Without God there is no free will

>Without God there is no free will

Why? What is the argument about that

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Thread approved, go ahead.

Essentially within time and space free will can't exist because classical mechanics.
People like Bergson counter argue.

You need something above nature in order to allow free will.

Call that whatever God.

What would it be free from? Things that don't exist?

First it would be useful to define free will somehow. The concept itself when you think about it is quite peculiar - it seems to be negated by a deterministic universe. If the universe wasn't deterministic, than without the supernatural, what would it be? Chaotic? That also seems to rule out the existence of the free will.
Therefore I see no scientific argument for free will - or even any explanation of how it might be scientifically possible.

Because without the transcendent you're left with naturalism, which means we're subject to causal determinism like everything else in the world.

free will is a delusion

A really simple argument would be that if we imagined a universe without God we're just imaging a purely mechanical world of cause and effect, but God is the agent which grants free agent minds to corporal beings, guaranteeing that we do in fact live in a world of free will. This is of course entangled in the problematic relationship between God's omniscience, for which there are many kind of arguments in addition, but it's a separate issue.

A really simple counter-argument would be that we really don't need to imagine a guarantor of free agency when lived experience seems to suggest at least a relative free agency of the mind anyway. Occam's razor, etc.

That's odd, considering how the fear of eternal punishment is what leads so many people into religion

>Therefore I see no scientific argument for free will
Yet there is a way. Assume solipsism to rid yourself of the false narrative you have.
Deterministic implies that things are determined by.. previous things. Who is to say that you are not one of those things, and who is to say that things only go one way?

>i have a will
>my actions are determined by my will
>my will is bound by my innate characteristics and my perception
>my will is bound to be a reaction to my perception
>my will is bound to my perception

>look ma', big words!

>You need something above nature in order to allow free will
Why
>muh classical physics
Quantum theory disproves this through the Observer Effect. Causality is not god and is subjective.

You do know that the observer doesn't need to have a consciousness to be called the observer? An observation is simply an interaction between a quantum system and a classical one. Please shut the fuck up.

It can't exist with God either.

Brainlet reporting in. I was having a discussion with my friend about religion. I'm not really fully in the God camp, and he asked why. He's a believer in free will, and I asked him why God gave us free will if it allows us to sin. He said

>God gave us free will to choose him, because that's what real love is

I said

>But all free does is allow us to stray from him. If God were logical, he would strip us of free will, and redefine love as obedient affection

I mean, seriously, why did God give us free will? It was a dumb move desu

1: god is the originator of everything
1.1: god is the originator of will
1.2 god is the originator of freedom
2: everything that wills, wills, and is free to do so
2.1: the difference, however is the degree of will exihibited

Yes, that interpretation of free will seems to be the only scientifically permissible one. I am all the things that determine the future, therefore free will is there by default. It doesn't even require solipsism.
However, most people want a certain independence from determinism in what they call free will. They act as if people were more than mere atoms whizzing around, that a choice is more than a series of physical interactions. Free will interpreted this way requires actual choices between possibilities, an independence of the individual. I even find it hard to express this belief - that we all act on - in words. Perhaps it is only a subconscious approximation made because we are unable to predict the future.

>What exactly is the relationship between God and free will ?
I think that free will means choosing good instead of evil by ourselves. If the world is deterministic and we have no free will then we cant choose good or evil and therefore our souls cant be saved. By adding the concept of soul we need 100% free will for this to work. If a man have a soul then he must have free will so he can choose to be good or evil. And here is the great problem...

biblehub.com/luke/15-4.htm

Yeah, you're gonna have to spoon-feed me why this is relevant. Like I said, I'm a brainlet. I don't follow logic too well.

>my will is bound to my perception
Which I can alter directly and indirectly by my will. I choose to stay here instead of leaving, I choose to do this instead of that.
However, we can use our innate freedom to create prisons for our will. Hence why we are here forever.

It literally can't be made simpler than the parable, I'm sorry.
Weird notion of time you've got there, but I'll be gentle and say that then your will is determined partially by your own previous actions, but since your first action was entirely innate and perceptive is carries on.

Without free will I don't see much point in the creation. Sure, it's beautiful - but all this value would be meaningless.
Imagine you're the Creator, you make a couple robots (without free will) and a whole world for them. How much would you care about those robots? Enough to sacrificial yourself? Enough to even care about if they were "moral" or not?
You're all powerful so watching these robots in a deterministic, without free will world would be like watching ball collisions in a gas. Absolutely meaningless.

>If you dont believe in God then you dont believe in Free will too

How can an atheist respond ?

