More atheism addressed.

schitzo wrote ...

Quote :

Helium,

Paineful understood exactly what I meant by God being a libertarian without me explaining it. So, it isn't an unreasonable theory. I'm sure Paineful has came to the same conclusion that I have that the true God isn't some dictator that demands worship as Theists believe but God loves freedom and for that is worthy of our worship.

Again, no, no, no. You're both absolutely right. You just don't have to be a libertarian to come up with that.

It's pretty 1-0-1.

You're great logic gap is that you're trying to copyright for Libertarianism a pretty simple and obvious universal truth.

Helium wrote:

You're great logic gap is that you're trying to copyright for Libertarianism a pretty simple and obvious universal truth.

It hasn't been obvious for most of man's history including in most of the religions and philosophies, much less our political systems. Look at this forum, reasonable deists here are still arguing against free will.

As I stated above: libertarian means nothing more than someone who is committed to liberty, which God, by His non-interference, obviously is.

It isn't a political statement saying we should do away with the War on Drugs, legalize prostitution, validate the Second Amendment and make government smaller (even though all of those are reasonable and compatible with libertarianism).

Yet, if i have free will, then my decision to will this or that action, was forced upon me by another will (God) that willed into existence my will and all others. Therefore, the choices I make were determined in advance by God's will that forced upon me this free will. That being the case how can this will, which i think is free, be free if the cause of this will was the effect of a past or another will?


I guess you could argue that free will was predestined by God.

Well predestination isn't exactly the right word since it is a statement of our lack of free will, therefore a contradiction. Predetermining that creatures would evolve with free will would not mean that it would be predetermined what we would do with it. Setting up the circumstances for evolving free will doesn't limit or contradict that free will.

Quote :

Yet, if i have free will, then my decision to will this or that action, was forced upon me by another will (God) that willed into existence my will and all others. Therefore, the choices I make were determined in advance by God's will that forced upon me this free will. That being the case how can this will, which i think is free, be free if the cause of this will was the effect of a past or another will?

Ah, your grand destruction of free will is thus then ...

Deists such as Paineful and I believe in free will. And we believe in God. And we believe that God would have authored free will or at least allowed for its existence.
Therefore your theory is that if we have free will and God authored it or caused it to be, then it can't be free will. Because, so to speak, where's the free will in ... free will.

By the way, didn't those monks in dark ages sit around talking about such minutae - hey maybe we were there! Don't get me wrong, just making a side joke. I find this stuff interesting obviously.

Here's where I see your logic flaw.

Not that I would presume to speak for Paineful, but I think our notion of free will is something we observe. In the strict sense I don't think Paineful or my theories even require God in the equation, strictly speaking. Free will is just a name we give to the phenomenon of choice that we appear to have. So if you catch my drift it's an observation we can make independent of the whole questino of whether there is or isn't a God.

Now you have in the past argued against free choice, claiming that it is illusory, and that our lives our determinist in nature. Fair enough.

But to reiterate, the case for free will comes from observation. So in fact we're not even certain if God exists. But we're pretty certain that free will exists.

So of course your logic doesn't flow, given the above noted caveat.

More correctly.

The logic is that we observe free will. We make a case for it. We speculate there is a God. We make a case for it. Both cases are made strictly from observations. Both are observations. So a unified theory would obviously have to account for both of them.

The Paineful Truth wrote:

Aaron wrote:

This is a model that I prefer...

Seeking nothing, possessing nothing, lacking nothing, the One is perfect and, in our metaphor, has overflowed, and in its exuberance has produced the new: this product has turned again to its begetter and been filled and has become its contemplator and so an Intellectual-Principle." ~ Plotinus

Overflowed? How can the "One that is all things", overflow?

But I agree with the One that is all things as a good description of God; basically equivalent to the One Whole Truth.

Is it impossible to be perfect and still want something?

Well, it is a metaphor. "The One" is the formless infinite potential that acts as the ground for manifest existence. It contains everything that is and everything that could possibly be within it's "self" in potential form. The "overflowing" comes when the potential becomes the actual.

Aaron wrote:

"The One" ....contains everything that is and everything that could possibly be within it's "self" in potential form. The "overflowing" comes when the potential becomes the actual.

