I agree that telling Christians who “hear God’s voice” that they are acting like a mentally ill person is a really bad idea. What I do in those situations is respond with something like “How do you tell the difference between your inner voice and god’s voice?” That’s a good way to help someone ask questions about their definition of god and point out that they are basically calling themselves/their inner voice/consciousness a god.
" “How do you tell the difference between your inner voice and god’s voice?”" I'm guessing that god's voice & their inner voice are always in total agreement.
Regarding the 'pencil test' of God, something almost identical actually happens in the Bible in Judges 6 (verses 37 to 40, to be precise), just instead of a pencil Gideon uses a piece of wool and asks God to make it so that the wool gets wet from dew, while everything around it is dry. When it happened, he asked God to do the reverse (so that the wool is dry, while the ground is covered in dew. Only after he tested God multiple times did he actually decide to put faith in him. This is what led me to atheism - I couldn't get over the fact that in the past, God would seemingly be OK with performing these obvious miracles, while the closer it got to modern day, his miracles became much more unremarkable and indistinguishable from coincidental, mundane incidents. This can either be explained with convoluted theological mental gymnastics - or very simply and easily by assuming the stories of the miracles of old were grossly exagerated or straight-up made up.
Igor Bednarski “grossly exagerated”, I agree. But why is that wrong? As catholic, I belive that Bible is Book about human development. Old Testament is like childhood. People learn about life and do stupid things. Each person has path and is always the same person. After Jesus, we should grow inside. His message was clear- “die for Love”. My grandparants also have had some amazing stories. So what? They were good people. I don’t see eather what good comes from atheists who call theists stupid. Why can’t we live together in peace, without calling eachother stupid?🤔❤️
@@laleydelamor1327 I never said theists are stupid, I think they are simply wrong. The Bible stories are harmful and convey a terrible message, which is why it matters whether people believe it or not.
Igor Bednarski No Sir, You didn’t say that theists are stupid. But now You said how our belief is harmful, and how we are wrong.Please, inlight me what exactly I do wrong; As catholic I belive in Jesus teaching and in His two golden rules: 1.Put God on first place- if God is Love, and I put Love first, that means i refuse diabolus (division spirit). All I do in my life should be guided with love. What is love, I don’t know. If I love my child and give him everything, I won’t do him a favor. So, child must cry sometimes, must learn about how to deal with life and responsibility. Love and trauma go together, I don’t know exact how, but I have conscience. For me, it’s important to teach a child, not to hate anyone. 2.Love your neighbour as yourself- in this case, neighbour could be enyone that helps me in need. Could be someone with different belif, why not? If Jesus told to Jews the story about good Samaritan, why catholic and muslim couldn’t be friends? Further more, I should love my neighbour AS myself. Not more, not less. I have to love myself first, to give love to needed. Now please tell me, what exactly I do wrong?❤️
@@laleydelamor1327 I can tell you what you do wrong. The Catholic church promotes harmful beliefs like their position on condoms. This position directly leads to an increase in Aids/HIV in countries where the church is followed. What about institutionalized protection of predators and a view on human sexuality that causes many cases of abuse, secret abortions, etc. You can love yourself and your neighbor by simply following secular humanism. Secular humanism promotes human and planet well being without all the extra filler. That is why religion is wrong, it promotes corruption, control, fundamentalism, wishful thinking, ignorance, complacency, etc. We can do better as a species. I recommend watching the intelligence squared debate: is the Catholic church a force for good in the world. Then get back to me! By the way, the Jesus that preaches to love your neighbor is the same Jesus that preaches hell for those who don't accept him!
@@laleydelamor1327 What if I told you I love my neighbor (including you and all humanity, and really all life) as myself, but I also don't see any evidence that there's a God? So we might agree on everything morally, but disagree on whether there's a God. Does that mean I deserve eternal torture? Furthermore, maybe a Muslim believes from Allah that he should love all life like his neighbor, just as you and I believe. Does he deserve eternal torture?
The frustrating thing is, even with this admission of defeat they just pretend everything is fine and declare their feelings all important. Frustrates me to no end.
@THE PEOPLE SING Feelings are not the problems when they simply express who we are as individuals. There is nothing wrong with that. When we base on our feelings as something that other people have to follow, that is where problems occur. Too often Christians base on this feeling to legislate against other groups.
IWillBecomeImmortalOrDieTrying You can’t change what someone want’s to be true especially if they aren’t scientifically minded in searching for facts. When you think about how many people are 100% dedicated to their contradicting religions it proves them all wrong. When everyone is right about 1000 opposing beliefs, if you can’t tell this leads to the fact they’re all wrong you’re just not capable of seeing truth. Plain and simple. And I write off most religious people’s views on anything of importance because I know they trust their misleading feelings more than facts. That’s that
@THE PEOPLE SING That's barely advice. What does it mean to believe in the labels? What is inner wisdom? How does being still and silent give us any information?
