Abel

Og
We exercise free will constantly. When my alarm clock went off, I had the choice of getting up, or turning it off and going back to sleep. I had the option of traveling the speed limit on my way to work, or exceed it. I do agree with you that our environment plays a large part in our makeup, but we all have the option of moving from one enviornment to another. We can exercise free will even in our current environment.

As to not liking to think of humans as inherently sinful I don't like it either, but it's true. You don't have to teach a child to lie. When caught with his hand in the cookie jar, a child will lie about it without blinking an eye. I don't know if you have children, but I have two and I speak from experience. We have to teach our children to tell the truth. Lying comes natural because we are sinful creatures.

B-continum
I did not mean to be evasive, I was just being honest. I don't know why God chose to speak.

B-continum

Yes, but we are able to alter our environments, which has an impact on us at the biological level. The whole environment argument is actually a two-way street: we are affected by our environment and our environment is affected by us. This can only be an argument for determinism if this relationship were one-to-one. But it isn't and I say we have more of an impact on our surroundings than they do on us because we are able to overcome them.

Abel - I appreciate the candid reply

__________________
"If you want to make God laugh, tell him your future plans" - Woody Allen

"I have too much respect for the idea of God to make it responsible for such an absurd world." - Georges Duhamel

"What does an agnostic, dyslexic insomniac do? Stays up all night and wonders if there is a dog." -Unknown

Og

I appreciate your perspective on humanity and free will. I understand why you say the things you do and it is basically because you have not thought about it closely enough.

Free will is an illusion. Self is an illusion. Sin is an illusion. This doesn't mean that they don't exist. It means that they appear to be something that they aren't.

When you say "you can overcome your environment," that just means that you mistook the environment of this person. You forgot to include the experiences from their environment and the mental state provided by their environment that led them to overcome their local environment. Bridges don't fall down on their own. They need to have the appropriate stresses applied at the appropriate points.

When you say that you made a choice, that is true. Decisions occur. They are a complex integration of weighted signals in the brain. You have a REASON for doing everything that you do. If you say "I could have acted differently in that situation," you have to ask yourself what your REASONS for action are. Reasons are your own understanding of these neural processes.

Can you change your reasoning for any action? If so, what would be your reason for doing that? Could you change that reason? Etc etc. You can't escape that you are a neural computation machine.

The problem is that there are complex and subconscious/conscious factors that drive your behaviors. Many of them you are not aware of. So when you make a choice that diverges from your normal behavior, you say that this is free will. So basically, people say that the more random an action seems, the more it is an expression of your free will. Yet each of your actions has a reasoning behind it, whether you're admitting it or are aware of it or not.

The notion that we are some intrinsic individual in the world just doesn't make any sense when you think about it. There is a long line of philosophical and scientific work on this topic. I am involved in much of it and have been exposed to it. The arguments for free will end up being arguments from ignorance or arguments out of wishful thinking from ignorance.

__________________
Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
The self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships
You & I, no distinction. - Tat Tvam Asi
Become Who You Are

Og

I'll also add that, for sure, your environment is influenced by you as well.

But creating the dichotomy of you/environment is nonsensical. It's like saying that your torso and your legs are separate entities. This is why I say "self is an illusion." The point of that is that the distinction between you and your environment is not ultimately meaningful. You ARE the same process as your environment and the environment is the same process as you are. You are an aspect of that process.

Just as a tornado is produced by colliding weather fronts and dumps the energy from the collision into the production of a cyclone which feeds back by sapping energy from the weather fronts. Saying that a cyclone is something separate from the wind and the clouds and the thermal differences that created it doesn't make much sense when you're trying to assess the nature of the thing.

__________________
Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
The self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships
You & I, no distinction. - Tat Tvam Asi
Become Who You Are

WilliamBlue

They are lying because of fear, evidently you have told them that it is wrong for them to get into the cookies, you even may have punished them after they were caught getting into the cookie jar. Their lie is not sinful, it is from fear, they are afraid of your displeasure. If instead you had always allowed them to get into the cookie jar, they would not lie for there would be no reason to lie, is that not so?

Thus lying does not come natural, it is fear based, without fear there is no reason to lie.

__________________
When you dance with an elephant it's up to you to not get stepped on.
How can we be so arrogant and egotistical to believe that the whole Universe was created just for us?

Abel

WilliamBlue
The cause for the lie is not important. Lying is wrong in both the Christian world and secular world. You are trying to justify lying by laying the blame on fear, and in the process teach children that under certain circumstances (fear) lying is an acceptable practice.

I suppose it is easier to lay the blame for our wrong-doing on someone, or something else, rather than accept the responsibilities of our actions.

My point was that we all will resort to wrong practices because that is our sinful nature.

WilliamBlue

You missed my point which was that it is a learned reaction to your displeasure, it is not ingrained in us, it is not part of our soul it is taught by you.

__________________
When you dance with an elephant it's up to you to not get stepped on.
How can we be so arrogant and egotistical to believe that the whole Universe was created just for us?

Abel

I disagree with you. I do believe sin in ingrained in us. If wrong actions (sin) are taught, verses being natural, who is teaching people to lie, steal, rape, and kill? It's all a learned behavior, correct?

Those committing crimes (sin) surely should not be held responsible since they were taught to behave this way, right?

To me your reasoning does not make sense. Even in our secular society, we hold people responsible for their actions, no matter what they were taught, if they do wrong.

Gotta go for today. See ya'll tomorrow.

Og

You're simply wrong. It is not ingrained in me. There's your disproof of your hypothesis.


Is this true? What if someone's brain chemistry is off from normal? They certainly aren't held responsible in the same way after that.

__________________
Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
The self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships
You & I, no distinction. - Tat Tvam Asi
Become Who You Are

WilliamBlue

No, should be held responsible for your actions, but to a child the mere act of your displeasure is enough to cause them to try and deflect it and lying although easily detected is the only way they know of doing that. But I believe it is taught and at an early age. As they get older they will get better at lying so that you will not be able to detect it and no I do not have any good ways to deflect them from this path other than to talk to them and try to make them understand why you don't want them in the cookie jar. Or you could make the cookie jar go away, but it is definitely important to make your children understand that there are rules and there are consequences for breaking them, but the lie from your child came from a natural instinct to not make mommy mad.

There are no excuses, except for what Og is talking about, for those other crimes you mentioned and many of those crimes maybe caused by the lack of consequences at an early age. Even if it is a medical issue we still have to remove the threat.

My wife, who raised two sons set up a merit based system where the kids earned points by doing the right thing and lost points for the wrong. If they wanted something, say to go to the beach with their friends, then she would assign a points 'price' to it and if they had the points then they were able to do it. If they did not have enough points then of course they did not go to the beach, which put them in charge of their own destinies and she never fluctuated from this system, but I am wondering off topic...

__________________
When you dance with an elephant it's up to you to not get stepped on.
How can we be so arrogant and egotistical to believe that the whole Universe was created just for us?