Scientific Justification for Free Will?

[Divine Insight]

Is there any scientific justification for the notion of Free Will?

Question #1. If you believe their is, can you please state your scientific evidence for the existence of Free Will.

Question #2. If you believe there is no scientific justification for the notion of Free Will, then please explain how we can have any scientific justification for holding anyone responsible for their actions. In fact, wouldn't the very notion of personal responsibility be scientifically unsupportable?

[Philbert]

Jesus would agree with you, it is not the action of looking at a woman that is immoral, it is the intent of lust in your heart that makes it immoral.

Um, sorry, apologies, but no, no and no.

If we didn't lust, what would be the meaning of fidelity? It is the lust that makes loyalty to our partners the special gift that it is.

The intent of lust in our heart was installed by God, to put it in theist language. Let us please stop trying to turn anything have to do with sex in some kind of shameful sin.

As far as I know, there is no record of Jesus having a girlfriend, let alone a wife or kids. Sex is not one of the subjects where he has demonstrated experience, let alone competence.

2,000 years of the Catholic Church being led by celibate virgins has brought us to an epidemic of child rape cases. And for every rapist, it seems there was someone else willing to cover it up. This system has brought us to bizarre doctrines such as, abortion is the worst imaginable crime, but don't you dare use contraception.

If we're going to seek guidance from preachers about sex, we should at least find one who actually has a sex life.

[Goat]

If we're going to seek guidance from preachers about sex, we should at least find one who actually has a sex life.

You mean, ones that are supposed to be allowed to have a sex life. Apparently, the problem with a lot of the scandals of the RCC is that priests who should have been celibate, where not.

[help3434]

[Replying to post 119 by otseng]

I find the contention that a omnisicent being can create something and then not be responsible for everything it ever did to be incoherent.

[Peter]

From here on I'm quite sure it doesn't and we don't have the luxury of waiting for evolution to evolve it out of the human race before disparate irrational beliefs tear us a new one, so to speak.

Gentle and brief reminder, over the last 100 years at least, the main threat has come not from those who believe in a personal God, but from those who don't.

This is not necessarily predictive of what will happen next however....

Over the past 100 years the main threat has come from psychopaths taking advantage of the propensity in humans for irrational god belief. After all, Hitler and Stalin didn't come to be considered demigods because of an overabundance of rational thought by Germans and Russians respectively.

Technology has advanced to the point where even a handful of irrational psychopaths can cause megadeath. I don't think the answer is even stronger irrational conflicting god belief. Do you?

[Peter]

It doesn't make it absolutely objectively right or wrong and I'm not sure why that's important unless one happens to be a person who cannot tolerate any grey area in their life.

Then would you agree that objective morality cannot exist in a secular worldview?

Correct, "objective" morality cannot even technically exist in a non-secular worldview since morality would be subjectively dictated by some god or other.

The fact that most humans on this planet believe in some "god" doesn't make it right or wrong just popular and supernaturalists are, currently, more popular yes.

Then likewise you cannot say that anything is really morally right or wrong. It would only be what's most popular and nothing more.

Correct, we decide how to treat each other based on consensus.

The group of people who determines how to treat one another is constantly growing. Thousands of years ago it was the family unit or the tribe. As the world shrinks through technology the group is becoming multicultural and we're seeing more agreement on how to treat on another across the globe.

Sure, but it still does not define how to determine morality.

We decide how to treat each other by consensus.

Do you hear many people complain that without "objective" good health you could simply declare that vomiting all day was healthy?

I've never even heard of "objective" good health. Yes, people should be healthy. But objective good health?

You seem to miss the point. You haven't heard the term "objective" good health because, like objective morality, there is no such thing as objective good health. We don't need to "objectively" know that vomiting all day isn't healthy, we just know.

I'll give a better example. The Bible states that divorce is bad. So, even if every marriage ends in divorce, it would still be considered bad.

Huh? You lost me.