@Gods Servant Right on point! To put what you said in other words, faith is the wish it was true and pretend that's good enough evidence. I love it when theists trip over their own shoelaces.
@Gods Servant Then enlighten me by deconstructing "the substance of things hoped for" and "the evidence of things not seen" in your words since, going by the standards set by your biblical sentence, you can believe in just about anything, including other gods, seeing that the requirement is just "hope" and the evidence is "invisiblility". Therefore, going by this definition of faith alone, the belief in Allah, Elohim, Shiva, Brahma, Krishna, Hathor, Pixies and the Virgin of Lourdes would also be justified, as they all meet the standard of "things hoped for" and of course, their remarkable state of permanent invisibility.
It's not truth if the same "hope" for unseen gods can be used other gods as well. It's an unreliable path to truth if the same method can lead to what you claim to be the true god as well as false gods.
@Gods Servant You did not address the point, and the truth is what can be demonstrated to be objectively factual, it is certainly not a wish nor a hope, the truth is verifiable. Furthermore, the truth is not commanded through stiff and absolute doctrines presented as inflexible edicts over a foundation of mere fear and intimidation, as is the case with your religion, where the simple acts of disbelief, uncertainty, doubt, skepticism or omission are outright punishable. Again, rather foolishly, that biblical verse you used to define faith can also point into the direction of belief in just about any other god/gods/godessess as long as "hope" and "invisibility" are concerned. It not only DOES NOT single out your god from all others, but gives free licence for belief in whatever crackpot lunacy fancies your whim because if "hope" and "invisibility" are the prevalent conditions, these attributes are quite common to any faith-based belief system. ANY! You're not handfeeding anyone "the truth", you're just tripping over your own shoelaces again and again.
Shout out to Matt Dillahunty for waking me up to the truth about our reality and helping to free me from the shackles of my old biblical religion. Leaving Christianity has made me a better man, more loving and compassionate, more moral, and more interested in a life of value.
If you actually believe what Matt has to say there are no values....only facts. Love, compassion, and morality are merely human constructs produced by evolution. How can one be "more moral" if there is no such thing as free will? And what exactly does it mean to be more moral when there is no objective basis for determining what is moral?
@@oldschoolsaint "If you believe... No values, only facts." And why does that follow? In answering, it would be helpful for you to define what you mean by "values" and how you distinguish them from "facts".
Paul Beaulieu Examples of facts: there are mountains, oceans, and stars. There are murderers, thieves, and liars. Examples of values: mountains, oceans and starts are beautiful. Murder, thievery, and dishonesty are wrong. If humans are but the product of undirected chance, how can beauty, justice, or morality be anything but an illusion? If there is no free will how can humans be moral agents?
@@oldschoolsaint Firstly, examples are not a definition. Secondly, are you saying there has to be a God for me to find beauty in a mountain? If yes, you need to make an argument that a God is a necessary condition for me, or anyone, to perceive beauty in anything.
It was lack of answered prayer that collapsed my faith. Once it was gone, my filters on taking in the world were gone. In that instant something like scales fell from my eyes. Suddenly I could see and think clearly. Much later I re-listened to a song that used to deeply affect me "spiritually", and it gave me a deep emotional response. I then realized all those so-called spiritual events in my life were nothing more than my own personal emotional response. Listening to that still, small voice in my own head and relying on those feelings, while ignoring the reality of the world around me is what kept me in religion for decades. Too soon old, too late wise.
You know I've learned so much from watching your debates Matt. Since I was a Christian for 40 years I pretty much consider myself an expert on the subject. You have taught me how to identify the fallacies (or at least have a clue about it)now I can use this in all the other areas of life when I'm dealing with people. Thank you Matt.
May I ask what kept you in for so long and what made you begin to doubt? I’m just curious because I’m fascinated by some of the things religious people believe especially young earth creationists, not that you were one, that’s just an example.
It seems to me that theists arguments boil down to, "This feels so good... If this is wrong, I don't want to be right". It reminds me of what my uncle used to tell me when I was very little while we were playing in the bathtub.
TK Englander 🤣 So, atheists know the truth, hundreds of christian denominations know the truth, different muslim denominations know the truth, hindus budhists.. name it! Oh, so many people know the truth! But atheist’s truth is the best one! Ok, I’ll be atheist from now on, because you have onley truth! Ummm..🤔? The truth is that all scientist agree how negativity from social media can harm whole society and cause brain damage. But we still continue to insult other people.. Strange.. wish You all the best❤️
Doesn't it say in the bible (preemptively) "thou shall not put god to the test"? It's as if people 2000 years ago also wanted to see some real evidence first :)
it's exactly like that. Similar to the "the fool says in his heart: there is no god!". Almost as if there were people calling the early Christians foolish. Almost.
