Why Do the Religious Reject Science While Embracing the Impossible?

[promethean75]

"Have you not made a choice, in your life Mickey?
Was it an illusion? Could you not have chosen the other option?"

If i may, in fact, Mike B couldn't have chosen the other option because only one option could have happened. All it means to say "you could have chosen differently" is that you would have chosen differently had you chosen differently.

The subtle confusion is here; it was logically possible for Mike B to choose vanilla instead of mint - mint exists, and he is able to eat it (none of this is illogical) - but physically impossible because it didn't happen.

One can't really say, "There are two possible outcomes to what Mike B chooses at the ice cream stand" because there isn't. Two realities can't exist simultaneously, and only one or the other can happen even though it's logically conceivable, i.e., we can imagine, Mike B choosing one or the other.

Tell me i made a connection this time, Pistol. I swore an oath to Persiphocleetus that I'd never debate freewill with the Pistol again and now i just broke that oath. Damn you to hell if you still don't understand.

[Belinda]

Criminal justice is more effective the more it sorts the causes of the crime and the less it punishes the criminal.

In a number of cases that may be true. But there are many who enjoy killing, raping even of minors and then disposing of everyone after they're through. That is true in both war and peace, but especially war where everything is permitted. What many don't understand, due to their great love of humanity and all that BS, is that people produce a lot of trash humans who deserve nothing more than to be permanently eliminated...and depending on the crime, old style.

Psychopathy is caused. Find the cause if possible. If the cause cannot be found then the criminal justice system shuts the psychopath away for the sake of public safety, not for the sake of retribution. This shutting- away is deterrent enough to deter when deterrence is at all possible, and preventive detention is also sufficient to express public disapproval of the crime.

There remains the need to reform prisons A so they are more humane (for the sake of avoiding barbarity) and B so imprisonment does not cause the prisoner to become even more entrenched in bad behaviour.

You say "deserve". It's possible to take an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. However in most cases of violent crime the crime does irreparable harm to the victims, and it's not possible to match the crime to the punishment. If only for this reason, it's far better to address the causes of crime than punish criminals after they have done the crimes.

Deterministic science, in the form of social and personal psychology, strengthens our ability to find and address the causes of crime.

[Pistolero]

If i may, in fact, Mike B couldn't have chosen the other option because only one option could have happened. All it means to say "you could have chosen differently" is that you would have chosen differently had you chosen differently.

Woop, there it is!!!
Yes, because to make a choice means you could not have made another, right?
Only a time traveler can verify that "truth".

You can't make two choices simultaneously, can you?
Vanilla and chocolate...but not vanilla and not vanilla but chocolate.
Too bad....that's not the criterion for being free.

The subtle confusion is here; it was logically possible for Mike B to choose vanilla instead of mint - mint exists, and he is able to eat it (none of this is illogical) - but physically impossible because it didn't happen.

He didn't because he made the choice, and cannot unmake it.
Freedom does not require time travel.

Every choice is like the implosion of a wave into a point.
It participates in determining everything that follows, to the degree of your power.

That's why self-control and careful consideration of optinos, is necessary....beforehand.
Afterward, it is too late....then you can only learn and make better choices.
But if you believe, truly, that you have no choice, then you will repeat the same mistakes and blame it on everything but yourself.

One can't really say, "There are two possible outcomes to what Mike B chooses at the ice cream stand" because there isn't. Two realities can't exist simultaneously, and only one or the other can happen even though it's logically conceivable, i.e., we can imagine, Mike B choosing one or the other.

There's no need for two outcomes.....only two or more options.

Every effect has more than one cause. Every cause has more than one effect.
Human choice is infinitesimally small, yet it is still free if it has more than one option.

But your regrets drive you to answer.
Could of....should of....you need to believe that the choices you made could not have been otherwise.
Unfortunately, they could have.....but only before the fact...not after the fact.

Impulsive personalities are usually addictive....
They get themselves into troubles they did not intend...because they did not read the circumstance....or they downplayed them and over-estimated themselves.
That error was their own, not the world's

If I choose to walk into the Brazilian jungle without a rifle, I take responsibility for what happens to me.

[Belinda]

"Have you not made a choice, in your life Mickey?
Was it an illusion? Could you not have chosen the other option?"

If i may, in fact, Mike B couldn't have chosen the other option because only one option could have happened. All it means to say "you could have chosen differently" is that you would have chosen differently had you chosen differently.

