Why Do the Religious Reject Science While Embracing the Impossible?

[henry quirk]

Henry, quoting Shakespeare doesn’t magically make your argument valid.

Mike, that wasn't about my argument (I haven't made one). No, it was a statement of fact: you don't know everything.

But, let's test that...

You say: The deterministic nature of reality has been demonstrated in everything from physics to neuroscience and cognitions are not immaterial; they are the result of physical processes in the brain

Please, provide your evidence. Hell, throw in your proof if you got it.

Oh, and while you're at it: post your definitive definition for determinism. Mebbe throw in your definitions for libertarian free will and compatibilism too.

[BigMike]

Henry, quoting Shakespeare doesn’t magically make your argument valid.

Mike, that wasn't about my argument (I haven't made one). No, it was a statement of fact: you don't know everything.

But, let's test that...

You say: The deterministic nature of reality has been demonstrated in everything from physics to neuroscience and cognitions are not immaterial; they are the result of physical processes in the brain

Please, provide your evidence. Hell, throw in your proof if you got it.

Oh, and while you're at it: post your definitive definition for determinism. Mebbe throw in your definitions for libertarian free will and compatibilism too.

Henry, let’s cut through the noise and deal with your challenge head-on. The deterministic nature of reality is grounded in the fundamental laws of physics. Every change in a physical system is the result of prior interactions dictated by forces like gravity, electromagnetism, and the nuclear forces. Conservation laws, like those governing energy and momentum, ensure that nothing changes state without cause. Neuroscience reinforces this: the brain operates entirely through physical processes. Neurons fire, neurotransmitters are exchanged, and electrical signals propagate—all measurable, all governed by physical laws, and all determined by prior causes.

Cognitions, far from being immaterial, are the result of these physical processes. Functional MRI studies clearly show how thoughts, decisions, and emotions correspond to specific patterns of brain activity. Benjamin Libet’s famous experiments demonstrated that neural activity begins before conscious awareness of decisions, meaning that what you perceive as “will” is not the originator of action but the product of a deterministic chain of events in the brain.

As for definitions, determinism means that all events, including human actions, are governed by preceding causes. Libertarian free will posits that choices can be made independent of those causes, which flies in the face of both physics and neuroscience. Compatibilism tries to reconcile free will with determinism by redefining free will as acting according to one’s internal motivations, even if those motivations are determined.

Now let’s flip this around. If you want to argue that cognition is immaterial, you need to explain how something non-physical can interact with physical matter in the brain without violating fundamental conservation laws. You need to show how this supposed immaterial “will” initiates any change without itself being subject to causation or external forces. If you can’t, then your resistance to determinism is just baseless rhetoric. It’s time to stop quoting Shakespeare and start dealing with reality.

[accelafine]

Henry, quoting Shakespeare doesn’t magically make your argument valid.

Mike, that wasn't about my argument (I haven't made one). No, it was a statement of fact: you don't know everything.

But, let's test that...

You say: The deterministic nature of reality has been demonstrated in everything from physics to neuroscience and cognitions are not immaterial; they are the result of physical processes in the brain

Please, provide your evidence. Hell, throw in your proof if you got it.

Oh, and while you're at it: post your definitive definition for determinism. Mebbe throw in your definitions for libertarian free will and compatibilism too.

To be fair you both think you know everything. I don't recall you ever conceding that you might be wrong in your own claims that we are 'utterly free' or providing evidence or a definition for 'utterly free' (apart from some endlessly repeated airy fairy hogwash about 'God, liberty and the American way blah blah').

[Immanuel Can]

Cognitions are not immaterial; they are the result of physical processes in the brain—neural activity governed by the laws of physics.

It's actually you that's missing the point. That cognitions issue in physical symptoms, you can prove; that the physical symtoms cause the cognitions, you cannot prove, and cannot even make plausible.

[BigMike]

Cognitions are not immaterial; they are the result of physical processes in the brain—neural activity governed by the laws of physics.

It's actually you that's missing the point. That cognitions issue in physical symptoms, you can prove; that the physical symtoms cause the cognitions, you cannot prove, and cannot even make plausible.

Immanuel, your assertion is absurd. Cognitions don’t “issue in” physical symptoms as if they exist independently of the brain; they are the result of physical processes in the brain. Neurons firing, synaptic activity, and neurotransmitter exchanges are cognition. You’re attempting to separate the two as though cognition is some ethereal entity floating above the brain, which is pure fantasy.

