If God Has A Plan For Everyone, Then Why Is It Planned For Some People To Be Non-Believers?

The determinist might argue that people make a different decision in the same situation based on the set of conditions each individual experienced leading up to the particular event, which you even kind of conceded in your post. Not a very strong refutation.


The ability for reflection seems like possibly a good example of free will on the surface, although I think it relies on the assumption we can make a choice outside of parameters from which earlier conditions have not dictated.

 

I was not out to refute anything Just sharing my perspective.

But does such choicemaking not imply a form of free will?

 

I don't know..

For instance, a computer can make a 'choice' in a program, I wouldn't say a computer has free will. Perhaps the fact that humans program the computer, to essentially act as an extension of the human mind is the difference.

 

The terminology may be getting in the way. Instead of "reaction', I prefer "response' and would emphasize that our programming and the situations we're responding to are often complex. In my earlier post above, I mentioned sub-modules: instant gratification versus enlightened self-indulgence versus altruism. Is the contest preordained, or is there some hope of novel response? Given the choice between eating healthy and my aunt's chocolate cookies, I usually end up eating the cookies, but once in a while I've made progress breaking bad habits. Sure there were factors influencing this change: expanding gut, contracting wardrobe, etc. Did I make a choice or was it determined? When the alcoholic goes to AA and ends up celebrating her 30th "birthday" was that all in the cards, or did some real choice take place? The short answer is, we don't know. As I mentioned earlier, some respectable scientists think quantum phenomena might even be at work in enabling real freedom, although the New Age "quantum consciousness" craze has given that a bad name. Is Mr. Writer compelled to think of himself as nothing but a collection of stuff obeying external laws? Does the computer make no meaningful choices? I guess I would say that the computer makes a meaningful choice. As I said above, I think I'm a computer with consciousness, emotions, and conflicted sub-modules responding to complex environmental inputs. Is that determinism? It depends on whether or not anyone could consistently predict what the outcome will be.

 

That terminology was brought up by Asmo, I was attempting to use his terms to relate the question, based on his initial confusion of what it was I was asking.

Yah, it seems there has been a "quantum craze" within the past decade. We are far from understanding the brain and human behavior comprehensively at the cellular level even. If we accept that consciousness is a byproduct of the human brain for a minute, one thing which seems distinct from the computer comparison is the brain's plasticity or ability to re-arrange, grow, prune existing neuronal and dendritic connections. Perhaps this may be faulty in some instances, say allowing us to erroneously retrieve a memory from a few years ago, however perhaps this also may allow for a will on part of the individual to direct their choices in particular ways which are not fully dependent on the enviornment or the individual's given physiology at any particular moment.

I came across this video, which I think relates to what you mention, as well as to a particular sect of Eastern Philosophy related to Buddhism in a book I read of Eastern Philosophy: Great Sages and Thinkers . Unfortunately I cannot remember who authored the ideas in the Eastern Philosophy thought but it described something like the "frustrators" mentioned in this video essentially being the driving forces of complexity in the universe.

http://youtu.be/iSfXdNIolQA

 

I agree with you....I don't think a computer will ever be able to do what the human brain can do....as in the examples you stated.....
The human mind is like a bull in that it can kick off anything not wanted and evolve to something new without being programmed.

the elasticity of it.......is pretty wondrous.....

 

a paper I recently read seems to suggest the hypothesis that consiousness lies mostly in the domain of classical physics, rather than quantum mechanics ...

 

It's not free will when a plan is involved.

 

Unless the plan is to give people free will ;D


I'm in two minds about free will. I strongly subscribe to the fact that we're powerless to the fact that our minds are blown about by the chaos of our surroundings, however, I feel that there is the subtlest element of choice involved in how we respond to our responses that can ultimately have drastic effects on how we proceed with proceedings. Something remains quite still, even in the thick of it, and I'd compare it to an existential tapas bar. Take what you like.

 

Depends on the plan But we don't even know the plan or if there is a fixed one at all. I'd say unless the plan involves predestination, which seems unlikely to me, 'the plan' could involve free will all the same. I am more sure that we have free will (even if it would really only count for 1 percent of our decisions, I mean I agree our subconsciousness and biology make a fair amount of decisions for us) than that there is a cosmic or divine plan that has our and future lifes and decisions fixed.

 

I see two words for which there has been no substantial definition offered in this discussion, free and will. There is free in the sense that you don't have to pay for it and there is free as in the ability to make independent choices. Then there is the will as in the ability to make choices and will as a fundamental desire to be which informs those choices.

The ability to make independent choices does not exist as we always choose with a guide and we don't come into or extend our being without the participation of others. We inherit our biological entity and in this sense it is a gift. We cultivate our perceptual/sensational/emotional experience which is redundantly temporary, through the breath and this carries the load of adding value to the process for yourself and for others. The fundamental desire to be is self evident. it's persistent demand is for rich abundance. On this basis our will as a mutually identifiable phenomena is to have life and have it abundantly. There is no opposing will, there is the experience of acceptance or rejection and the polar tension between the two.

