Austrian Cardinal on Evolution

[SPOOFE]

I know what intelligent designs look like, and the biosystem doesn't qualify.

I remember, back when the Biosphere II project fell apart, there was a small ruckus about how "if man can't do it [set up a biosphere], then it MUST have been God!" I always thought that logic was amusing.

[Firefox]

Perhaps a notion of free will has nothing to do with predetermination or absolutes or any such thing. Free will has nothing to do with the laws of physics...

Who said anything about physics?

if you try and claim that, you're either a gear, or every action is random. Best way is to say that even if our personality is just composed of our experiences and how we learn to deal with them, and even though the physical body that we use to express our personality (as well as carry it... stupid brain...) only exists based on other shit in the past, every action we make is still made by us, determined by our own minds. That's my idea of free will. Of coure, when you bring in the notion of am omniscient god, for there to be free will he must either not care, or you must redefine omniscient to mean that he only knows what's happening right now.

Then what would be the "correct" definition of omniscience so as to preserve the concept of free will? How are humans free to do as they please without their imaginary friend already knowing what they are going to do?

[Zero]

We are physical beings constrained by physical law. Assuming free will even exists, the laws of physics apply to it.

We are physical beings, can you explain to me what physical laws apply to love, hate, stupidity, intellect, humor, any of it all? Maybe free will is an idea more then a thing. Something abstract, not something certain.

My opinion ? People can't even seem to decide on a proper definition of free will, so it's hard to debate. I, personally doubt it exists; we think and talk in terms of free will because thinking and talking any other way is horribly awkward. Free will, I believe, is what we call our mostly subconscious decision making process; since we can't "see" how we make decisions, we call it free will.

I've always simply thought of it as the decision making process in general, but it isn't something that's simple to define. We can only be charged for crimes we did of our own 'free will'. What the hell does that mean? I agree, the definition for such things isn't so certain. Tricksy...

Who said anything about physics?

LotA did.

Then what would be the "correct" definition of omniscience so as to preserve the concept of free will? How are humans free to do as they please without their imaginary friend already knowing what they are going to do?

I said so above. If you think of omniscient as knowing only of the things that are existing right NOW, and not knowing necessarily of the absolutes of the future or the past, then omniscience and a notion of free will can both be true.

And an imaginary friend can't be omniscient. Only things that exist can be anything. What did you mean by that?

[Lord of the Abyss]

Who said anything about physics?

LotA did.

Actually, I was responding to your comment :

Perhaps a notion of free will has nothing to do with predetermination or absolutes or any such thing. Free will has nothing to do with the laws of physics... if you try and claim that, you're either a gear, or every action is random.

We are physical beings, can you explain to me what physical laws apply to love, hate, stupidity, intellect, humor, any of it all? Maybe free will is an idea more then a thing. Something abstract, not something certain.

Those are all derived from physical processes of the brain, otherwise brain damage would be unable to affect emotion. The idea that there is a nonmaterial mind has no evidence.

If you are referring to the neurological patterns that produce mental experiences, they are constrained by the underlying hardware.

And an imaginary friend can't be omniscient. Only things that exist can be anything. What did you mean by that?

It's a fairly common insulting reference to God.

[Zero]

Those are all derived from physical processes of the brain, otherwise brain damage would be unable to affect emotion. The idea that there is a nonmaterial mind has no evidence.

If you are referring to the neurological patterns that produce mental experiences, they are constrained by the underlying hardware.

You missed my point entirely. I know all of these are physical functions of the brain, but do we define love by what chemical/chemicals it is? Do we define qualities of mind by chemistry and physical properties? No, we don't, because it's foolish to. Free will is a qualitfy of mind, not a real thing. Of course, to me, free will has nothing to do with anybody's concept of God, either. Free will is an idea, a feeling. An abstract. Not something that we define with physics, but instead in the realm of human experience, much like the emotions I mentioned.

And I don't believe in a non-material mind. Just clarifying.

[Firefox]

I said so above. If you think of omniscient as knowing only of the things that are existing right NOW, and not knowing necessarily of the absolutes of the future or the past, then omniscience and a notion of free will can both be true.

