Very simple and very cool analogy

[Dante]

Dante... since it is impossible to re-create an event exactly... does this not give credibility to randomness? The coin wont even be exactly the same ....as the electrons within its atoms will be shifted to some other position.

[ant222]

Then why do people go to hell? If everyone passed, there would be no need for it.

The fact that they can pass doesn't imply they will pass. For example: you can pass some exam if you work hard for a long time, but you won't pass it if you don't make appropriate efforts. That is what I meant by the possibility to pass.

Not necessarily. This place could have been life just waiting to happen. Or if not, then the chances were low but by no means impossible.

That is how I said: low.

In other words, life makes low chemical entropy but high physical entropy? If that were our purpose, why aren't we made of crystals?

I am not sure it is correct to divide enthropy into chemical and physical. I just meant that living organizms have high-ordered structure (organization), and that their activity causes a decrease of enthropy.

I've made a mistake in the text:

[Spectral Paladin]

I knew it, I knew someone would say this. It's a cheap retort that's wheeled out when there aren't any better answers.

No it's a sensible conclusion. If God is immaterial as he is supposed to be, then the reason why our actions are predetermined does not apply to him.

Ante, even if quantum physics prove that there is indeterminism on all levels, that doesn't mean free will, it means random events (this time in the true sense of the word).

[ant222]

No it's a sensible conclusion. If God is immaterial as he is supposed to be, then the reason why our actions are predetermined does not apply to him.

I have written why. Why didn't you quote my reply and comment on it? Here you just repeat what you wrote above, and what I replied to.

Well, I can repeat myself too, in other words. God is part of the universe. Let's assume God's behavior is indeterministic, while the rest of the world is deterministic.

By the definition of determinism, about the latter part we can say that given the state of it by moment T, we can calculate (if we had the state and sufficient calculating power) the state at any moment T + delta(t), delta(T)>0.

That doesn't apply to God. We can't precalculate His behavior. But we know that God does have an effect on the rest of the universe and does change its state.

Since we know the future of the deterministic part of the universe, then either God does't affect it, or He affect it in a deterministic way. According to you, none of these is correct. So, it seems that it is you who is really incorrect.

And I do not like the word immaterial. Isn't everything that exists material? Soul is invisible to most of people but it is no way immaterial.

Ante, even if quantum physics prove that there is indeterminism on all levels, that doesn't mean free will, it means random events (this time in the true sense of the word).

Ante? Whom can he be?

[(Ant222 - 222 + Dante) div 2] = Ante? No. It equals Ant, which is correct.

As to me, I don't like quantum physics. Though I mentioned it as a probable cause of indeterminism, not free will. But I agree with this your quotation.

Free will drags indeterminism, but not the other way round. But I am not sure what is meant by randomness in quantum physics.

[Spectral Paladin]

Sorry I meant you by ante.

Since we know the future of the deterministic part of the universe, then either God does't affect it, or He affect it in a deterministic way. According to you, none of these is correct. So, it seems that it is you who is really incorrect.

I did say that he won't be affecting it in a deterministic way. Therefore, if the universe is deterministic then God does not affect it.

Soul? Not immaterial? Out of what materials is it made then?

[GUNWOUNDS]

@ Dante -->

Think about this for a minute.

God makes a social universe in which if you intentionally commit an act of violence upon someone, then the law courts visit some kind of judgment/violence back upon your head. You are held accountable for your actions, and in this way, responsible social communities can be constructed. Boundaries and specific behavior expectations are shared by members of the community in such a way as to create an "operational unity" to (hopefully) facilitate "interpersonal unity" and growth as a culture.

Let's say that I am a member of a tribe, and that we all meet together and decide that it would be against our best interests to allow members of the tribe to sneak up on other members of the tribe while they are asleep and kill them (in order to take all their possessions). And then we decide that if someone does that crime, they will subsequently be whipped and executed in front of the others, to reinforce the seriousness of the need for trustworthy relationships among the tribe.

Now let's say I commit such a crime--I kill my neighbor and move all his belongings into my hut. When I am found out, the tribe's tribunal finds me guilty and sentences me to death for my crime. I weep and wail, beg and plead, and eventually (somehow) convince them to spare my life and that I will never, ever violate the law of tribe and betray the community trust again.

When I accept their pardon for my crime, would it make any sense for me to discount that because "they pardoned me from something they set up in the first place"?! Of course not--the rules that were "set up" were for good. That I was sentenced to punishment was not the "fault" of the rules, but of my disregard for them. I cannot shift the blame to some "system" (or worse, to the system creator) when it simply operates efficiently! Moral codes imply consequences of various types, for positive and negative respect for those codes. Consequences for destructive behavior are simply "responses" of the "necessary-for-good" law, provoked by my actions or inaction. Most of the law codes in the cultures of the world are not arbitrary--they exist in order to facilitate the growth and health of a community. While it is true that God "set up" a system of actions/consequences (and laws that express these in warning fashion), this system is healthy and embedded in reality (e.g., 'do not walk off a cliff--you will likely plunge to your death'), and certainly not arbitrary in the least.