The subtle confusion is here; it was logically possible for Mike B to choose vanilla instead of mint - mint exists, and he is able to eat it (none of this is illogical) - but physically impossible because it didn't happen.

One can't really say, "There are two possible outcomes to what Mike B chooses at the ice cream stand" because there isn't. Two realities can't exist simultaneously, and only one or the other can happen even though it's logically conceivable, i.e., we can imagine, Mike B choosing one or the other.

Tell me i made a connection this time, Pistol. I swore an oath to Persiphocleetus that I'd never debate freewill with the Pistol again and now i just broke that oath. Damn you to hell if you still don't understand.

Promethean, your are correctly addressing relative freedom to choose: you are not addressing supernatural Free Will.

The determinist must agree that the event (including its psychological correlates) which happened ---- necessarily happened. However the determinist , same as anybody else, can't predict what is going to happen . Mike could not be sure he would choose mint ice cream until after the event.

Living systems can and do choose between alternatives. The human is especially good at assessing probabilities especially when the human is also a trained scientist and statistician.

[Pistolero]

One has to ask...why do these people demand such extraordinary standards for them to accept what is evident in their everyday life?
Do they demand as evidence of strength that a man be able to lift a stone he cannot lift?
What kind of bullshyte is this?

I think life is an illusion because it must be immortal and be able to live two lives at the same time...
Is this method meant to deceive the world, to fool fate, or just themselves?

[Alexis Jacobi]

Because when you pathologize the person instead of confronting the argument, you’re not debating anymore. You’re diagnosing. You’ve stepped out of philosophy and into psychiatry. Which, ironically, is precisely the kind of thing that authoritarian regimes have done to political dissidents. And if that’s the lens, then who’s really acting like the ideologue here?

This is what I have to say — you can take it or leave it, of course.

Psychiatry — the word’s meaning — is treatment of a psychic ailment. But please note that my angle is psychology. Simply put an examination of your and my psychological position. Or “health” if you wish. I do not proscribe for you some plan to attain health. But I do say that man today is pretty fucked up.

You, me and the next guy. I have always stated that we are “all in the same boat”.

Your philosophy, your bizarre scientistic anthropology with postmodern tones, is a position that I believe (determine, sense, intuit, conclude) is sickly, potentially destructive, grounded in errors of various sorts. My analysis is of the position and not so much about you, the man. I reject the accusation that mine in an ad hominem argument. Because, ultimately, you are not what concerns me.

The ideas — the consequential ideas — that have possessed you, these concern me. And your ideology has been shown to have many different defects. A dozen people have offered up their assessments. You reject them all.

My take? Your ideas represent a sickness of our age. Is it a nihilistic reaction? I think numerous things can be said. And frankly that is what has been going on in this thread.

I feel it quite fair to present an analysis, within a philosophical discussion, that allows for the consideration of man’s psychology.

You are like a “true believer” of the sort Eric Hoffer wrote about.

You continually say that people”refuse the truth” you wish to present to them as sheer fact, right?

I suggest that you refuse to see the psychological dimension of your “true believer” position.

[Alexiev]

Promethean, your are correctly addressing relative freedom to choose: you are not addressing supernatural Free Will.

The determinist must agree that the event (including its psychological correlates) which happened ---- necessarily happened. However the determinist , same as anybody else, can't predict what is going to happen . Mike could not be sure he would choose mint ice cream until after the event.

Living systems can and do choose between alternatives. The human is especially good at assessing probabilities especially when the human is also a trained scientist and statistician.

The Modernist seeks fundamental and essential truths. The post-modernist thinks truth varies depending on one's point of view. Clearly, from our point of view the future is indeterminate and we can freely make choices. "Aha!" cries the Modernist. "That's an illusion. Everything is determined by basic physics!"

Ok. Maybe the modernist is right. But so what? What good is.it to pretend to see things aa "predetermined" when, from the speaker's point of view, they are not determined? To insist that it is important is to promote a particular world view -- a world view that has been soundly and correctly criticized by post- modernists.

[iambiguous]

As a hard determinist, I absolutely reject individual moral responsibility in the traditional sense—because if our thoughts and actions are entirely the product of causal forces outside our control, then blame becomes a fiction.

But then those hard determinists who are compelled by brains wholly in sync with the laws of matter to argue that when you reject individual moral responsibility in the traditional sense you were never able to opt otherwise. So, what does it mean to reject something that you were never able not to reject?