Bullshit. Omniscient includes knowledge of the past and future. As such, all future events are known.

And an imaginary friend can't be omniscient. Only things that exist can be anything. What did you mean by that?

I'm referring to God, a figment of human imagination, moron.

You missed my point entirely. I know all of these are physical functions of the brain, but do we define love by what chemical/chemicals it is? Do we define qualities of mind by chemistry and physical properties?

Yes we do.

Free will is a qualitfy of mind, not a real thing.

What do you mean it isn't real? It's the ability to make decisions free of outside influence.

[Lord of the Abyss]

You missed my point entirely. I know all of these are physical functions of the brain, but do we define love by what chemical/chemicals it is? Do we define qualities of mind by chemistry and physical properties? No, we don't, because it's foolish to. Free will is a qualitfy of mind, not a real thing. Of course, to me, free will has nothing to do with anybody's concept of God, either. Free will is an idea, a feeling. An abstract. Not something that we define with physics, but instead in the realm of human experience, much like the emotions I mentioned.

I don't consider it foolish, just impractical for everday usage even if we had the technology/knowledge to analyse the brain that well. Since we are talking definitions, practicality isn't the point.

It's like a painting; the images on paintings really are nothing more than a pattern of atoms, but we seldom talk about them that way because it's normally more natural and efficient to just point and say "isn't that landscape pretty ?" . Emotions and thoughts are patterns in the brain; words like "anger" and "love" are simply a more concise way of referring to those patterns.

And as far as free will goes, I see insufficient evidence to believe it exists in the first place. I consider it a useful illusion; without the idea of free will concepts like ethics become almost incomprehensible.

There's an old saying that "We all believe in free will, we have no choice." . I think that fits my attitude quite nicely; despite what I believe intellectually I feel like I have free will, and I normally act like it was true out of simple practicality.

[Zero]

Bullshit. Omniscient includes knowledge of the past and future. As such, all future events are known.

First off, it's a very old book. Many translations, and probably many years of oral tradition behind it. You'll use this to attack religion, but I'm going to use it in the way a bullshit artist would.

When they claim god is all-knowing, that may not include the future and past. It may only mean the present. When there are times that God accurately predicted the future, it may simply have been that events went that way because of his influence. The bible's a very old document, and ought not to be taken seriously. Reality is a better indicator of God, if you choose to believe in such a being, and since omniscience is impossibe because of

Thing is even an omniscient being can't see something that isn't there, and quantum uncertainty is a very important part of the physical world. In order to see everything with certainty, he would need to eliminate quantum uncertainty. Since I believe that would destroy the universe, that makes the matter sort of moot. Even if he recreated the universe it wouldn't be the same one, just a new version made from his memories - and if he looks again the same thing happens.

we can assume that God isn't omniscient. If there is one. So even if there were such thing as free will, God wouldn't get in the way.

What do you mean it isn't real? It's the ability to make decisions free of outside influence.

How can you say something's real when there isn't really a specific definition of it around? If we take yours, then there definately isn't such thing as free will, as we can never be truly free of outside influences. Aside from that, there isn't a standard definition of free will that we all agree on anyways.

Yes we do.

Then tell me the bloody chemical formula already.

[Zero]

And as far as free will goes, I see insufficient evidence to believe it exists in the first place. I consider it a useful illusion; without the idea of free will concepts like ethics become almost incomprehensible.

This is what I believe as well. I know that my decisions are bound by my past, but I don't care. My past created me, and I create my own actions. That's my idea of 'free will' but it's obviously bullshit. That's why free will is an idea above anything else. Not something you can measure.

[zippy]

Firefox - You get to choose which parallel universe you want to be in. Is that enough?

Uh, no, because regardless of what universe I'm in, I make a choice that is already known. Every fucking move I make is predetermined, regardless of your insipid "parallel universe" bullshit.

That is a result of the hypothesis that every decision results in a number of parallel dimensions. Given that presumption, there is no such thing as free will regardless of whether an omniscient being exists be he Jehovah or The Flying Spaghetti Monster. Any way, given that such a being would have to be outside time, the concept of "already known" is meaningless

My stance was, that by knowing every possible outcome, omniscience is possible but meaningless, as data without qualification is as useful as a random number generator.

