Richard Dawkins - Anti -Christ or Great Thinker?

xp:
Early Torah God isn't omnipotent and omniscient, just very powerful. My sense is its only with the post Assyrian captivity prophets that Yahweh is viewed as omnipotent, even outside of Israel, using foreign powers to punish his chosen. This coincides with the 6th century's Job, where His will is incomprehensible to man.

The interpretation of the Early Torah God takes on a different cast when He isn't omnipotent and omniscient. He doesn't know that Eve will eat the apple or Abraham will tie up Isaac. He's a tinkerer, experimenting with his petri dish. Abraham might have gone along with the test, but perhaps the last few patriarchs God asked refused and hence didn't become generation FO for his Israelite lineage.

that when i chose to act the free will comes from really god choosing to act bc infinity encompasses everything. that seems like a kind of determinism but really it's just redefining the human soul as itself an expression of contracted divine will.

I like this

xp

sunday is purim. the word purim, acc to the talmud, comes from the word 'pur' - a contemporaneous Persian word for lots, like a lottery. it refers to the lottery that Haman throws to determine in which month he should have all the jews killed. there's a lovely essay from the rebbe that i've been learning w/ my dad about how basically lotteries access a higher level of sublime divinity than the normal state of reality since it uses will to subjugate itself to a higher more amorphous form. in this level (a level that precedes any contraction that leads to finitude -- aka raw infinity stuff) everything is equal. good and evil. mordechai and haman. etc. (on purim there's a directive to drink until you cannot tell the difference between mordechai and haman - aka achieve a mental state of consciousness that mimics in some way this pre-creative state of divinity.) this is why one of the meanings of yom kippur (aka yom kippurim) is "yom" day "ki" like "purim" bc purim is such a sublime state that even yom kippur, the holiest day of the year, only approximates its divine access.

xxp if we're talking biblical anthropology i'm a little sloppy on my documentary hypothesis theory but i think you're correct that the earliest bible stories predate the later ones by a significant period time (but of course it was all redacted). so i wouldn't be surprised if you can find the heartbeat of an earlier limited omnipotence from when yahweh or el were a part of pantheon beliefs (which acc to this theory then passes into monolatry and now even full blown monotheism iirc until the era of Ezra). but the shift to monotheism happens quickly enough imo that divine omnipotence isn't particularly hard to read back into the narrative.

and not* even

it could be that human choice, such as it is, is simply one form of indeterminacy.

can u expand on this please?

― Mordy

i'll try, though i do want to say i'm not speaking from any sort of position of authority and could have all this totally wrong.

was the complete history of the universe, from beginning to end, written at the big bang? could one extrapolate everything that has come to pass, everything that will come to pass, from that first moment? or does random stuff happen? there seems to be, from my completely lay perspective, at least the possibility for genuine randomness, of things we cannot predict happening. and human consciousness might, to some extent, have elements of that.

or it might not. hell if i know.

ok i thought that was what you meant - "indeterminacy" is a term of art tho and i wanted to be sure.

i'm a big fan of the first cause argument without which i think you must conclude some kind of natural mechanic for randomness / spontaneous generation of reality.

agreed

I suspect the idea of free will became a necessary construct to account for human and natural evils with the arrival of dualisms and monotheisms from the East. There's not much free will in classical Greek tragedy, yet free will is explicitly described in the Zoroastrian avastas. Ahriman could do good, as he demonstrates by creating the peacock, but he chooses to do evil. 2nd temple Judaism and Christianity inherited that. Why do men do evil in a world created by an omnibenevolent, omnipotent deity? Because God bestowed the gift of free will. The argument kind of breaks down with natural evil. Why did little Suzy get bone cancer; because God's gift of free will provides a test of our responses?

