Why Do the Religious Reject Science While Embracing the Impossible?

[henry quirk]

reality doesn’t care about your aesthetic preferences.

Agreed, so you'll stop dressin' up the pig and own your meat machine philosophy as it is: empty, meaningless, and amoral, yes?

compassion isn’t erased by determinism. It’s grounded by it.

Impossible if this...

Here’s the brutal truth: your brain is a deterministic machine, operating under the same unyielding physical laws as a rock rolling downhill. You don’t control your thoughts, your desires, or your decisions. You are driven by a cascade of external inputs, biological processes, and environmental stimuli—all of which you neither initiated nor directed.

...is true. There's simply no place in it for compassion.

what’s the rational, humane response to suffering, failure, even wrongdoing?

If this...

Here’s the brutal truth: your brain is a deterministic machine, operating under the same unyielding physical laws as a rock rolling downhill. You don’t control your thoughts, your desires, or your decisions. You are driven by a cascade of external inputs, biological processes, and environmental stimuli—all of which you neither initiated nor directed.

...is true none of us respond, we only react. If this...

Here’s the brutal truth: your brain is a deterministic machine, operating under the same unyielding physical laws as a rock rolling downhill. You don’t control your thoughts, your desires, or your decisions. You are driven by a cascade of external inputs, biological processes, and environmental stimuli—all of which you neither initiated nor directed.

...is true none of us have any say-so.

So yeah, I describe the brain as a machine. But you’re more than a brain. You’re the sum total of what caused you—and you are still capable of love, grief, sacrifice, joy, and insight. None of that disappears in a deterministic world. It just becomes understandable instead of mystical.

There's you dressin' the up the sow again. If this...

Here’s the brutal truth: your brain is a deterministic machine, operating under the same unyielding physical laws as a rock rolling downhill. You don’t control your thoughts, your desires, or your decisions. You are driven by a cascade of external inputs, biological processes, and environmental stimuli—all of which you neither initiated nor directed.

...is true, then I'm nuthin' but meat, goin' thru motions caused by blind, empty, meaningless, amoral forces. Love, grief, sacrifice, joy, insight: there are none. There can't be.

You’ve got to deal with it.

Yes, you should. This...

Here’s the brutal truth: your brain is a deterministic machine, operating under the same unyielding physical laws as a rock rolling downhill. You don’t control your thoughts, your desires, or your decisions. You are driven by a cascade of external inputs, biological processes, and environmental stimuli—all of which you neither initiated nor directed.

...is yours. Own it, as it is.

[BigMike]

What you mean is that you are a free person not that you are a 'free will'.

I am indeed a free person: a free will..

Now, be a good girl and stop tellin' me what I mean.

Hey Henry—quick question:

What exactly do you mean by the "free" in free will?

Free from what, exactly? Physics? Causality? Prior conditions? Brain chemistry? Evolution? Society? Upbringing?

Or is it just a poetic way of saying, “I like to feel in control,” without actually being able to spell out what that control consists of?

Because if your "freedom" can't be meaningfully distinguished from deterministic inputs, then what are we even talking about?

[BigMike]

reality doesn’t care about your aesthetic preferences.

Agreed, so you'll stop dressin' up the pig and own your meat machine philosophy as it is: empty, meaningless, and amoral, yes?

compassion isn’t erased by determinism. It’s grounded by it.

Impossible if this...

Here’s the brutal truth: your brain is a deterministic machine, operating under the same unyielding physical laws as a rock rolling downhill. You don’t control your thoughts, your desires, or your decisions. You are driven by a cascade of external inputs, biological processes, and environmental stimuli—all of which you neither initiated nor directed.

...is true. There's simply no place in it for compassion.

what’s the rational, humane response to suffering, failure, even wrongdoing?

If this...

Here’s the brutal truth: your brain is a deterministic machine, operating under the same unyielding physical laws as a rock rolling downhill. You don’t control your thoughts, your desires, or your decisions. You are driven by a cascade of external inputs, biological processes, and environmental stimuli—all of which you neither initiated nor directed.

...is true none of us respond, we only react. If this...