 

Last Monday, I had the opportunity to hear a dozen Christians at a church meeting tell how God communicates His plan for them to them. Remembering comedienne Lily Tomlin's warning that "When you talk to God, it's prayer, but when God talks to you it's schizophrenia" I was cautious. But since they were all highly intelligent professional types and the door was too far for me to bolt, I sat there and listened. Sometimes it was a "still, small voice" or a nudge. Sometimes a "two by four upside the head" (metaphorically speaking). But never was it the puppet master pulling strings. Of course, these were folks brought up in progressive traditions favoring Arminius over Calvin. The Presbyterians or Baptists would probably see God as more controlling. I'm personally skeptical of divine micromanagement and designer plans for individuals. I think God's Plan was set forth in the Big Bang and the laws of physics, and whatever transpired subsequently from these laws, random activity and natural selection--kind of like the modern artist who throws paint at the canvas and sees what happens. God as Jackson Pollock. But I'm open to Norman MaiIer's alternative theory: God the cinematographer. I sometimes do have the sense that my life is scripted. I've mentioned before that I suspect God is less Charlton Heston and more Woody Allen with a beret in a director's chair producing avant garde tragi-comedic theater of the absurd-- full of joy, pathos, whimsy,horror, ribald humor and slapstick in various degrees of predictability and unpredictability, leaving the audience scratching their heads. According to this theory, God may have created us as source of eternal entertainment, beating anything that a conventional script writer could come up with. And of course he'd give us free will. Otherwise it would be no fun at all. But that's just speculation. This could tie into Oxford Professor Nick Bostrom's theory that we're in a matrix-style computer simulation. Maybe it's a computer game played by angels and demons. Anyhow, we can't just sit back and watch the show, since we're all participants and must figure out as best we can what to do and what it all means.

The Dope put forward useful distinctions about the meaning of free will, the first of which (not having to pay) seems inapplicable to the question at hand, but the others are the crux of the issue. The second meaning, freedom to make independent choices, doesn't preclude a significant amount of outside influence ranging from persuasion to coercion. Choices have consequences, but if we're free to make them, we have free will even though the choice is "Your money or your life" or the freedom to go to Hell in a hand basket. The third meaning may be the most interesting of all, but I'm not sure I understand it. I agree that make our choices from a pre-existing framework established by nature and nurture. We don't choose our basic personalities, although sometimes they can change. The Dope's reference to "the breath" is unclear to me. When I hear the term, particularly when written in bold letters, I think of the Hebrew rua'ah (ר֫וּחַ) or ru'ah hakodesh (holy spirit). I became "reprogrammed" into Christianity as a result of a response to a passage in Genesis that took on new meaning to me: the part that says we were created in God's image and likeness. That "moment of clarity" triggered a series of thoughts that seemed like the downloading of information (or more accurately, calling up and reintegrating stored information from my memory) which shaped my new world view. I also think of God breathing the life spirit into Adam, our prototypical first ancestor. Is that what you had in mind?

 

I didn't make the claim that there is a connection between buddhist/hinduism and materialism. I'm also not interested in the speculations of ancient peoples or on assertions presented without evidence.

An important point here is that it does not teach "denial" of self, in the sense that you must memorize the proposition that there is no self, but rather it teaches techniques which when applied will produce overwhelming evidence for the lack of self, an effect which is reproducible.

This not only flies in the face of the evidence of how well mindfulness based therapies make people ADJUST to society and their lives, but is also not founded on any kind of evidence and is your own speculation based on your own definitions of what is required to be functional in society.

You might as well say that someone growing up in a buddhist home in japan all their life would be dysfunctional in an individualistic society. Adjustments may occur, that's fine.

Practising meditation does not disqualify you from participating in western society, nor is western society so easily encapsulated in the sentiment of an "individualistic society". Many elements within western society reject those values.

Since you are not endorsing the theory I will not waste anyone's time with trying to tackle a highly technical theory of physics only understandable by two people on the planet and rife with speculation and lack of data and rigorous models. Notice the Dyson quote begins with "I think". It's his opinion, his speculation. It's a beautiful speculation, and it's pan-psychism, which I completely endorse 100% in my own opinion, and which does not actually negate determinism; we need only understand that mind can be determined. Here he conflates mind/consciousness with free will/causal agency. The two are not the same idea.

Not too sure what the point of this paragraph was other than for name dropping. The question of what self is, is exactly the question we are facing here. That the mind is modular does not necessitate free will. Computers are also organized into subsystems. The comparison to judeo-christian theology is stretched and forced. Nobody asked about that, and frankly I don't care about that. Couldn't care less about what Aquinas thought. I'm interested in evidence and reason.

