bilby
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Simpletons gonna simple.
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Problems with the Problem of Evil
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Learner
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People living a healthy life by having a good balanced diet was caused by God then? That should help solve obesity.
I have it btw, but I do love Coca-Cola and beer. I know it's not good for me, but funny enough God provided me with a juicer. It's down to me. Decisions decisions.
I will decide to use my juicer a lot more often. Sugar levels should be sorted if I maintain the course, not a problem, praise the Lord.
Lion IRC
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Which thread?
Primes aren't hard to understand.
You know they teach children about prime numbers in elementary school right?
If thats your analogy it didn't work.
Did you post a link to the threads?
Hang on. Lemme check.
...nope. You didn't.
Jarhyn
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So does my sister... Whose pancreas was fucked up.
The solution THERE was "oh, just gotta slice and dice on your digestive tract, then take a laser to one of your organs!"
I guess it's "down to her" to make "good decisions" with her body like "to do something so unintuitive and bizarre that it took people studying people like her as they died of obesity without recourse for all prior time until we could throw OFF the superstitions sold by Christians".
It's not a decision to not know something, and it's not a decision to DIE because things are out of your control.
My sister would be DEAD if the world had held to your beliefs. I'm glad she didn't and that the world doesn't.
Plenty of people still die of congenital obesity while they try to diet or pray away a chemical reality.
But sure, tell the woman whose intestines and pancreas are haywire to go on a fucking diet. I'm sure that will help.
You know some people with obesity would die of malnutrition if they didn't eat enough to get fat, too?
If you didn't guess I am not just 'oh ha ha jovially joking' like I do with some people at some times. I am legitimately pissed in a way that will legitimately follow our interactions on these forums. You have actually managed to change my whole opinion of you. That is the depth of ignorance buried in your statements.
Jimmy Higgins
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So you are going with the anti-ID narrative. God created man, just not that well.
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I don't see how that could be interpreted as me being anti Intelligent Design.
Maybe if a medical professional were here and could tell us what the science says about the probable cause(s) of childhood brain cancer then perhaps we could contemplate whether God can be blamed.
But I fear it might be an ironic case of God-Of-The-Gaps where we don't really know what causes it so blame God instead.
Jimmy Higgins
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It'd be the part about the human body being poorly designed to manage cell mutation. Whales have it, but we don't.
So yes, poor design. God doesn't cause cancer, the poorly intelligent design of the human body allows for it.article said:
Time for you to move the goalposts.
Learner
Veteran Member
Or...why don't you tell that to the manufacturers of harmful foods, and your government to sort it?
Malnutrition and why? I am now borderline diabetic and...there are plenty good ways to eat heartily without starving yourself.
I thought you always had that opinion from the start. Anyway my opinion of you at least...a decent fellow in my eyes (Tom too). It's all good from this end.
Jarhyn
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What do you not get that it isn't "harmful foods" but "genetics that unswervingly cause this for the people who 'draw' that 'hand'"?!?
What do you not understand about "my sister got fat from a well understood genetic condition" do you not understand?
Learner
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I thought I was talking about the common obesity that's generally in many.
In respect to you and your sister... we have a different angle of conversation slipping in here - that I do understand.
Elixir
Made in America
Is English your first language?
Or do you just automatically lapse into incoherence when you’re over your head?
Genetics and activity patterns have more to do with obesity than government not being a good enough Nanny to keep people from harming themselves.
southernhybrid
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If people really had free will, they wouldn't over eat and become obese, although Jarhyn has already mentioned, there are other causes of obesity besides eating too much. I can eat most anything I want and stay very thin. My two sisters were both extremely obese. One had weight loss surgery and was able to keep off the 100 lbs. that she lost. But she practically lives on yogurt. I do wonder how healthy that is. The other one died of metastatic cancer, which started in her kidneys. Obesity is a risk factor for kidney cancer. That may not be why she got it, but her weight being over 300 lbs at one point was a risk factor. She would lose and gain it back and lose and gain it back. She was extremely thin until her mid 20s. When she finally lost over 100 lbs via Weight Watchers, she got cancer. And yes. My two sisters ate tremendous amounts of food, and they lacked the will to eat smaller portions. So much for free will. If you don't have the will power to eat healthy foods, you don't have free will, do you?