Here’s the brutal truth: your brain is a deterministic machine, operating under the same unyielding physical laws as a rock rolling downhill. You don’t control your thoughts, your desires, or your decisions. You are driven by a cascade of external inputs, biological processes, and environmental stimuli—all of which you neither initiated nor directed.

...is true none of us have any say-so.

So yeah, I describe the brain as a machine. But you’re more than a brain. You’re the sum total of what caused you—and you are still capable of love, grief, sacrifice, joy, and insight. None of that disappears in a deterministic world. It just becomes understandable instead of mystical.

There's you dressin' the up the sow again. If this...

Here’s the brutal truth: your brain is a deterministic machine, operating under the same unyielding physical laws as a rock rolling downhill. You don’t control your thoughts, your desires, or your decisions. You are driven by a cascade of external inputs, biological processes, and environmental stimuli—all of which you neither initiated nor directed.

...is true, then I'm nuthin' but meat, goin' thru motions caused by blind, empty, meaningless, amoral forces. Love, grief, sacrifice, joy, insight: there are none. There can't be.

You’ve got to deal with it.

Yes, you should. This...

Here’s the brutal truth: your brain is a deterministic machine, operating under the same unyielding physical laws as a rock rolling downhill. You don’t control your thoughts, your desires, or your decisions. You are driven by a cascade of external inputs, biological processes, and environmental stimuli—all of which you neither initiated nor directed.

...is yours. Own it, as it is.

Henry,

You keep quoting that same passage as if it’s a mic drop—but you’re missing the punchline. If the brain is a deterministic machine, as I said, that doesn’t mean it’s a simple or empty machine. It means it’s a caused one. And that changes the foundation of compassion, not the fact of it.

You think determinism erases meaning? No—it grounds it. You think it makes love or sacrifice unreal? No—it makes them honest. Because now we know where they come from. They’re not magic tricks. They’re not granted by gods. They’re emergent from cause and effect. From life. From the unfolding of nature. And you know what? That’s far more profound than the cartoonish idea that they’re “gifts” from some ghost in the sky or some metaphysical soul.

And as for your "reaction vs. response" jab—come on. That’s just semantics. In a deterministic system, your so-called “response” is still part of the system. It still arises from who you are and what shaped you. But that doesn’t mean you’re a puppet. It means you’re a process—a dynamic one, rich with structure, memory, emotion, and intelligence.

When I say “you are the sum total of what caused you,” I’m not trying to “dress up” anything. I’m telling you that your pain, your care for others, your creative spark—all of it is real, precisely because it arises from physical interactions we can understand, study, and respect.

What you’re defending isn’t humanity—it’s mysticism. You think calling us machines is dehumanizing? No. What’s dehumanizing is pretending people are “evil” or “broken” because they made choices they never freely authored.

You want me to own my view? Fine. I own it. We’re caused. We’re not “free” in the spooky metaphysical sense. But we’re real. And the more we understand the causes that make us who we are, the better we can treat each other—not with blame, not with retribution, but with clarity and care.

That’s not emptiness. That’s the start of something better.

[Alexis Jacobi]

You say people must assume responsibility for what they are—even if they never chose to become it. But you don’t explain how that squares with your own admission that we are all shaped by prior causes. You’re embracing the language of personal authorship while simultaneously denying the mechanism by which authorship could exist. That’s not integrity. That’s incoherence.

I say that it is best if I assume responsibility for what I am. On all levels.

It occurred to me, reading what you said, that that is what we must do. I thought of the East Indian idea of karma: that you have the body and live in the conditions that you deserve, that you merit. I do not say that I accept the metaphysical belief that supports the notion of karma, but rather that it is certainly best for me to adopt a responsible attitude for everything bequeathed to me by my parents and my entire lineage, my culture, and the world.

I refer to “prior causes” differently than you assume. We exist in complex causal networks. Who could deny this? And if they did, what purpose would it have?

Because I can envision the possibility of “standing apart” from the causal networks in which I am enmeshed, it is through that act (of seeing, understanding) that I am presented with choice. That act is a metaphysical exercise.

