Of course its relevant. You don't want it to be because it exposes the religion-voters for what they are, but it is relevant.

You attempted to justify an anti-atheist bias by saying it's due to "opposite beliefs" and all I wanted to hear was you explaining what beliefs - relevant to public office and service - an atheist necessarily has that are opposite to a christian.

I love it...so if Bello states that christians are generally intolerant of gays, HE'S the closed-minded one. Gotcha. Makes perfect sense.

Glad you get it.

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Marauder Harabakc Goat

Any christian who doesn't believe in free will needs to re-read genesis -- original sin can't happen without free will having been in the picture.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

Yea I'm really not sure which planet Bov and Bello took that poll on =p Can't say I've met many Christians who didn't.

I still think free will as a philisophical concept is impossible. What we have is the *illusion* of free will. Every decision we make is a direct result of two spheres of influence on us: our genetics and the environment around us. I cannot see how we can make a decision that is not a result of these two influences, as these influences make up the entirety of reality as we know it.

I chose to write thie post because my life experiences and my personality dictate that it be so.

So, all of you are trying to tell me you don't hear dedicated Christians utter the phrases "God's plan", "God intented it to be like this", "It's in God's hands", "God wants me to...", etc?

Any iteration of these phrases implies, automatically, that free-will does not exist because God has an intent or purpose for you or has laid out a plan for you, even if you think that you "mostly" have free-will and God decided to interevene and fuck with you a few times or whatever.

Free-will without God's interevention implies that God lets you completely live your life and make your own decisions. I have yet to meet a single dedicated Christian that believes God does not in some way control their life or aspects of it. Free-will does not mean that "most" of the time you have complete control outside of the sphere of God's influence...it means from the time you are conceived to the time you die, you are not controlled by God in any manner.

You may know a few Christians that believe in free-will, but by and large I cannot even come close to counting how many bible-thumpers I have heard say the above phrases and the many variations of them. I don't know the people you know and you don't know the people I have come across, but I have yet to meet a single dedciated Christian face-to-face that has stated they believe in free-will and that they do not believe in "God's plan" for them. I'm sorry...I've never in my life met any dedicated Christian face-to-face that has taken either stance.

Frib, I was sitting here one day looking through the Facebook livefeed. I keep seeing post after post after post saying, "It is God's plan blah blah blah," by various people. I would say well over half of my friends are Christian Republicans. I decided to write something that refuted the notion of "God's plan" and put it in my profile, which I'll share with you now:

"There is no plan. There is only your alpha and your omega and what happens between those two points is an ad lib story penned in real-time by yourself in accordance with the reason why things happen… and that reason is the occurrence of random and/or intentional acts by the people and/or world around you as well as the biological/psychological/physiological manifestations and/or predispositions your body transgresses from/with juxtaposed with, and/or apart from, the decisions you make for yourself and/or the actions/reactions you perpetuate in the environment around you. In other words you are born, shit happens, and then you die." – Heath Alvarez

It's possible to believe in all of those phrases(a possible exception being "it's in God's hands", which really isn't a phrase that's used for all situations) and also believe in free will. God can have a "plan" without interfering directly in human decision-making, but instead carving a path for humans to follow and allowing them to choose whether to accept it.

Plus, knowing people, it's not extremely hard to convince them to follow a particular path with minimal convincing =)

I hope you were when you wrote that...

Or how many times do you hear someone who came out of a disaster unscathed - but people around them died - say "Thank God we made it!"

Heheh. Yeah. God smote those other suckas.

Who me? Nay, never been more sober. I hope you're not suggesting human beings don't follow easily =x

You'd have to be on some pretty good crack to think you need to eliminate free will to lead a bunch of people around; Which could subsequently be used as part of a grander scheme.

I'm still squinting in an attempt to find the contradiction.

Think he was talking about what Bello decided to share.

This may be the most disturbing thought I have ever read on this board from someone I had previously considered an intelligent poster. I read a fair amount of the posting here and enjoy the banter but I want to step in here. The idea that someone can not step outside of their genetics and environment and take a new path is absurd beyond reason.

If I remembr right, you are a teacher Frib? If so, your jaded philosphy makes a degree of sense (as much as I disagree with it). My wife is also a teacher and she deals with the fact that frequently the "apple doesnt fall far from the tree" every single day. The reason she has been able to teach special education now for 10 years without even a hint of burnout is a belief that people CAN and DO step outside of what they are given and make things better. Unfortunately, she also sees people make things worse... but the concept is the same.

Now if this was one of your troll posts again, you got me. It still makes me sad to imagine the world you live in with no free will.

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Yes, I was talking about Bello's post, which was pretty close to incoherent. No offense, it was truly badly written and totally hard to understand.

Don't argue with a Quaker on the topic of free will.

More posts, less oats!

Lol... interesting stuff here.



It made total sense to me. Most of it wasn't even Bello's writing. It was a quote of someone else. Your comment, if directed at Bello, just shows that you barely skimmed it before replying.



lol... I'm not burning out. You are not approaching this subject from a philosophical point of view. You are describing, in my argument, the *illusion* of free will.

But I ask you to give me an example of a single decision any of us can make that is NOT based on our experiences and our own personality traits. It's impossible. Given the exact set of circumstances and the exact personality, genetics, etc., any two people will make the exact same decision in any given circumstance. You can't do otherwise, because there are no other influences on your decision.

Let's pretend that someone "rises above their circumstances" and reforms from whatever horrible past they may have. They only did so because the experiences they had in their life combined with the character traits within them caused him to make those choices.

You can rest easy, though. This illusion of free will, as I've described it, is so complete that in our daily lives we can behave as though it is not an illusion. In this sense, this illusion is similar to the idea that perhaps our existence is also an illusion. We have no way to prove that everything around us is really here (as opposed to someone else's dream, or some sort of hallucination, etc.), but since the illusion is complete, we can behave as though it is real.

Fribur...basically what you're saying is, "Your dislike of beets comes not from free will, but from the fact that you had them once and they tasted bad!"

I guess you can sit there and argue that. It's not a particularly strong or compelling argument, though.

Well I thought it was his quote since he signed his name to it... /shrug

Incoherent? It reads perfectly fine to anyone else that knows how to read and comprehend words.

Actually, I wrote the entire thing. I wrote it more in lawyer-speak with all the and/or clauses because there is always some asshat internet armchair lawyer that will come back and say, "You said OR instead of AND!!! That clearly means it cannot be both! Your logic is fucked up lawlz piss my pants rawfle I rulez!"

This thread is the dumbest thread.

Easily my favorite quote with regard to free will:

"Indeterminism does not confer freedom on us: I would feel that my freedom was impaired if I thought that a quantum mechanical trigger in my brain might cause me to leap into the garden and eat a slug"

- Professor J.J.C. Smart

We're apparently supposed to be led to believe that neurons are unique snowflakes and do not follow an order of laws as an apple will fall to the ground when dropped.

Haha, brilliant. Thank you.

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