[POLL]Your religion? - Page 14

And how can you claim to know what is beneficial and what is not, when you cannot figure out the long term consequence of your actions and you don't really know what others want? According to your reasoning, it would be ok for me to kill half the worlds population, because by doing so I would benefit the group that is the other half, and I wouldn't even have to be right as long as my intensions were good.

But it would not benefit both groups so then it would be beneficial to everyone. As I said previously

You can easily measure it by weather or not it is beneficial for everyone, while an action might only directly benefit one person often at times it will indirectly benefit the group or community as a whole if it is a good action. An evil action will only directly benefit one person and have negative consequences directly and indirectly effect many of a community or group.

Maybe this didn't translate, I'd prefer to think that then to think you are trying to twist my words

On August 17 2012 15:09 FarmMylife wrote: Show nested quote + And how can you claim to know what is beneficial and what is not, when you cannot figure out the long term consequence of your actions and you don't really know what others want? According to your reasoning, it would be ok for me to kill half the worlds population, because by doing so I would benefit the group that is the other half, and I wouldn't even have to be right as long as my intensions were good. But it would not benefit both groups so then it would be beneficial to everyone. As I said previously   You can easily measure it by weather or not it is beneficial for everyone, while an action might only directly benefit one person often at times it will indirectly benefit the group or community as a whole if it is a good action. An evil action will only directly benefit one person and have negative consequences directly and indirectly effect many of a community or group. Maybe this didn't translate, I'd prefer to think that then to think you are trying to twist my words

Realisticly you don't know what might be beneficial to anyone other than yourself and that may not even be true, you can not know what others want you can only guess or assume. And maybe what they want isn't really beneficial to them, do you give them what they want or what they don't want but is beneficial to them?

And your other argument: There is an omniscient God, he starts the universe, thus he knows everything that is going to happen and every decision people will make. Then there can be no free will, only the illusion of free will is possible. Every decision people make and everything that happens is a direct consequence of the "first move".

On August 17 2012 15:16 Zorglub wrote: Show nested quote + On August 17 2012 15:09 FarmMylife wrote:   And how can you claim to know what is beneficial and what is not, when you cannot figure out the long term consequence of your actions and you don't really know what others want? According to your reasoning, it would be ok for me to kill half the worlds population, because by doing so I would benefit the group that is the other half, and I wouldn't even have to be right as long as my intensions were good. But it would not benefit both groups so then it would be beneficial to everyone. As I said previously   You can easily measure it by weather or not it is beneficial for everyone, while an action might only directly benefit one person often at times it will indirectly benefit the group or community as a whole if it is a good action. An evil action will only directly benefit one person and have negative consequences directly and indirectly effect many of a community or group. Maybe this didn't translate, I'd prefer to think that then to think you are trying to twist my words Realisticly you don't know what might be beneficial to anyone other than yourself and that may not even be true, you can not know what others want you can only guess or assume. And maybe what they want isn't really beneficial to them, do you give them what they want or what they don't want but is beneficial to them? And your other argument: There is an omniscient God, he starts the universe, thus he knows everything that is going to happen and every decision people will make. Then there can be no free will, only the illusion of free will is possible. Every decision people make and everything that happens is a direct consequence of the "first move".

Once again you misunderstood what I said, I said all possible futures. What I mean by all possible futures and a simple way of explaining it is, you come to a fork in the road going down road A will have one possible outcome, road B will have a separate outcome. Because God is omniscient he can then see the outcome of Road A and Road B simultaneously, and then because God gave you free will you can then decide for yourself what road to go down. Maybe its kinda similar to this idea

On August 17 2012 15:48 FarmMylife wrote: Show nested quote + On August 17 2012 15:16 Zorglub wrote:   On August 17 2012 15:09 FarmMylife wrote:   And how can you claim to know what is beneficial and what is not, when you cannot figure out the long term consequence of your actions and you don't really know what others want? According to your reasoning, it would be ok for me to kill half the worlds population, because by doing so I would benefit the group that is the other half, and I wouldn't even have to be right as long as my intensions were good. But it would not benefit both groups so then it would be beneficial to everyone. As I said previously   You can easily measure it by weather or not it is beneficial for everyone, while an action might only directly benefit one person often at times it will indirectly benefit the group or community as a whole if it is a good action. An evil action will only directly benefit one person and have negative consequences directly and indirectly effect many of a community or group. Maybe this didn't translate, I'd prefer to think that then to think you are trying to twist my words Realisticly you don't know what might be beneficial to anyone other than yourself and that may not even be true, you can not know what others want you can only guess or assume. And maybe what they want isn't really beneficial to them, do you give them what they want or what they don't want but is beneficial to them? And your other argument: There is an omniscient God, he starts the universe, thus he knows everything that is going to happen and every decision people will make. Then there can be no free will, only the illusion of free will is possible. Every decision people make and everything that happens is a direct consequence of the "first move". Once again you misunderstood what I said, I said all possible futures. What I mean by all possible futures and a simple way of explaining it is, you come to a fork in the road going down road A will have one possible outcome, road B will have a separate outcome. Because God is omniscient he can then see the outcome of Road A and Road B simultaneously, and then because God gave you free will you can then decide for yourself what road to go down. Maybe its kinda similar to this idea

