Chap wrote: ↑Fri Jul 08, 2022 9:19 am
KevinSim wrote: ↑Fri Jul 08, 2022 2:58 am
Now see, it was because I started thinking things like this that I started thinking atheistic thoughts back on my mission in 1979. But is that really the simplest explanation? If there is no God, then how did we get our free will, our non-determinism? Non-determinism cannot come out of a completely deterministic universe.
Somebody with free will has to have existed in this universe from the moment of the Big Bang. If it wasn't God, then who was it?
Okay, for the purposes of argument, let us assume that we do have what do you call free will.
It certainly does not follow that there always has to have been some conscious entity in the universe that has free will. The universe could perfectly well have been nondeterministic right from the start, but simply not yet have had in it any living creatures in it complex enough for the idea of free will, or the lack of it, to have had any meaning. It would clearly be nonsensical, for instance, to ask whether a life-form as simple as a coronavirus does or does not have free will.
So I don't think your argument for the necessary existence of a deity is valid.
Thanks, Chap - I was simply going to ask KevinSim to justify his statement, but I like your answer better
An apparently coherent characteristic at one level may conceal a great deal of incoherence at another. There are numerous examples of this at the level of everyday phenomena.
For example, as far as the user of an electrical source is concerned, current seems to flow smoothly through conductors - e.g., in the case of a battery powering a flashlight. However, at the atomic and subatomic level, a snapshot of the electrons (and, perhaps, holes) shows them performing a crazy jostling dance that has them, as individuals, moving in apparently random directions at any given moment in time.
And don't get Einstein going on the movement of molecules of gas in apparently still air.
Are you sitting still, KevinSim? You seem to be, but you are on a rotating sphere, with a velocity of a substantial fraction of 1600 km/h due to the rotation. Add 108,000 km/h due to earth's orbit around the sun, etc.
Even if you recognize these motions, their apparent smoothness at the level of human observation hides a huge amount of "turbulence" that can be detected by instruments.
All of this is to say that what you infer about an entity with free will may be completely wrong because you are inferring from the wrong level.
(Sorry - I got a bit carried away there
)