Originally Posted by Og

Because you don't do that to someone walking around in the world. Basically it's a "you break it, you buy it" mentality that I have. I'd feel responsible for them after that.

It's when they come out of their little bubbles and start causing a problem. Until we get education treated as more important than military and we can go into 2 trillion dollars of debt (i.e. the iraq war bill) in funding our educational system, we need stop gap measures to keep people from committing mass suicide or mass crimes. Until people are trained to think for themselves, we need an authority which they can look to (God). This is the ENTIRE point of Santa Clause.

Originally Posted by shadowind

intresting, was she wrong on anything, like colors and such?
since shes blind she wouldn't know like subcousously and replay it back when her brain was losing o2 or something, unless she learnt to attach liklyhoods and such at 17 and held on to them, like a sterotype of other senses going with sterotypical sights(seems unlikly though), its a intresting story. also if her eyesight problem was effected by the state of being dead that might have something to do with it, was she totally blind, she couldn't see shadows or anything right? intresting though, any body else has any ideas?

Originally Posted by Og

Calling it an illusion is not an opinion. It's a hypothesis based on strong evidence from cellular/molecular/behavioral neuroscience, neurology, and electrical and computer engineering.

"Open Minded" is just a state of a machine. It indicates functionality that adapts to new information. The Ego is the source of the illusion that there is free will. Saying "I am not free" makes no sense. If you are not free (and you truly realize this) then you are not an "I" (ego).

I am not saying that anyone should discard their ego and pierce the illusion. "I have free will" is certainly a valid statement! "I" and "free will" are both illusions and define each other. It is a self consistent statement.

People should keep their gods because they work to an extent for now. As we move forward and ask questions about the nature of the universe and existence, the reality that we are all one gigantic continuous process (where each one of us is ENTIRELY a confluence of sub-events in that process) is going to have to surface. As the world shrinks due to population increase and communications, the notion of being separate is going to have to go out the window.

When christians argue "we have free will" I tend to nod and let them live on that (that's a thread that will unravel their whole world if pulled on). If they start telling me me that I must believe it, I smile and will frequently tell them that I do and that it means a great deal to me (and I'm not lieing or patronizing them).

When they come to a forum on the internet designed for discussion of things like this, they have broken the seal and the thread will be tugged.

Originally Posted by shadowind

why not pull the thread? unravel their entire sweater, maby they'll see why it was to hot to begin with.

Originally Posted by romansh

True the fact that free will does not exist cannot be proved. Can anything? I can't prove the sun will rise tomorrow, logic, theory, evidence (precedent) indicates that it will. Similarly evidence and logic points to there being no free will.

Show me your logic and evidence to the contrary ...