Either way, it does make the Christian concept of an omniscient god providing free will to his followers in a single dimension problematic. In that instance, the definition of omniscience would have to change to mean "knowing everything as it happens".

[Firefox]

When they claim god is all-knowing, that may not include the future and past. It may only mean the present.

Support this claim.

we can assume that God isn't omniscient. If there is one. So even if there were such thing as free will, God wouldn't get in the way.

Then God isn't all-powerful. What's your fucking point, then?

How can you say something's real when there isn't really a specific definition of it around?

Come back when you aren't spewing solipsism bullshit.

Then tell me the bloody chemical formula already.

Then stop resorting to appeals to ignorance, and start doing some research.

That is a result of the hypothesis that every decision results in a number of parallel dimensions.

Irrelevant.

My stance was, that by knowing every possible outcome, omniscience is possible but meaningless, as data without qualification is as useful as a random number generator.

But I thought God was supposed to be all-powerful, and knowing what will happen in the future precludes free will, regardless of your "parallel universe" bullshit.

[Zero]

Where in the bible does it say that God is all-powerful? For that matter, where does it say that he's all-knowing? Besides this, why is that the definition of God that you choose? Simply because it's the most common usage of the term that you've dealt with? That seems reasonable.

Come back when you aren't spewing solipsism bullshit.

I'm not spewing anything. I'm saying that there's no clear definition of free will. In the religious sense, it certainly means something quite different from the legal sense.

[Firefox]

Where in the bible does it say that God is all-powerful? For that matter, where does it say that he's all-knowing?

I'm not talking about the Bible, dipshit. You said:

When they claim god is all-knowing, that may not include the future and past. It may only mean the present.

Emphasis mine. Support this claim.

Besides this, why is that the definition of God that you choose? Simply because it's the most common usage of the term that you've dealt with? That seems reasonable.

That's not the definition I chose, asshole. Read above.

I'm not spewing anything. I'm saying that there's no clear definition of free will. In the religious sense, it certainly means something quite different from the legal sense.

First you say there's no clear definition, then you say "in the religious sense"? Which is it, dumb-ass? What's the religious definition, then, if not the ability to make conscious choices without external influence?

[Oskuro]

On Free-Will and Omniscence:

My opinion might just be semantics and wild ideas, but I think free-will is more a matter of scale than anything else. Let's make an example...

Let's imagine we have a simple physical simulator, a very basic program that has little spheres that bounce around. These spheres have different properties regarding elasticity or weight, so none of them bounce in the same way.
So, let's say we want to predict the future... We just read all the properties of the spheres, and calculate the outcome for the next 100 frames (precisely what the computer does during the simulation). Doing this we will predict everything exactly as it will happen.
On the other hand, if we were to see things from the "cognitive" point of view of one of the spheres, the sphere would belive the bouncing around of the others is completely random and unpredictable (of course, study would quickly reveal that it isn't).
If we were to grant a sort of AI to the spheres, so they choose where to bounce so as not to collide with others, they would belive they have free will to choose these bounces, but us, as programmers, would know all the conditions, and as such would know the outcome of the AI's decision.

The Universe, after all, is a humongous bunch of bouncing balls, and with sufficient computing power, or time to study it, it is conceivable that all variables could be isolated and we could then predict the future perfectly. Actually, we can pretty much predict events at certain scales (like planetary movements).

Still, at our individual scale, we do not know all the variables that influence our decisions, as such, we have free will. As long as we don't know the future (all the variables), we are free to act.

The movie "paycheck" explores this concept (quite poorly).

What I find to be a hard mental exercise is to imagine a user switching on the future-predicting exacomputer, and trying to predict his own future. Since the computer would know perfectly the reactions that would take place in the user's mind, it would present the future, and even if the user was determined to prove the machine wrong, the future it shows would actually be the final outcome.
It is hard to imagine that the user would go along with the predicted future, that he wouldn't just say "no" and do something else, but I belive that would be the case.