But still, everything that is as well as all potential, remains withing itself. I think it's merely a breakdown in the analogy, one that tries to rationalize how there can be no free will, even by God, and if I may say so, fails. I think the only possibilities are whether external free will was intentionally created or happened accidentally. The latter would be an indication of a non-existent God.

But a disturbing part of the quote is characterizing God as "seeking nothing, possessing nothing, lacking nothing". How can those who draw conclusions about God's motivations based on reasonable deductions from creationon be accused on the one hand of projecting ourselves on Him, while at the same time, those who make those accusations ascribe these bleak qualities to Him without any basis at all that I can see. If those qualities were true, God, seeking nothing and lacking nothing, would not even have created this universe for Him to then care nothing about.

I think Plotinus was trying so hard to make God unlike us, He projected qualities that could as easily be used to describe a lump of shapeless, spiritless emptiness, unable to imagine or will the creation of anything--or no God at all.

A critical part of his philosophy was that he didn't believe in sentience or self-awareness by God ("The One"), and presumably, by ourselves. Do you agree with that?

The Paineful Truth wrote:

Aaron wrote:

"The One" ....contains everything that is and everything that could possibly be within it's "self" in potential form. The "overflowing" comes when the potential becomes the actual.

But still, everything that is as well as all potential, remains withing itself. I think it's merely a breakdown in the analogy, one that tries to rationalize how there can be no free will, even by God, and if I may say so, fails. I think the only possibilities are whether external free will was intentionally created or happened accidentally. The latter would be an indication of a non-existent God.

? I'm not sure what you're getting at. Free-will is an entirely separate issue IMO.

The Paineful Truth wrote:

But a disturbing part of the quote is characterizing God as "seeking nothing, possessing nothing, lacking nothing".

Well that's just one aspect of god. "The One" is the aspect of god that "seeks nothing, possesses nothing, and lacks nothing", but those terminologies are a bit misleading because they are dualistic. There's no way to put into terms the proper way of describing "the One" because language is by nature dualistic. By saying that "the One", "seeks nothing, possesses nothing, and lacks nothing" what Plotinus means is that "the One" is neutral to all of these things.

As Stret will be quick to point out "absolute nothingness" is a paradox. Therefore when Plotinus writes about "no-thing" he is talking about a neutral state between existence and non-existence.

The Paineful Truth wrote:

How can those who draw conclusions about God's motivations based on reasonable deductions from creation be accused on the one hand of projecting ourselves on Him, while at the same time, those who make those accusations ascribe these bleak qualities to Him without any basis at all that I can see.

The basis is the simple logic of cause and effect. It can't be "turtles all the way down". It makes sense (to me anyway) to deduce that "the first cause" or "the ground of being" would have to be formless and infinite, otherwise it begs the question of what was the cause of the cause, or "what created a thinking, feeling god?". Thoughts and feelings are dualistic and finite by definition after all.

The Paineful Truth wrote:

If those qualities were true, God, seeking nothing and lacking nothing, would not even have created this universe for Him to then care nothing about.

The sun emanates light and warmth without care (or non-care), however based on your logic, the sun must care because if it didn't it wouldn't have "created" light and warmth. However the true nature of the sun is that it "creates" light and warmth not because it wants to or because it cares or doesn't care about us, it does it because that's what suns do.

The Paineful Truth wrote:

I think Plotinus was trying so hard to make God unlike us, He projected qualities that could as easily be used to describe a lump of shapeless, spiritless emptiness, unable to imagine or will the creation of anything--or no God at all.

I can understand how you might take that viewpoint but it's not true IMO.

Take a look at the following passage...

The Intellectual-Principle (Reason) stands as the image of The One, firstly because there is a certain necessity that the first should have its offspring, carrying onward much of its quality, in other words that there be something in its likeness as the sun's rays tell of the sun. Yet The One is not an Intellectual-Principle; how then does it engender an Intellectual-Principle?

Simply by the fact that in its self-quest it has vision: this very seeing is the Intellectual-Principle. Any perception of the external indicates either sensation or intellection...

So as you can see, Plotinus wasn't "trying to make God unlike us". He was just indicating the difference between "the ground of being" (The One) and it's many manifestations.

The Paineful Truth wrote:

A critical part of his philosophy was that he didn't believe in sentience or self-awareness by God ("The One"), and presumably, by ourselves. Do you agree with that?