Exactly! What I find most fascinating is the fact that the Bible is an actual record of the existence of atheists even thousands of years ago. Even without all the scientific knowledge we have nowadays there were people who were skeptical and wanted evidence before believing. And there were people who had already reached the conclusions that “there is no god”. And if the authors of the Bible took the trouble of mentioning them in the holy book it means that they were particularly bothersome and certainly didn’t limit themselves to deny god in their hearts. I wonder if they had an atheist experience even back then...
Pat Pezzi I belive that atheists and theist exist so long as any religion. For me, doubt is logical. In Bible, we have a story about Doubting Thomas. I’m doubting Thomas among catholics. If someone would have come to me and say “I saw Jesus yesterday!” I would say “ok, I belive you. Come on and let’s go to tell this story to person that likes to hear stories, that person do that for living..” As great philosopher Soren Kierkegaars says, faith and doubt should go together, he disliked mass religion. Wish You all the best❤️
"I cannot just ask God to move a pencil" wait... is that not exactly what the "debate" between Elijah and the prophets of Baal was all about? I would bet my life on that kind of debate any day of the week. I doubt any apologist would, which demonstrates they do not believe the God of the Bible.
There is another argument against the Kalam Cosmological Argument that I don't usually hear. I think the KCA commits an equivocation fallacy. (I think WLC changed his wording of it at some point and I suspect it was to avoid this.) The first premise says that everything that begins to exist has a cause. But this refers to all the things we've seen in the world such as bicycles, footballs, chairs, trees and so on. But none of those things began to exist from nothing. They are all really just a change in form of what already exists. When a chair came to exist it was actually a change in form of the wood. The wood came from a tree, which in turn came from water, sunlight, and minerals. None of it began to exist ex nihilo, i.e. from nothing. The second premise says that the universe began to exist. But in this premise, "began to exist" implies that the universe began to exist ex nililo. That the universe came from nothing. This is a different thing. Our experience from things within our universe can't be imposed onto the universe itself. (You might also want to call it a fallacy of composition.)
And as Matt has said before, the KCA establishes the universe had a beginning, then the theists shoehorn in their God. I think Sean Carroll has a valid point as well, being that talking about causation for what is prior to the big bang as "not even wrong."
What you are talking about is how the Kalam equivocate between all causation we have observed, which all have material causes(the matter or stuff it is made of) and efficient causes(the action or process that effected the change) but then, when applying this to God creating the universe _ex nihilo_ (from nothing, no material cause) the argument leaves out the material cause. This objection cannot be fixed without abandoning the ex materia. Craig reworded his so that both uses of cause are efficient causes to avoid equivocation, but that still leaves the problem of every thing we have ever observed to "begin to exist" had a material cause...but his idea on how the universe began does not. To use our experience as an argument(everything beginning toexist has an eficient cause) but leaving out how it also had a material cause imo is special pleading and cherry picking.
@MinutemanSam no sir you are incorrect www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.physicscentral.com/experiment/askaphysicist/physics-answer.cfm%3Fuid%3D20120221015143&ved=2ahUKEwiThbHEzcPhAhUD1qwKHSACBDIQFjACegQIDhAO&usg=AOvVaw0AzqUXnlufB3fM_2rbNUsA
@@wj3438 did you read this article? The second sentence says"The first law of thermodynamics doesn't actually specify that matter can neither be created nor destroyed, but instead that the total amount of energy in a closed system cannot be created nor destroyed (though it can be changed from one form to another)." Matter can be created and destroyed but not energy.
To be fair even if the theist could demonstrate that we have libetarian free will it would just be another faculty that we have like vision or awareness. From here there is absolutely no link to a god.
Damn Matt! You are on the ball today! 3 videos in one day. lol. Keep up the good work! I really enjoy listening to your point of view. You are one of the people that helped me out of the delusion of Christianity several years ago! You sir, are a badass! ~BA
@Gods Servant Read the first chapter of the Bible, which is the creation, plenty of inaccuracies in just that chapter alone. There's a difference between idolizing and having respect, which Matt has more than earned. By the way, you could change his mind with the proper evidence, and that's where people like him and people like you differ, and it's called intellectual honesty.
Believing that guys argument about not relying on physical evidence(pencils) while also believing that God performs miracles(physical evidence) is completely ridiculous. And believing miracles from other people's experiences is completely ridiculous.
Libertarian free will isn’t just an argument from feeling, it’s also an argument from a valid epistemology, if you’re determined to believe what you believe, how can you possibly make a truth claim including the ‘truth’ of determinism?
I agree with you, Matt. If someone else from the church had to step in at the end of the debate and say don't look for evidence in the real world and just trust your inner "voice", then he knew that their theist lost the debate and he figured that he better step in and say something.