You made this point.

If I hold to an ethic of accepting responsibility, that does not mean necessarily that I am the author (of what I assume responsibility for).

I negate your ethics of allowing or validating irresponsibility. It seems to me a more manly attitude to accept what I have been given or more properly what I am.

[henry quirk]

Here you go, Mike...

Libertarian free will: individuals have the ability to make choices that are not determined by prior events or natural laws, meaning they can choose among different possible actions. This view asserts that free will is incompatible with determinism, as it requires that agents have genuine alternatives available to them.

Agent causality: an agent (a being with will) can cause events, particularly their own actions, as opposed to being events being caused by prior events.

Libertarian agent causation: actions are caused by agents themselves, rather than by prior events or states. This view supports the idea that individuals have the power to make self-determined choices, which is a key aspect of libertarianism regarding free will.

Libertarian agent free will: individuals have the capacity to make choices that are not determined by prior events, allowing for genuine moral responsibility. This perspective asserts that free will is incompatible with a deterministic universe, meaning that agents can act in ways that are not preordained by past circumstances.

Free will: a moral being, a person, influenced, but not determined, by the world and prior events, who can and does choose and act (i.e. is self-causing), and who is entirely responsible for his choices and acts.

That's what I'm talkin' about.

None of the above should be startling to anyone who actually reads my posts.

[henry quirk]

You keep quoting that same passage as if it’s a mic drop

Yes sir, I do cuz it is. If this...

Here’s the brutal truth: your brain is a deterministic machine, operating under the same unyielding physical laws as a rock rolling downhill. You don’t control your thoughts, your desires, or your decisions. You are driven by a cascade of external inputs, biological processes, and environmental stimuli—all of which you neither initiated nor directed.

...is true, then all your fine thoughts about morality, compassion, justice, humaneness, etc. are invalid, null & void. Hell, those thoughts aren't even yours. Those thoughts are just the inevitable result of amoral, empty, meaningless, blind forces working thru you or pullin' your strings.

And you know this. That's why you make no attempt to reconcile this...

Here’s the brutal truth: your brain is a deterministic machine, operating under the same unyielding physical laws as a rock rolling downhill. You don’t control your thoughts, your desires, or your decisions. You are driven by a cascade of external inputs, biological processes, and environmental stimuli—all of which you neither initiated nor directed.

...with those fine thoughts. You know the gap cannot be bridged. You can't have it both ways Mike. If you want morality, compassion, justice, humaneness, etc. you can only have them as a free will (as I defined it just up-thread). None of that is for the meat machine you believe yourself to be, that you'd reduce us all to existing (not living) as.

[henry quirk]

EDIT/DELETION: Overkill...too much...the point was made...no point in beatin' a dead horse (or meat machine).

[BigMike]

You say people must assume responsibility for what they are—even if they never chose to become it. But you don’t explain how that squares with your own admission that we are all shaped by prior causes. You’re embracing the language of personal authorship while simultaneously denying the mechanism by which authorship could exist. That’s not integrity. That’s incoherence.

I say that it is best if I assume responsibility for what I am. On all levels.

It occurred to me, reading what you said, that that is what we must do. I thought of the East Indian idea of karma: that you have the body and live in the conditions that you deserve, that you merit. I do not say that I accept the metaphysical belief that supports the notion of karma, but rather that it is certainly best for me to adopt a responsible attitude for everything bequeathed to me by my parents and my entire lineage, my culture, and the world.

I refer to “prior causes” differently than you assume. We exist in complex causal networks. Who could deny this? And if they did, what purpose would it have?

Because I can envision the possibility of “standing apart” from the causal networks in which I am enmeshed, it is through that act (of seeing, understanding) that I am presented with choice. That act is a metaphysical exercise.

You made this point.

If I hold to an ethic of accepting responsibility, that does not mean necessarily that I am the author (of what I assume responsibility for).

I negate your ethics of allowing or validating irresponsibility. It seems to me a more manly attitude to accept what I have been given or more properly what I am.

Alexis,

You're halfway there—and that’s what’s maddening.