No I don't because "the One" is not the whole of god. "The One" is the ground of being, but god is more than just the ground of being. God is the ground as well as everything that emerges from it.

Aaron wrote:

The sun emanates light and warmth without care (or non-care), however based on your logic, the sun must care because if it didn't it wouldn't have "created" light and warmth. However the true nature of the sun is that it "creates" light and warmth not because it wants to or because it cares or doesn't care about us, it does it because that's what suns do.

You're saying that the Sun is spiritless, and by extension of the analogy, so is God. That discounts any definition of God I've ever come across and I can see no difference between that and atheism.

Quote :

? I'm not sure what you're getting at. Free-will is an entirely separate issue IMO.

If there is no spirit, then from what does will emanate?

The Paineful Truth wrote:

A critical part of his philosophy was that he didn't believe in sentience or self-awareness by God ("The One"), and presumably, by ourselves. Do you agree with that?

Aaron wrote:

No I don't because "the One" is not the whole of god. "The One" is the ground of being, but god is more than just the ground of being. God is the ground as well as everything that emerges from it.

But lack of sentience by the Sun is the foundation of its (and God's) lack of/inability to care. I think Plotinus recognized that it was necessary to be critically consistent--even though I disagree achingly with the overall package.

Cogito (and I know I think) ergo Sum

The Paineful Truth wrote:

Aaron wrote:

The sun emanates light and warmth without care (or non-care), however based on your logic, the sun must care because if it didn't it wouldn't have "created" light and warmth. However the true nature of the sun is that it "creates" light and warmth not because it wants to or because it cares or doesn't care about us, it does it because that's what suns do.

You're saying that the Sun is spiritless, and by extension of the analogy, so is God. That discounts any definition of God I've ever come across and I can see no difference between that and atheism.

No, I'm saying that the sun neither cares nor doesn't care. I didn't say anything about the relationship between the sun and spirit.

In the Plotinus model "spirit" is a manifestation of the One. Therefore spirit is a part of god, however in god's most grounded form, spirit is transcended.

The Paineful Truth wrote:

Quote :

? I'm not sure what you're getting at. Free-will is an entirely separate issue IMO.

If there is no spirit, then from what does will emanate?

I never said there was no spirit, but even if I had that doesn't negate the possibility of limited free-will. Once again, IMO free-will is a completely separate discussion.

Helium wrote:

Quote :

Yet, if i have free will, then my decision to will this or that action, was forced upon me by another will (God) that willed into existence my will and all others. Therefore, the choices I make were determined in advance by God's will that forced upon me this free will. That being the case how can this will, which i think is free, be free if the cause of this will was the effect of a past or another will?

Ah, your grand destruction of free will is thus then ...

Deists such as Paineful and I believe in free will. And we believe in God. And we believe that God would have authored free will or at least allowed for its existence.
Therefore your theory is that if we have free will and God authored it or caused it to be, then it can't be free will. Because, so to speak, where's the free will in ... free will.

By the way, didn't those monks in dark ages sit around talking about such minutae - hey maybe we were there! Don't get me wrong, just making a side joke. I find this stuff interesting obviously.

Here's where I see your logic flaw.

Not that I would presume to speak for Paineful, but I think our notion of free will is something we observe. In the strict sense I don't think Paineful or my theories even require God in the equation, strictly speaking. Free will is just a name we give to the phenomenon of choice that we appear to have. So if you catch my drift it's an observation we can make independent of the whole questino of whether there is or isn't a God.

Now you have in the past argued against free choice, claiming that it is illusory, and that our lives our determinist in nature. Fair enough.

But to reiterate, the case for free will comes from observation. So in fact we're not even certain if God exists. But we're pretty certain that free will exists.

So of course your logic doesn't flow, given the above noted caveat.

More correctly.

The logic is that we observe free will. We make a case for it. We speculate there is a God. We make a case for it. Both cases are made strictly from observations. Both are observations. So a unified theory would obviously have to account for both of them.

Free will is just an abstract concept in the minds of human beings whose perceptions, and thusly their entire conceptual universe, are imperfect, easily manipulated, and regularly fooled.
Free will is just like the concept of natural rights. It only exists in your head.

Quote :

Free will is just like the concept of natural rights. It only exists in your head.