I think that it's telling that free-will is almost entirely predicated on magic. The "tests" for free-will often have magic as their basis and how is that not laughed at if you posit : "if you did action X the first time, and then we reset time and you go back to that exact same point..." You can't reset time. We never will be able to. There's literally no imaginable test that could demonstrate free-will. And I think that philosophy has to admit that it's less than a dead-horse. The more refined our analyses become, the more impossible it becomes to even define/test free-will. Even to the point of programmed android vs human -- if I make an android that can do TRULY random alternatives every so often, and compare that to a human, can we distinguish whether either had real free-will vs the artifice?
This is the way I look at it, and even taking god and magic out of it. Every choice we make is based on past experiences. so everything we experience in life is what determines the choices we make. So based on that, I don't see how we have free will.
I love when you do debates at churches. I’m sure a lot of theists are hearing good arguments for the first time and a lot of preachers regret inviting you
This is off subject of the video, but when something hits my brain, my ADHD forces me to address it at that moment or risk losing it. I have to say thank you Matt, for Atheist Experience and Atheist debate. I started transitioning into an atheist around age 18 and finally became confident about the improbability of the existence of the supernatural about 10 years after. Listening to you has really helped me learn how to articulate my thoughts into words. Being able to do this has allowed me to train my mind into being more logical, leading to more reasonable conclusions. Beyond the atheist position, this has helped me recognize fallacies within my other views and within the positions of others. I am not sure how much you know about ADHD, but having this disorder can definitely be a challenge, especially when trying to learn and in social interaction. Because of you, I have learned to take control of my mind in a way that makes my ADHD less noticeable. I can focus my thoughts better and absorbing knowledge is less of a challenge. I can't say thank you enough for your teachings and the impact it has had on my life. Please keep up the good work and know that what you are doing is truly a benefit to the world on a whole.
@@SolidAir54321 Free will, "not in his nature" (he did cause people to die, but only physically, not totally stop existing), dumb crap like that... Satan is also his child, too...
I also feeeel like I'm standing still right now. I definitely don't feel like I'm moving east to west at 1000 mph, or hurtling around the sun at 67000 mph. But the evidence says my feelings are wrong.
You were so nice, Matt. The ending from that Christian clearly shows Christians are jerks in disguise. A respectful conversation ended in preaching. Leighton was really pathetic even on a civil level.
Question, even if you could go back in time and do something different to demonstrate libertarian free will, wouldn't the desire to go back in time to demonstrate libertarian free will also just be a subconscious desire in your brain that you have no control over? What about that would count as free will?
Matt! Fantastic, straightforward, sensible presentation of reality. Much respect and appreciation. Your final thoughts on "feelings " was the most valuable. The whole " inner voice " nonsense was a predominant part of my own journey out of belief. Thank you.
If we do have free will, I believe it's very limited. For the first 18 years of my life, most choices were made for me by my mother including my birth, where I lived, where I went to school, who my teachers were, who my mother married, who my siblings/family were, what I had for meals, what I wore etc. In turn, the rest of my life's "choices" have been directly influenced by others.
Yep,you did not choose your genetics either which also determines as well as environment choices.I put it on par with believing in God that you believe you have free will..
Matt, have you listened to Robert Sapolski from Stanford? He has some amazing stuff on free will from a neurobiological standpoint. His evidence suggests we have no free will. But we live as though we do...
Isn't there an equivocation underlying any notion of going back in time to be able to do or not do something different? As far as we know, we CAN'T GO BACK IN TIME so any conclusion you might draw from this popular thought experiment simply cannot follow.
18:07 It's not just that he's _willing_ to accept feelings - he is actually _able_ to. The "liberterianist" is going to claim that I am able but unwilling to accept, to which my response is "Fine, but I don't _feel_ like I have a choice."
Matt is correct when he talks about feelings. My very well qualified and experienced pychologist has told me feelings ( emotions) come from our thoughts, so if you're thinking is wrong then your feelings are too. Thoughts become feelings and if feelings persist then that can lead to actions. Cheers sky
@@reasonandsciencecatsboardcom you can trust your reason because it came from god? That doesn't make sense at all you can reason he's perfect or trust that he says so but how can you trust that reason any more than the evolutionary explanation.
@@reasonandsciencecatsboardcom evolution DOES explain these things (consciousness is harder to explain though or perhaps it's the one I've studied the least) also the reason to trust your reason is it keeps you alive quite often so for it to be wrong we'd have to somehow be wrong in such a way that it works anyways which while possible I don't find likely and falls under the category of "can't prove it's wrong" which I don't believe to be proof that it's true.
