Where my world view diverges from most

Do you at least believe in spiritual choice, if not physical choice?

(That is all your physical actions, even if you're not truly deciding them, may center around your spiritual choices)

 

Everything is deterministic scientifically speaking but not necessarily planned by a greater being, God.

The consciousness might be a bridge between two existences that rarely interact. This may allow for some deviation, random variables, or choice in this deterministic reality.

While we have a lot more to go in understanding the consciousness, I am willing to accept there is choice because I am biologically programmed to live and my concept of living is too entwined with personal choice.

For some reason, all the beings that evolved with less concern for living tend to die off and not propagate. Maybe if there is someone like that they would be able to believe there is no such thing as choice.

 

As far as I can tell there is no chance, no luck, just hard determinism. Choice is simply going with the dominant desire of the moment and desire spawn from the subconscious thus is absent of our will. The illusion of choice is just that, an illusion. Flip a coin and how it lands is determined by laws of physics that take into account things such as force, trajectory, rotation, weight of coin, where the center of gravity is in the coin and the surface the coin lands on, humidity, temperature among other factors to be considered. The universe is bound by cause and effect.

 

But you can't calculate the flip of the coin and how it lands, in the real world. Put $100 on heads or a $100 on tails and you'll soon find out that chance exists. Go into a bar and maybe you meet the love of your life or a murderer. Choice is determined by random factors too, so a choice made in one set of circumstances maybe different from the same choice made when you're drunk or high or angry.

Radioactivity is random. You never know which atom will go bang, or when. Is the cat dead or alive? You don't know unless you go and look.

 

No effect can transcend its cause, either temporally, or in any other way. If person transcends non-person, person cannot be the effect of non-person.

 

Currently lacking the ability to predict does not imply that will always be the case. Roll a die a million times and a clear predictable pattern will emerge. Roll a die once and we cannot predict how the die will land yet that does not prove that all is left to chance. Perhaps when quantum computing is a thing we will then have the power to calculate such complex processes. Just because something appears random does not mean it is. I believe that everything is determined by rules, and we do not currently know all the rules thus we cannot rule out that there may be no such thing as chance or luck, nor can we rule out that there is. Is the cat alive or dead? Whatever the answer, it is based upon rules that we do not fully understand as there are many unanswered questions in quantum mechanics.

 

Either that or it is flawed by the Fall.

 

Which of the real Ten Commandments does the Adam & Eve story illustrate?

 

Why do you need religion to tell you that? Is there not will behind the creation of a beehive, a bird's nest or a beaver dam?

 

So, if you rolled a pair of dice, do you think they would be weighted?

 

For the sake of clarity, are you making the argument of determinism? That the outcome of a thrown die is determined by its throw? Or some grander interpretation of chance? Do you include quantum effects in this, or is it more of a categorical statement?

I assume you're talking roughly about evolution, at that point, it becomes important exactly where you draw the line between some of those concepts. I'm a bit suspicious of words like "creative force", when evolution is closer to rearranging things rather than creating them.

 

isn't this the object of life or even non-life? to exceed the bounds of what came before would seem to be a natural phenomenon. matter combines, breaks down and recombines. energy alters itself and its environment. whether these are instances of "transcendence" is strictly a value judgement based solely on our limited understanding of existence. does that "person" actually transcend the "non-person" or is it merely an alteration of form?

i'll admit it is tempting to extrapolate the meaning behind the creation of the universe from such examples, but this is a very fauna-centric view. where is the will behind water vapor forming clouds, the formation of majestic geological features or the intricate design of a rose? just because man or any other animal may create, through instinct or intellect or will, does not mean that every creation must follow suit. it's easy to anthropomorphize what we see and attribute human meaning to the cosmos, but to do so would tend to indicate that mankind is the basis of the universe and this is a bit of hubris in which i refuse to indulge.
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I contend that the material world, and that which emanates from it, is a cause and effect sequence. It is a process. It is a prescribed sequence of changes. Indeed, it is defined by its changes. It is also it's subjectivity to change that leaves me to believe that it is subject; in other words, it is contingent in its being.

Evolution is not "rearranging things". Evolution is not unique recombination of the preexisting. Evolution contends to produce the truly unique.

And please, don't elude to natural selection playing any part in producing that which is truly unique. Natural selection is nothing more or less than extinction by degrees; it adds nothing to what it chooses from.

Evolution is based on the idea that chance mutations accumulate into ever increasing functional complexity.
Chance cannot play such a role anymore than something can come from nothing.

 

I watched part of a documentary that marveled over how peoples who never even knew of each other's existence all built pyramid like structures all over the world. I thought, "well maybe they all been exposed to a pile of rocks". The pyramid shape is effectively the default shape of a pile of rocks. Now, if they all built seven pointed star shaped structures with little domes on top, I'd be impressed.

The odds of more than one person discovering the obvious, quite independently from each other, is surprisingly high.

 

So no one is accountable?

 

Good question!!!
In relationships between equals, one's responsibility for them self extends from their authority over them self.
In relationships between sovereigns and subjects, such as between an author and that author's novel characters,
the subject's responsibility to the sovereign extends from the sovereign's authority over the subject.

 

Evolution is the interpretation of information. The information contained in simple organisms contains every bit of information to form more complex organisms. It is just the information expressed that makes the organism " complex". And getting something from nothing is only possible if something and no thing are the same thing. "In the beginning was the Word". The Word was complete silence. .... The loudest thing you never heard.

 

So God didnt roll dice?

Even being agnostic I would bet on an intelligence being at play when it comes to the universe and this thing called life and especially consciousness.

The odds are just impossibly high for chance to be the truth.

Of course the atheist must believe in pure chance as that is his only option since he denies intelligencr existing.

Science that is grounded on the assumption that matter is fundamental isnt concernef with looking for intelligence ssince mmatter is assumed to be fundamental discards god or intelligence. So of course they would never look for that!

When an atheist says there is no evidence for intelligence they always leave out that science isnt looking for intelligence! Haha

If you dont look of course if it exists you will never find any!

 

alluding a bit to the notion of predetermination

"A man's heart plans his way, But the Lord directs his steps."
Proverbs 16:9

 

The fact that you don't know until you open the box doesn't change anything. That entire experiment was basically claiming that just because a person doesn't know something means both are true. No, if the cat is dead before the box is opened, it's dead. The fact that the person who put the cat into the box doesn't know it's dead yet, doesn't change a thing. The experiment was based on a false sense of importance, and people have any real effect on space or time.

 

Everything is chance. There is no "plan" for the universe.