But according to what we know, your decision will be based on something that has happened to you before you came to that choice. So what you think is "your choice" is not really a choice at all because you will choose based on your prior knowledge and experience, and that prior knowledge and experience will decide exactly what you choose, and that prior knowledge and experience is again itself based on even prior "choices" and experiences.

Even if you initially had some kind of free choice, that first decision would inevitably influence and decide every "choice" you ever had after the initial one, because your decisions would be based on your experience from the initial "choice".

Can you do something you would not have done? Logically you can not, because then you would not have done the other option anyway you just thought you would.

How do you determine what your going to eat. Past experince in my case eould tell me that I like to eat BBQ duck and white rice but i feel like eating salad and some pasta. Maybe I ll go to a resturant though and try something totaly new. How do your idea apply to what I will decide to eat today? I will be happily using my free will in deciding what I eat at around dinner time

On August 17 2012 17:37 FarmMylife wrote: How do you determine what your going to eat. Past experince in my case eould tell me that I like to eat BBQ duck and white rice but i feel like eating salad and some pasta. Maybe I ll go to a resturant though and try something totaly new. How do your idea apply to what I will decide to eat today? I will be happily using my free will in deciding what I eat at around dinner time

If you really want salad and pasta today, dont you think there is a reason as to why you would like that particular combination today? Maybe its because it is a long time since you got it last time, or maybe it reminds you of something pleasureable today.

How would you ever know what you like or would want to try, if you havent got any knowledge of how the food tastes and what is likely to taste good? You somehow magically get inspired to taste something new without any clue as to why you might like it?

Do you ever get a sudden urge to try something you never tried and something which you have no clue as to why you might like or how it would even taste?

I am a very adventorous eater, I ll eat almost anything if some one else is eating it and says try some its good. Maybe I want the pasta and salad because easy ti make but there are other things that i could make just as easy or easier. A combonation if experince will determine what i eat however some experinces will be given more consideration at diffirent times will making the same choice. Why are some twins so similar and others so diffirent from each other when the grow up in the same house.

You just said it, someone or something you experienced inspired you to try or do it. It is not your choice, it is a decision you make because of what you have experienced or thought prior to the event. You think you could have done something else, but you could not because your experience would always make you "decide" the exact same option in the same situation, you don't have any choice at all you just think you do.

Twins are similar or different in respect to how much similar or different things they individually have experienced or thought.

Okay, I don't want to have to kill myself so I will just stfu.

gl hf

edit: but plz people, show some respect for one another.

So lets say you live in a remote area and have never eaten fast food, nor do you have a t.v. or seen an adverisment. You find your self in a hurry and are standing in front of a McDonalds, Wendys and Burger King. With no prior experince of eating at any of them picking one to eat would be using free will. If you ate a Mcdonalds then a week later found yourself in the same situation, you could use your experience and say i have eaten at Mcdonalds and eat there again. You could then use the same experience to say I have already eaten at Mcdonalds I should eat at one if the other places. Now you are using a prior experience to pick from either Wendys or Burger King but your still making a blind pick and using free will

On August 17 2012 22:08 FarmMylife wrote: So lets say you live in a remote area and have never eaten fast food, nor do you have a t.v. or seen an adverisment. You find your self in a hurry and are standing in front of a McDonalds, Wendys and Burger King. With no prior experince of eating at any of them picking one to eat would be using free will. If you ate a Mcdonalds then a week later found yourself in the same situation, you could use your experience and say i have eaten at Mcdonalds and eat there again. You could then use the same experience to say I have already eaten at Mcdonalds I should eat at one if the other places. Now you are using a prior experience to pick from but your still making a blind pick and using free will

Something will make you choose to go exactly to either Wendys or Burger King, that something will also be a prior experience.

