Intelligent Design and Why Not

[TomJrzk]

Originally Posted by Margaret McGhee

Fred, you said,



I am an atheist and I believe that free will is an illusion. Are you suggesting that I am therefore morally blind?

Hmmm. My post #50, was actually written in reply to Margaret's post #47; as is shown in the hybrid display mode (but who else is going to bother to scroll through all that). But Fred's post got written before my reply, so my post looks like it's replying to Margaret's post #49; sorry.

This post is written in reply to Margaret's post #49:

Margaret, thanks for the dialog. I might be able to help you with your statement above, since I had a friend that was a huge evangelist and said something similar. He also used the thermodynamics argument until I helped him understand what thermodynamics is; though he stopped using the argument I doubt that he bothered to go back and disillusion everyone he'd 'convinced' before.

I think Fred's assertion is based on their definition of morality: "truth derived from something other than humans' brains". That's what he meant by 'subjective morality' and I can not argue against their self-supporting definition. So, I was only able to get my friend to define me as 'amoral', rather than 'immoral'. But, at least Fred is not a Palestinian...

You can tilt at that windmill all you want but I don't think you'll get very far, I let him roll off my back as best I can (like not being able to add 1+1 when I disagree with both of his '1's). But it will be good for the unsure others who might read these posts to have his 'facts' challenged. You go, girl!

[Fred H.]

MM: I am an atheist and I believe that free will is an illusion. Are you suggesting that I am therefore morally blind?

It’s what the movie seemed to convey.

If indeed free will is an illusion, as you believe, then obviously so is morality, and moral blindness would be inevitable. (I’m guessing TomJ would agree.)

OTH, if we truly do have at least some free will/choice and “morality” is more than just an illusion, but we are convinced otherwise, then moral blindness would certainly seem to be an unavoidable result.

(Regarding the murders of innocent people: While the last 2,000 years of theism’s influence on civilization may be less than impressive at times, when 20th century atheists have been in charge (e.g., USSR, PRC, etc.), things seem to get much bloodier and more brutal—atheists inevitably start to see themselves as god, and their own subjective morality as being inherently better than everyone else’s—seems to be an unavoidable human proclivity. And the numbers I see on various atheist Internet sites for Christian atrocities over the last 2,000 years all seem to be hopelessly inflated. But here are several reasonably solid 20th century numbers to keep in mind regarding atheist governments: USSR, 1917-87—62 million mass murders; China (PRC) 1949-87—35 million mass murders; etc.)

[Margaret McGhee]

Hi Fred, You said:

If indeed free will is an illusion, as you believe, then obviously so is morality, and moral blindness would be inevitable. (I’m guessing TomJ would agree.)

Thanks for cutting to the essence.

Please explain why behavior (that is the product of chemicals and synapses) like altrusim, honesty, kindness and social laws against stealing and murder are not beneficial to those who express them - unless they also believe in some (your?) God.

Margaret

PS - Communism and Christianity are both examples of strong belief systems that happen to be arch enemies - probably because they each draw from the same group of believers. Those who are psychologically disposed to submit themselves to institutional patriarchal authority-wielding belief systems. I would therefore attribute all those murders to religion, either of the cloud-being variety or the economic system variety.

[TomJrzk]

Originally Posted by Fred H.

If indeed free will is an illusion, as you believe, then obviously so is morality, and moral blindness would be inevitable. (I’m guessing TomJ would agree.)

No, TomJ would definitely not agree. Morality is burned into our DNA, even yours. There is nothing in the dictionary definition of moral that says anything about objective and I would argue the basis for what you think of as morality was written by subjective men, too. I'm Atheist but I still feel 'bad' when someone is hurt, I (and I have NO WAY to explain this), do not go out of my way to run over puppies.

[alexandra_k]

I think our disagreement is largely verbal (in the way we are using terms).

I'll begin with a few definitions so this should become a little clearer:

LIBERTARIAN FREE WILL

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism_(philosophy)

Now I think we are both in agreement that there is no such thing as libertarian free will.

So... If by the term 'free will' you mean that to be a shorthand for 'libertarian free will' then the statement 'there is no such thing as free will' means 'there is no such thing as libertarian free will' and I agree with that 100%.

But...

That doesn't help with the intuitive difference between acts of type one and acts of type two (that I talked about before). I'll unpack that a little...

