free will

Originally posted by RJHinds
It is what I call ornery. 😀

You see, many simply do not see God as a God of purpose. Seeking to obtain something that satisfies His heart and is according to His plan, His purpose, His eternal intention that would cause Him satisfaction, this seems novel to some people.

It is easier for them to see God was pretty tired by the time the sixth day concluded and needing to relax in some human way.

What really made God rest was having MAN there as His deputy authority to rule over His creation with dominion. That was "very good" - a Man created in the image of God to have dominion on behalf of God.

All that is really left is for man to choose to be united with God in life union through eating of the tree of life.

Just reading Genesis alone, it is not easy to see this. But by the time we come to the end of the Bible, we can see that God intended in His creation of man - to dispense His life into man for a union, a mingling, a interweaving of Himself with man.

All things were ready by the end of the sixth day. Man only needs to make the right choice and not choose .... the other way.

There is in this universe - God's way and the OTHER way . All hell breaks lose when man chooses the other way and not the will of God.

Originally posted by Phil Hill
The question remains....does your posturing change that it says [b]he rested?[/b]

The question remains....does your posturing change that it says he rested?

The question remains .... does your posturing change that it says God- the Creator - does not grow weary and does not faint ?

I have no problem saying what the English translation SAYS - God rested. God rested already. Now we seek the best interpretation of "God rested".

Some of us do anyway. Others of us seek to a handy interpretation for some other motive.

Originally posted by Phil Hill
Looks to me like it says quite clearly that he rested [b]from his work work being the key word you apparently missed.

The other verse you posted saying he can not become weary is what you Christians call one of the thousands of missing contradictions from The Campfire Book Of Yahweh's Fables For Boys And Other Assorted Babes In The Woods.

edit - I hate tags 🙂[/b]

it's a translation issue. the word translated as 'rested' here simply means the end of labor. in essence, it means "[bible]god ended his labors on that day."

Originally posted by twhitehead
Except then the decisions become random.

There really are only three choices:
1. Entirely deterministic decisions.
2. Partly deterministic and partly random decisions.
3. Entirely random decisions.

Keep in mind in this discussion that 'free will' means different things to different people and most of us haven't really thought it through.
For me, ...[text shortened]... eterministic computer program as having 'free will' despite it meeting my conditions above.

i see no fault in the 3 choices.

from the apparent observations, the most likely condition for humanity is #1, where their decisions are entirely influenced by environmental conditions.

we could speculate that the human thought process exists in no-space (outside physical influences), in which case, #2 would be in effect, since due to interactions with other wills and the environment, there would be influences on the thought process.

condition #3 could only exist with a 'god' concept being and only briefly. such a being could 'randomly' decide to create existence out of a state of non-existence, but as soon as it creates something, its thought processes become influenced by the creation and it falls into #2.

Originally posted by stellspalfie
i dont think its possible for the brain to have a true random thought. it may be too complex for us to see or figure out how and why we have thought a particular thing. in the same way that rolling a dice is not really random there is always a set of conditions that lead the dice to roll the way it has.

It may not be immediately random, but surely if you trace back the causes of any given thought, some of them may be quantum effects (and hence truly random). Others may be thought of as random such as when we make a decision based on the roll of a die or the toss of a coin although those are clearly external inputs, there are surely just as many effects internal to the brain that we could characterise as random.

Originally posted by VoidSpirit
condition #3 could only exist with a 'god' concept being and only briefly. such a being could 'randomly' decide to create existence out of a state of non-existence, but as soon as it creates something, its thought processes become influenced by the creation and it falls into #2.

I don't understand what you are saying. Why would it be impossible for a computer program or even human brain to take a quantum output (truly random as far as we know) and amplify the result into a decision?
I don't know exactly how the brain works, but suppose one of the electrical signals is affected by the vibrations of a particular molecule, would you not characterise those vibrations as 'random'? Is Brownian motion for example not at least partially affected by quantum effects?

Originally posted by stellspalfie
things do not have to be 'controlled' for them to function. would you describe the molecules that join and repel to make chemicals as 'controlled'.

They do if they have information language code programmed into them that instructs them what to do. Then the obvious next question is where did this information language code, that scientist say make up the dna, come from?