If you claim that physical processes don’t cause cognition, the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate how this alleged immaterial cognition interacts with the physical brain. How does it trigger neural activity without violating the laws of physics? How does it bypass conservation laws? If it has no mass or charge, it cannot exert force or change the state of a physical system. That’s basic physics.

Your position isn’t just implausible—it’s incoherent. Until you provide evidence or a mechanism for how immaterial cognition could exist and influence the physical world, your argument is nothing more than empty hand-waving. Determinism stands on the solid ground of science; your position crumbles under scrutiny.

[attofishpi]

Allow me to comprehend THE most important consideration I have of U and your belief.

Is it your belief that atto posting this question was ALWAYS going to exist, even if the Big Bang had all the identical parameters again (a second IDENTICAL instance of the Big Bang) ...that this question I am posing would always be posed

Yes, Atto, that’s exactly what I’m saying. If the Big Bang, with all its initial conditions, were to play out again with identical parameters, then everything—including you posting this question—would unfold in precisely the same way. Why? Because the universe operates under deterministic laws. Every atom, every particle, every force is governed by causality. Given identical starting conditions, the same chain of events would inevitably lead to this moment, including your decision to pose this question.

Well, Mike..here's my 'gotcha' moment --> earlier you stated from the Boony's Room thought experiment that the two identical instances of David Boon would diverge in their actions after some time..to which I agreed.

BigMike: "If they were truly identical—right down to the atomic level and beyond—then yes, their behavior would align perfectly. At least for a time, until random quantum effects begin to accumulate, eventually influencing their divergence."

So, there you admit that where minds are concerned hard determinism falls apart. That actually, you'd have to admit in that my question above is extremely unlikely to occur again within an identical Big Bang scenario. Since where the conscious mind decision making process occurs, quantum indeterminacy has such a profound affect as to refute any argument hard determinism attempts to make.

Given ALL the same conditions of the Big Bang, this planet Earth is extremely likely to exist.
However, since human conscious minds exist, this planet would never look identical again if the identical Big Bang were repeated.
Y ? ..because conscious human minds with their decision making "will" are affected by quantum indeterminacy within their decision making process...hence humanity will never look the same again!

[Alexiev]

Alexiev, your comment is an embarrassing display of intellectual laziness and an unwillingness to engage seriously with the topic at hand. Dragging out tired, irrelevant comparisons to gulags and totalitarianism shows that you’ve completely missed the point—or worse, you’re deliberately avoiding it.

Justice in a deterministic framework is about reducing harm and addressing causes, not punishing people for some mythical "desert" based on free will. Your clinging to the concept of "desert" is nothing more than clinging to a primitive, retributive mindset that has repeatedly proven ineffective and unjust.

As for your nonsensical jab about "passing the salt," it’s just another tired attempt to derail the conversation. Saying "thank you" isn’t irrational in a deterministic world; it’s a social behavior shaped by cause and effect, reinforcing cooperative relationships. If you can’t grasp that, maybe you should spend less time making irrelevant quips and more time trying to understand the actual argument being made. Your resistance to reason is wearing thin.

Perhaps you have never read or seen Minority Report.. As certain as it is that Tom Cruise should be punished whether or not he has committed a crime, I cannot agree such punishment should be a general principle.

Of course if there is no freedom, it doesn't really matter if illusory freedom is restricted.

Let me know when you can predict the future perfectly. Until then we must muddle through the best we can. What possible difference does it make if we could predict the future given perfect knowledge? Perhaps you are right. Perhaps an omniscient God sees the future. But given our limited knowledge we -- like the gambler who cannot see the backs of the cards -- must admit our ignorance and work with what little knowledge we have.

[henry quirk]

Functional MRI studies clearly show how thoughts, decisions, and emotions correspond to specific patterns of brain activity

Yes, the brain does things when a person thinks. Still, doesn't quite get you to mind is brain activity. Not much of an evidence. Here's a counter...

Epilepsy surgery pioneer Dr. Wilder Penfield, asked why are there no intellectual seizures?

Epileptic seizures can be experienced in a variety of ways: convulsions of the whole body, slight twitching of a muscle, compulsive memories, emotions, perceptions of smells or flashes of light, complex motor behaviors such as chewing or laughing or even walking, or subtle moments of inattention.

