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I am religious and believe in free will

70 (27.6%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

113 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (24%)

Total Members Voted: 249

[Rolepgeek]

?

What? The human brain is a complex thing adapted first and foremost to social stuff, not rationalization. Rationality results in things like birth control and convoluted schemes and existential crises. That's not good for replication.

Or did I just get off topic in the ensuing rant?

[TD1]

The war in heaven wasn't observed by mortals, though.  And demons don't show up much in the Bible...  I think they possessed some pigs, and drove a man into a raving fit?  Which Jesus took care of in front of witnesses.  But surely there was more to this elaborate production than *that*...  Maybe not though.

I dunno, between the prophets and apostles, there's something like a few thousand instances of demons being driven out. Not all are recorded in detail, obviously, but much like Jesus' miracles, many are just mentioned in passing; "and then he went to X place and drove out many many demons and healed like two dozen blind men".

Oh, yeah I forgot about those.  So perhaps the existence of demons throughout history was to allow Jesus and the saints to drive them out, showing their power?  I don't know if the apostles did, but I think saints are supposed to have that power.

All of the apostles drove out the demons in Jesus' name. In fact, as far as I remember, all of their miracles were done in Jesus' name. So the apostles made it clear that they themselves didn't have the power, but only God did.

The power to drive out demons in the name of someone is still a mighty power. I mean, it may be directed from some other source, but it's still wielded by the Apostles. Were I to encounter the demon-possessed, I'd be pig food. I don't think "help me God" would work. Didn't for all the ones Jesus helped, anyway - needed the personal touch.

[Grimlocke]

I gotta say that with all the biblical mythology being discussed... The old polytheistic religions had way better stories.

[origamiscienceguy]

The war in heaven wasn't observed by mortals, though.  And demons don't show up much in the Bible...  I think they possessed some pigs, and drove a man into a raving fit?  Which Jesus took care of in front of witnesses.  But surely there was more to this elaborate production than *that*...  Maybe not though.

I dunno, between the prophets and apostles, there's something like a few thousand instances of demons being driven out. Not all are recorded in detail, obviously, but much like Jesus' miracles, many are just mentioned in passing; "and then he went to X place and drove out many many demons and healed like two dozen blind men".

Oh, yeah I forgot about those.  So perhaps the existence of demons throughout history was to allow Jesus and the saints to drive them out, showing their power?  I don't know if the apostles did, but I think saints are supposed to have that power.

All of the apostles drove out the demons in Jesus' name. In fact, as far as I remember, all of their miracles were done in Jesus' name. So the apostles made it clear that they themselves didn't have the power, but only God did.

The power to drive out demons in the name of someone is still a mighty power. I mean, it may be directed from some other source, but it's still wielded by the Apostles. Were I to encounter the demon-possessed, I'd be pig food. I don't think "help me God" would work. Didn't for all the ones Jesus helped, anyway - needed the personal touch.

It takes much faith in order to do so. If any of us (me included) encountered any demon possessed people, I know I wouldn't have the faith to try to dive the demon out. I'd expect it to fail and probably be too terrified to try. (thankfully, I don't think I've encountered any demon-possessed people. Although my mother has a story whee she thinks she met one.) Anyways, Faith in God's power has given the apostles power to perform miracles through Christ including, walking on water, driving out demons, and healing the sick. I find it hard to believe that these days many people (if any) have anywhere near the amount of faith as the apostles did back in the day because they actually saw Jesus do all the miracles and stuff. But probably though shallow reading of the bible, they assume that they have the power to heal.

Wow. I digress quite a lot.

[Orange Wizard]

It's semantics, mostly, but the important bit is that God is the one behind the demon-driving, whether we argue that the apostles have power or not.

[Bohandas]

Where did the idea that angels had no free will but humans did come from anyway?  Was it supposed to be part of the explanation on why God created humans when angels already existed?  I don't remember it ever being stated in the Bible anywhere at least.

God didn't create Satan with sin, but he gave him free will which Satan used foolishly.

Or is it possible that Satan was created to betray God to set things in motion?  After all, wouldn't Satan have known it was impossible to overthrow God?  What would the point have been?

I find it interesting that some people say that Judas effectively did the same thing and betrayed Jesus because he had to in order to move things along.  It's not a completely crazy viewpoint.

Satan is not all knowing, so he did not know for certain that he couldn't overthrow God. He tied to get many angels on his side (there is a verse I think that says he got about 1/3 of all the angels) but God is all knowing, and all powerful so Satan didn't have a chance. Satan probably should have known that he couldn't ovethrow God, but his pride probably made him do foolish things.

