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I like this very much.
But I am puzzled by it because I don't follow your logic.
it sounds like you are saying "some intelligence" has control and guides events; and also that "there is no room for free will"
I don't get it. Because free will is you the individual (you are intelligent), using and working within a system that is intelligent and responsive. The "some intelligence" that controls and guides events is you. The intelligent responsive system is the Divine.
BTW: Over the past several months I've come to appreciate a sophistication in your thinking that, at first, I did not see. You've inspired me to think with increasing depth, and for that I am grateful. Thanks,
An ability to more or less create a desired future is part of the essence of free will, and I do believe in free will. So let me try this approach:
By "free will" I mean "individual agent causality." Keeping in mind my basically naturalistic leanings, free will basically means that there are some types of physical systems that can develop intentions (desires/goals) "of their own" - meaning, these intentions emerge as behavior-guiding aspects (I'll just say "sub-systems") within an organism. These sub-systems are context-dependent (i.e., influenced by the organism's environment), but to understand them we need to employ a hermeneutic style of explanation. Sorry for that big fancy word, but what this amounts to is that to comprehend the nature of the free-will-expressing behavior-guiding sub-systems, we need to shift "back and forth" between the organism's internal processes and external environment.
Quick, but relevant digression: To read a novel, you need to perceive the words out of which the novel is composed. But the meanings of words, in most cases, depends on the sentences in which they are embedded, and generally on paragraphs, etc.. as well. "He scored last night" might mean one thing when uttered by a sports commentator, and something completely different if uttered in, say, a men's bathroom. And these context considerations don't stop there. A word or a sentence or an entire novel could have different meanings in different cultures, different historical periods, etc. Basically, the meanings of the words create the meaning of the novel, but the meanings of the words are, to some extent, dependent upon the novel as a whole (and the culture as a whole, etc.), so interpretation, broadly speaking, always ends up being a "back and forth" process between using the words to understand the context (the novel) and comprehending the context well enough to re-interpret the words. In many cases, the "spiral staircase" can have many turns. Each time you complete a cycle, you end up "back where you started," but a "level up". You are looking at "the same words" each time you compete a cycle, but with each level the nuances of meaning keep changing. The Christian Bible is famous for demanding a seemingly never-ending "hermeneutical spiral".
As a free agent, I have goals. What are my goals? Good question. To reach a goal, I need to interact with an environment, and this environment plays a major role in specifying the meaning of my goal in the first place. As I work toward my goal, the environment keeps changing - partly because of factors outside of my control, and partly due to my own impacts on the environment. My goal is to reach X, but due to the constantly changing environment (partly due to my own actions) my estimation of "a good path to X" keeps changing and, in some cases, the very meaning of "X" itself might change for me. Also, the meaning of "what it is like to accomplish X" can change many times before I end up getting to whatever it is that "feels like I've accomplished X" when I "get there" (wherever "there" ends up to be).
This whole process of working toward a goal would be complicated enough even if it were just me working my way through a fairly simple context. But the world is not just me, and the world is anything but a simple context. If other agents have free will, then their actions as they attempt to reach their goals often make havoc of my efforts to reach my goals. From the perspective me trying to reach my goals, the seemingly endless free-will-driven behaviors of other people create a context that is, FAPP, a chaotic mess containing a great deal of randomness. As a free agent, I have some control, but as a node in this chaotic web of interacting goal-driven behaviors, my control is vastly limited. The girl who was burned might have been burned because of someone's malicious goals, or because of someone's carelessness, etc. Whatever goals she might have had will, in most cases have to be reformulated. Her burns change her, and through her they change the environment. Her own free will and her environment keep combining to create contexts in which the "meaning of her life" (sorta like the meaning of a word in a novel) keeps changing.
Perhaps you will want to say that, whether we realize it, or not, God is a conductor and we are all willing participants in a great orchestra. As such, we freely follow the conductor's lead, even if it means some of us sometimes have to suffer 3rd-degree burns and die in a state of misery. What appears to be a cacophony of local noises to us is, actually, in the big picture, a beautifully unfolding work of musical art. Even people who think they are freely choosing to reject the conductor's guidance might, actually, be fulfilling conductor's plan perfectly because his influences are subtle and he has designed the musical masterpiece to be a sort of "jazzy" production with the cantankerous free wills of atheists and scoundrels of all sorts in mind. They are the discordant notes that somehow give a delightful "edgy" quality that ends up making the overall work even better than if they had not been there.
It's a beautiful worldview. Perhaps that is what life is. I hope so. I really do hope so. But I can't honestly say that I actually believe it.
BTW: We don't technically need the conductor in order to live in the orchestral version of Reality. We have a lot of excellent models showing that intricate and beautiful patterns can emerge on their own, with out any "conductor" consciously guiding the overall process. So, technically, live could be the big beautiful pattern with or without a God up on the podium. Also notice that no "supernatural" influences or entities are required. Reality can be a grand orchestral work on purely naturalistic terms.