The point of all this is that omniscence and free-will cannot coexist, for omniscence negates free will. An omniscent being would need to leave the non-omniscent beings to their own devices, but it would know everything that would happen, including its own reactions, so if God is supposed to be omniscent, then God does not have free will, wich would point out that God is actually the very laws of physics in their pre-ordained mechanical precision


Gee, I set out to spill my thoughts on free-will, and end up making a series of connections (hopefully not fallacies... ) that end up suggesting that God does not exist (not in the mythological sense, anyway).

[Surlethe]

The Universe, after all, is a humongous bunch of bouncing balls, and with sufficient computing power, or time to study it, it is conceivable that all variables could be isolated and we could then predict the future perfectly. Actually, we can pretty much predict events at certain scales (like planetary movements).

That's a concept known as "determinism". It's been out of fashion in physics for pretty much a century now because some dude -- you may have heard of him -- called "Heisenberg" shot some really, really big holes it it.

[Oskuro]

[quote=Surlethe]That's a concept known as "determinism". It's been out of fashion in physics for pretty much a century now because some dude -- you may have heard of him -- called "Heisenberg" shot some really, really big holes it it.[/quote]

I know about Heisenberg's Uncertainity Principle. I'm not attempting to make a solid scientifc statement here (since the subject of Free-Will is more a subjective thing, as I attempted to point out). The whole "bouncing balls" model was just an example to explain the concept of scale.

STILL, my example does go around Heisemberg's Principle by assuming we somehow manage to know both the position and the momentum of the particles in the universe. If this is indeed possible or not is not the point I was trying to debate.

[Surlethe]

That's a concept known as "determinism". It's been out of fashion in physics for pretty much a century now because some dude -- you may have heard of him -- called "Heisenberg" shot some really, really big holes it it.

I know about Heisenberg's Uncertainity Principle. I'm not attempting to make a solid scientifc statement here (since the subject of Free-Will is more a subjective thing, as I attempted to point out). The whole "bouncing balls" model was just an example to explain the concept of scale.

Then you will please refrain from violating solid scientific statements. The concept of bouncing balls does not scale.

STILL, my example does go around Heisemberg's Principle by assuming we somehow manage to know both the position and the momentum of the particles in the universe. If this is indeed possible or not is not the point I was trying to debate.

If you presume to go around the Uncertainty Principle by defining knowledge which is impossible to posess into existence, then your example has nothing to do with reality. Here's a hint for the future: displaying blatant scientific ignorance doesn't make your point look good.

[zippy]

If you presume to go around the Uncertainty Principle by defining knowledge which is impossible to posess into existence, then your example has nothing to do with reality. Here's a hint for the future: displaying blatant scientific ignorance doesn't make your point look good.

Seeing as the discussion is about omniscience, I don't really think anyone has bothered taking reality into account. Noone is claiming any scientific justification for their stance.

Current possible definitions of Omniscience is either the knowledge of everything that has happened, is happening and will happen, or just limited to knowledge of everything as it happens. Either case violates the uncertainty principle, and that has already been acknowledged.

[Oskuro]

Seeing as the discussion is about omniscience, I don't really think anyone has bothered taking reality into account. Noone is claiming any scientific justification for their stance.

Precisely what I was trying to point out, thanks.

[Skelron]

When they claim god is all-knowing, that may not include the future and past. It may only mean the present.

Emphasis mine. Support this claim.

I'll do it for him Firefox since it is clear you do not fully understand the term Omnisicience or are insisting everyone follow your own interpretation of the word without realising that Philosophers have for centuries had rather differing opinions of the word.

It wouldn't have taken you long to discover what I am about to quote, a quick search of Wikipedia would have shown you to have been arguing from ignorance.

Omniscience is the capacity to know everything, or at least everything that can be known. In monotheism, this ability is typically attributed to a god. It is typically contrasted with omnipotence. Omniscience is sometimes understood to also imply the capacity to know everything that will be.

