by know means puts you out of the woods, you've possibly just grown the forest even more.

~JS, who sees the choice as a sort of pick your poison

EDIT: This was a ****ty post. I apologize. I was all over the place and oftentimes unclear. To try and be even more condensed, Aldin, I'd like to discuss my examples that weren't addressed. I feel that would be helpful in discussing belief as a choice, because I don't really see how you justify it given our discussion thus far.

The rest of this post was me just covering my ass for possible rebuttals. Anyway, feel free to respond to what you like, but I'd definitely like to touch on the examples I had previously provided, and perhaps the responses to your specific rebuttals. Again, sorry for kicking this response into overdrive.

[Aldin]

Yikes... that's the short version?!?

So... wow. I'm not sure how to go about responding to everything. Let's start with:

Determinism. Given what we know now, the atheist can logically say one of two things about determinism.

They can say everything is cause and effect from physical, measurable processes and thus ultimately deterministic. From an atheistic perspective this is a logical conclusion from what we currently know. It doesn't "feel" right, and doesn't match our day-to-day experience, but neither do a lot of things we know are true in quantum mechanics, which means not "feeling" right isn't a defeater for the argument and in any case, we are going to function from day-to-day within that day-to-day experience of making meaningful choices.

They can also say there is something non-physical and non-measurable which allows for genuine choice to exist. In other words there is a "me" that is separate from the pure cause and effect of the physical. Call it quantum mechanics, multi-dimensionality, or whatever, this is basically a belief in something that does not fit with the things we "know" from science. It does, however, match with what we "feel". I have no issues with this stance. I simply note that if the atheist will allow for non-physical, non-measurable things to exist, then they have removed the burden of proof from me to demonstrate that very thing when I talk about God.

Belief and Choice. I'm struggling to equate the way I use the words belief and choice with the way you use the words belief and choice. I know you want me to interact with Santa Claus here, so why not?

At some point most children stop believing in Santa Claus. All children do not stop believing in Santa Claus at the same point. Different amounts of evidence are required to cause them to shift. To choose from believing in him to not believing in him. That requirement of different levels of evidence makes it clear that the evidence itself doesn't force belief. Instead, the choice is up to each individual to decide what is convincing to them.

If we leave aside determinism, the idea that belief is forced rather than a choice becomes difficult to fathom. In fact, it's circular. If belief is forced rather than a choice, then you achieve determinism, right? What would not be deterministic in a world where we don't choose what we believe?

Does choice of belief invalidate your argument?

Say I love my anti-vaxxer sister and want her to vaccinate her kids. So I provide evidence for her that vaccinations are good and necessary to a healthy individual and a healthy community. I provide evidence that anti-vax rhetoric is without solid foundation. And she doesn't believe me. She doesn't believe my evidence. And she chooses not to vaccinate her kids.

Have I failed to show my love? Have I failed to provide evidence? Was the evidence not good? No. She simply chose not to believe either me or the evidence.

With belief as a choice, a loving God can provide evidence to people and still have them not believe. For your specific argument as presented in your first post, this is a defeater. It doesn't address your gunslingers, but that's a separate point. Absent determinism, your initial syllogism fails.

Gunslingers and the FSM

One thing you seem to be saying is that choosing what to believe would make all beliefs equally likely. In this freewheeling, wild cosmos of free-choice the Christian God, eternal gunslingers,and flying spaghetti monster are equally plausible creators and sustainers of the universe. I have no idea why you would think that.

Take my sister, for example. Believing vaccinations are good or believing vaccinations are bad are not equally viable beliefs. The evidence which exists more closely matches with believing vaccinations are good. So I can choose between those beliefs confidently.

Once we start talking about the creator of the universe, we get to examine the available evidence and decide what to believe. The Christian God accounts for that evidence in a way which I find believable. Obviously the constructs of the eternal gunslingers and fsm do not - since both have no correlation to the evidence and are constructs designed to make light of the Christian God. We aren't doing a comparative religions study here, so I hope it will suffice to say that for me personally, after having examined many potential creators, I have found the Christian God to be the most compelling.

Finally, as to the question of whether an atheistic beginning or a Christian one makes the most sense, I can only reply that the atheist response is some variation of "I don't know", while the rationale presented in the Bible is cogent. It doesn't make me right, but if I'm looking for an explanation, the place where I find the best one is in the Bible.

And, yes, I choose to believe that. And, yes, most of the people in this thread do not find the exact same evidence compelling for belief in the Christian God. But that just gets back to my earlier point. The evidence is there. We all see it. Which of us is believing in Santa Claus?

~Aldin, at length

[ollie]

Narrowly rather than broadly...

Originally Posted by Aldin

They can say everything is cause and effect from physical, measurable processes and thus ultimately deterministic.

I think there's a gap here. I don't think that physical implies deterministic (arguably, measurable does, but I don't think physical implies measurable either). Regardless of quantum theory or chaos theory, I'd say our day-to-day experiences are measurements that are full of noise (albeit often with a clear signal too). I don't see any reason for it to be unintuitive that it's noisy all the way down, even without invoking quantum stuff.

(FWIW, I also don't have a problem with determinism, presumably for much the same reasons as people who simultaneously believe in their free will and a deity that knows exactly what they're going to do with that free will.)

[Tornado]

My limited understanding of quantum theory tells me that at a quantum level a particle can exists simultaneously in two states/locations and only 'chooses' once observed.
Is that right?

If so, it is interesting that choice apparently exists at the very heart of existence.
Also it makes me wonder if there was nothing living to make an observation, what state would everything be in?

The topic of no free choice I find a bit scary. To me that feels like the worst kind of curse and I am unwilling to accept that. I can see how one can feel the same about their faith.

[Aldin]

@ollie Fair enough. So you believe that there are physical things that exist outside of causal (cause and effect) relationships?

~Aldin, noisily and nosily