Alternatively, he knew he couldn't overthrow God but, being of free will and wanting things to go in accordance with God's plan, which required an adversary to test His creations, rebelled, presenting such a high degree of subservience instead as pride to make the charade all the more convincing, perhaps eventually forgetting the original reason, and thereby fulfilling his role as both he and God intended.

To sacrifice one's soul for the sake of God is a far greater burden than merely the body. Judas Christ, in Hell forever for our sins.

Here's a notion: What if God is testing us for some utterly up fathomable purpose even higher than He is (even if it's just as simple as 'get on my level, punks'), but doesn't want us to succeed

I believe that's (basically) the premise of Gnosticism

[Bohandas]

When I send my Dorfs to dig a tunnel and they go berserk and drown everyone that does not necessarily mean it was my intention for them to do so, though it was in their capacity to do so

But if you also designed the dorf's AI then you're going to have a fair idea of what they're likely to do

Read Toady's devlog to see why that's wrong

Yeah, but he's not also omniscient.

[Fenrir]

When I send my Dorfs to dig a tunnel and they go berserk and drown everyone that does not necessarily mean it was my intention for them to do so, though it was in their capacity to do so

But if you also designed the dorf's AI then you're going to have a fair idea of what they're likely to do

Read Toady's devlog to see why that's wrong

Yeah, but he's not also omniscient.

Entertaining thought I had: god might not actually know anything at all, at least not how we use the term. Why would you need to build a mental model of reality if you have instantaneous and direct access to reality unbounded by time? There's no need to maintain state if you have no latency and you never lose access to anything, and there is no need to predict anything if you can always see the outcome.

[Bohandas]

When I send my Dorfs to dig a tunnel and they go berserk and drown everyone that does not necessarily mean it was my intention for them to do so, though it was in their capacity to do so

But if you also designed the dorf's AI then you're going to have a fair idea of what they're likely to do

Read Toady's devlog to see why that's wrong

Yeah, but he's not also omniscient.

Entertaining thought I had: god might not actually know anything at all, at least not how we use the term. Why would you need to build a mental model of reality if you have instantaneous and direct access to reality unbounded by time? There's no need to maintain state if you have no latency and you never lose access to anything, and there is no need to predict anything if you can always see the outcome.

I've considered similar ideas as well. A truly omniscent being would have paradoxially have no need to think. It would never need to process information, only to access it.

This is the one tiny concession I'll grant to double-talking ID advocates who claim that god is actually "simple"/"non-complex". It's not much of a concession though as even the greatest thinking mind would be absolutely dwarfed in complexity simply by the data contained in an omnipotent mind; especially one that is also eternal (effective omniscience could be achieved with only the set of all knowledge that's actually going to ever come up, which is likely to be finite for a finite being, but an eternal being on the other hand may be reasonably be expected to encounter a transfinite number of different situations). Complete memorization of every digit of Graham's Number alone would account for more complexity than the entire solar sysyem and in fact quite likely even more complexity than the entire observable universe, let alone memorization of every digit of pi...

[Fenrir]

When I send my Dorfs to dig a tunnel and they go berserk and drown everyone that does not necessarily mean it was my intention for them to do so, though it was in their capacity to do so

But if you also designed the dorf's AI then you're going to have a fair idea of what they're likely to do

Read Toady's devlog to see why that's wrong

Yeah, but he's not also omniscient.

Entertaining thought I had: god might not actually know anything at all, at least not how we use the term. Why would you need to build a mental model of reality if you have instantaneous and direct access to reality unbounded by time? There's no need to maintain state if you have no latency and you never lose access to anything, and there is no need to predict anything if you can always see the outcome.

I've considered similar ideas as well. A truly omniscent being would have paradoxially have no need to think. It would never need to process information, only to access it.

This is the one tiny concession I'll grant to double-talking ID advocates who claim that god is actually "simple"/"non-complex". It's not much of a concession though as even the greatest thinking mind would be absolutely dwarfed in complexity simply by the data contained in an omnipotent mind; especially one that is also eternal (effective omniscience could be achieved with only the set of all knowledge that's actually going to ever come up, which is likely to be finite for a finite being, but an eternal being on the other hand may be reasonably be expected to encounter a transfinite number of different situations). Complete memorization of every digit of Graham's Number alone would account for more complexity than the entire solar sysyem and in fact quite likely even more complexity than the entire observable universe, let alone memorization of every digit of pi...