Originally posted by RJHinds
They do if they have information language code programmed into them that instructs them what to do. Then the obvious next question is where did this information language code, that scientist say make up the dna, come from?

not this old chestnut!!! the dna has not had code programmed into it, that implies that dna existed outside of its programming and was put together using a logic system that was not initially attached to dna.

the word 'code' evokes mental images of humans creating information and then hiding it. when used by christians they use this context to imply the a code needs an intelligence behind it for it to exist.

we have given all the elements on the periodic table initials and numbers to give them an identity and embed them with data. this also could be described as a code. we all know they existed before we labeled them, this applies to dna, the code you refer to is a system we deduced that meant we could accurately describe how they work. because we live in a universe that science and maths can describe, all things can be given a code due to the mathematical qualities everything possesses.

Originally posted by stellspalfie
not this old chestnut!!! the dna has not had code programmed into it, that implies that dna existed outside of its programming and was put together using a logic system that was not initially attached to dna.

the word 'code' evokes mental images of humans creating information and then hiding it. when used by christians they use this context to imply ...[text shortened]... scribe, all things can be given a code due to the mathematical qualities everything possesses.

Why does everything possess mathematical properties that allow us to describe them?

Originally posted by twhitehead
That is not a problem because God is in a different time frame. So from our perspective he is a static unchanging entity and from his perspective we are a static unchanging entity.
So he doesn't decide to do things in the same sequence we see them but rather he has made all decisions prior to instantiation our universe, and essentially instantiates our u ...[text shortened]... lly the program is on a different timeline from us and is static to us and we are static to it.

For the sake of trying to construct some sort of model of how an omnipotent "God" interact(s/ed) with our universe, this account looks feasible; that is, it looks feasible to me only in isolation from the notion of free-will. Indeed if the universe was scripted as suchReveal Hidden Contentthen our actions are entirely deterministic (and would happen, where relevant, in response to inputs from "God" ). The proposed system (pre-scripted universe + freewill) is, to me at least, incoherent.

Originally posted by RJHinds
Why does everything possess mathematical properties that allow us to describe them?

Because things, and their relations to/effects upon/responses to/ ... / other things tend to be governed by physical phenomenon that can be quantified most conveniently, in the language of mathematics.

Originally posted by twhitehead
I don't understand what you are saying. Why would it be impossible for a computer program or even human brain to take a quantum output (truly random as far as we know) and amplify the result into a decision?

"random as far as we know" is key. if it is truly random, it could be that the quantum level is a gateway to outside of this universe which would open up some really fascinating fields of study further down the line. in this condition we would have a #2 situation a combination of quantum randomness and deterministic physics.

if however quantum physics is contained fully within the universe, then it must be subject to some laws/variables that we have not fully comprehended as of yet and any randomness is only apparent.

I don't know exactly how the brain works, but suppose one of the electrical signals is affected by the vibrations of a particular molecule, would you not characterise those vibrations as 'random'? Is Brownian motion for example not at least partially affected by quantum effects?

if the molecule follows some law of physics, then it would not be random. so we're back down to what really is the quantum effect? we understand so little about it. our speculations can be refined as more is discovered in the future.

Originally posted by twhitehead
It may not be immediately random, but surely if you trace back the causes of any given thought, some of them may be quantum effects (and hence truly random). Others may be thought of as random such as when we make a decision based on the roll of a die or the toss of a coin although those are clearly external inputs, there are surely just as many effects internal to the brain that we could characterise as random.

it should be noted that there is nothing random about a roll of a die or toss of a coin.

Originally posted by RJHinds
Why does everything possess mathematical properties that allow us to describe them?

because everything in the real world has physical qualities. maths is a language, a way of describing the world around us. the world does aware of the maths, we create the math to make it work, the maths isnt always perfect, sometimes it just does the job to a level we need. sometimes the math can go beyond what we know and predict the future. maths is freaking amazing.

Originally posted by twhitehead
It may not be immediately random, but surely if you trace back the causes of any given thought, some of them may be quantum effects (and hence truly random). Others may be thought of as random such as when we make a decision based on the roll of a die or the toss of a coin although those are clearly external inputs, there are surely just as many effects internal to the brain that we could characterise as random.

FYA - the brain, actually the synapses and neurotransmitters are to large for quantum effects to influence them.