My view: I suspect that Reality could, indeed, appear to be an orchestral masterpiece if it can be viewed from a more or less "God's-eye" view (whether or not there ever is a God - or any future version of myself or anyone else - who can actually achieve this perspective). But I don't think that suffering is an intentional part of any "plan." I don't think that God, or any member of the orchestra says "Hey, we need to insert some intense atrocities and suffering here at this point in order for this orchestral work to be as great as it can be." No. Suffering occurs because, for various reasons (including some reasons relating to the messiness of conflicting goals amongst free agents) suffering is logically unavoidable. The girl was not burned "for a reason" - or, at least, not for any good or necessary reason. She got burned because somebody was an a**hole, or someone was careless, or simply because she stumbled into the wrong place at the wrong time. But, fortunately for us, I think/hope, Reality is resilient and lemonade can, in most cases, be made out of lemons. The great beauty of the grand design can, perhaps, be achieved despite her tragedy, not because of it.
This isn't to say that the girl, or her family, can't draw some comfort from a deeper meaning to be found in her tragedy. Intuitively, I suspect that meaning can be drawn from virtually anything; and here I am referring to "genuine" meaning - not meaning rooted in self-deception just to feel good. I have not mastered that art myself, but I intuitively feel that it is an art that can, in principle, be mastered. Perhaps the lives of great historical religious figures play some role in achieving that mastery? Maybe various sorts of "divination" practices could play a role? Just a speculations on my part.
In any case, I think that a network of mostly selfish interacting free wills with different personal goals pretty much guarantees that some FAPP random suffering will occur, and the evolutionary processes resulting in the emergence of self-absorbed free agents in the first place apparently also guarantees some suffering (natural disasters, etc.). IF there were a conscious, intelligent, loving, Omni-dude, then He could have (should have/would have) skipped the suffering - at least the really intense atrocious stuff - and simply designed us, from scratch, to play well with others. If free will is a logically coherent concept at all, then there is no reason we couldn't all freely choose to be loving and helpful to others. We didn't chose our basic natures. We came into being with a basic nature - a "seed" of sorts - out of which we, in conjunction with our environment, commenced a process of continual self-recreation. If the seed, and the environment, were "pure" (i.e., all created via the intelligent design work of a purely loving Omni-dude) then there would be no need for suffering and evil. But that's not our reality, which makes me deeply skeptical of the "All-loving Omni-dude" concept. More realistically: Life evolved from fundamental elements that do not, in themselves, care about our suffering. Life "created itself" from whatever it had to work with, and these available resources are not inherently loving or nice. Love and compassion need to be built from sweat and tears because that, apparently, is what Living Reality had to work with. So innocent children get burned and the band plays on despite the profound pain and sadness and, hopefully, someday we (Living Reality as a Whole) will be able to rise above the indifferent elements constituting our nature and create something that at least roughly resembles the loving, compassionate, beautifully orchestrated Nirvana that we seek.
Last edited by Gaylenwoof; 01-11-2018 at 04:06 PM..
BTW: Over the past several months I've come to appreciate a sophistication in your thinking that, at first, I did not see. You've inspired me to think with increasing depth, and for that I am grateful. Thanks,
....
thank you gaylen. i very much enjoy your posts and our conversations, on a range of topics that are quite dear to my heart.
But you DO say "she brought it upon herself" with your reincarnation misunderstanding of the role prior consciousness plays in our lives. ALL consciousness exists beyond death. Our human consciousness is connected to all other consciousness living or dead. Most of us cannot instantiate awareness of it but those who do just that think they are "remembering" past lives. Your reincarnation rationale excuses and covers over primitive savagery and evil because our ignorant ancestors had no knowledge of consciousness to produce a better explanation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tzaphkiel
yes, and before birth, too.
eternity runs in both directions.
But no consciousness that exists now has been in existence before. Any "remembering" of past lives is the result of connections with the consciousness of others who lived before. It is never the same consciousness reincarnating. That is the basis for your misunderstanding and the entire delusion that forms the basis of your rationalization of human suffering and evil in this life. It is misguided.
But no consciousness that exists now has been in existence before. Any "remembering" of past lives is the result of connections with the consciousness of others who lived before. It is never the same consciousness reincarnating. That is the basis for your misunderstanding and the entire delusion that forms the basis of your rationalization of human suffering and evil in this life. It is misguided.
The consciousness you speak of has always been, past and present. We lived inside of God. There is a world in itself inside the father even in the realm of Heaven. That is where ALL life comes from and where we were prior to getting sent from Heaven and attached to the zygote in the womb. That is why people remember "lives" before their Human existence. We were little spirits of light inside of God that existed and we laughed, we played, etc. There are people in this world who met each other and have no idea why it seems they've always known each other. That's because they did know each other. They played together as spirits of light inside the creator before they became flesh.