Yes, it’s admirable to take responsibility for what you are, even though you didn’t choose your starting conditions. Yes, it’s wise to try to “stand apart” and examine the forces acting on you. But here’s where you twist it: that very insight—your ability to observe the network of causes—is itself just another part of the network. You don’t stand outside of it. You’re not launching a metaphysical lifeboat. You’re just watching the tide from another angle.

You say, “that act is a metaphysical exercise.” No—it’s a physical process occurring in a highly evolved brain. And your drive to be “manly” or “responsible” or “noble” about it? That’s another outcome of causes. You don’t summon it ex nihilo. You don’t conjure moral resolve from a free-floating will. You feel it because something—your upbringing, culture, genes—wired you to.

But here’s the catch: none of that invalidates the value of the effort. Just because your resolve is caused doesn’t mean it’s worthless. In fact, it makes it all the more meaningful. You didn’t choose your programming, but you are its unfolding. The better your inputs, the better your outputs.

So go ahead—take responsibility. But don’t confuse that feeling with metaphysical freedom. You’re not “authoring” your nature. You’re enacting it.

That’s not defeatism. It’s clarity.

And clarity, not mythology, is the only honest foundation for ethics.

[BigMike]

See, Mike, all this...

You think determinism erases meaning? No—it grounds it. You think it makes love or sacrifice unreal? No—it makes them honest. Because now we know where they come from. They’re not magic tricks. They’re not granted by gods. They’re emergent from cause and effect. From life. From the unfolding of nature. And you know what? That’s far more profound than the cartoonish idea that they’re “gifts” from some ghost in the sky or some metaphysical soul.

And as for your "reaction vs. response" jab—come on. That’s just semantics. In a deterministic system, your so-called “response” is still part of the system. It still arises from who you are and what shaped you. But that doesn’t mean you’re a puppet. It means you’re a process—a dynamic one, rich with structure, memory, emotion, and intelligence.

When I say “you are the sum total of what caused you,” I’m not trying to “dress up” anything. I’m telling you that your pain, your care for others, your creative spark—all of it is real, precisely because it arises from physical interactions we can understand, study, and respect.

What you’re defending isn’t humanity—it’s mysticism. You think calling us machines is dehumanizing? No. What’s dehumanizing is pretending people are “evil” or “broken” because they made choices they never freely authored.

You want me to own my view? Fine. I own it. We’re caused. We’re not “free” in the spooky metaphysical sense. But we’re real. And the more we understand the causes that make us who we are, the better we can treat each other—not with blame, not with retribution, but with clarity and care.

That’s not emptiness. That’s the start of something better.

...incompatible with...

Here’s the brutal truth: your brain is a deterministic machine, operating under the same unyielding physical laws as a rock rolling downhill. You don’t control your thoughts, your desires, or your decisions. You are driven by a cascade of external inputs, biological processes, and environmental stimuli—all of which you neither initiated nor directed.

The gap is insurmountable.

Henry,

There's no gap. Just your unwillingness to see that you're standing on both sides of it.

You say the idea of being "driven by external inputs" is incompatible with compassion, meaning, and humanity. Why? Because you’ve bought into the myth that meaning has to come from magic—that unless something is uncaused, or “freely” willed from some metaphysical ghost core, it isn’t real.

But think about this:

If a child grows up in abuse and later lashes out in pain, we don't understand less by seeing the causes—we understand more. We don't care less—we care more. Knowing what shaped someone is the only path to truly helping them, to building better systems, to preventing suffering before it starts. That's not empty. That's the deepest moral ground we can stand on: a world where clarity replaces cruelty, and cause replaces condemnation.

You keep quoting the line about being a machine under physical law—as if that somehow wipes away love, art, sorrow, sacrifice. But you live it every day. You’re a machine feeling. A machine arguing. A machine trying to make sense of the world. Why is that ugly? Why is that not even more beautiful than pretending it’s all vapor and soul-magic?

What you call a gap is really just a refusal to let go of a romanticized fiction. But here's the offer on the table: you can have everything you value—compassion, dignity, beauty—without the illusion of metaphysical freedom. You don’t have to believe in ghosts to love what’s real.