With "Well yeah" a la Sam Harris or with a "Fuck no" ala Bergson.

really? pretty much philosophy 101 terms

>Weird notion of time you've got there
Infinite infinites between every point. You think there is only one direction? You think this is really 3D?
> but I'll be gentle and say that then your will is determined partially by your own previous actions
Do you remember them? Is it up to you to notice them? Can you alter your behavior through them?
I believe in freedom in every moment.

"Wubba lubba dub dub, l-life is pointless, morty. *BURP*. Yeah. I can prove it mathematically. Actually, l-l-let me grab my whiteboard. *URP* mmmm get schwifty "

>Infinite infinites between every point.
Literally scientifically wrong.
>Do you remember then
I don't get what you mean.

I could rape everyone in this thread and not one of you weak cucks could stop me, you'd all just lay there moaning about how me coming on your face was "pre-determined"

Define "free will".

If life is meaningless why there is History ?

You first

>The ability to consciously choose between good and evil
i guess?

Why can't God just remove the "choice" part of free will? Can't he just define it to be something different? He is God after all.

self-caused volition

He'll probably ask you to define every word in that sentence next

Let's assume A=A holds, alright? Either way, I don't care what He defines it as, the thing I call choice and free will doesn't change.

>the thing I call choice and free will doesn't change
But what about God's definition? That's the only one that matters anyway, right?

I guess I'm proposing that God can change the definition of free will on a whim, to something that better suites his need to be abjectly loved by his creations.

>Literally scientifically wrong.
Ah, yes, physics. Planck length and all that. I have grown to assume the multiverse, although it is merely a hypothesis.

>I don't get what you mean.
How available to you are those previous conditions of yours? Can you handle them? If you can, you have expanded your level of freedom.

Freedom is always in the boolean value of 1, but the actual value and amount of freedom is relative to what you do, think, want, believe and know.

No GOD === Man's Actions are deterministic ===>A man is no different than a piano keys
===> We can all rape each other cause everything is pre-determined
===========>The man will try to prove that he is not just a piano key so he will try to make a rebellion against determinism thus raping everyone

No God.Hail the new wonderful world !

You're proposing the absurd be made real, and that somehow omnipotent means being able to force everyone to do something AND have them retain their free will.
Can we at least assume logic applies, because otherwise this discussion is absolutely pointless.

I'm not seeing how a definitional switch is illogical.

Imagine you have two objects, A and B. Both objects contain things.

I'm not proposing we change the order of things inside object A, but rather switch to object B.

>and that somehow omnipotent means being able to force everyone to do something AND have them retain their free will.
>All powerful
>Created all things
>Cannot change the meaning of concepts or ideas on a whim despite the fact that he created these things to begin with

>Ah, yes, physics. Planck length and all that. I have grown to assume the multiverse, although it is merely a hypothesis.
>Freedom is always in the boolean value of 1, but the actual value and amount of freedom is relative to what you do, think, want, believe and know.

How many cocks are you simultaneously sucking right now? Please be a trolling, I don't want to believe that anyone actually talks and thinks like such an absolute faggot.

Not an argument.

Yes, omnipotent is a paradox. If you switch the name of A to B, A doesn't suddenly become B.
Stop trying to think of something clever, just think about the original post you replied to, I'm not going to add anything more.

Is it possible for God's will to be violated?

Kek.
Apparently we are also gatekeepers to whatever horde of chaos is about to escape us.

It wasn't an argument, it was an appeal to humanity.

Within a margin.

Not switch the name, switch TO.

I'm not trying to think of clever things or sound smart. I genuinely wanted my logic tested, because the problem of free will has been keeping from Christianity.

I guess I'm more likely to believe in a non denominational spiritual being.

Jonah is a teacher who disobeys God's will. How is that possible?

Why? Suppose I'm presented with a moral choice with alternatives A and B. Then, assuming a universe in which I choose A is possible, this universe ought to be preferred by God. But suppose I choose option B. Then it would follow that God preferred universe B over universe A.

Because God allowed him to, for some absurd reason, I suppose.

I forgot to add: Assume that A is preferred.

I don't know what God could have made instead, I only know what I live in. The fact is that it would be meaningless even for a human to care/love a creation without free will.
You say strip humans of free will to make us happy. Why would making us happy even have any value? Without free will our consciousness would be only an illusion. Free will is the only thing that gives value. That is why we have it.
Another conundrum is why isn't God telling us every moment what to do, why is the Bible not a perfect guide that gives us all the answers to any questions instantaneously. Again the answer is because free will. Bible only points us in the right direction, it's supposed to stimulate thought and enable us to reach the right conclusion ourselves - not only in the sense of the right choices leading to paradise but also conclusion as in the end result of a thought process.