― Sanpaku

classic theodicy right there. millennia people have been trying to prove that god exists despite the existence of purposeless suffering. nobody's succeeded yet, and my personal thought is that nobody ever will because you can't fucking do it.

closest i've seen is not a theodicy proper but a defense offered by a guy named plantinga. now he's old right now and spending a whole lifetime as a christian philosopher has rotted his brain, but the plantinga defense what he came up with way back in the 1960s is the closest i've seen. this defense is not a proof of anything, but points out, and i'm not a philosopher so i could be getting this wrong, that it's entirely _possible_ that a god possessing certain values, including prioritizing human free will as a positive good, would not be able to create a world free of "natural evil" without rendering the concept of human "free will" an absurdity, without getting into "can god make a rock so big he can't lift it" territory.

people have been trying to prove that god exists despite the existence of purposeless suffering.

not too hard really. all you have to do is tweak god's attributes a bit to fit observable reality. an omnipotent, but amoral, god would probably be sufficient, but I haven't drilled deep enough on this idea to see if it requires other tweaks to work. essentially, all of empirical science could be interpreted as an inquiry into god's actual nature, which can only be understood in light of a true understanding his creation.

theodicy doesn't really bother me so much bc it seems to me like an internally consistent infinite creator would necessarily have to encompass both good and evil being the creator of both. a rabbi in high school once told me that everything god does it good because goodness is a trait higher than god. i was like "woah check yourself there i'm pretty sure that's insane."

turtles all the way up

lol

it seems to me that OT narratives make no sense without a concept of free will and that sin and punishment in particular make no sense without such an idea. for example take a look at Exodus 9:12 which has inspired an entire literature on the question of why Pharaoh was punished if God intervened in his free will. and particularly consider that the passage only makes sense within a context where free will is assumed.

― Mordy, Friday, March 10, 2017 11:55 AM (one hour ago)

I don't think this is true at all. Rather, the OT concept of sin strikes me as similar to that of social shame. It (sin) attaches itself to people or groups as a result of wrong-doing like a kind of metaphysical stain. This stain, if sufficiently large, can only be erased by spilling the blood of the sinner (or some acceptable substitute, e.g. scapegoat).

Of course, there's anger on the part of those wronged (e.g., God) as well as desire to punish the sinner, but these things don't necessarily depend on a belief in free will. Like the social "stain" of sin itself, feelings of loss, shame, outrage and desire for redress and can just fine exist without that.

This kind of impersonal, mechanical view of sin as something that is called into being by human action - and not that which motivates human action - makes sense of Christ's sacrifice. His spilled blood (since someone's blood is needed) washes away all sin forever. Not the sin that grows in human hearts, but the sin that blights communities, demands the slitting of throats, and calls down the lord's judgment.

Finally encountered a less versified source of the famous Epicurus quote, from Lactantius's On the Anger of God

God, he says, either wishes to take away evils, and is unable; or He is able, and is unwilling; or He is neither willing nor able, or He is both willing and able.
If He is willing and is unable, He is feeble, which is not in accordance with the character of God;
if He is able and unwilling, He is envious, which is equally at variance with God;
if He is neither willing nor able, He is both envious and feeble, and therefore not God;
if He is both willing and able, which alone is suitable to God, from what source then are evils?

I don't think you can read that into that passage. The OT distinguishes between times that Pharoah hardened his own heart and God heartened his heart. I think that necessarily implies that the earlier times were free will and the later times were not. xp

if He is able and unwilling, He is envious, which is equally at variance with God;

weakest link here imo

if He is able and unwilling, He is envious, which is equally at variance with God

probably a translation issue, but that "envious" makes no sense to me. Of whom or of what? And why?

I'm guessing the idea behind the "envious" would be that God is being spiteful, because the essence of evil is that it is not merely a bad thing, but wrong, unjust and undeserved. God envies the excellence of his innocent victims and deliberately brings ruin upon them out of his envy and spite. Hmmm.

lot of assumptions being made there about the nature and character of god and the reasons for his decisions

The envious there is invidus in the original, with the latin dictionary defs:

1) envious
2) hostile, inimical

Again, we don't have the surviving text in the original Greek. Kind of odd that Lactantius didn't use malus (malevolent) or pravus (crooked, wicked).