So no, Henry. The gap isn't insurmountable.

You're just too proud to cross it.

[henry quirk]

I like how you go for the deleted, overkill, post and not the meaty, on-point, one...

You keep quoting that same passage as if it’s a mic drop

Yes sir, I do cuz it is. If this...

Here’s the brutal truth: your brain is a deterministic machine, operating under the same unyielding physical laws as a rock rolling downhill. You don’t control your thoughts, your desires, or your decisions. You are driven by a cascade of external inputs, biological processes, and environmental stimuli—all of which you neither initiated nor directed.

...is true, then all your fine thoughts about morality, compassion, justice, humaneness, etc. are invalid, null & void. Hell, those thoughts aren't even yours. Those thoughts are just the inevitable result of amoral, empty, meaningless, blind forces working thru you or pullin' your strings.

And you know this. That's why you make no attempt to reconcile this...

Here’s the brutal truth: your brain is a deterministic machine, operating under the same unyielding physical laws as a rock rolling downhill. You don’t control your thoughts, your desires, or your decisions. You are driven by a cascade of external inputs, biological processes, and environmental stimuli—all of which you neither initiated nor directed.

...with those fine thoughts. You know the gap cannot be bridged. You can't have it both ways Mike. If you want morality, compassion, justice, humaneness, etc. you can only have them as a free will (as I defined it just up-thread). None of that is for the meat machine you believe yourself to be, that you'd reduce us all to existing (not living) as.

Gosh, but you're obvious.

[henry quirk]

you live it every day.

Cuz I'm a free will, Mike. I'm a moral being, a person, influenced, but not determined, by the world and prior events. I can and do choose and act (i.e. am self-causing), and I'm entirely responsible for my choices and acts.

I get to have love, art, sorrow, sacrifice, compassion, dignity, and beauty; meat machines do not.

and: I'm out! Gutbuster pizza and beer calls!

[BigMike]

I like how you go for the deleted, overkill, post and not the meaty, on-point, one...

You keep quoting that same passage as if it’s a mic drop

Yes sir, I do cuz it is. If this...

Here’s the brutal truth: your brain is a deterministic machine, operating under the same unyielding physical laws as a rock rolling downhill. You don’t control your thoughts, your desires, or your decisions. You are driven by a cascade of external inputs, biological processes, and environmental stimuli—all of which you neither initiated nor directed.

...is true, then all your fine thoughts about morality, compassion, justice, humaneness, etc. are invalid, null & void. Hell, those thoughts aren't even yours. Those thoughts are just the inevitable result of amoral, empty, meaningless, blind forces working thru you or pullin' your strings.

And you know this. That's why you make no attempt to reconcile this...

Here’s the brutal truth: your brain is a deterministic machine, operating under the same unyielding physical laws as a rock rolling downhill. You don’t control your thoughts, your desires, or your decisions. You are driven by a cascade of external inputs, biological processes, and environmental stimuli—all of which you neither initiated nor directed.

...with those fine thoughts. You know the gap cannot be bridged. You can't have it both ways Mike. If you want morality, compassion, justice, humaneness, etc. you can only have them as a free will (as I defined it just up-thread). None of that is for the meat machine you believe yourself to be, that you'd reduce us all to existing (not living) as.

Gosh, but you're obvious.

Henry,

You're stuck because you think memory, learning, pattern recognition, and prediction are somehow separate from morality, compassion, justice, and meaning. They're not. They are the substrate. And you’re not seeing that because you haven’t made peace with what a brain actually is.

You think: “If it’s all just a machine reacting, then nothing means anything.” But that’s just because you haven't understood what a learning machine does.

A deterministic system with memory and feedback learns. It stores patterns. It recognizes suffering—its own and others’. It forms models, makes predictions, and adjusts behavior accordingly. That's where morality begins—not from a ghost in the machine, but from the structure of the machine. Empathy, care, remorse, hope—all of these emerge from feedback loops shaped by experience, not magic.

