Donating = Loving
Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
Log in or create an account to join the discussions on the Atheist Republic forums.
Donating = Loving
Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
Donating = Loving
Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
FREE E-BOOKS
Get the book "Why There Is No God" and one more book for FREE!
Sign up below for the Atheist Republic Newsletter to get the books.
Record Your Message!
Record your voice here for it to be aired on the Atheist Republic Voicemails Podcast.
Send us your views and opinions, your personal stories, messages of support, comments on recent news, or any comments you would like to share about your part of the world.
Note : By clicking record you are allowing us to broadcast your message on any of our platforms.
Affiliate Disclaimer
Links to atheist related books, shirts and movies and other atheism related products are affiliate links.
All proceeds will go to keeping the Atheist Republic website up and running; providing resources, advocacy, community tools and encouragement to atheists all over the world.
Determinism is basically dead, and has been for a long time. That being said, the macroscopic world is a pretty darn good approximation of a deterministic system. So good that in almost all situations you can model it as deterministic and get excellent results.
How is determinism supposedly dead? In what field by whom and by what argument? I remain thoroughly unconvinced that emergentism (which I suppose you point towards) gets us away from the bind of physical states of the brain causing our mental states. The more I read about human cognition, the more convinced I become that free will is an illusion.
@peurii
I am assuming he is referring to the quantum field, and the apparent randomness of particle behavior. Since we are unable to predict the behavior of a particle with our Current Knowledge, many agree this implies our universe is not strictly deterministic but rather probabilistic. Even if we were to know everything about everything we would still not be able to predict every Cause-and-effect. Others suggest this only indicates that we are incapable of knowing everything. For more information you can try researching the double slit experiment, Bohemian mechanics and Schrodinger
It's hard to lay it at the feet of a single person at a single moment in time; but if I had to I'd say either the Stern-Gerlach experiment or the introduction of the Born rule; both happened in the 1920's.
Put as simply as I can: you can preform the same experiment, on identical particles, yet get very different results. That is not a property you want a deterministic system to have.
---------------------------------------------------------
Pooping on determinism isn't necessarily an endorsement of free will, imo. It's possible both assumptions (determinism, free will) are wrong.
@randomhero1982
Yes many assumed this study indicated that our decisions are pre determined but not taking into account the brain activity which arose before our conscience could also be explained being a general response your brain has when “gearing up” to make a decision and is not depended on the decision being made and therefor the studies address the issue of free will
Possibly, I'm not sure myself to be honest.
I just remember reading the article and found it thought provoking.
I think if I was pushed for an answer, I would simply state that I hope we have free will but I am unsure.
In my experience; everyone seems to believe in free will; even those who claim they don't.
@nyarlathotep
Well if an individual believes in free will I do not see how they can Instantly write off the possibility of Gods existence as unscientific.
Free will would mean our actions are random, not deterministic. And if an unobservable thing (free will) can impose a pattern on a random system (our actions), than any seemingly chaotic system (weather, quantum mechanics) can have an unobservable thing hat imposes a pattern on it, and that’s -at least possibly - a God.
I'm skeptical of that postulate: maybe it's true and maybe it isn't; and I don't have the foggiest idea how to figure out which it is. And I'm betting you don't either.
@Jordan
Operation of the human brain and accompanying thought processes are visible, (setting aside the debate of free will vs no free will,) and are directly interactable, we can perform test on them, (although back to morality, should we?)
So one of your core points is false, free will (if it is a thing) is directly observable. Heck if someone knocked you unconscious, I think it is pretty clear any free will you may or may not of had is gone. Same with killing someone, although that is more permanent.
@ Jordan
Define what you mean by free will. Also it's irrelevant what anyone believes, what matters is what objective evidence they can demonstrate for a belief.
@sheldon
does an embedded sense of self count as evidence? I’m assuming you could say the sense of self is an illusion but couldn’t the same argument be equally made for every other “apparent” truth. After all if we cannot trust our own experiences, can we trust that the universe is even intelligible?
Since it is nothing more than a subjective anecdotal assertion, do you really need to ask if it represents a demonstration of objective evidence?
Only if you don't know what objective means. I suggest you look it up. In the mean time ask yourself if it's an objective fact that the earth is round not flat, then ask yourself how assured we can be that this assertion is objectively true compared to someone claiming they have been beamed aboard an alien spacecraft and have a message for all of humanity, and offering the assertion this is validated by an "embedded sense of self." Whatever that means?
We an trust neither of those claims, unless we can demonstrate sufficient objective evidence for them.
What objective evidence can you demonstrate for any deity?
Do look up objective and evidence before you answer please, as I don't want to keep explaining how this differs from subjective opinion.
Anyone who is aware of gravity cannot believe in free will. But I believe I at least have some illusion of free will.
Hey, Jordan! Quick question for you! Just thought of it earlier, and now the curiosity is killing me!... *bouncing up and down like a kid who has to pee really bad*....
Do you pray that your god will forgive us godless heathens and have mercy on our souls and somehow lead us to his truth? Or, deep down, do you really want us atheist scum to fry for our blasphemous ways, and therefore pray to your god to punish us to the fullest extent of his loving and benevolent vengeful wrath? And when it is all said and done, do you really have any choice in the matter one way or the other? Inquiring minds want to know.... *big grin*...
@ Tin Man
As 'Jordan' seems to find it impossible to define where he/she gets their own sense of , or even define what he/she means by "right and wrong" I would not hold my iron lung waiting for any semblance of truth from them.
Keep sniffing the WD40, you'll get there! It kills the desire to pee!
@Old Man
I love you, man!.... ROFLMAO...
@ Tin Man
*blushes* Aaaaaaw....Talyyn will be going all misty eyed again....and Cog will be chucking a poo and 'nana fit....and various Rugby players will be fundraising to condemn us....Love you too dude...
Pages