For your consideration:

God's Will is absolute.
Human will is relative.
Human will cannot contradict God's Will.
But we can exercise freewill relative to
each other, and to the physical context.

Quote :

Free will is just an abstract concept in the minds of human beings whose perceptions, and thusly their entire conceptual universe, are imperfect, easily manipulated, and regularly fooled.
Free will is just like the concept of natural rights. It only exists in your head.

Ah, I'm so glad to know that the beer I'm going to have now, which I probably really shoudln't have, is really not my choice, I had nothing to do with my choice to have it.


thank you Uriah for freeing me from the angnst of my decision.

There is no decision.

What I ever I do ...

... was willed.

You have set me free

Hiccup.

Uriah,

The Milky Way is my fault. I'm sorry!

I agree that free will is just like the concept of natural rights and it only exists in my head but if I didn't have a head I couldn't have either. Both concepts are immaterial. So, we obviously won't find them in the material world. We can only find them in the immaterial world of our spirit(mind). My point is that all because they are just concepts that doesn't prove they are not true. I love my mother. My love for her is a concept that only exists in my head but it is also true. Since both concepts only apply to the immaterial and not the material world the argument can go both ways. You're lack of a belief in free will and natural rights is just a concept in your head.

Helium,

I'm not trying to copyright anything. God has the copyright. Libertarians just have a political philosophy that is in line with nature and Nature's God. People use other political philosophies to try to play God. Libertarians use our political philosophy to obey God. Your right that it's a pretty simple and obvious universal truth. Libertarians follow that truth while others deny it.

Helium wrote:

Quote :

Free will is just an abstract concept in the minds of human beings whose perceptions, and thusly their entire conceptual universe, are imperfect, easily manipulated, and regularly fooled.
Free will is just like the concept of natural rights. It only exists in your head.

Ah, I'm so glad to know that the beer I'm going to have now, which I probably really shoudln't have, is really not my choice, I had nothing to do with my choice to have it.


thank you Uriah for freeing me from the angnst of my decision.

There is no decision.

What I ever I do ...

... was willed.

You have set me free

Hiccup.

Why are jumping to such an extreme?

Just saying there is no free will, doesn't mean that we don't have freedom of choice. And it certainly doesn't mean, or even really imply, that everything is controlled - willed, as you say - by some outside force. It doesn't imply either that we are powerless.

Only that we exist in a matrix of cause and effect. What we do, everything we do, have repercussions that will affect all of our subsequent descisions, and even the availability of options we have to choose from.
Also, everything that has ever happened in the universe also has causes and effects, everything interacts with everything else.

Schizophretard wrote:

Uriah,

The Milky Way is my fault. I'm sorry!

I agree that free will is just like the concept of natural rights and it only exists in my head but if I didn't have a head I couldn't have either. Both concepts are immaterial. So, we obviously won't find them in the material world. We can only find them in the immaterial world of our spirit(mind). My point is that all because they are just concepts that doesn't prove they are not true. I love my mother. My love for her is a concept that only exists in my head but it is also true. Since both concepts only apply to the immaterial and not the material world the argument can go both ways. You're lack of a belief in free will and natural rights is just a concept in your head.

Yes, that's true! In fact, the entirety of human consciousness exists only in our heads.

The universe is ordered on all levels, because of this the fact we have a head is not such a big deal, and doesn't really imply anything about where we came from, other that it is system that breeds complexity and order.

Gnomon wrote:

Quote :

Free will is just like the concept of natural rights. It only exists in your head.

For your consideration:

God's Will is absolute.
Human will is relative.
Human will cannot contradict God's Will.
But we can exercise freewill relative to
each other, and to the physical context.

Exactly, this is what I'm talking about. We do have a choice, and the apparent freedom to decide how to interact with our environment - with the options we are given.

Quote :

God's Will is absolute.
Human will is relative.
Human will cannot contradict God's Will.
But we can exercise freewill relative to
each other, and to the physical context.

Well okay, Gnomon, I can agree with that as well. So maybe a bit of semantics has come into it.

Quote :

Schitzo said
Libertarians follow that truth while others deny it.

You join a long list of ...isms and ...ians that make such a claim.

Uriah,

I agree that scientifically our heads don't really imply anything about where we came from but philosophically it does. Natural rights and free will are more of philosophical questions than scientific ones.