But no consciousness that exists now has been in existence before. Any "remembering" of past lives is the result of connections with the consciousness of others who lived before. It is never the same consciousness reincarnating. That is the basis for your misunderstanding and the entire delusion that forms the basis of your rationalization of human suffering and evil in this life. It is misguided.
A soul chooses to incarnate and a soul chooses to keep incarnating by choice and by agreement. They we also do it out of an incredible yearning and desire to assist humanity and help the planet. From our limited small human perspective we dont see or know all the reasons but from the broader wiser perspective of the soul there is vast sweeping understanding, meaning, purpose, design, intelligence, and wisdom in every situation. From the soul perspective it makes perfect sense.
Last edited by Tzaphkiel; 01-12-2018 at 07:23 AM..
... human suffering and evil in this life. It is misguided.
You have free will MPD. You can steep yourself in "evil and suffering" for as long as you choose to maintain that as your desired focus. And perhaps one day you will use your free will and choose to focus on something else.
But I am puzzled by it because I don't follow your logic.
it sounds like you are saying "some intelligence" has control and guides events; and also that "there is no room for free will"
I don't get it. Because free will is you the individual (you are intelligent), using and working within a system that is intelligent and responsive. The "some intelligence" that controls and guides events is you. The intelligent responsive system is the Divine.
Despite the outrageous length of my previous post, I think I failed to highlight the precise/concise answer I was aiming at. Namely, this: Given the existence of free will, and given the mixed bag of "seeds" we are born with (i.e., the "evil-prone" biological inclinations of our bodies combined with the vastly different environments into which we are born), I believe it is FAPP impossible for ANY intelligent entity - even Omni-dude - to guarantee that each and every incident in life is the result of intentional planning or guidance. IF you insist that, as a matter of fact, every event is intentional (as in planned by a soul prior to birth in order to accomplish this or that spiritual goal) then you are, in effect, eliminating the possibility of true free will. Maybe if every individual is born into their own dream world in which they are the only reality and everyone else is just a character in the dream, then the soul-planning exercise might work, but it can't work if you need to negotiate a world of other people who are exercising their own free wills.
One option you might have: You could say that free will only exists for souls between incarnations. Maybe the souls all get together and make a group plan in which everyone agrees to do exactly this or that. In that case, our biological lives are like wind-up toys, predesigned by the community of souls to run around doing exactly what the planning committee planned. I suppose that would be "free will" of a sort, but it is hard for me to believe that anyone could seriously believe that that's the nature of life.
Quote:
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regarding ...rationality gone out the window ... i'm sorry I have no idea what you are saying, and I really do want to understand what you are expressing and follow the logic you are using, so for that last sentence please can you restate what you are trying to say there. Thank you.
Here I am taking the standard atheist line: Omni-dude is a blatantly irrational concept. Either God is not really Omni-dude, or God is not all loving and/or all good. This is essentially "the problem of evil" which I don't think has been satisfactorily answered by traditional theists.
My version (hinted at in my previous post): If God is truly all-powerful, then God could have designed us to all have purely good natures. Every single one of us could have been born with genetics that ensure that we have compassionate, loving natures. We would be free to do evil if we wanted to, but given our natures, we simply wouldn't want to. Some people are born with genes that make them hate the taste of cilantro. These people are perfectly free to eat cilantro, if they want, but they are genetically predisposed to never really want that. Being born with genes that virtually guarantee that we will always feel love and compassion for other people is probably a natural impossibility (i.e., given the realities of physics, chemistry, and biology, it would be mathematically impossible (or, at least, FAPP impossible) for the entire human population to be born with purely loving and compassionate natures), but it is not logically impossible. So the question is: If Omni-dude is really Omni, then why not create a world in which universal love and compassion is, in fact, naturally possible and, indeed, naturally ensured?
Atheist/agnostic/liberal theist answer: God is either not really Omni-dude or, God really doesn't care very much (if at all) about human suffering.
You might say that human beings are too limited to understand that, ultimately, God has indeed created the best of all logically possible worlds. You are certainly welcome to believe that, but I do not believe it. If this is the best of all logically possible worlds, then any deviation from how things actually are would be a move away from the best possible. Any change to a perfect world is either a "difference that makes no real difference" or it is a difference that makes the perfect world somewhat less than perfect. I do not believe that "the best of all logically possible worlds" has to be a world in which a girl suffers severe burns and eventually commits suicide. If the girl's suffering could have been avoided without making this a less than perfect world, then the girl's suffering must be irrelevant insofar as the standards of perfection are concerned. (Because if her suffering was indeed relevant, then the world in which she was not burned would be a better world than our perfect world, which is logically absurd.)