1) Mr X discovers Mrs X in bed with another man. They divorce. Several years later Mr X goes out and buys a gun... He formulates a plan (writes it in his diary, let us say), and goes and shoots her.

2) Mr Y is being held at gunpoint. The person pointing a gun in his face hands him a gun and tells him: 'Either you shoot this person in front of you or I shall shoot that person and I shall shoot 5 other people as well'.

Lets imagine the trial...
Lets also consider moral responsibility...

Do you agree when I say that most people would think that Mr X should be locked up for a very long time (at the very least) whereas Mr Y... Shouldn't be locked up at all?

An everyday way of saying it might be 'Mr X was free but Mr Y was not'.
Of course both of their behaviours were determined by causes outside their control (they didn't freely choose their environment or their genes). Given their environment and their genes they could not have done otherwise from what they did in fact do. No libertarian free will allowed...

But the point is that we do talk of acts being more or less free.

It is too counter-intuitive (too much an affront to common usage of the terms) to conclude that there is no such thing as free will. What I want to say is...

Of course we have free will! It is just that free will does not mean libertarian free will (It isn't too hard to show that notion to be self-contradictory hence self-defeating).

Kind of like... How we could conclude 'there is no such thing as tables or chairs or material objects'. I mean really... Physics doesn't credit these entities - it credits entities like quarks and protons and electrons etc. Strictly speaking there is no such thing as a table! But the people would never have that... And so... We let them keep their tables. And... We can let them keep their free will too so long as we are willing to drop libertarianism and adopt something compatibal with determinism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism

I think maybe you are a hard determinist (if determinism is true then that logically entails that free will is an illusion)
Whereas I am a soft determinist / compatibilist (if determinism is true then that does logically rule out liberterian free will... BUT it is okay folks, because their are other varieties of free will that (in Daniel Dennett's words) are actually WORTH wanting.

(See his 'Elbow Room: Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting. And also see his 'Freedom Evolves' if you are more interested in the evolutionary processes involved)

[alexandra_k]

Lets have a look at the concept of 'omnigod'. Omnigod is supposed to pick out what is roughly in common to the god of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Sorry but I'll have to leave Buddist, Hindu etc gods alone for the time being).

Here are at two properties that are supposed to be properties of omnigod (there are other candidates, but they are more controversial).

1) All powerful.
2) All loving (benevolent / kind / good)

Now... Lets have a think about a little act of evil. Since we are probably naturalistic we can consider 'evil' (from a naturalistic point of view) to be... pain... suffering... natural kinds of stuff like that.

Lets say... Little kids... Stuffing another little kid with firecrackers.
(That is supposed to be moral evil - evil inflicted by a moral agent).

Lets consider... The holocaust.

Or... We can think of an example like... A volcano erupting. Killing thousands of people.
(That is supposed to be natural evil - 'evil' inflicted by the natural world).

Now...

Could god prevent the acts?

If he is all powerful then the answer must be yes.
If god is all loving... Then he would have prevented the act.
But he did not.
Thus it logically follows that either god is not all loving or he is not all powerful.

Given the problem (existence) of a single act of needless suffering...
Omnigod has been shown to not exist.
And there it is (IMO)
Omnigod... Does not exist. And that is a proof (of sorts).
Though the theodicies are supposed to be people trying to defend the concept of omnigod in the face of the problem of evil.

Either he let it happen when he could have prevented it (not all loving)
Or he was powerless to prevent it (not all powerful)
Given evil (harm / suffering on naturalistic interpretations of evil)
There can be no such thing as omnigod.

Some theists... Actually bite the bullet and restrict either gods power or his goodness. The problem then becomes... Being left with something worth worshipping...

Hmm.

So their strategy is... 'of course god exists. but omnigod cannot exist (logically inconsistent notion hence self defeating). so by 'god'... we cannot be referring to omnigod'.

Just like my strategy is... 'of course people have free will. but people cannot have libertarian free will (logically inconsistent notion hence self defeating). so by 'free will'... we cannot be referring to libertarian free will'.

[Fred H.]

TomJ: Morality is burned into our DNA, even yours.