I was giving an example of where God decreed something to be bad. And even if a majority of people think something is acceptable, it would still be considered morally bad.

So a battered wife should stay married because a god says it's morally bad to divorce. IMO being Christian and being a battered woman are very similar mental states. Christians are expert masochists but why try to foist that mentality on everyone else? Misery loves company??

Killing is generally wrong in most situations because most humans think it is but when it comes to selection(survival) killing is frequently thought to be justified by most humans. So yes, killing is not morally wrong in life and death situations. .

So, if most people think that killing is right, then it's considered morally right?

If most people think killing for some reason is right then it's right, yes. Most people consider killing in self defense to be just.

What if the majority thought it was OK to kill someone just because of their ethnicity?

Then it would be "right" for that time and place. The fact that it would be considered wrong in this time and place is just personal bias.

Again, like most things, morality is fluid. I'm not sure why some people desire everything in life to be black and white because they're going to be disappointed at every turn.

I don't claim that morality is black and white. But, if the test for morality is what the majority accepts, then isn't that a case of black and white? Simply poll the population and the majority answer wins. Cased closed.

Maybe I should have said black and white forever as the bible would have us believe.

I see. Yes, I believe that objective moral values exist (things that are black and white). If objective moral values do not exist, then it's simply culture or preference. One cannot say with any authority that anything is really wrong (or right).

That's correct, all we can say is that today and here this is how we agree to treat each other. Why substitute the questionable dictates of some imaginary god for an agreement between rational people?

If you and I were the last two people on the planet how would you like to decide how to treat each other? By mutual agreement or by some never changing dictates of your god and mine? It seems that this is the main problem in the world today. Too many people want their gods dictates to prevail over reasonable agreement.

[Divine Insight]

.

Can absolute morality truly be based on nothing more than actions?

Or must it be based on intent?

I would personally say that it must be based on intent and not on actions.

So that's a whole new concept of morality altogether.

• 27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’[e] 28 But I tell you that anyone
  who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
  
  Matthew 5:27-28

Jesus would agree with you, it is not the action of looking at a woman that is immoral, it is the intent of lust in your heart that makes it immoral.

Absolutely.

According to the Gospel rumors Jesus agrees with me on many moral issues.

This is why I often say that it would be impossible for me to follow Jesus. After all, how do you follow someone who agrees with you? The best you can do is stand with them side-by-side in agreement.

So the best I could ever hope to do is stand beside Jesus as his equal on moral issues.

[Sonofason]

Well, is there a 'random choice'? Or, are things predetermined by the state of the brain chemistry, the connections and the environment. If we 'rewound' a moment in time, and presented the same scenario (down to the quantum scale), would the choice always be the same?

How would we know? What test can we do to determine that?

If we can't. does the question have any meaning at all, from a scientific point of view?

Thank you Goat,

You have hit my point dead center square on!

That is precisely what I'm asking.

If the concept of Free Will Choice is a meaningless question in science, then surely the concept of Personal Responsibility is equally meaningless?

That is precisely the point I'm getting at here.

and Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."

[Goat]

Well, is there a 'random choice'? Or, are things predetermined by the state of the brain chemistry, the connections and the environment. If we 'rewound' a moment in time, and presented the same scenario (down to the quantum scale), would the choice always be the same?

How would we know? What test can we do to determine that?

If we can't. does the question have any meaning at all, from a scientific point of view?

Thank you Goat,

You have hit my point dead center square on!

That is precisely what I'm asking.

If the concept of Free Will Choice is a meaningless question in science, then surely the concept of Personal Responsibility is equally meaningless?

That is precisely the point I'm getting at here.

and Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."

Which , of course, is totally meaningless when it comes to the scientific justification for free will. For that matter, for the religious concept of free will either.

[Sonofason]

Like I said.. nonsense... 90% of philosophy is over thinking nonsense.

I'm using the term "philosophy" here in a very practical way.