Basically, to believe that an all-loving, all-good Omni-dude is possible because God's rationality is beyond human understanding, is to allow that blatantly illogical things can be logical if I believe that God's ultra-logical logic allows it. You might as well insist that 2+2=5 because God can do anything, and you believe that God says it's actually logical. If God's "real" logic seems illogical to our limited minds, then rationality has gone out the window because you can believe absolutely anything you want, and if someone says it's illogical, then all you have to do is say "God's logic allows it, even though it seems logical to mere humans." At that point, all hope of rational discussion immediately ends. All we can do at that point appeal to emotions and preferences in taste.
Last edited by Gaylenwoof; 01-12-2018 at 08:38 AM..
..Given the existence of free will, and given the mixed bag of "seeds" we are born with (i.e., the "evil-prone" biological inclinations of our bodies combined with the vastly different environments into which we are born), I believe it is FAPP impossible for ANY intelligent entity - even Omni-dude - to guarantee that each and every incident in life is the result of intentional planning or guidance....
and choice. don't forget it is also by choice. and agreement. agreement by all parties involved.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gaylenwoof
..IF you insist that, as a matter of fact, every event is intentional (as in planned by a soul prior to birth in order to accomplish this or that spiritual goal) then you are, in effect, eliminating the possibility of true free will. Maybe if every individual is born into their own dream world in which they are the only reality and everyone else is just a character in the dream, then the soul-planning exercise might work, but it can't work if you need to negotiate a world of other people who are exercising their own free wills.....
no that does not eliminate the possibility of free will, it is the very essence of free will. it is by choice and agreement of all parties involved.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gaylenwoof
..One option you might have: You could say that free will only exists for souls between incarnations. Maybe the souls all get together and make a group plan in which everyone agrees to do exactly this or that. In that case, our biological lives are like wind-up toys, predesigned by the community of souls to run around doing exactly what the planning committee planned. I suppose that would be "free will" of a sort, but it is hard for me to believe that anyone could seriously believe that that's the nature of life. .....
no that is not free will that is "set in stone" or "pre determined before we ever get here."
The situations may be chosen by us in advance, and in that sense they are pre determined before we got here, but we exercised our free will in setting up those situations by our own souls.
we are not wind up toys. we are not robots. we are not chess pieces being moved around on the board by a committee. That is the absolute abnegation of all personal responsibility. I am saying the opposite. Free will is the opposite of that.
Situations are set up in advance (by us, by choice) and the essence of free will now that we are here is that we have a choice in how we respond to whatever we face in our life.
Your soul is the wisest smartest part of yourself. Whatever it chose, designed "set up in advance" for you here in this life, it had a really good reason for doing so, and it always always always has your best interests at heart and is acting and choosing from a place of wisdom and compassion. As humans we are asked to live from that place also, but we have free will here in our human daily life whether we actually do that or not.
[more later, on more of your post, great posts as usual, thanks gaylen]
Last edited by Tzaphkiel; 01-12-2018 at 12:08 PM..
But no consciousness that exists now has been in existence before. Any "remembering" of past lives is the result of connections with the consciousness of others who lived before. It is never the same consciousness reincarnating. That is the basis for your misunderstanding and the entire delusion that forms the basis of your rationalization of human suffering and evil in this life. It is misguided.
Quote:
Originally Posted by allenk893
The consciousness you speak of has always been, past and present. We lived inside of God. There is a world in itself inside the father even in the realm of Heaven. That is where ALL life comes from and where we were prior to getting sent from Heaven and attached to the zygote in the womb. That is why people remember "lives" before their Human existence. We were little spirits of light inside of God that existed and we laughed, we played, etc. There are people in this world who met each other and have no idea why it seems they've always known each other. That's because they did know each other. They played together as spirits of light inside the creator before they became flesh.
Consciousness is a vibratory energy form that is the basis of our reality and we are part of its Becoming. We reproduce it but it must have a specific character (we use the term resonance to describe the degree to which it matches the basic frequency of God - eg., Love). As best I can tell God's consciousness has always been, past and present, but each of OUR current contributions has NOT been. IF your fanciful description of our origins pleases you and nourishes your belief in and love of God, that is fine, but there is little to support it scientifically.
My understanding is we can all take really good guesses at before life and after life as we know it now, but that's all they will ever be. Guesses.
Scientists are humble enough to admit their predictions of what's to come are guesses (of the educated type)
G-d is good, yet His thoughts are not our thoughts. Likewise our thoughts are not his, scripture says his ways are above man's, and we can not comprehend them, he has not given us the mind to do it.
So, let go of all this and focus on living honestly and humbly, period.
Last edited by mstelm; 01-12-2018 at 10:57 PM..
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