Most of my friends are obese. I know that at least one eats too much, but I'm not sure about the others. The one who comes over for dinner frequently and sometimes meets us for lunch, has never over eaten around me. She is addicted to smoking, despite trying for years to quit. Her late Christian mother died of lung cancer. Why didn't she have the will to quit, if we have free will? Extreme obesity was rare when I was a child. I had an obese grandmother, so perhaps my two sisters inherited traits from her, that caused them to eat too much, while I was more like my mom, who could eat what she wanted without gaining weight by the time she was my current age. My mom and I were both mildly overweight when we were younger than 50, but we both were able to change our eating habits at 50 and lose that extra weight. That seems genetic to me. It was easy for me, but my sisters struggled with trying to cut back on eating for years. Obesity is a complicated disease, but if there was a loving god who gave us free will, why would he let people over eat so much or inherit the traits that lead to obesity and then be fat shamed, even by some physicians? My late sister was nastily fat shamed once by an orthopedic surgeon. I guess he couldn't help himself.
Nice god ya got there. You think that your god gives you free will, but too many people these days don't seem to have the will not to over eat, not to smoke, not to put down their phones, or to get off the couch and exercise, for examples. You've admitted that you have had trouble cutting back on beer and Coke, but then you learned how to make juice. But, even too much juice isn't healthy, so be careful. Still, if you had free will, you could have stopped or cut way back on your Coke and beer. So much for free will. Still, I'm sorry that you struggle with this problem.
I've been to a local pizza buffet and watched people eat huge amounts of pizza. Most of them are very obese. I'm sure some of them are Christians, since I live in the Bible Belt. Why would they do that if they had free will? Why would they let that pizza lure them into over eating, instead of simply eating a few slices? Talk to someone who is obese and trying to cut back on what they eat. They can't usually do it. So much for free will.
That's usually not the argument I give for the lack of free will, but since the topic of obesity was brought up, and the claim was made that a loving god gave us have free will, it made me think of all the obese folks who are trying to cut back on eating, but simply don't have the will to do so. Why is that if we all have free will?
But, I'll add that if Christians really had free will, there would likely be far fewer educated Christians because they would realize that their beliefs are simply mythology and one would think that humanity would have realized that by now, and created a secular philosophy to create community and do works of charity, the two positive things that I see in some religions. I guess too many don't have the will to accept that the idea there is an invisible man in the sky who hears their pleas is a myth. And, that's why I try not to judge too harshly. I know that people can't help who they are, as we are all products of our environmental and genetic influences. Even people like Tfg is a product of his environmental influences and genetics. There is plenty of evidence that the man is a psychopath. Psychopathy is a disease of the frontal cortex, which leaves one without a moral compass. Society needs to be protected from these evil psychopaths, but they can't help who they are, so at least make prisons humane. Okay. Iv'e digressed enough for one post....
I guess we've strayed quite a bit from the topic of evil, but the promise of free will is a lie, or myth, so that's another obvious reason why the Bible is obviously, 66 little books of myths, created by the Patriarchs of ancient times. The Christian religions and many others have been used to suppress women, justify racism, slavery and wars. I think there is more evil in religions like Christianity, than good. So much for the good book.
Elixir
Made in America
I don't think so. To me, what you say above is very much on point. Particularly about evil in isolation.
"Evil" is something we opt for because, as scripture is quick to point out, we are flawed by our own measure.
In innocence, we could all eat ice cream until we die, and no regrets. But with our awareness/creation of evil, we can throw all such behavior into the "evil" bucket, condemn it, and pray to an outside intervening force (e.g. "God") to give us the strength to eat something besides ice cream and do something besides watch TV.
IMHO it's all okay. Eat ice cream and die. It will only hurt the living; you'll be dead. We all die anyway.
Or summon the will to refrain from overeating, be a little bit picky about what you eat, exercise enough to balance your caloric intake and seek help from the medical community if that doesn't work.
If any of it does work to produce a desired change, that will help you AND the rest of the living.
Go ahead and thank Jesus if doing so keeps you on track and "delivered from evil"!
DBT
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Yes, an oxymoron.
pood
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One would hate to be seen agreeing with Lion, even a little bit, but I noticed how he has juggled his words. First he was asking about “free will,” and now he’s asking about “free choice.” Yet this juggling, intentional or not, raises an interesting point, I think.
I sometimes think the free will debate gets skewed just by the choice of the words “free” and “will” to frame the debate. Maybe “free choice” is the better term.