But seizures never have intellectual content. There are no intellectual seizures, which is odd, given that large regions of the brain are presumed by neuroscientists to serve intellectual thought. It is all the more remarkable when we consider that seizures commonly originate in these intellectual areas of the brain. Yet the outcome is never intellectual seizures.

An intellectual seizure would be a seizure that caused abstract thought, such as logic, or reasoning, or mathematics. People never have, for example, mathematics seizures—seizures in which they involuntarily do calculus or arithmetic.

Penfield concluded, quite reasonably, that this was because intellectual thought didn’t come from the brain. Intellectual thought (Penfield called it mind) is an immaterial human power. There is more to the mind than matter. Penfield began his career as a materialist. He ended it as a convinced dualist. There was, he noted, an aspect of mental function that wasn’t a material product of brain chemistry. -drawn from the Mind Matters site

Benjamin Libet’s famous experiments demonstrated that neural activity begins before conscious awareness of decisions, meaning that what you perceive as “will” is not the originator of action but the product of a deterministic chain of events in the brain.

Certainly the existence of the brain wave that occurs before a decision is made has been shown many times. And in fact Libet wasn’t the first one to show that. It was called the “readiness potential” [Bereitschaftspotential] and it was shown a couple of decades earlier by some German researchers. Libet was the first person to look at it in the kind of detail he did but it was known that there was a potential in the brain that happened before decisions were made by about half a second. -from Mind Matters

And what did Libet have to say?

Determinism has on the whole, worked well for the physical observable world. That has led many scientists and philosophers to regard any deviation from determinism as absurd and witless, and unworthy of consideration. But there has been no evidence, or even a proposed experimental test design, that definitively or convincingly demonstrates the validity of natural law determinism as the mediator or instrument of free will. -BENJAMIN LIBET DO WE HAVE FREE WILL?JOURNAL OF CONSCIOUSNESS STUDIES, 6, NO. 8–9, 1999, PP. 47–57
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/ ... ill%3F.pdf

determinism means that all events, including human actions, are governed by preceding causes.

Yes. Full stop.

Determinism is the philosophical belief that all events, including human actions and decisions, are determined by preceding events and natural laws, meaning that everything that happens is causally inevitable. This view often raises questions about the existence of free will, as it suggests that choices are not truly free but rather the result of prior causes.

Causally inevitable, Mike. Everything. Including your fine ideas about reforming the justice system. As B. Obama said you didn't build that! In context, if determinism is true: you didn't think that!

Libertarian free will posits that choices can be made independent of those causes

Yes.

Libertarian free will is the philosophical view that individuals have the ability to make choices that are not determined by prior causes, meaning that free will and moral responsibility are incompatible with a deterministic universe. It asserts that agents can choose between different possible actions, emphasizing the importance of personal agency in decision-making.

Compatibilism tries to reconcile free will with determinism by redefining free will as acting according to one’s internal motivations, even if those motivations are determined.

No, not exactly, though redefining free will to make it seem you can still choose is exactly what you do.

Compatibilism is the philosophical view that free will and determinism are compatible, meaning that it is possible to believe in both without contradiction. It suggests that individuals can be held morally responsible for their actions even if those actions are determined by prior causes.

You would be better served, though no more coherent, if you just fess up and admit you are a compatibilist.

If you want to argue

Uh, no. This is your thread. You made the initial assertion. It's your job to defend it, substantiate it. You haven't yet. Me, I've made no in-thread argument. I'm not obligated to.

[henry quirk]

I don't recall you ever conceding that you might be wrong

Cuz I'm not.

But...

Every atom, every synapse in your brain, every fleeting thought you believe you’ve “freely” chosen is simply the inevitable consequence of these laws in motion.

That may very well be the case. If it is then we are as we necessarily must be. I advocate for libertarian free will not becuz I'm wrong (or right) but simply becuz it's what I, as an aggregate of particles, necessarily must do. You advocate for determinism not becuz you're right (or wrong) but simply becuz it's what you, as an aggregate of particles, necessarily must do. If we're meat machines neither of us have any choice about it.

Not the humble example you hoped for. Best you're gonna get.

[BigMike]

Functional MRI studies clearly show how thoughts, decisions, and emotions correspond to specific patterns of brain activity

Yes, the brain does things when a person thinks. Still, doesn't quite get you to mind is brain activity. Not much of an evidence. Here's a counter...