@@reasonandsciencecatsboardcom our senses, even if completely wrong, is the building block from which we form reason and it's the building block for which we percive reality. So to suggest that the reality we percive is different from the one we live in is pointless because it's the one we percive and build everything off of it. Also most Atheists do not believe in objective morals I'm not sure why you'd lie about that . I need to sleep but if you actually want to know a skeptics side to your arguments just look them up. I realize it's harder for you, you assume that when science doesn't have an answer it just points to god but it doesn't so go out and genuinely be curious and skeptical about things. Realize that when science doesn't have an answer that's an opportunity to learn not discredit. I do fundamentally disagree with your argument because it's basically taking scientists and saying they can't trust anything if they believe what they do but you can if you believe what you do when that's not true there's no reason to trust God(if he exists) for the same reason you claim you can't trust reason without him.
Just watched the debate on Braxton's channel. Not surprised that he had nothing interesting or new to present. I thought you did a good job holding to relevant points to counter his assertions.
I don't think libertarian free will could even be a possibility. Time being linear, what will happen will happen, the hypothetical of "if you could go back and do X again" is pointless, as it's not possible. I think those that think libertarian free will is a thing either don't understand it or are coming from a position of incredulity
Admittedly, I'm not as smart or eloquent as Matt, but I feel that we do have libertarian free will. If I come to a fork in the road and could go either way, let's say I go left, it's hard for me to believe that I couldn't have just as well gone right. But at the same time, I agree that there's not really any conceivable way to demonstrate that.
Sorry, but how a question about the origin of experience it self can be solved by experimental or empirical means? Isn't that kind of trying to climb on yourself?
Whether libertarian, compatibilist, deterministic, or synaptic, it's hard to argue that free will exists at all within a coercive religious construct like Heaven/Hell.
If I dropped the pencil 5 minutes ago what difference does it make that I could have made an infinite amount of choices at that exact moment in the past? Time is linear and looking and wondering what could have been, although interesting to ponder is useless. Having said that though, even if you take into consideration all of the aspects that shape a person and make them who they are, until that present moment in time when they are faced with a particular choice, they still would have an infinite amount of possibilities to choose from even if within the framework of their past experiences. I would further argue that human evolution and progress would be impossible without the ability to take in new information and use that new information to formulate new thoughts and opinions. New information provides us with more range of choice in decision making.
Compatibilism confuses me. Isn’t that the same thing as God knowing what you’re gonna do but saying you have free will? Aren’t they pretty similar? Matt I heard many of your talks about compatibility and even though I understand most of that you’re saying I don’t quite understand all of it. Like when you say you can either drag Don across the room or ask him to leave. What does that mean? And why would you drag him?
My question on free will is, if we truly have it, why don't we all have a precognition of accepting to be created? If free will is what we have and in order for it to be consistent, when was I freely give the choice to be created? It seems to me that without being given the choice to be created then I simple don't have free will and was forced into exsitance... That is not a free choice, that is being forced in to something I have not chosen. There is nothing free about my exsitance!
While I'm no expert, I'd like to know if anyone you're aware of has ever tried to connect the delayed choice Quantum eraser experiments, you can TH-cam to learn more, if these experiments might be a physical way to support free will. At first glance you might automatically say no but if you take the time to understand this particular experiment, could it in anyway support free will? I'd be very interested in the thoughts of somebody more knowledgeable in this then myself.
I also believe free will to be a complex issue. A simple double pendulum shows a very complex path, imagine a system with billions upon billions of parts (neurons, experiences, body's current chemistry based on recent food intake, etc.), determining our choice may not be practical to calculate but may be deterministic anyway. Then throw in quantum uncertainty, ah crap!
Matt I’m still totally confused. When you say you can ask don to leave the room or you can drag him out... is that an analogy? Or literal? If you don’t have a choice different than your determined path, how could you do one or the other? This is where I don’t hear 👂 ya. Something isn’t adding up to me.
I'm baffled at the fact that someone could actually believe they do not have free will yet they have complete and total control over their lives and the way the lead their lives.
But whatever you do is motivated by some factor there for - it isnt without cause, meaning: it's not out of free will, rather: out of need to react and take action due to this or that...
I've thought a lot about the notion of free will lately. I've come to the conclusion it is impossible. I am not aware of the unconscious processing going on in my brain before things pop into consciousness. I'm an EE and during the development process solutions pop into my brain and only afterward do I evaluate the notion and most times it is a good solution. I don't control or understand the processes that cause this to happen. In addition looking back over my life most of my major decisions seem to be on autopilot. I felt compelled to do certain things and if I resisted the force of the feelings increased. There is a feedback loop between conscious and unconscious thought because I was not born knowing about electronics. However that does not diminish the notion that I am not in total control of my actions. While I don't agree with Dennett's notion of compatibility I like his definition of consciousness: an edited digest of current activity.