Think of it this way: A stone doesn’t learn. A rock rolling downhill doesn’t remember. But your brain—your beautifully deterministic brain—does. It models itself, the world, and other people. And over time, it builds moral intuitions. Not because it's free—but because it’s plastic, causal, and connected.

What you keep calling a “gap” is just your inability to accept that caused things can be meaningful. That love isn’t fake just because it emerges from experience. That responsibility isn’t meaningless just because it has a backstory.

You want a metaphysical source for your values. I’m telling you: you don’t need one.

All you need is a brain that remembers.
That learns.
That feels.
And that adapts to patterns in ways that promote well-being—not because it’s commanded to, but because it evolved to.

That’s not an empty world. That’s a real one.

If you're still asking "Where does compassion come from in a deterministic world?" the answer is simple: from memory, learning, and the capacity to simulate the pain of others as if it were your own.

No ghost required. Just a nervous system.
A beautiful, messy, miraculous product of billions of years of cause and effect.

[Alexis Jacobi]

But here’s where you twist it: that very insight—your ability to observe the network of causes—is itself just another part of the network. You don’t stand outside of it. You’re not launching a metaphysical lifeboat. You’re just watching the tide from another angle.

The insight I refer to gives one the ability to choose differently, or to choose perhaps contrarily.

You don’t “believe in” what is metaphysical to tangible existence. I do. And this has already been gone over in other posts.

[Dubious]

Mike,

I think you're interested in truth & wisdom.
Sadly, that sets you apart -
even on a philosophy forum.

Many are not interested in truth,
they're interested in security.

Your capacity to present truth threatens them,
as their security does not rest upon truth.

Truth reveals their volatility.

Alone, they'll likely squirm -
but together, like hyenas,
they'll try to circle you,
try to smother you with falsehood -
and if you become exhausted,
that's when they'll go for the throat.

To eliminate you,
by any tactic,
allows them to declare falsehood truth.
Allows them to declare the strength of their falsehood,
when all they established was the weakness of flesh.

Truth does not die.
Regardless of if not one speaks it.

They're not obeying the principles you are,
they're on a different path -
as you recognize, the path of truth scares them.

They do not know what they're doing -
they ignorantly lash out,
because they're frightened animals.

Not realizing their thrashing,
is carving out the pit,
that they'll starve in.

-

Fortunately, you're not obligated to play their 'game'.
If they were genuinely interested in truth,
they could research the insincere questions they pose -
but they wont do that, they're not interested in the response.
They demand YOU, respond to every intellectual dishonesty they can muster.
Why? To overwhelm you.
Again, they believe overwhelming you is equivalent to establishing the contents of their beliefs.
And again, all it would establish is the capacity for a majority to overwhelm a minority.

To listen, evaluate and explain takes energy/effort.
These are finite resources.
If you deplete these resources on their falsehoods,
you've gained nothing, and they've ensured their security.

I suggest focusing your energy on discovering, defining & living by truth.
It builds upon itself and empowers those who align with it.
That is not wasted energy.

The greater that monument of truth,
the more falsehood that will be revealed by it's light.

What a conventional load of pure hogwash!

The word truth is as much subjective as objective, equally proficient in ennobling a lie as it is in declaring something to be true. In that sense it's different from a fact, an objective entity establishing its credentials being nothing more or less than what its existence affirms it to be. It requires no other affirmation for the simple reason that it can't be falsified. Truth, on the other hand, has always been subjectively modified. In most civilizations the word truth is given as much credence as the word god in being the ultimate pledge of authority by a deciding human agent with the overt intent of making its beliefs and decisions impervious to negation.

Humans have never ceased lying about truth from the first generation on.

[Alexis Jacobi]

You want a metaphysical source for your values. I’m telling you: you don’t need one.

Some absolutists I might listen to (if I am in the mood). But some I am inclined not to pay much attention to.

You fall into the latter category …

I very certainly understand on what you base your admonitions! I simply do not think you’ve got it right.

Still, you are free to think in whatever way you wish to.

(Metaphysics (in my sense) means simply existent ideas or conceptions that appear with the general manifestation.)