Well, this conception of god has problems for ID advocates, since "design" implies some kind of thinking and planning ahead going on. Which doesn't mesh well with gods supposed timelessness, though. If god is timeless as I've heard a lot of theists assert, the idea of god gets nonsensical pretty quickly.

[Rolepgeek]

Design implies that because that's the way we think of design. Semantics arguments don't really work once you start taking in context. For a timeless being, 'design' is a metaphor at best. Much the same way evolution isn't actually a thing, it's a shorthand way of referring to the tautology that in an environment with limited resources, replicators that are better at replicating will replicate more effectively and come to dominate said environment. Or how nature doesn't 'want' to reach a lower energy state, it just happens that unstable positions tend towards stability by the simple fact that the more unstable something is, the shorter the period of time it spends that way. Given the ability to move either towards stability or towards instability, one will, over time, win out. Which is why half-lives work the way they do.

[Reelya]

I gotta say that with all the biblical mythology being discussed... The old polytheistic religions had way better stories.

It's comparable to a TV show where there's a large ensemble cast and you can have episodes focusing on different character's relationships vs a TV show where one superpowered protagonist solves all possible problems and always gets the girl in every episode.

[Fenrir]

Design implies that because that's the way we think of design. Semantics arguments don't really work once you start taking in context. For a timeless being, 'design' is a metaphor at best. Much the same way evolution isn't actually a thing, it's a shorthand way of referring to the tautology that in an environment with limited resources, replicators that are better at replicating will replicate more effectively and come to dominate said environment. Or how nature doesn't 'want' to reach a lower energy state, it just happens that unstable positions tend towards stability by the simple fact that the more unstable something is, the shorter the period of time it spends that way. Given the ability to move either towards stability or towards instability, one will, over time, win out. Which is why half-lives work the way they do.

Yeah, no, "design" implies that because that's what the goddamn word means. And "semantic argument" isn't some catchall objection you can use to dismiss anyone who expects people to use terms that actually have some relationship to what they're trying to say. If someone says something that doesn't make sense, they're not being metaphorical, they're wrong.

And it's obivous that proponents of intelligent design mean the term "design" in the way that everyone else does in most other contexts. "Intelligent" is in the name of the thing, so they clearly mean to indicate that there is some kind of cognitive work going on here. ID rhetoric is full of references to cleverness and planning. One of their favorite things to do is to compare the natural world to human-manufactured objects as "proof" of some kind of grand designer.

So, no, I'm not buying the "metaphor" dodge. Even if I accepted your point, all you'd be saying is that god is too mysterious and ID advocates are just using aribitrary words and don't really know what it is they're talking about, which isn't a terribly good defense.

[Bohandas]

Has anyone else noticed that the similarity between adultery as defined by Matthew 5:28 and rape as defined by social justice warriors?

[Rolepgeek]

What I'm saying, Fenrir (and I should say here that I have no idea what ID advocates are) is that from what I can tell, your objection is: 'technically it can't work like that since if something knows everything then it can't have uncertainty or planning'.

Which, to me, is missing the point. Intelligent design also means 'well-crafted', in reference to systems specifically. Argument based on 'timeless, thus it can't/doesn't need to plan, thus it can't design, thus your system is false' is missing a step in the logic chain. Something being made in a way such that it accomplishes the purposes you desired for it to is an example of intelligent design. Whether or not it's being thought of in the same way we think about things is beside the point. You specifically said it 'implies' that. You did not say it is defined as that. My point here is that implications are not arguments. They're implications. 'Intelligent' in this context means it was not random, nor was it defined by an interminable process. Choosing how to define a word and then telling someone that their shorthand name for a set of ideas and theories doesn't fit when using that definition is not actually accomplishing anything.

If someone says something that doesn't make sense, the first step is not to assume they're wrong. The first step is to assume you misunderstood them. Principle of Charity. If you ask for clarification and it still doesn't make sense, then maybe you can assume they're wrong. But 'well that sounds stupid, so the idea itself must also be stupid' is not the proper way to go about debating.

Another way to look at it would be that human rationality is aspiring towards the perfect Rationality of God, which would make it perfectly sensible to compare man-made objects to natural ones. We don't have perfect information, but we try to have good information. It doesn't prove anything, mind you, just an interesting thought.

SIDENOTE: Bohandas, don't you dare. Don't you dare cross those streams. This is already pressurized oil. We don't need to have napalm thrown on. You want to make that comparison, do it in a thread about social justice. Please.