Life is about making choices.What determines what is chosen is based on genes and conditioning.Did we choose our genes and the environment where we were brought up?.No.Conclusion we do not have free will.I am also in the camp of we are not an agent,though yes "it feels like " we are not the doer of actions and we are not the thinker of our thoughts.We cannot even know what thoughts we receive and when we receive them.These are all concepts that can be agreed upon or not.What is'nt a concept is the notion that I exist.So if I am not the doer of action,if I am not the chooser then who am I?.Does the realization I exist assume that I have a will,I choose and do actions?.There seems to be a fear around this realisation as if somehow the realization would change behavior.If you were never the doer the realization you are not will change very little behavior..It may bring more peace ,acceptance and forgiveness in oneself and others..Society that is based on doership will quite rightly still hold you accountable for your actions.Deep down the realization everything that happens had to happen AND live your life as if.. you have free will.
The reason I don't trust inner voices is because I know for a fact you can't trust them to be true. I've imagined my mother call my name at night, walked out of my room to find her sleeping on the couch (she clearly didn't call my name). I remember being able to levitate off the ground in a trance like state; it turns out it was just me hallucinating by bending my perspective based on memories (the way I could tell is that specific details like words and numbers on the walls would be blurred out, not there, or I was incapable of focusing on them). This is how I know I can't trust what I hear in my head, I can just be letting my imagination run wild. I also don't truly believe people actually have freewill. I would love it to be true, but I don't think it is. I could say I had an equal chance of choosing vanilla or chocolate, but I know there was a 99% chance I would choose vanilla purely do to bias. If I was basically guaranteed to pick that it can't really be freewill then.
I don't think that you can have this discussion without first defining "free" and "will", and you surely can't use time travel to describe it. Unless of course, you really can accomplish time travel. Otherwise, get a different argument.
Matt, I watched the debate and I thought you did a good job. Also, how does having libertarian free will prove a god? There was never an explanation and I don’t see any connection. Keep up the good work!
If we do not have free will, is Dillahunty then arguing against imprisoning people for the crimes they commit since they could not have done differently? A secular moral system must be fair so how could it imprison people who are not to blame for their crimes? Sam Harris has a beautiful argument against free will th-cam.com/video/pCofmZlC72g/w-d-xo.html
"A secular moral system must be fair so how could it imprison people who are not to blame for their crimes? " Why not? The Bible has god punishing people for sins committed by others.
This problem of how free our will is looks unsolvable to me. We can never know if we could have made another decision, if we go back in time. I also think our decisions are at least partly made automatically by the programming of our brain, but I do think we have free will in what programming we allow into our brain and that we have free will to change our programming. We do a lot of things subconsciously. If someone drops a cup of coffee on the table, we move away, before we can think 'that hot coffee is going to flow over the table on my legs'. However, we also make a lot of decisions consciously, like 'what will be my next car?'. We have values on the subject, that originate from consciously thinking about past experiences. During the thinking about such a decision, we can consciously chose to prioritize some values over others or go searching for information on the subject to influence our decision. Then at least a lot of random factors come into play, that would influence our decision making. Than we would probably have a big change to not make the same decision twice, even if we didn't have libertarian free will. So my question is more, who thinks our brains are so predictable, that we would make the same decision twice and if not, is that free will?
_We can never know if we could have made another decision_ I think we can, because the question is a bit silly. If we went back in time, we are not repeating the conditions, since we have new knowledge and so new inputs or desires. Thus, under both free will and determinism, we should not expect the same result _(though of course, it could be the same, context dependent)._ Only if our actions are the result of true randomness at a fundamental level, should they be expected to change under identical preconditions, and that would be undesirable I think. _we also make a lot of decisions consciously_ Do we? Or do we feel that we do? Like you say, we have our values, but how does our thinking begin, what are our first values? It's all external, so in one way we lack free will. More concretely however we can ask, how can a "choice" even be made? What could be the physical mechanism? It just seems to be physically impossible for free will or even choice making to occur. We are fortunate however, to be complex enough to have a feeling of making choices, but not so powerful to know all our choices before we make them. Even if it's just a powerful illusion, it's incredibly useful: for purpose, responsibility, novelty, and so on. The only place its reality matters is to apologetics in defense of of omnipotent god who is suppose to love all, yet allows suffering. Only free will or universalism could be compatible with such a being. Of course, omnipotence itself is incompatible with free will....
@@Rogstin Obviously, what is meant is not going back in time with new knowledge and so new inputs or desires, but with the exact same ones as before. I think it matters how long of a period we were reset back by. I can imagine that we would react the same, to most situations, when we were reset by 10 seconds. However, I see no good arguments for the idea that we would repeat things step by step in the same way, if our time had been reset by 5 minutes or longer. Whether we actually make decisions consciously or we just feel like we do is a hard question, but why assume that it's just a delusion when it doesn't feel like it? What evidence is there FOR the claim that our consciousness is just an delusion, stronger than our internal evidence of feeling that our consciousness is real? (I know about the experiments showing that consciousness is delayed, but I think that it's not necessarily evidence for consciousness being a delusion.) Our thinking begins even in the womb. Why would you say all your thinking is external? It's obviously not, just listen to the never ending debate in your brain. That internal debate is at least partially random (random means things happening, without a cause) and partly controlled, I think by ourselves. There are surely external causes initiating our thinking and those are (I'm sure) partially deterministic, but I see no evidence to conclude all of it is deterministic. I don't think free will's only use is to do apologetics in defense of of omnipotent god. I think free will is much more useful to defend secular humanism. I think apologetics has appropriated the free will debate, to serve their circular arguments. I'm not not going to let a honest debate about free will be muddled by apologetics. We don't need to attack free will, in order to destroy apologetics. Apologetics can be easily dissected with more apparent arguments.