Foreknowledge and its compatibility with free will has been a debated topic between theists and philosophers. The argument that divine foreknowledge is not compatible with free will is known as theological fatalism. If man is truly free to choose between different alternatives, it is very difficult to understand how God could know in advance which way he will choose. Various responses have been proposed (under the assumption that God exists, and is omniscient):

God can know in advance what I will do, because free will is to be understood only as freedom from coercion, and anything further is an illusion.
God can know in advance what I will do, even though free will in the fullest sense of the phrase does exist. God somehow has a "middle knowledge" - that is, knowledge of how free agents will act in any given circumstances.
It is not possible for a god to know the result of a free human choice. Omniscience should therefore be interpreted to mean "knowledge of everything that can be known". God can know what someone will do, but only by predetermining it; thus, he chooses the extent of human freedom by choosing what (if anything) to know in this way.
God stands outside time, and therefore can know everything free agents do, since he does not know these facts "in advance".
See the article on predestination for a more thorough discussion.

Omniscience is also studied in game theory, where it is not necessarily an advantageous quality if one's omniscience is a published fact. For example, in the game of chicken: two teenagers each drive a car towards the other. The first to swerve to avoid a collision loses. In such a game, the optimal outcome is to have your opponent swerve. The worst outcome is when nobody swerves. But if A knows that B is in fact omniscient, then A will simply decide to never swerve since A knows B will know A's logical decision and B will be forced to swerve to avoid a collision - this is assuming each player is logical and follows optimal strategy.

The basics of what is meant by the term Omniscience

If your going to debate a word at least don't rehash the most basic of debates, and insist everyone stick your own viewpoint on the word, and use it as evidence that it must be impossible. When to be frank explanations for all your arguements have been around since before you where born.

[Firefox]

When they claim god is all-knowing, that may not include the future and past. It may only mean the present.

Emphasis mine. Support this claim.

I'll do it for him Firefox since it is clear you do not fully understand the term Omnisicience or are insisting everyone follow your own interpretation of the word without realising that Philosophers have for centuries had rather differing opinions of the word.

It wouldn't have taken you long to discover what I am about to quote, a quick search of Wikipedia would have shown you to have been arguing from ignorance.

I don't necessarily trust Wikipedia to be an accurate source for information.

Zero was arguing from ignorance, given his "When they claim god is all-knowing, that may not include the future and past. It may only mean the present[/b]" remark. Also note he said "they claim" as well, which I took to mean he was arguing from the fundamentalist standpoint. I simply wanted him to explain.

[Skelron]

Well in this case Wikipedia was simply a source I can use to confirm information I already knew, from my days of A-Levels. (I am assuming if I could find the notes they would not be taken as evidence in any case )

As it is indeed, looking back the use of the words 'they could be', did make a differance. I must remember just because someone is right does not mean they are necersary right for the correct reasons...

As it is the problem with discussing any of the Catholic Church's beliefs on God. (And remember this thread started as a discussion on a Cardinal's views on evolution, not a fundy's) is that the amongest the traditional attributes given to him is Transcendence. Making all the words associated with him merely 'best fit' and acknowledged as being insufficent for the task. Which is a long winded way of saying, don't be too strict in the interpretation of the words translation, as it is merely meant as a best fit in any case. (And because often the words are debated over anyway. What does Omnipotence mean is a famous example....

Does it mean All powerful Full stop. Can do anything, anything at all, even make a rock too heavy for him to lift, then lift it anyway.
Does it mean anything Logically possible, so God could not make a square circle since a square is square and a circle a circle.
Or can God only do what is logically possible for him to do. (IE if God dosn't have a body God cannot pick his nose. Should he take on a body God can pick his nose etc.)

Omniscience similarly to Omnipotence has these qualifiers. Is God in Time if so he cannot know the future, since it has not occured. However the argument would go, that would not then be the meaning of the word 'Omniscience' rather it would mean God knows everything that has occured and is currently occuring. His all knowingness is certainly still all knowing since the future has not happened it cannot be logically known. Everything it is logically possible to know however God knows.

See how this interpretation links nicely with the interpretation of Omnipotence that God can do anything Logically possible, here we interpret Omniscience to be 'Know everything it is logically possible to know.'

Yes I believe in God and yes I lean towards the 'Logically possible' viewpoint.

[Firefox]

Sorry about the misinterpretation. It can be a problem indeed. Thanks for the clarification.