I guess I was expecting a little more rigor and honesty here. If that’s all there is, then your DNA “morality” is really not “morality,” it’s simply genes/algorithms, and the resulting behavior we might see, say, in a wolf pack; the result of random mutations and natural selection; and it merely has to do with the fitness of creatures that are little more than automatons.

Actual morality, if indeed there is such a thing, requires free will, choice—it has to do with humans attempting to freely determine and choose objective right and wrong, good and bad, to conform to ideals of right human conduct.

Or did Todd convince you that we do have some sort of free will? Although such a view is incompatible with Todd’s purported atheism . . . but that’s b/c Todd is actually agnostic or possibly a closet theist/deist, which explains why he’s such a nice guy.

[Margaret McGhee]

Alexandra, It seems to me most discussions of free will make no effort to respect levels of explanation.

From Wiki: All libertarians subscribe to the philosophy of incompatibilism which states that an action cannot be both free and physically predetermined in the commonly understood sense.

The philosophy of compatibilism seems to ignore levels of explanation as well.

Behavior choices are all free insofar as no outside agent physically forces us to choose one behavior over another. In that sense, from the outside looking in every life form is a free agent - has free will.

Behavior choices are not free at the next level down. We are incapable of choosing from the alternatives we are presented with - other than the ones that we feel will optimize our happiness.

If anyone (Fred) believes that is wrong please provide an example.

BTW - It seems to me that Mr X and Mr Y of the type I and type II examples in post #55 are examples consistent with my assertion. They both chose behavior that at the moment was what they deemed would give them the greatest happiness from the alternatives they were aware of. No-one forced them but they were not free to do otherwise. (Two levels of explanation.)

Margaret

[Fred H.]

MM: In that sense, from the outside looking in every life form is a free agent - has free will.

Behavior choices are not free at the next level down. We are incapable of choosing from the alternatives we are presented with - other than the ones that we feel will optimize our happiness.

You may be right—in which case we then have, essentially, no more “free will” than, say, a wolf has; and “morality” is nothing more than a meaningless label for genes/algorithms/behaviors—products of random mutations and the blind natural forces that drive natural selection—and that happen to have resulted in the perpetuation of our accidental species. Fine.

I however see things differently. As I’ve noted elsewhere, the evidence that there is indeed objective truth (certainly objective mathematical truth) and that we humans can comprehend it (and use it to understand our world) is overwhelming, and convinces me that we do have at least some free will and that there almost certainly is some sort of objective morality that we humans can and do attempt to discern and follow.

One last thought: Put yourself in my shoes and try to imagine how laughable you’d find the so-called “morality” of accidental automatons that’s essentially nothing more than the result of accidental DNA. (And BTW it has nothing to do with Tom’s notion that some of us have a “need to believe”—I’ve been in your shoes and simply found the view to be less than convincing.)

JimB’s been a great barkeep, it’s getting late, and we need to finish this thread—you and Tom get the last word, if you so desire.

[Margaret McGhee]

Hi Fred,

I take no pleasure in having the last word on this. I don't consider this a discussion where one of us is right and the other wrong. It is an argument that has been raging . . since Thomas Hobbes first suggested in the mid 1600's that our brains guided us through life and not our God given souls - enraging the bishops of the day who would rail against the "mechanical philosophy," worrying that it reduced people to machines. (See link below.)

I am far more interested in how our higher level beliefs can have such a profound effect on how we engage the world, the explanations for natural phenomena that we adopt and ultimately, our behavior.

I think this discussion vividly shows how we all harness our intellect not so much to examine our higher level beliefs but to defend them against all threats. It shows how weak our intellects are in the face of strong ideological beliefs.

I'm not picking on you here. I suspect that I am incapable of imagining some supernatural force at work in the universe. Or, more accurately, that I am incapable of seeing the logic in your position that such a force exists - and perhaps that's my loss.

I'm happy to not claim any victory here on the question of free will. But I do feel somewhat vindicated at that next level up (belief system theory).

And I can assure you that the world is full of atheists who care very much about the world we live in. I would greatly prefer a world where there was no crime and no war and where no-one uses intimidation or force against others. I just tend to see strong ideology as more often the excuse for such affliction and seldom the solution.

Regards, Margaret

PS - There's an interesting interview posted at the DailyKos blog this morning with science writer Carl Zimmer that discusses some of these things in case anyone is interested.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/2/11/8440/49578