Helium,

Yeah but some ...isms and ...ians must be the right ones. Everyone claims to have the truth but the person who has it is correct in their claim. NazISM and CommunISM want to enslave people. My "ISM" wants to free people. So, My "ISM" isn't a threat to mankind as most of them are because I don't want to enslave anyone under it and I can't anyways because you can't be enslaved in freedom. You're the one that said," a simple and obvious universal truth." and I agree with you. It is a simple and obvious universal truth that freedom is good and slavery is bad. I'm not trying to copyright this truth for libertarianism. I'm saying that libertarianism is the product of this truth. A libertarian is someone who believes this simple and obvious universal truth and agrees with it. A libertarian is someone who believes in freedom. So, by your logic I'm trying to copyright the simple and obvious universal truth of freedom being good by believing in it. It's the same as if there were a group of people that believed in the existence of the sun and said the sun was proof of their belief. These people would be called sunists and by your logic you would be saying that sunists are copyrighting the sun for their "ISM" even though it was the existence of the sun that gave birth to sunism. If it will make you feel better I'll agree with you my friend. It's true I'm trying to copyright the simple and obvious universal truth by believing in it!

It is hard for me to understand why a deist would be anything other than a libertarian because what a deist is to religion is what a libertarian is to government. It seems to me that it would have to be an act of double think to believe in a free religion but not a free government. How could someone be for free thinking but not free action? Don't they go hand in hand?

Honestly, schitzo, I don't understand why you, Paineful, Averroes and PA seem to agree with me so profoundly on the religious aspects but how we can so depart when it comes to the what would you think simple task of transposing to the political sphere.

But I find AVerroes invincible behind his all knowking knowledge of which I'm just not up to speed; I find Paineful irresolute like yourself, immoveable from his ideology; and PA, I dunno, I guess his experinece is intractable.

I dunno I know some great peole from the right (mostly yourselves) and I know some great people from the left.

Unlike youselves, I'm still open. The logical corollary to the deism has not been set in stone by you folks.

If i'm a lone voice here, so be it.

Helium wrote:

But I find AVerroes invincible behind his all knowking knowledge of which I'm just not up to speed; I find Paineful irresolute like yourself, immoveable from his ideology; and PA, I dunno, I guess his experinece is intractable.

Uh....I don't know whether to feel flattered or upset. "Intractable"...Huh?

Anyway, "The history of free men is never really written by chance but by choice; their choice!"

Dwight D. Eisenhower

I'm pretty sure Ike wasn't a Deist, and not exactly a Libertarian either, but he did warn of the danger of the Military-Industrial Complex.

Any ideology that promotes the freedom of the individual, whether we are talking about a person or a business owner, is something I applaud.

Helium wrote:

I find Paineful irresolute like yourself, immoveable from his ideology.

I assume you mean resolute, and what else would you expect from the Paineful Truth.

Quote :

If i'm a lone voice here, so be it.

I think you and Aaron are on similar pages, and Kiwi, when he's around.

But I've asked the same question many times, how can reason lead to such diverse opinions, especially when there's so many areas of agreement. The answer is, you can't. At least one side would have to be unreasonable.

The Paineful Truth wrote:

But I've asked the same question many times, how can reason lead to such diverse opinions, especially when there's so many areas of agreement. The answer is, you can't. At least one side would have to be unreasonable.

One word... "Dualism".

The Paineful Truth wrote:

But I've asked the same question many times, how can reason lead to such diverse opinions, especially when there's so many areas of agreement. The answer is, you can't. At least one side would have to be unreasonable.

Because Reason is just an abstract idea in the mind of human beings, and therefore relative to each individual.

Because Reason is just an abstract idea in the mind of human beings, and therefore relative to each individual.

Only as it applies to subjective subject matter. Virtue and beauty may be subjective, but morality and natural law aren't.

Aaron I take the above to be the essence of dualism, good and evil, male and female, yin and yang, but I don't think that's what you mean by it. Please elucidate.

You are starving and you kill an animal to eat. That's good for you and bad for the animal. But what if the animal escapes instead? That's good for the animal and bad for you.

The point is, the nature of "good" and "bad" and duality in general is relative to the subject. What's good for you is often bad for someone or something else and vice versa.