The compatibilist holds that I am free just so far as I can execute my determined choices without impediment. This comports with Schopenhauer’s claim to the effect that “I am free to do as I will, but I am not free to will what I will.”
The Libertarian seems to think that we are free to will as we will as well as do as we will, but the compatibilist does not go that far.
The compatibilist accepts determinism — hence, “compatibilist,” meaning determinism is compatible with free will. But what exactly is compatible? Is it free will, or free choice?
However that may be, my take on it, expressed in other extensive threads, is that give antecedents a, b, and c, we WILL do d; but we do not HAVE TO do it. That is, I deny necessity in our actions; the only necessarily true propositions are those alternatives that cannot be conceived without bringing about a logical contradiction, like a four-sided triangle.
Compatibilist free will — or perhaps as discussed above, free choice is the better couplet — depends on counterfactual reasoning. I would have preferred to take the job in Boston; but the job in New York offered more money, so I took that job instead. Once we can reason counterfactually, and we do so all the time, it immediately becomes clear (at least to me) that we could have done, other than what we did. But to do other than what we did, would have required different antecedents.
Southernhybrid mentions the obesity cases. No compatibilist would deny that we are heavily influenced by our genes, but we should also keep in mind that people do beat obesity though that usually requires medical assistance or other assistance of some kind. But I think it’s important to realize that we not just mindless meat puppets of our genes, and lots of environmental factors come into play that trigger certain gene expressions under certain circumstances. P.Z. Myers writes about a lot of this at his blog.
Of course you can then argue that we are meat puppets of our genes in combination with external signaling, and you can argue meat puppetry to what I regard as the absurd conclusion that the novels we write, the music we compose, the buildings we raise, etc., were all written, composed or raised by not just our genes and memes, but really by a chain of cause-and-effect circumstances stretching to the Big Bang. And this is absurd because the Big Bang has no mind, and no capacity to write, compose, or raise anything, especially in the distant future.
I’ve also argued that consciousness has no selective value if it does not have the capacity to choose among different options. If we really had no choice, we likely would all be philosophical zombies, executing routines and subroutines that look like conscious acts while we would in fact be dead inside, with no awareness of anything, as presumably (though some contest this) chess-playing computers are. But we are not chess-playing computers.
I think we have compatibilist free will, as described briefly above and more extensively in a couple of threads devoted to the subject, but perhaps “free choice” captures the notion better than “free will.”
I’d just end by saying that there is a bad atheist argument against free will, which is God’s supposed omniscience. The line goes that because God knows in advance what we will do, we must do the thing that he knows, and hence we have no free will (or moral responsibility for our acts, which would make God judging us an absurdity).
It’s a bad argument because in the presence of an omniscient agent, we are free to do whatever we want. What we cannot do, is act other than what God foreknows. I can do A or B, freely. But if I do A, God will foreknow that fact. If I do B, he will foreknow that fact instead.
Unfortunately for the theist, at least the Christian theist, when you add omnipotence into the mix, along with omniscience, then the argument to free will breaks down. An omnipotent God would not only know everything we are going to do in advance — and that’s OK for our free will — he would also foreknow every counterfactual possibility of our actions, and then, being omnipotent, he would CHOOSE to create a reality where we do A instead of B. In the presence of the omni God who not only foreknows but FOREORDAINS what we do, free will, or free choice if you prefer, is indeed hopeless.
I sometimes think the free will debate gets skewed just by the choice of the words “free” and “will” to frame the debate. Maybe “free choice” is the better term.
The compatibilist holds that I am free just so far as I can execute my determined choices without impediment. This comports with Schopenhauer’s claim to the effect that “I am free to do as I will, but I am not free to will what I will.”
The Libertarian seems to think that we are free to will as we will as well as do as we will, but the compatibilist does not go that far.
The compatibilist accepts determinism — hence, “compatibilist,” meaning determinism is compatible with free will. But what exactly is compatible? Is it free will, or free choice?
However that may be, my take on it, expressed in other extensive threads, is that give antecedents a, b, and c, we WILL do d; but we do not HAVE TO do it. That is, I deny necessity in our actions; the only necessarily true propositions are those alternatives that cannot be conceived without bringing about a logical contradiction, like a four-sided triangle.