Epilepsy surgery pioneer Dr. Wilder Penfield, asked why are there no intellectual seizures?

Epileptic seizures can be experienced in a variety of ways: convulsions of the whole body, slight twitching of a muscle, compulsive memories, emotions, perceptions of smells or flashes of light, complex motor behaviors such as chewing or laughing or even walking, or subtle moments of inattention.

But seizures never have intellectual content. There are no intellectual seizures, which is odd, given that large regions of the brain are presumed by neuroscientists to serve intellectual thought. It is all the more remarkable when we consider that seizures commonly originate in these intellectual areas of the brain. Yet the outcome is never intellectual seizures.

An intellectual seizure would be a seizure that caused abstract thought, such as logic, or reasoning, or mathematics. People never have, for example, mathematics seizures—seizures in which they involuntarily do calculus or arithmetic.

Penfield concluded, quite reasonably, that this was because intellectual thought didn’t come from the brain. Intellectual thought (Penfield called it mind) is an immaterial human power. There is more to the mind than matter. Penfield began his career as a materialist. He ended it as a convinced dualist. There was, he noted, an aspect of mental function that wasn’t a material product of brain chemistry. -drawn from the Mind Matters site

Benjamin Libet’s famous experiments demonstrated that neural activity begins before conscious awareness of decisions, meaning that what you perceive as “will” is not the originator of action but the product of a deterministic chain of events in the brain.

Certainly the existence of the brain wave that occurs before a decision is made has been shown many times. And in fact Libet wasn’t the first one to show that. It was called the “readiness potential” [Bereitschaftspotential] and it was shown a couple of decades earlier by some German researchers. Libet was the first person to look at it in the kind of detail he did but it was known that there was a potential in the brain that happened before decisions were made by about half a second. -from Mind Matters

And what did Libet have to say?

Determinism has on the whole, worked well for the physical observable world. That has led many scientists and philosophers to regard any deviation from determinism as absurd and witless, and unworthy of consideration. But there has been no evidence, or even a proposed experimental test design, that definitively or convincingly demonstrates the validity of natural law determinism as the mediator or instrument of free will. -BENJAMIN LIBET DO WE HAVE FREE WILL?JOURNAL OF CONSCIOUSNESS STUDIES, 6, NO. 8–9, 1999, PP. 47–57
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/ ... ill%3F.pdf

determinism means that all events, including human actions, are governed by preceding causes.

Yes. Full stop.

Determinism is the philosophical belief that all events, including human actions and decisions, are determined by preceding events and natural laws, meaning that everything that happens is causally inevitable. This view often raises questions about the existence of free will, as it suggests that choices are not truly free but rather the result of prior causes.

Causally inevitable, Mike. Everything. Including your fine ideas about reforming the justice system. As B. Obama said you didn't build that! In context, if determinism is true: you didn't think that!

Libertarian free will posits that choices can be made independent of those causes

Yes.

Libertarian free will is the philosophical view that individuals have the ability to make choices that are not determined by prior causes, meaning that free will and moral responsibility are incompatible with a deterministic universe. It asserts that agents can choose between different possible actions, emphasizing the importance of personal agency in decision-making.

Compatibilism tries to reconcile free will with determinism by redefining free will as acting according to one’s internal motivations, even if those motivations are determined.

No, not exactly, though redefining free will to make it seem you can still choose is exactly what you do.

Compatibilism is the philosophical view that free will and determinism are compatible, meaning that it is possible to believe in both without contradiction. It suggests that individuals can be held morally responsible for their actions even if those actions are determined by prior causes.

You would be better served, though no more coherent, if you just fess up and admit you are a compatibilist.

If you want to argue

Uh, no. This is your thread. You made the initial assertion. It's your job to defend it, substantiate it. You haven't yet. Me, I've made no in-thread argument. I'm not obligated to.

Henry, your response is a scattershot of misinterpretations, cherry-picked quotes, and rhetorical posturing. Let’s cut through the noise and address your points directly.

First, your appeal to Wilder Penfield’s musings about "intellectual seizures" is unconvincing. His observation that seizures don’t produce logical or abstract thought doesn’t imply that cognition is immaterial. Seizures disrupt the brain's normal functioning—they don’t enhance it or activate entirely different capacities. The fact that seizures don’t generate complex reasoning doesn’t prove a dualistic “mind”; it simply reflects the specific effects of abnormal neural activity. This isn’t evidence against cognition being a product of brain processes—it’s entirely consistent with it.