Whatever that means?

And, in my view, given this...

All of this going back to how the matter we call the human brain was "somehow" able to acquire autonomy when non-living matter "somehow" became living matter "somehow" became conscious matter "somehow" became self-conscious matter.

Then those here who actually believe that what they believe about all of this reflects, what, the ontological truth about the human condition itself?

Then those who are compelled in turn to insist on a teleological component as well. Usually in the form of one or another God.

Meanwhile, philosophers and scientists and theologians have been grappling with this profound mystery now for thousands of years.

...none of us really seem capable of going much beyond philosophical assumptions such that brain scientists themselves either can or cannot back us up.

Then the particularly surreal suggestion that even science itself is but one more inherent manifestation of the only possible reality.

But that doesn’t mean giving up on accountability or consequences. I replace backward-looking blame with forward-looking responsibility—collective responsibility. That means understanding the causes behind harmful behavior and altering the conditions that produce it. If we don’t like the effects, we don’t moralize—we fix the causes. That’s how progress works.

Same thing? Okay, you don't give up on accountability and consequences. But then you were never actually able to give up on them, other hard determinists propose. Just as you were never able to understand the causes or alter anything other than in how nature itself...intended?

Which then prompts some to contemplate a possible relationship between nature and teleology...meaning and purpose. Most attribute that to a God, the God, their God.

Every cause—whether it’s a twitch, a thought, or a war—can ultimately be traced to combinations of the four fundamental physical interactions, all operating within the constraints of the conservation laws. That’s not poetry. It’s physics.

Then back to the points I raised here: viewtopic.php?t=43311&start=150#top

Again, it's like you are here to broach, examine and then assess all this given an understanding of determinism that allows you to insist your own assessment is, what, always more reasonable, more relevant than those who think otherwise?

And as for your point about The Gap and Rummy’s Rule—yes, that’s precisely why the scientific method is so essential. We don’t deal in absolutes. We don’t “prove” theories; we falsify hypotheses and narrow uncertainty. We move forward not by declaring truth, but by rigorously eliminating falsehood.

So no, we don’t have a “definitive resolution.” We have a process. And that’s enough—for those of us who don’t need superstition to feel grounded.

Right, like scientists themselves can shove The Gap and Rummy's rule under the trivial pursuit rug. Like a hundred years from now the scientific community won't look back and marvel at what we used to believe about our place in the universe. After all, just go back a hundred years and note the gaps between then and now there.

[Pistolero]

Hey look, Miss Land graced us with another round of the same....
Last call for mind numbing Rummy Rules...

Linguistically fractured and fragmented - meaning...self-induced schizoid.

If she feels she cannot answer, she'll accuse you of imposing your views on her...like all those nasty objectivists.
Man-splaning....
Be submissive to the laws of nature....be deterministic.
Come close to god.

Don't know how the sun works?
Never-mind....it's an illusion.

For Miss Land, if you cannot contradict the Laws on Nature, you aren't free.
So, basically, only God...

[promethean75]

"There remains the need to reform prisons"

Prison's won't change much at all, even in the next fifty years, as tech takes off. They'll still be as small as possible, packing inmates like sardines and with the same old TVs and GED classes. They'll still be staffed by corrupt assholes who break their own rules, abuse inmates, deny them their rights, and sneak drugs in.

All this obviously because the prison system runs and functions under the constraints of the capitalist system... so it's going to be all fucked up, incompetent and draconian. A secret world the public doesn't know about but gets a peak at once in a while on National Geographic.

[BigMike]

You keep asking the same question like it’s some kind of mic drop—how does advantage manifest in real time? Through action, yes. Through behavior. Through the physical movements of a body whose neural system has processed prior experience and environmental input. That’s exactly what I’ve been saying. You’re just pretending I haven’t because it’s the only way you can keep your strawman alive.

Through actions, Mickey....choices being actions.
How, then, are they naturally selected if they are not free and illusions?

You’ve now heard the explanation: A brain, shaped by genetics and environment, processes information, learns from outcomes, rewires its circuitry, and alters its future behavior accordingly. When a human avoids a pit they fell into yesterday, it’s not because of some ghostly “will”—it’s because their neurons stored information that led to new output. We can call that a “choice,” sure, but it’s just an effect with a knowable, traceable cause.