@@FlipjevanTiel_What evidence is there FOR the claim that our consciousness is just an delusion_ Be careful, you're moving the goalposts here. We aren't talking about consciousness. _Why would you say all your thinking is external?_ What is thinking? It's the signals moving in your brain. How is your brain formed? Firstly by it's DNA, then its environment, then it's experiences _(an extension of the environment)._ The point here is that who we are is always outside our control, in a fundamental way. At this point I can examine myself and make goals for change, but the very act of doing so and the methods picked are the result of a lifetime prior. This is a soft no free will to me. _That internal debate is at least partially random (random means things happening, without a cause)_ I can grant that we can have thoughts that have no _apparent_ cause, but I deny that they have no cause. Whether it's a change in room temperature, subsonic noise, or a supernova's disruption of the magnetic field in my brain, there is a cause. This is the hard no free will to me. _Obviously, what is meant is not going back in time with new knowledge and so new inputs or desires, but with the exact same ones as before. I think it matters how long of a period we were reset back by. I can imagine that we would react the same, to most situations, when we were reset by 10 seconds._ You seem to be contradicting yourself here. If we have no new knowledge, that includes the event that just happened, how long is irrelevant. If this is the case, we should always expect the same outcome unless the universe is fundamentally random. If we remember the last 10 seconds or 5 minutes or whatever, then it's not the same, and we shouldn't expect the same outcome. The point here is that no experiment can distinguish between free will and determinism, only fw/dt and fundamental randomness.
At the risk of sounding like Jordan Peterson, I think the issue of whether or not we have "free will" is very much about what we mean by "free" and "will". If "free will" literally means that my decisions are actually not "caused" by anything at all, then I can't make sense of that idea. Whether the causation underlying my decisions can be called a form of "will" that is "free" is another matter. It seems there is a difference between my "freely" choosing to do something, for whatever reasons are going on in my own head, and my being compelled to do something by having a gun put to my head. And I think that is what we are getting at when we speak of freedom to choose one's actions.
I don't think there is a bible verse that actually says "all things in moderation" or some equivalent of that. I have tried to find such a verse before with no success after someone quoted that from the bible. He couldn't cite the book, chapter, or verse and was unable to find it after.
It would lead to a "pencil moving god?" No. If evidence for God was ubiquitous (and anyone could have proof at any time) there would be no question that God was real, so people would get over moving pencils pretty quickly.
I think there's a better way to describe libertarian free will than to say it's the belief that if you could go back in time you could change what choices you made. First of all, it's not possible to go back in time and change things anyway, and Matt always has this unstated condition that any hypothetical time travel would erase your memory of the future, and therefore you can't just use future knowledge to affect the outcome. This might seem obvious to some people, but people often don't consider this, and I can only assume that Matt thinks it's elementary because he seldom gives this condition until after people fail to answer the question as stated. I have a simple solution to this confusing. The way I think about libertarian fee will is that it's just the idea that a person is able to act without being influenced by prior events. When you talk about libertarian free will in this way it seems to me that no one could agree that a person is able to act without being affected by prior events. Almost everything in a person's life it controlled by things that happened at some earlier point. That's how cause and effect works. A person doesn't choose where and when to be born or who their parents will be, and all these things have a huge affect on what choices a person will make. An easy example would be this: a person with a broken leg cannot simply will their self to be the fastest runner in spite of their broken leg, as if the broken leg has no effect on the person's desire to run fast, because they will that the prior event (broken leg) has no effect, and it would be absurd for someone to suggest otherwise, but this is exactly what libertarian free will is claiming. So maybe dispense with the time travelling scenario, because I don't think it achieves the desired result, and libertarian free will really isn't hard to understand, there's just a lot of misconceptions and bias.
@matt I was also waiting for you to point out an obvious contradiction: that if there is a Free Will, and the voice of god is also present in our minds (that we are ought to listen to), then is there truly Free Will? One can't claim to be both an agent of free will and also claim that there is a voice of god in one's head - (essentially another agent guiding them)... Also, my understanding of how feelings occur is through a chemical reaction in the brain, therefore experiencing a feeling about something is an involuntary reaction to stimuli. Hence having a feeling that Free Will exists is closer to a demonstration that free will actually doesn't exist. In my view, a better case in favor of Free Will would be when one makes a decision that is contrary to one's feelings...