While I am interested in the psychological and social ramifications of any facts or theories, they are beside the point. First, and last, is what is true. I would never select pragmatism over truth. You'll be happy to know that fatalism and determinism are not the same thing. Fatalism is the belief that it doesn't matter what one does; however nothing could be further from the truth, even if everything is determined. If everything is determined, then what one does is determined in the exact same capacity as the entire universe; one is a shimmering facet of this entire process, and one matters just as much as any other portion or totality of the universe.

Any effects on self-efficacy or emotional and egoic rejections of the truth are mere vagaries beside the point. We don't dismiss the heliocentric model of the solar system because it makes Saudi Mullahs uncomfortable and froth at the mouth.

You can conclude what you like, but you should first look at the evidence if you want your conclussions to have any kind mapping onto what is actually the truth of the matter.

For example, you can explain to me exactly where in the decision making process free will enters. Give me an example, break it down. I will walk through it with you and we will see if we can find free will.

Not that we're not individuals, but that there is no self. We are of course individual people, by law, by custom, by biology. But there is no thinker of thoughts. The proof comes from many studies in neurology and psychology as well as from the subjective proofs offered in meditation (trying to find the thinker of thoughts can produce a failure to locate it that is conclussive).

Well you haven't raised a single finger to check for that, have you. There is lots of evidence out there, I won't be spoon feeding you however. If you want to know the truth truly then you will make the effort.

The two directions that arrive at this conclussion are the mind sciences and Vipassana meditative practice. The former offer objective indications that no "seat of the soul" exists, the latter offer subjective indications that you yourself are vacant of any locus of agency.

The mind sciences offer their proofs through peer reviewed scientific journals, some of which you may be lucky to find through google or read secondary sources about. The meditation is a practice, and a difficult one at that, but one which can be done realistically and which you can begin tackling today if you wish.






Please give me an example of when you had free will today and I will show you that you are mistaken. I can also engage with you about the illusion that "you" are anything at all other than a summation term for all the mental phenomenon of which you are aware.

 

Yes, sounds reasonable God waited ~13.8 billion years to create one species which he could get entertainment from, particularly the many of them which struggle and suffer throughout their existence and all the while he still gets many of them to suck his metaphysical cock by praying and worshiping this. Genius!

 

Not having to pay is meaningful in conjunction with coming into being with the capacities we possess. We possess a hand me down biology. The gift of life or if you are in a bad mood, the imposition of life. On this level we cannot make independent choices. I say independent not to be confused with individual. To create progeny we require assistance. To be we require precursors. Our will can be identified as I said as wanting to maintain our temperate ease. It is on this basis that we make choices.

The phrase redundantly through the breath has many levels of meaning. Most applicable to this subject we make choices based on narrative at the level of life history, at the level of current personal assessment, and at the level of imagined potentials in contrast to the aforementioned. In this sense we build on the past but the past doesn't become the past until it happens in the present. We see only the past and imagine the future. To see a future consistent or different than the past we make choices in the present. Choices don't make or break experience but add value to it.
For example in eating we add caloric value.

Every breath reloads the capacity for self awareness, oxygenates the brain, and in each breath is a successive moment of determination.

We also need to look at the word plan on the one hand as a set of steps designed to achieve an end and on another as a topological accounting or map. Plan in terms of predetermination of events is not meaningful in conjunction with the idea of making individual choices.

 

memory in systems, or awareness seems intrinsic to the configuration of states, dependent upon the very states themselves and the previous states of the system.

 

Any decision on how to apply myself in time, in this moments becoming or state of being. Do I stand up or lay down in this moment. Do I eat now or later. Do I commit suicide or not. This applies to individual choice as distinct from fundamental will which is endowed.

In addition to personal reflection, the summation of all the mental phenomena of which you are aware, you exist in physical relationship.

 

But all of your independent choices are still dependent on every event that came before them.

If there is an event that has no effect on anything, then it doesn't exist in the universe of "our" events...there is no event (choice, or other physical event), that is not affected by every event before it. Nothing exists without a cause.

Your decision to stand or remain lying down is dependent on infinite events.

 

I just think, God is already on the other side. If God is looking out for us at all, that should be enough...that we're ok in the end. In the interim, it's all about intensity of experience. What is more intense than being a bunny rabbit being eaten alive?

Fear is much different for an animal. It is a pure, undiluted emotion. The rabbit can't even think to itself "This is wrong". It doesn't even know it is wrong. All it knows is the intensity of the experience.

I am a lover of animals, so I don't say this lightly. But I think where we see horror, the sum total of all this pain, suffering, and euphoria, may be something quite beautiful.

 

I stated there are no independent choices, there are individual choices. Choices are timely. As we are beings, events in real terms are this moments experiential condition. We are in a constant state of becoming. History is a narrative. The future we aspire to.