>Why?
Everything works like that. Quantum mechanics - the base ones, the ones we can discuss - work like that. A particle won't be found just anywhere, but within a margin.
Finding a functional model and applying it to oneself is how humans deal with reality. Shouldn't be different here.

God's plans can not be prevented by our wills - that much is certain. Doesn't mean that His plan A will succeed the ideal way. But it does mean that there are enough plans.

That proposes several problems, especially in what the "right direction" is. There are volumes or religious texts that could point us in the "right direction." Why should one just stick with the Bible?

I mean, I get what you're saying, but it just doesn't seem logical to me. If God wants us to love him, why allow room for error? Why not make the Bible a flawless tome?

And in a world where we have God's love, and he has ours, what worth is anything else?

Nihlism will not save your soul

>Why should one just stick with the Bible?
One should not. Else we'd be like Muslims and nobody would write down a book.

There is something called a conscience, even wolves or rats are born with a certain, however limited sense of morality.

The wavefunction evolves deterministically in quantum mechanics. It gives you the probabilities of measuring a particular value of an observable. It isn't magic that adds a bit of spicy indeterminism to the universe, or something. Unless you are trying to somehow involve God or human will in the measurement process, which leads you down the road of hilariously degenerate hidden-variable-esque theories.

>If God wants us to love him, why allow room for error?

Because it's not love if there is no room for error. It's not even slavery, as the object of affection might as well be inanimate.

>The wavefunction evolves deterministically in quantum mechanics.
It has a random element within boundaries. Determinism is outright proven false.

>It has a random element within boundaries
????

The particle appears in a random location, no? Unless you believe in science of the gaps (and that determinism is the strict, axiomatic goal of science), this is so.

>The particle appears in a random location
Within strict, determined boundaries*

First, since this thread is about free will, in humans, it's generally believed that physical processes related to thought are at a large enough length scale to be effectively classical. Theories of quantum mind would also not rescue free will, but instead put us at the whim of probabilities.

Second, quantum mechanics doesn't imply anything one way or the other about whether it's possible for God's own will to be violated. We assume physics don't apply to him.

Thanks boss.

Yeah, the boundaries being the universe. Just because the probability is low doesn't mean it's impossible. As the realist, hidden variable explanation was proven false - this is not determinism by any standard.

>First, since this thread is about free will, in humans, it's generally believed that physical processes related to thought are at a large enough length scale to be effectively classical.
I'm not a general thinker.
>quantum mechanics doesn't imply anything one way or the other about whether it's possible for God's own will to be violated.
I only provided a model which explains determinism and the alternative. I never said that this causes humans to have free will or anything of the sort. Instead, I said we can apply this model. Not the events, not the surrounding science. No. The model. Simply to be able to say: it can make sense.

Although, it is true that people have placeholder beliefs. Fluid values, so to speak. (Or quantum wave functions not yet realized).

God's will can be violated within boundaries. Say, you can sin. Yet you can't eradicate the world.

>Yeah, the boundaries being the universe. Just because the probability is low doesn't mean it's impossible.
I got the idea that the probability is zero after a point. Doesn't really go against my point, though. It might go against your sense of plausible scale, though. Can't help you with that. Try not to be so close minded, if that is the issue.

this is painful to read

I need to pull allnighters now and then. Activates my almonds.

>Morality requires free will

????

>I'm not a general thinker.
I'll say

It does if you want values worth fighting for. A world without free will is a world without real questions.

Not an argument in sight.

If you strip morality of all transcendental meaning, and assume it's just a handy tool for survival - yeah it doesn't require free will to be a meaningless shadow of itself

God does want obedient affection. If you have no ability to disobey, you're not obeying. You're just existing as programmed.

skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/think.html

>look mom, I'm an illiterate retard

LOL

>believing hell is a place of punishment and not simply missing out on gods love

What does that have to do with my post?

Wisdom begins with reliance on God. Don't think you can be wise without God's blessing.

Let's stick to more reasonable assumptions for right now, okay?

If the concept of free will is coherent, then a person can't merely be chemical reactions in the brain. If he were, then he could not freely choose a course of action any more than a rock at the mercy of gravity and friction can choose which way to roll down a hill. If humans are free, then they must have an "immaterial mind" that is the source of their free will that allows them to act without being completely determined by their biological functions.

This is why free will is contingent on the existence of God.

>look ma', I'm 14!

How are morality or ethics even meaningful concepts if people are incapable of choice?