Having recently read Lucretius, the 'final answer' Epicurus offered was simply that after creating the world, the gods retreated to a distance and felt indifferent toward it, as a child might wind up a toy, set it down, walk off, and not care if it ran into something and broke.

Ugh do any of youse have the free will to just not

that seems to be a subject of dispute

Ya it was by way of a deep and srs query

highly ironic that God is one of the few beings not allowed to have a free will of His own.

hard to be a god iirc

he really should have just not created the universe. then there would have been no suffering! instead he fucks up, constantly. lol what an idiot

Let's get God's brain under an fMRI and find out.

oh jeez that's more than i thought i'd have to read (NOT REALLY)

anyway what Wittgenstein didn't say about what would it look like if the Earth went round the Sun

I don't find determinism terrifying, I just accept it. it has no bearing on the decisions I make or how I behave tbh, I just consider it a fact.

Qualified like this, what you've got there is quite a particular form of acceptance, though, right?

The thread really went in a different direction for some time, but if anyone was still wondering about modern science and implications on free will and determinism, I think Karen Barad's chapter on 'Agential Realism' is very good. Very pragmatic, really. Using quantum mechanics specifically.

No better excuse for the existence of a Dawkins than that we have to spend this many calories evaluating what's the dumbest argument Epicurus came up with that one time

Don't talk smack about Epicurus. He was closer to modern scientific ideas of physics than anyone else who lived before Isaac Newton.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinamen

Fascinating!

This is an interesting lecture by Derk Pereboom covering a bunch of the positions: https://youtu.be/bObzpWrhH-Q

I think I'm basically on Pereboom's side (which he calls 'Spinozist'), although I'm definitely not familiar with all of the moves for and against compatibilism. But for me there's a basic appeal in denying free will in the possibility of revising a lot of our ideas of human nature, our relation to the world, and our moral concepts, retributive punishment first of all.

people have been trying to prove that god exists despite the existence of purposeless suffering.

don't see how "purposeless suffering" disproves God in any way. humans are capable of inflicting purposeless suffering. if God can't do the same then he's less powerful than a human. i find many atheist arguments against a God fail when you ask "Can a human do this?" this idea that he is only perfect and only good and would never show up late to work is silly. God's a fuckup like the rest of us, and i find that cosmically funny and sympathetic.

also "trying to prove that god exists" seems like the biggest waste of time. religion and belief is an experience that is expressed - not proved - through these forms.

Without the concept of free will, people are just animals, beings with no moral integrity, no claim to rights of any kind. If you think this perception would make us kinder -- for instance, by erasing the desire for retribution, or the practice of stigmatizing people for their choices -- just look at the way we treat animals. If your concern is destigmatizing conditions like addiction, just think about what it would be like to be an addict and feel like you have NO control over your actions, even with help. Faith in free will, even if it needs assistance from a "higher power" or whatever, is a source of hope. Deterministic materialism by contrast is a kind of mental prison.

This isn't to say free will definitely exists, but some version of it -- not an exaggerated Randian one that denies society but something that preserves the cocnepts of freedom and responsibility -- is just absolutely essential for people to live in our society. (Maybe some older collectivist societies could do without it, idk about them.)

"Rights of any kind" = rights beyond the right to avoid pain. Any claim to autonomy. Sorry it was unclear.

I have never understood the focus on the free will debate, which seems like a tangent from the core issue of accounting for conscious thought & self-awareness. I'm not really clear in what sense they can be illusory, but if that were the case it would undermine the way everyone I know thinks about themselves and the world. I suspect instead the whole issue is largely irrelevant and that the language required to explain consciousness is incommensurable with the way ppl think about their lives, just as it doesn't make a big difference to a chef how an onion has evolved

otm

But for me there's a basic appeal in denying free will in the possibility of revising a lot of our ideas of human nature, our relation to the world, and our moral concepts, retributive punishment first of all.

Okay, I can see this. Definitely a good idea always to include the question, how much responsibility someone has for their actions; not to assume that everyone makes their own choices all the time. Especially when talking about addiction, also when talking about poverty. Or in a general sense when trying to make sense of people's actions.