Blame shifting, of course, was part of the original response of Adam and Eve. God expected Adam and Eve to trust His warning (and to grow thereby). But when they failed, the man immediately blamed the woman, and then God ("The woman YOU gave me, gave me the fruit to eat and I ate") and the woman blamed the Serpent ("The serpent tricked me, and I ate"). The Serpent gave no excuse, since his act was apparently one of deliberate destruction. (Remember, Jesus called him a "murderer" from the beginning, in John 8.44.)

A mother who loves her son can still turn him into the authorities to be punished for raping or murdering someone.

[Dante]

The fact that they can pass doesn't imply they will pass. For example: you can pass some exam if you work hard for a long time, but you won't pass it if you don't make appropriate efforts. That is what I meant by the possibility to pass.

If god sets you an exam and you fail, then you couldn't have passed. That's how predeeterminism works.

I am not sure it is correct to divide enthropy into chemical and physical. I just meant that living organizms have high-ordered structure (organization), and that their activity causes a decrease of enthropy.

I've made a mistake in the text:

[Spectral Paladin]

How can god be immaterial if he has an image to make us into? And how does being physically insubstantial free one from the rules of predetermination?

I won't go to great depth but basically the reason our actions would be predetermined is that we and our environment is made out of molecules which interact in a certain way no matter what. Therefore someone immaterial is free of predetermination (but he can't interact with a predetermined universe).

Now about a circular universe or the ending of one being the start of another...it can't be without a first cause. An infinite series of universes is an event itself which needs a cause. The loop is an event itself which needs a cause. You can't have predeterminism without an exception - the first cause.

[Dante]

If immaterial things were exempt from predetermination, then they would also be exempt from causality. Effect would not follow cause. Creating something would not cause it to be created. You could drop something and it would never be dropped. Causality is the only thing that is certain, no matter what the circumstances. A god would not be an exception.

Besides which, if god in the christian sense existed then there are many documented instances of 'him' interacting with the universe. Moses, Caine, Jesus, etc. So even if cauality would not apply in theory, it certainly would in practice.

Loops have no beginning or end. That's kind of what makes them loops. What the nature of this first cause was, if there was one, is not important.

[ant222]

If god sets you an exam and you fail, then you couldn't have passed. That's how predeeterminism works.

But indeterminism works the other way round... Do you agree that in determinism the Christian God is impossible?

How is a moving system more orderly than static minerals?

Well, it is quite logical. In order for an organism to properly function it must meet very strict limitations. The number of "working" organisms with respect to the number of all organisms of the same complexity is near zero. Thus, "working" organisms are really ordened to a very high extent.

Of course, a "moving system" can be water. In this case its entropy is higher than of crystals.

As to animals' entropy, you can make a search in google and make certain of your incorrectness. Here are some quotetions I found:

http://www.ceri.com/ed-evol.htm:

Living systems are different than a cup of hot coffee. They maintain a low-entropy state (a high degree of orderliness) over long periods of time. At the organismic level, the time frames are on the order of a lifespan. At the species level, the time frames span millions to billions of years.

Living systems can do this because they are open systems. They gather raw materials from the environment, build self-replicating structures and excrete waste products. Although life is anti-entropic, it does not violate the laws of thermodynamics. While entropy is decreased within the organism, entropy is increased to a greater degree outside of the organism. The net entropy effect is positive, in full agreement with thermodynamic principles.

The localized state of increased order (decreased entropy) within living organisms requires energy to maintain. By selectively absorbing materials with high energy potential and excreting materials with low energy potential, energy can be gathered from the environment to maintain the structure and order of the living system.

http://www.digital-recordings.com/publ/pdfs/life_on_earth.pdf

What remains to be answered is how these complex systems (organisms) were first formed and how they maintain their presence on Earth. It is obvious that the entropy of the Biosphere is decreasing continuously (at least it was before the industrial revolution and deforestation).This means that the matter involved in the formation of the Biosphere is getting more and more organized (less random).

In the 1944 the Nobel prize winning physicist, Erwin Schrodinger wrote up his thoughts about living systems in a book titled, What is life?.

He observed that:

living systems tend to preserve their structure over time. The Laws of thermodynamics only permit average entropy to increase, yet biological systems can do the reverse (maintain order). Tornadoes are similar order-maintaining phenomena. Schrodinger thought that perhaps living systems maintained orde by 'consuming order' from the surrounding environment.

the molecular structure of living matter is far more complex than inorganic.

complexity is somewhat proportional to size. At microscopic scales randomness makes it difficult to develope elaborate mechanisms.

And so on. I hope that now you will reconsider.

At a Russian site I found an interesting comparsion: the entropy of a living organism is comparable to that of a piece of rock of the same mass. Though I don't know how they calculated it...

There is no 'most-knowing,' there is all knowing. Everything. Future included.

Knowledge about the future in indeterminism implies the knowledge of all the possible alternatives of the future. One can know information. But indeterministic universe simply doesn't have definite information about the future. There is nothing to know, hence, it can't be known.

You persist in uderstanding 'allmighty' and 'allknowing' literally, while knowing this leads evident to logical paradoxes. So, I propose to understand them within the limits of the universe God created. Since He doesn't want to destroy this universe or change it's fundamental properties, He won't do paradoxial things. Of course, He does affect universe, but in a non-destructive way.