To know is to guide your future choices, Mickey.
This is impossible if choices are illusions, boy.
Choices are actual, not magical illusions, some magician cast upon us all.
Choices matter.

You're demanding that I call it a free choice—as if calling a spade a scepter changes what it is. But your definition of “free” is so rubbery you could slap it on anything from a chess move to a coin flip and call it agency.

A qualifiers, mickey, can be "slapped onto" any concept.
Strong, willed...strong physique. Strong mind....strong constitution....yes manchild.
Free choice, free lunch, free spirit, free entry, free will, yes manchid...none of these are illusions. None of these re magical.
All qualifiers can be "slapped onto" any cocnept.

Like the number one...one moron, one imbecile, one retard, one piece of shit, one genius, one horse, one unicorn....

And let’s be real: Your obsession with trying to corner me on race reveals more about your agenda than mine. I said determinism applies across the board. Evolution doesn’t care about your politics—it’s a process, not a pamphlet. You want to argue about racial traits? Fine. But drop the games. Acknowledge the cause-and-effect basis that you yourself appeal to, then stop pretending you’re the only one allowed to use it.

The masks are on your face, Mickey.

You refuse to define the term 'free' or 'will', and declare that free-will is not absolutely so...
But it doesn't have to be absolutely so, to be real, Mickey....

And yes, nature is brutal, indifferent, unfair. That’s why your cartoon version of my worldview—where I supposedly want to hug the wolves and make the deer into social workers—isn’t just dishonest, it’s lazy. I want to reduce unnecessary suffering—not deny that nature is cruel.

All declarations, manchild.
You use terms to pretend you are profound when all you are doing is avoiding the term "choice.'

I'm not the one claiming choice is an illusion, Mickey...you are.
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.
I see chocie in action. I urge others to se for themselves....to look into their past and se when they experienced making a choice.
It need not be free form causality, form need, from motive, from desire....that's your definition Mickey.
A supernatural acquirement.

Choice is pat of causality. It is intentional causality, manchild, as opposed to unintentional, will-less.....

You keep building these clumsy caricatures of my views because it’s easier than dealing with what I actually say. I don’t need utopias. I don’t believe in “happily ever after.” I believe in systems that respond to data, that reduce harm without the fiction of blame, and that evolve intelligently. You want to sneer at that? Fine. But at least argue with what’s really there.

"Respond to data" the way YOU want them to....the way YOU will them....they way you prefer....
Your choice on how you define 'free- is not scientific, Mickey....I start with the empirical, the act, the behavior...you start with a conventional definition you found in a book and realized how useful it was to bring about your Utopia.

I smell blood, Mickey...and like all hunters, I pursue the smell...
It's coming from your uterus...are you menstruating or has someone ripped you a new one?

Mickey...at this point your disagreement is over semantics....not the act itself.
Not the act of choosing and willing.
You just do not like the term 'free' and 'choice.'

Would you not use a similar method if you wanted to nullify power, Mickey?
Would you not adopt a definition that would make it impossible for any mortal to attain, so that you can then declare all men to be equally impotent?
Mickey...the magic trick is linguistic. like all spells.
Verbal.
Abracadabra, hocus pocus, let will be unfree by redefining 'free'...poof.
The myriads of mediocrity cheer.
Sleight of tongue.

Have you not made a choice in your life Mickey?
Was it an illusion? Could you not have chosen the other option?
Was not your choice part of what determined your future options?
If yes...then you are free.
That's all freedom means, manchild....to have more than one option.

Pistolero, you’ve posted the same distorted misread of my position so many times I could set my watch to it. You keep pretending I claim “choices don’t exist,” when I’ve been clear from the start: choices are real — they just aren’t uncaused. That’s the difference you can’t or won’t grasp.

Learning, adaptation, decision-making — yes, all real, all observable. And caused. You demand some impossible purity of “freedom” that requires zero influence, then mock me for not believing in it — while smuggling in your own redefinition of choice as if that settles it.

Your final paragraph gives the game away: you think “freedom” means having options. Great — I’ve never denied that. But having options doesn’t mean you magically pick among them outside of causes. That’s the illusion. That’s what I reject.

So either argue against what I’m actually saying, or drop the circus act.

[Pistolero]

Ah, so you believe choices are real and not illusions?
So, life has free-will.
I never said you pick them from "outside causality."
There is no "outside existence".
Existence is dynamic, interactive....meaning cause/effect.
A proper definition of words begins with an observable phenomenon, an act.