Next, your selective quoting of Benjamin Libet is a red herring. Libet’s readiness potential experiments demonstrate that neural activity precedes conscious decisions, undermining the notion of free will as an uncaused initiator of action. Whether Libet personally entertained doubts about strict determinism is irrelevant—his findings remain a cornerstone of evidence that conscious will is a byproduct of prior brain activity. If you’re claiming otherwise, you need to explain how this sequence—neural activity first, conscious awareness second—supports libertarian free will. Spoiler: it doesn’t.

Your philosophical definitions are standard fare, but your implication that compatibilism is a mere "redefinition" is a straw man. Compatibilism doesn’t deny determinism; it recognizes that internal motivations, even if determined, can align with the concept of choice. It’s a pragmatic approach to preserving responsibility without invoking magical thinking.

As for your claim that determinism renders my arguments meaningless because "I didn’t think that," you’re conflating determinism with fatalism. Determinism doesn’t negate causation or logic; it explains them. My ideas are the result of a causal chain, just as your responses are. That doesn’t mean those ideas lack validity—it means they arise predictably within a physical framework.

Finally, you’ve offered no coherent counterargument. You’re hiding behind the assertion that I must defend determinism while cherry-picking anecdotes and ignoring the foundational principles I’ve laid out. If you have evidence that cognition is immaterial or that free will exists outside the bounds of causality and conservation laws, present it. Until then, your rhetorical diversions are nothing more than noise.

[accelafine]

I don't recall you ever conceding that you might be wrong

Cuz I'm not.

But...

Every atom, every synapse in your brain, every fleeting thought you believe you’ve “freely” chosen is simply the inevitable consequence of these laws in motion.

That may very well be the case. If it is then we are as we necessarily must be. I advocate for libertarian free will not becuz I'm wrong (or right) but simply becuz it's what I, as an aggregate of particles, necessarily must do. You advocate for determinism not becuz you're right (or wrong) but simply becuz it's what you, as an aggregate of particles, necessarily must do. If we're meat machines neither of us have any choice about it.

Not the humble example you hoped for. Best you're gonna get.

Exactly the response I expected. Nothing. I don't know who you expect to convince with 'nothing' but hey, there are experts who know everything all over the internet. Billions of them.

[promethean75]

An "intellectual seizure" is a nonsensical phrase and a category mistake because an intellect isn't a brain. At the same time, this fact does not give credence to the idea that, therefore, there is this other thing called intellect that isn't affected by the brain and this is evidence of the person's soul (that has freewill, etc).

Instead, look at what is meant, not what is said, with the word 'intellect'. It's because 'intellect' is granted as a subject described by predicates that the mistake is made in treating it as a thing with properties. In fact, the word describes behaviors, not things, not 'parts' of a brain.

We say 'he's intellectual' when he displays mindfulness, intelligence, knowledge, and such. But these aren't 'parts' of him either. Likewise, when we say 'he's conscious,' we don't mean he's got a consciousness in him. We mean he's awake, aware, not in a coma. We mean he's behaving a certain way. This is all we can mean because, like Wittgenstein's beetle, you'd not be able to see the 'mind' even if he had one. So clearly, we aren't talking about an object or possession when we talk about 'intellect' and 'mind'. We're talking about physical behaviors described as 'intelligent', 'conscientious', 'purposeful', 'concentrated'.

These descriptors are only meaningful when describing the whole individual, not components of the brain. Okay, take a Peter Hacker analogy. You don't point to a single part of the car and say 'there's the horse power', so why would you point at this part of the brain and say 'there's the mind'?

Man, you guys have been stuck in a Cartesian theater for a hot minute, ain't you?

[attofishpi]

Exactly the response I expected. Nothing. I don't know who you expect to convince with 'nothing' but hey, there are experts who know everything all over the internet. Billions of them.

[promethean75]

Repost of Pete doing his philosophy skit again for those who wanna know who the Peter Hacker is.

https://youtu.be/0yv_k5uMCpU

Your homeboy Descartes comes in at 6:00.

[attofishpi]

atto just blew the bollocks out of "hard" determinism, and BigMikes ignoring that fact.