You think there is only one influence on what you will choose, but in reality there would be thousands, millions or even trillions of different inputs and memories which together would form your decision. From the fly that landed on your arm, to your back ache, your dry lips, the corner of the billboard in the background and memory of yesterdays tv show and what you had at breakfast that morning.

You just dont realize all the different influences.

Or you can let your emotions influence your free will, like people who don't like change. They don't like change because they use their free will to choose to be comfortable with what they know? Or do they not like change because of some psychologically based event, for example trauma, or indoctrination or anything caused by the persons environment? At what point does the event have more importance then your free will, so to speak ?
I would go further and say that free will is the synergy between genes, which is your blue print, and life experiences, aka your environment, which compromises every moment since 'birth'. Which makes free will, for me, a gradual concept, where the benefits of the environment (let's call that wisdom, knowledge) gives one more 'choices' to choose from. Where the choice is based more or less on if you apply coincious analysis, pulling knowledge you have stored to apply a benefit scale, going with the choice that you consider the most benifical. Or you do it blind and let your 'instincts' do the choosing. Which might result in low level analysis, for example, making a decision purely on color. Example would be choosing between an object that is shinny on one that is not. Majority would choose the shinny object, which can be argued is a predetermined choice made by our DNA.

Best I can explain it.

On August 18 2012 01:05 uiCk wrote: Or you can let your emotions influence your free will, like people who don't like change. They don't like change because they use their free will to choose to be comfortable with what they know? Or do they not like change because of some psychologically based event, for example trauma, or indoctrination or anything caused by the persons environment? At what point does the event have more importance then your free will, so to speak ? I would go further and say that free will is the synergy between genes, which is your blue print, and life experiences, aka your environment, which compromises every moment since 'birth'. Which makes free will, for me, a gradual concept, where the benefits of the environment (let's call that wisdom, knowledge) gives one more 'choices' to choose from. Best I can explain it.

Why would they not like change, or choose to be comfortable with what they know in the first place? No matter how many choices and how much wisdom you have got, exactly "something", perhaps the sum of all prior experiences compared to the choice, will make you choose exactly one and not the other. If emotions are not controlled by you, and they are able to make you change your decision, then you don't have any free will either.

Well zorglub, I'll give an extreme example, but do you think a rape victim is in control of their emotions a day after the event? Control, in this concept is i synonymous with choice. I don't see a difference. Also Read the updated part of my prior post.

As for people not liking change, I believe I already explained that in my post (usually has to do with wanting to be comfortable, which can be interpreted as being fear full of not being comfortable. And being fear fill is that your brain reminds you of the pain yo had when a prior decsion was one that brought pain. Good example would be someone who went through an event where his decision was based on trust rather then analyzing the event himself. Say the result ended negatively and brought lots of pain. Let's say this person goes through a certain timeframe without ever consciously revisiting the event, right after it happened, and comes with a similar situation, do you think he will choose to trust that new person, who let's say has the same level of trustability ?)

Pretty sure we are in agreement here, my original post was reply to farmlife

On August 18 2012 01:38 uiCk wrote: Well zorglub, I'll give an extreme example, but do you think a rape victim is in control of their emotions a day after the event? Control, in this concept is i synonymous with choice. I don't see a difference. Also Read the updated part of my prior post. As for people not liking change, I believe I already explained that in my post (usually has to do with wanting to be comfortable, which can be interpreted as being fear full of not being comfortable. And being fear fill is that your brain reminds you of the pain yo had when a prior decsion was one that brought pain. Good example would be someone who went through an event where his decision was based on trust rather then analyzing the event himself. Say the result ended negatively and brought lots of pain. Let's say this person goes through a certain timeframe without ever consciously revisiting the event, right after it happened, and comes with a similar situation, do you think he will choose to trust that new person, who let's say has the same level of trustability ?)

I don't really understand what your point is. As far as I can tell, everything you say would only confirm there is no free will and your actions, decitions and behaviour is rooted in past experiences, not dispute it.

On August 18 2012 01:05 uiCk wrote: Or you can let your emotions influence your free will, like people who don't like change. They don't like change because they use their free will to choose to be comfortable with what they know? Or do they not like change because of some psychologically based event, for example trauma, or indoctrination or anything caused by the persons environment? At what point does the event have more importance then your free will, so to speak ? I would go further and say that free will is the synergy between genes, which is your blue print, and life experiences, aka your environment, which compromises every moment since 'birth'. Which makes free will, for me, a gradual concept, where the benefits of the environment (let's call that wisdom, knowledge) gives one more 'choices' to choose from. Where the choice is based more or less on if you apply coincious analysis, pulling knowledge you have stored to apply a benefit scale, going with the choice that you consider the most benifical. Or you do it blind and let your 'instincts' do the choosing. Which might result in low level analysis, for example, making a decision purely on color. Example would be choosing between an object that is shinny on one that is not. Majority would choose the shinny object, which can be argued is a predetermined choice made by our DNA. Best I can explain it.