For example, Science is a "philosophy" that is built upon the ideal that observations and experiments made on the world we live in should be the foundation for meaningful conclusion.

In a similar manner, I'm speaking of a secular model of a culture that is based upon a "philosophy" that is built upon a similar philosophical paradigm as science.

After all, I feel that there is some justification in addressing this model since many "secular atheists" proclaim that we shouldn't be basing our social standards on illusions that cannot be rigorously defined and in ways that are meaningful to the world in which we live. And those secular atheists point to the "Philosophy of Science" as an example of the guidelines required to justify a meaningful concept.

In other words, they dismiss the idea of a "soul" because there is no scientific evidence for the existence of a "soul". Therefore they claim that this is a concept of illusion (or delusion) that has no secular basis.

So I'm just taking this a step further and asking, "What is the secular basis for holding anyone responsible for their actions if there is no scientific basis for the concept of Free Will?"

I think this is a legitimate question.

After all, you have already conceded to the following:

1. You have conceded that the very concept of Free Will may not be a meaningful question in science.

2. You have conceded that the concept of Free Will is based entirely upon our own intuitive illusions (or possibly delusions).

I'm not suggesting that no one should be held accountable for their actions.

I'm simply asking, how a purely secular philosophy (or cultural paradigm) of humanity could justify holding anyone accountable for their actions when there is no secular evidence that any such thing as Free Will even exists?

This wouldn't mean that we couldn't incarcerate people who we deem to be criminal or a danger to society. But it does bring into question whether we could actually hold them responsible in any sense of "blame".

If there is no such thing as Free Will and we are all basically just dust in the wind, then people who go off the deep end and do things that we consider to be criminal would simply be victims of their own malfunctioning brains.

How could we blame them for having a malfunctioning brain if they have no Free Will Choice in the matter?

Free Will is paramount to the very idea of "blame" or holding people "personally responsible" for anything.

Now I'm not saying that Free Will doesn't exist. On the contrary, I believe it does, at least in the case of healthy humans. I think there may very well be mentally ill people where Free Will has indeed flown the coop. But I don't believe that this is necessarily true of everyone who does bad things.

I believe in Free Will (just as you apparently do, at lease in the sense that we have a very profound intuitive illusion of it as you say).

But I still have problems with Free Will even being a meaningful secular concept.

The very notion of Free Will suggests to me (via this same intuitive illusion) that there must be something mystical going on beneath the facade of physical existence.

So now does this "Intuitive Illusion" take on as much merit as the "Intuitive Illusion" that we have Free Will at all?

In other words, if I can justify the idea that we have Free Will via nothing more than intuition, then why should the buck stop there? Why can't I then also believe in a mystical soul via the same intuition?

Secular atheists start screaming, "No, no, no! A belief in a mystical soul is totally unscientific and not supportable by science!"

Well Duh?

Neither is FREE WILL!

And therefore neither is the notion of Personal Responsibility.

So how could a secular atheist justify holding anyone responsible for anything, especially in terms of blaming them like as if it was their fault for having made a Free Will Choice to do the bad thing?

The intuitive concept of Free Will Choice is just as unscientific and illusive as the intuitive concept of a soul.

I just wanted you to know that I think you are making a terrific argument against the idea of free will, responsibility and blame. At the same time you are cutting the legs out from under science. Bravo.

There is far more to this existence than what is known. There may be far more to this existence than what is even knowable. God bless your soul, the agent behind your free willed actions.

[Goat]

[q

I just wanted you to know that I think you are making a terrific argument against the idea of free will, responsibility and blame. At the same time you are cutting the legs out from under science. Bravo.

There is far more to this existence than what is known. There may be far more to this existence than what is even knowable. God bless your soul, the agent behind your free willed actions.

Now, isn't it interesting that you can't explain HOW I am cutting the legs from under science??? Then of course, you immediately go into the logical fallacy of 'argument from ignorance'.