But adding to treeship's concerns about determinism, which I think are pretty interesting, my suspicion is about how far we can expect real people to follow through the implications of determinism, and actually get around to adopting the more charitable attitude to other people that it implies.

For example look at those people who adopt 'evolutionary psychology' (which is one form of determinism) and use it to excuse rape. Determinism (okay, perhaps as reified mantra, rather than as philosophy) is easily instrumentalised.

Given how easy it would be, I'm not sure how we'd avoid the attitude of resignation in the face of fate (leave the addicts and the impoverished to their lot; or, let big people do whatever they feel like to little people). Having said that, strands of Hinduism and Buddhism seem to be able to combine an extremely bleak fatalistic outlook with compassion, somehow, and like, I've actually encountered real Hindu people who really acted out this compassion, so ... ?

xp:
A central concept of Buddhism is no self, that there is no permanent soul in living beings, related to their concept of dependent arising, that all things, including volitional thoughts, arise from others. In some secular interpretations (and possibly the original for of Siddhartha's day), its all fairly compatible with modern neuroscience, and certainly with an absence of free will. And yet, Buddhists have perhaps the best record among religions, remarkably clean of inquisitions, pogroms, religious wars, burning of books, and yes, treatment of non-human animals. I think their record indicates we don't need moral judgement of free actors in order to have good lives. We need compassion towards others and measured doubt in all things. And the recognition that all are subject to unsatisfactory environments, health, and thoughts that aren't entirely in their control contributes to both.

Also, as an addict in long-term recovery, I found the modern scientific descriptions of addiction, all the dopamine releases at the nucleus accumbens etc., liberating. I couldn't be expected to voluntarily stop drinking once started, or avoid temptation if I spent my time perusing the liquor aisle. To the extent that I have control, its my role is to arrange my life so those precipitating situations don't occur, because I won't have the will to stop myself. I'm willing to accept that on a moment to moment basis, I'm not free, but perhaps on longer timespans, some part of me, which I'm unconscious of, have an influence on my adaptive subconscience. It takes just takes time, not willpower.

Without the concept of free will, people are just animals, beings with no moral integrity, no claim to rights of any kind.

― Treeship, Saturday, March 11, 2017 8:59 AM (one hour ago)

The fourth point doesn't follow from the first three. Our belief that humans possess "certain inalienable rights" isn't grounded in anything substantial, so far as i can see, and wouldn't necessarily be eroded by the denial of free will, individual moral culpability, etc.

Oh yeah and on this one from upthread:

people have been trying to prove that god exists despite the existence of purposeless suffering.

The problem of suffering always seems a bit ... dunno, to me, because it seems to imply that if I, as a human, experience an event as suffering, then that event is suffering. But the tapeworm (for example) that lives in my guts and parasites off me, while that's awful for me, doesn't experience it as suffering, probably as the opposite. Likewise if I get eaten by dogs or whatever, they're having a great time. And of course, here I am, wearing part of a dead cow for comfort and eating other parts for sustenance. Dunno.

To the extent that I have control, its my role is to arrange my life so those precipitating situations don't occur, because I won't have the will to stop myself. I'm willing to accept that on a moment to moment basis, I'm not free, but perhaps on longer timespans, some part of me, which I'm unconscious of, have an influence on my adaptive subconscience. It takes just takes time, not willpower.

i think this constitutes a belief in free will, just one that is more circumscribed than most people in the west might believe in. i don't think that the buddhist denial of the "self" is a denial of the will, either, really; making the choice to meditate, to try to forge a more productive relationship with thoughts that are not in one's control, is an exercise of the will. granted, i could be wrong because i don't understand buddhism as well as you do, but to the extent that i am familiar with these kinds of ideas, i don't think that align with determinism, which is a perspective that i think -- if taken seriously -- would be totally at odds with how human beings experience their consciousness.

Free will has its own thread where the ilxor hivemind settled this question for all time. It was inevitable.