You see... I don't make any concious decision if I let my emotions, instinct, intuition, 6.th sense or whatever guide me and make my decision. That "choice" was also a "decision" I made because of past experiences. I dont have any choice, in the same situation, given the same circumstances I would always have done the exact same thing, and every time I would think I actually made a decision, but I didn't, my past experiences made that decision for me.

If we imagine that I have some kind of free choice, my decision to go for one or the other would be influenced by a million things that I didn't choose and can not control, so even in that situation, I hardly have any choice at all.

Even If I controlled the entire universe except one thing, and that one thing had an influence on my choice/decision, I would not have a truely free will because something "other" than me would be able to make the decision for me. In this scenario the impact on my free will would perhaps be small if the thing I didn't control only impacted a small percentage of my available choices.

Now imagine you control a human in an entire universe, imagine how many choices you truely decide for yourself and how many of them are influenced by something you do not control. You would not have any truely free choices at all, because everyone of your choices is influenced by something which you do not control.

If I can make you do something, like replying to my post on this website, then you don't have any truely free will because I made you write the answer and without me, you would not have made that decision. I made you take the choice and make the decision to write a reply, not you.

Zorglub you are one weird dude. Hindsight is 20/20.
Guys you can't just ask about situations what have happened because he can just cook up mumbo-jumbo about events leading to that point and if he does a decent enough job he "seems about right". What you need to ask about is either the first event, the present or what is the purpose of this domino effect like thingy he is praising. So here we go again !

What influenced the first event? Oh, nothing? Was it influenced by jack shit? Great !
I, in the present, have free will to do whatever the fuck i want. I have an infinite amount of choices to pick from. I'll write down 100 things to do and then e-mail pokerstars to use their random number generator to pick between 1-100 and do what is on my list in that number. Let's see you tackle the RNG of stars.

Even in highschool philosophy class this was the easiest shit to debunk, get real.

You sound like Floofy, Tutz and d_dumbas_s. Closed minded fool babbling about your newly found jedi mind trick to impress your dumb friends. Get real.

On August 18 2012 03:12 Zorglub wrote: If I can make you do something, like replying to my post on this website, then you don't have any truely free will because I made you write the answer and without me, you would not have made that decision. I made you take the choice and make the decision to write a reply, not you.

I see what you did there.


For the ones who's brains don't work it is a win win situation because he is influencing whatever the other guy does. This is despicable and pathetic.

On August 18 2012 06:43 cariadon wrote: Zorglub you are one weird dude. Hindsight is 20/20. Guys you can't just ask about situations what have happened because he can just cook up mumbo-jumbo about events leading to that point and if he does a decent enough job he "seems about right". What you need to ask about is either the first event, the present or what is the purpose of this domino effect like thingy he is praising. So here we go again ! What influenced the first event? Oh, nothing? Was it influenced by jack shit? Great ! I, in the present, have free will to do whatever the fuck i want. I have an infinite amount of choices to pick from. I'll write down 100 things to do and then e-mail pokerstars to use their random number generator to pick between 1-100 and do what is on my list in that number. Let's see you tackle the RNG of stars. Even in highschool philosophy class this was the easiest shit to debunk, get real. You sound like Floofy, Tutz and d_dumbas_s. Closed minded fool babbling about your newly found jedi mind trick to impress your dumb friends. Get real.

Ok and how does the "random" number generator come up with a "random" number? Was it told to do so by some lines of code or does it find out all by itself? If you let pokerstars RNG guide your life, then something made you do that in the first place.

If you have an infinite amount of choices would you be so kind as to move the sun over my place so it never becomes night and about 25-28 degrees all year round? And please move some galaxies closer to us. Defeat gravity and the numerous amounts of natural and manmade laws you are bound to follow, fall in love with a guy even though you are straight. Stop your heart for 20 seconds. Or just stop causation or prove it doesn't happen, then I would be very impressed. You sir are the master of the universe doing jedi mind tricks, not me.

You tell me how the first event happened, the only option I can see is an infinite existence where a God/spirit/overmind always has existed and he generated the whole scenario. With current science you will encounter the exact same problem, what started the big bang and where should the matter come from if it wasn't here always?