Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

Portia wrote:I always believed that only humans have free will . . . or consciousness, for that matter. I think plants are alive, and animals have an even higher intelligence, but I don't think they experience consciousness in any meaningful way. I think human beings are far less likely to behave rationally than any other entities, and that seems to prove their free will to me.

If you could show me an instance when a bowling ball defied the laws of physics, that might convince me it had free will.

You can't prove that they just choose perfect obedience...

Perfect obedience and lack of free will both have the same result.

I don't buy it. Bowling balls don't have neurons; ergo, they cannot think. This seems to be an important prerequisite for choice. I believe Descartes would agree with me.

Portia wrote:I don't buy it. Bowling balls don't have neurons; ergo, they cannot think. This seems to be an important prerequisite for choice. I believe Descartes would agree with me.

Spirits do not have bodies... and therefore lack neurons as well...

Yet they are perfectly capable of thinking and decision making...

Portia wrote:
If you could show me an instance when a bowling ball defied the laws of physics, that might convince me it had free will.

How about when an axe head defied the laws of physics? See 2 Kings 6. See also Orson Pratt's discourse: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Journal_o ... y_Law,_etc.

Not saying Orson Pratt was right, or that there is only one way to interpret this. Just a thought.

361 wrote:

Portia wrote:I don't buy it. Bowling balls don't have neurons; ergo, they cannot think. This seems to be an important prerequisite for choice. I believe Descartes would agree with me.

Spirits do not have bodies... and therefore lack neurons as well...

Yet they are perfectly capable of thinking and decision making...

We actually don't know what spirits have or don't have, so using spirits as a rebuttal doesn't really work. For all we know they could have have spiritual neurons. Or maybe it is the intelligence that our spirits were formed from?

Then who is to say that neurons are required for thought? Can you prove that? ;D

361 wrote:

Portia wrote:I don't buy it. Bowling balls don't have neurons; ergo, they cannot think. This seems to be an important prerequisite for choice. I believe Descartes would agree with me.

Spirits are perfectly capable of thinking and decision making...

Prove it.

Portia wrote:

361 wrote:

Portia wrote:I don't buy it. Bowling balls don't have neurons; ergo, they cannot think. This seems to be an important prerequisite for choice. I believe Descartes would agree with me.

Spirits are perfectly capable of thinking and decision making...

Prove it.

Um. There is quite a bit of scriptural evidence to support that.

Portia wrote:

361 wrote:

Portia wrote:I don't buy it. Bowling balls don't have neurons; ergo, they cannot think. This seems to be an important prerequisite for choice. I believe Descartes would agree with me.

Spirits are perfectly capable of thinking and decision making...

Prove it.

Umm... Battle in Heaven... 1/3 chose to leave... 2/3 chose to stay?

Not to mention those who hadn't had the opportunity to accept the gospel in this life may accept it as a spirit in the spirit world.

Fredjikrang wrote:Then who is to say that neurons are required for thought? Can you prove that? ;D

I highly reccommend the book "One Tattered Angel" by Blaine Yorgason. While not proving anything, it is interesting to read of the life of his daughter, born with naught but a brain stem. From a gospel standpoint, it is reaffirming to see the inteligence not born of the brain.

When I say "prove," I mean "show me the empirical evidence, baby." It seems like a fairly fundamental part of human-hood is the ability to think, to choose, to experience consciousness. If someone can make a convincing argument that these processes are exclusively spiritually (and not neurologically) based, then maybe you'll be on to something. But I don't think throwing out truisms about "1/3 this" and "2/3 that" makes a very convincing scientific argument (though suited for Sunday School they well may be.)

Besides, bowling balls clearly don't have spirits. Ha!

You are talking about scientific evidence. About spirits. Do you not see the irony here, especially since you have basically said that you don't accept the scriptures as viable evidence?

(And besides, how do you know that bowling balls don't have spirits? Prove that.)

I'm sorry, but I guess I don't see the point of your argument. And not only that, but it isn't at all related to this thread, as far as I can tell.

It has everything to do with this thread . . . Katya asked if someone believed bowling balls choose to be dropped from a second-story window, and some people seem to believe (the rather surprising idea, to me) that they do. I certainly have never heard such a proposition, and was merely trying to sound the depths of what appears to me to be a borderline-absurd theory.

Hmm. Well, seeing as how I don't think that bowling balls choose to fall, at least not in the same way that humans choose to do things, I'll just stay out of it.

But I think it's link with the topic is tenuous at best. The topic is really about omniscience and choice, not about if inanimate objects can think.

Holy cow.

Potato guns, bowling balls, and brain stems?

Holy cow.

Well... I never understood the confusion. Don't we just love having finite minds?

How is your agency taken away if God sees time as one eternal now?

xkcd *** wrote:How is your agency taken away if God sees time as one eternal now?

I think it comes down to the thought that if God can see tomorrow, then tomorrow already exists. If tomorrow already exists, then what impact does my will exert upon today? If he can see my wedding day, do I really get to chose if and to whom I wed? In the original question Toni posited that God can see all of your tomorrows, but as long as you remain unaware, you maintain your agency. ie. He can see my wedding day, but that does not infringe upon my agency as long as He doesn't announce the details to me.