Compatibilist free will — or perhaps as discussed above, free choice is the better couplet — depends on counterfactual reasoning. I would have preferred to take the job in Boston; but the job in New York offered more money, so I took that job instead. Once we can reason counterfactually, and we do so all the time, it immediately becomes clear (at least to me) that we could have done, other than what we did. But to do other than what we did, would have required different antecedents.
Southernhybrid mentions the obesity cases. No compatibilist would deny that we are heavily influenced by our genes, but we should also keep in mind that people do beat obesity though that usually requires medical assistance or other assistance of some kind. But I think it’s important to realize that we not just mindless meat puppets of our genes, and lots of environmental factors come into play that trigger certain gene expressions under certain circumstances. P.Z. Myers writes about a lot of this at his blog.
Of course you can then argue that we are meat puppets of our genes in combination with external signaling, and you can argue meat puppetry to what I regard as the absurd conclusion that the novels we write, the music we compose, the buildings we raise, etc., were all written, composed or raised by not just our genes and memes, but really by a chain of cause-and-effect circumstances stretching to the Big Bang. And this is absurd because the Big Bang has no mind, and no capacity to write, compose, or raise anything, especially in the distant future.
I’ve also argued that consciousness has no selective value if it does not have the capacity to choose among different options. If we really had no choice, we likely would all be philosophical zombies, executing routines and subroutines that look like conscious acts while we would in fact be dead inside, with no awareness of anything, as presumably (though some contest this) chess-playing computers are. But we are not chess-playing computers.
I think we have compatibilist free will, as described briefly above and more extensively in a couple of threads devoted to the subject, but perhaps “free choice” captures the notion better than “free will.”
I’d just end by saying that there is a bad atheist argument against free will, which is God’s supposed omniscience. The line goes that because God knows in advance what we will do, we must do the thing that he knows, and hence we have no free will (or moral responsibility for our acts, which would make God judging us an absurdity).
It’s a bad argument because in the presence of an omniscient agent, we are free to do whatever we want. What we cannot do, is act other than what God foreknows. I can do A or B, freely. But if I do A, God will foreknow that fact. If I do B, he will foreknow that fact instead.
Unfortunately for the theist, at least the Christian theist, when you add omnipotence into the mix, along with omniscience, then the argument to free will breaks down. An omnipotent God would not only know everything we are going to do in advance — and that’s OK for our free will — he would also foreknow every counterfactual possibility of our actions, and then, being omnipotent, he would CHOOSE to create a reality where we do A instead of B. In the presence of the omni God who not only foreknows but FOREORDAINS what we do, free will, or free choice if you prefer, is indeed hopeless.
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DBT
Contributor
You are switching from 'will' to 'choice.' They are not the same. Will is not the neuronal means or mechanism of decision making.
Your assersion is simplistic and ideological.
Jarhyn
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No, I think the angle is specifically that bad shit happens to folks who did nothing to cause bad shit and who can do nothing about it for themselves. That is the problem here, specifically for your god.
I can absolutely forgive anything that doesn't know that's gonna happen. But for something infinitely powerful AND infinitely able to see the consequences of all possible actions without taking those actions, it can't really be forgiven.
The properties you ascribe to god I do not. I looked at my own actual acts of special creation and actually did the work to determine what was necessary and sufficient about my abilities in doing so.
In Gnostic/esoteric traditions this is, if I understand properly, "tzimtzum", or something like that? I think there's probably at least one person who has studied esoterica well enough to know. It translates roughly to the idea of Clancy from The Midnight Gospel. Often this is where such people actually foist the problem of evil off to. This is generally thought of as "the demiurge".
In some ways this points a theological finger at me, because shit, I even dress kinda like Clancy! I do similar things, I wander in life in similar ways.
I'm not the asshole popping into the window to hunt little girls' unicorns, if we're really gonna look at the metaphor, but I'm not not the guy taking interesting stories out of the world for the purposes of hearing and sharing them and understanding something more of existence.
Then the mathematical multiverse, the MMV, The concept that @Swammerdami brings up from time to time (not that it matters one way or another, but day you just use the MMV ironically, or do you feel some valence to it, Swammi? Can I call you that?) roughly translates to The Monad in those gnostic/esoteric traditions, some structure in which structures and systems structure along in some understandably evolving way with predictable properties through all expansions; that all things mathematically describable in some way "exist", is the postulate there, but then I can't see how that differs from Kalam in terms of outcome.
bilby
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Good of you to clear that up so definitively for us. The level of detail in your logic, and the quality of your many references is particularly impressive.