Furthermore, the indetermined God created indetermined (having free will) people:

[Spectral Paladin]

If immaterial things were exempt from predetermination, then they would also be exempt from causality. Effect would not follow cause. Creating something would not cause it to be created. You could drop something and it would never be dropped. Causality is the only thing that is certain, no matter what the circumstances. A god would not be an exception.

Besides which, if god in the christian sense existed then there are many documented instances of 'him' interacting with the universe. Moses, Caine, Jesus, etc. So even if cauality would not apply in theory, it certainly would in practice.

Assuming we live in a predetermined universe we have no free will, because the place our very thoughts come from, the brain, would be subject to predeterminism. This would not apply to the thinking of a creature without substance. That would not prevent its actions from having an effect.

Predeterminism and christianity are not compatible.

Loops have no beginning or end. That's kind of what makes them loops. What the nature of this first cause was, if there was one, is not important.

Still something must have caused that loop.

Is soul as immaterial as number 3, as love, as taste, as indeterminism, as aetherodynamics? Or is it a bit more material than the latters, but much less than what you call "material"? Thus, being material is not a boolean variable...

Tell me, what do you call material?

[Dante]

Assuming we live in a predetermined universe we have no free will, because the place our very thoughts come from, the brain, would be subject to predeterminism. This would not apply to the thinking of a creature without substance. That would not prevent its actions from having an effect.

Why wouldn't causality apply to a creature without substance, even assuming that this is not self contrdictory?

Predeterminism and christianity are not compatible.

Good thing I believe in the former and not the latter then, isn't it?

Still something must have caused that loop.

I answered that in the very segment you quoted.

Other replies can wait until I can be bothered sifting through them. I tend to get bored with arguments like this quite quickly nowadays.

[Spectral Paladin]

No you were just toying with words again. A loop has no beginning and no end - of course it doesn't. But it was created (has your computer ever frozen because of an infinite loop? Something caused that).

Why wouldn't causality apply to a creature without substance, even assuming that this is not self contrdictory?

Causality wouldn't apply to the creature's thinking. It would apply to its actions.

[Dante]

There is no way, even in relation to thinking, that causality does not apply. It is one of the few things that we can be certain of.

And do pay attention to what I wrote. Loops have no beginning or end. That's kind of what makes them loops. What the nature of this first cause was, if there was one, is not important.

[Spectral Paladin]

I didn't take that as an answer because I don't see it as one. I didn't say it's important; I merely pointed out that there has to be a first cause.

There is no way, even in relation to thinking, that causality does not apply. It is one of the few things that we can be certain of.

You go too far. We can be certain? Bring on the facts that make us certain then, I am eager to read them.

[Dante]

Can you suggest a viable alternative?

Whether there has to be a first cause or not is not important. I will not debate this point further.

[Spectral Paladin]

Then we are not certain.

As for the word random, here is a very good example: when playing a card game, the cards are dealt "randomly". Now everyone with common sense knows that when the deck was shuffled the cards ended in a certain order, unintended, unknown. The word random is used to facilitate communication.

Calling a chicken a duck or saying normalcy are obvious mistakes on your part.

[Faetarius]

I agree with Dante that there is no such state as something being truly "random". If we knew every facter we could calculate the outcome with a 100% success rate (excluding errors). However we, as humans, use the word random to explain something that we cannot predict and so *seems* random to us. This is a technical misusage, but allows easy understanding. Wrongful use of words is just part of everyday speech. The point is merely a verbal nuance.

[Dante]

As for the word random, here is a very good example: when playing a card game, the cards are dealt "randomly". Now everyone with common sense knows that when the deck was shuffled the cards ended in a certain order, unintended, unknown. The word random is used to facilitate communication.

I don't care if it's a word used to facilitate communication, so are the words 'good,' 'down' and 'humane.' Just because there is a word for a concept, does not mean that it exists objectively. The order of the cards is unknown, yes. It is without pattern and seems random but is in fact determined by preceding factors.

Calling a chicken a duck or saying normalcy are obvious mistakes on your part.

Either you are misinterpreting what I say or you're just being dense. Either way I don't need to counter.

Thank you, Faetarius. Though I would say that the point is a bit more than mere semantics. It's involved, yes, but there's more to it than that...

[Spectral Paladin]

But the matter is not objective. We see it as random, we call it random.

Nay, not misinterpreting. Your part = the people who do it.

[Dante]

But the matter is not objective. We see it as random, we call it random.

We are making up a word for a concept that does not exist. Much like legality.

Nay, not misinterpreting. Your part = the people who do it.

That just doesn't make any sense.

[Spectral Paladin]

roflmao

[Faetarius]

But that's what language is for! Making up words that have no real use but sound good! :P *ahem*

[Dante]

I'm trying to talk about reality, not language. Random exists in language, and so do chairs. But random does not exist in reality. Chairs do. Am I getting through here?

[Faetarius]

Yea, I understand what you mean, and I must say I agree. Just trying to lighten the mood a bit.