Will and choice are part of determining causes.
Nothing metaphysical. Observable.

Ta, Ta,

I do believe my time here is nearing an end.....of another cycle....
But you never know.....cause....effect...

[BigMike]

Because when you pathologize the person instead of confronting the argument, you’re not debating anymore. You’re diagnosing. You’ve stepped out of philosophy and into psychiatry. Which, ironically, is precisely the kind of thing that authoritarian regimes have done to political dissidents. And if that’s the lens, then who’s really acting like the ideologue here?

This is what I have to say — you can take it or leave it, of course.

Psychiatry — the word’s meaning — is treatment of a psychic ailment. But please note that my angle is psychology. Simply put an examination of your and my psychological position. Or “health” if you wish. I do not proscribe for you some plan to attain health. But I do say that man today is pretty fucked up.

You, me and the next guy. I have always stated that we are “all in the same boat”.

Your philosophy, your bizarre scientistic anthropology with postmodern tones, is a position that I believe (determine, sense, intuit, conclude) is sickly, potentially destructive, grounded in errors of various sorts. My analysis is of the position and not so much about you, the man. I reject the accusation that mine in an ad hominem argument. Because, ultimately, you are not what concerns me.

The ideas — the consequential ideas — that have possessed you, these concern me. And your ideology has been shown to have many different defects. A dozen people have offered up their assessments. You reject them all.

My take? Your ideas represent a sickness of our age. Is it a nihilistic reaction? I think numerous things can be said. And frankly that is what has been going on in this thread.

I feel it quite fair to present an analysis, within a philosophical discussion, that allows for the consideration of man’s psychology.

You are like a “true believer” of the sort Eric Hoffer wrote about.

You continually say that people”refuse the truth” you wish to present to them as sheer fact, right?

I suggest that you refuse to see the psychological dimension of your “true believer” position.

Alexis, let’s stop pretending you’re conducting some noble “psychological analysis” here. You’re not diagnosing a worldview — you’re cloaking your disdain in psychoanalytic theater because you can’t rebut the logic head-on. Every time someone defends a position you dislike, suddenly it’s not just disagreement — it’s pathology. It's the same tired script: “You’re not wrong, you're sick.”

Let me be blunt. I’m not “possessed” by ideas. I’m arguing from evidence. Physics, neuroscience, cognitive science — all fields that say, in different ways, that human thought and behavior are caused phenomena. That’s not “scientistic,” it’s called grounding a position in data. But when facts make you uncomfortable, you handwave them away as symptoms.

You say I reject everyone’s critiques? No — I reject bad arguments. Circular ones. Ones built on intuition, personal discomfort, or ancient metaphors dressed up as wisdom. When someone says, “I just feel like we must have agency,” I say: show me. You can’t? Then it’s not a counterargument — it’s nostalgia.

You’re free to call that a sickness of the age. But frankly, it sounds a lot more like resentment that you can’t make the facts fit your moral narrative. That’s not insight. That’s defensiveness wrapped in poetic language. So call me a “true believer” if you want — it doesn’t make you the realist. It just makes you the guy standing in the rain swearing it isn’t wet.

[BigMike]

Your philosophy, your bizarre scientistic anthropology with postmodern tones, is a position that I believe (determine, sense, intuit, conclude) is sickly, potentially destructive, grounded in errors of various sorts.

Name one of those “errors” and give a single argument that falsifies it.

[Alexis Jacobi]

You will not hear — for all that you have ears.

Myself, I appreciate Sr. Pistolero’s clarification: we exist within a complex context, and our choices are real within a complex web.

In my view, this a similar statement to that which I presented to you months back: We live within determining structures and yet we have (what I called) a cubic centimeter of possibility to act within that complex web.

[He puts it thus: “Existence is dynamic, interactive....meaning cause/effect.”]

You continue to respond to me and to others with thoughts and arguments that prove that you are capable of decisiveness and choice. You prove my argument (for degrees of freedom).

Your arguments are hypocritical and they involve self-deception. This signals for me a psychological problem, and a reasoning problem.

I don’t have a great deal more to add except to say you have been — you are — an invaluable resource for me. You have helped me to understand how important it is (for men, for man) to realize how valuable is the choice (agency) that we have.

I think you are one of the best participants on the forum. Not because you are presenting truth — you present partial truths and sophistries wedded together, a bad mix — but because you allow such highly relevant topics to be discussed.