You can’t change what someone want’s to be true especially if they aren’t scientifically minded in searching for facts. When you think about how many people are 100% dedicated to their contradicting religions it proves them all wrong. When everyone is right about 1000 opposing beliefs, if you can’t tell this leads to the fact they’re all wrong you’re just not capable of seeing truth. Plain and simple. And I write off most religious people’s views on anything of importance because I know they trust their misleading feelings more than facts. That’s that
I've done the pencil thing before as a kid, and it's frustrating that the magic genie in the sky won't give some proof of his existence. The whole faith excuse is just an admission of its falsity. People are just desperate not to die, and want to believe that they won't. I'm over it though, billions have died before me and billions will die after.
I love your logic of what happened; I only wish those who listened to their 'inner voice' had such logic as well. Unfortunately, that seems to be the problem. When the preacher pleaded to stop looking outside for God and trust within, it was a call to put on blinders, to shut out any possibility of truth, facts, or logic, and just disregard reality. Because their beliefs only live within--a concept conceived by a mind that has no stimuli to change but merely reconfirm by repeated narrative--it is unlikely the minds who practice closing off from reality will gain any actual enlightenment or plasticity. They will just continue to believe while justifying their rationalization because it is the easiest choice. It's quite an amazing coping strategy, actually. When your concepts of the world are questioned, hide within and redefine until it's such a habit of thought, you never feel uncertain again. People do it all the time; we use affirmations to improve ourselves and overcome our base programming. PTSD literally creates a false image of the world in the mind, and then the mind reconfirms it with narratives all in an attempt to keep one safe. The human mind is primed for disconnection of perspective from reality. So, although I adore how clearly you saw his admittance of the impossibility in finding God outside oneself, does it really change the believers' perspective who merely hear confirmation to believe and have faith--the only thing that has kept these fanciful fantasies alive for so long? These believers can just reprogram themselves to continue believing in the unproven because of the Pavlovian whistle from the preacher to 'look within.' It may reflect the flimsyness of their argument--which was so baseless, those opening remarks were like trying to listen to a man create the universe and then jump through convoluted hoops to prove God did it first--but for those so indoctrinated, they already have a skewed view of reality that can only see confirmation of the beliefs that make up that structure of thought. When some people claim they see God in light or a tree or baby smiling, how could they even plausibly not see God when the celestial smear is ingrained within the perceptive core of their mind? I wonder sometimes the point of it all. Not to say one should stop--reality needs to be confirmed as many times as possible to break people out of their false realities--but does the debating work? Are people merely staying with the sides they chose, with resistance to their ideologies only giving them reason to stubbornly reconfirm their beliefs? I notice in arguments that it's not acceptance but resistance to a stance that people build their strongest defenses. Conflict is where their thoughts grow rigid. Are eyes ever opened with this medium? I confess, I don't know much about debate, but I've certainly found it appealing to discover so many sharp minded individuals who can actually construct a thought and convey it entertainingly. I like narrative sliced down to the bone of reality, and atheists in debates rarely disappoint. As someone who had PTSD for 30 years, even with the seeds of thoughts planted that my perception was not matching reality, the PTSD was a greater program ingrained in my mind to the point I was facing death before I could finally push myself to see a therapist (ironically, I tore myself from religion a good 10 years before that.) Even with a mind made for rationalization, unless the ideology was in some obvious way causing me harm, I wasn't motivated to be free of it. Are those who are deeply religious suffering enough to want to escape, when religion offers so many promises to relieve their suffering in the first place? The logical argument will only appeal to a logical mind, but is there another approach to reach those who aren't religious because of logical reasoning? Honestly, is anyone religious because it's perceived as 'logical,' or have they all just found ways to rationalize it after the fact? I'm rambling. You got my mind thinking, and I greatly appreciate it. I would rather a question than an answer any day.
From what I understand the perfect experiment would be to set up everything the same and see if you'd do something different but this is impossible since you can't replicate time.
This is almost paradoxical to me. I tend to work with .. given what I know as fact, is it probable ? This makes "free will" likely and God not. "You can't prove free will" just reminds me of the irritating rhetoric you usually get from the other side.
What is the difference between a biological robot making decisions and enacting plans which benefit itself and others like it and human free will which does the same?
I feel like everything is determined because our universe as we know it is bounded to the laws of physics and even if quantum mechanics showed that there is randomness we could not control it
What opponents to compatibalism do not understand is that there are different fields of science for a fuckin reason. Each discipline uses different levels of description. You wont use excitations in quantum fields (aka particles) as base elements to build theories in biology or sociology. And when it comes to human interactions we're describing complex emergent phenomena which, even if they were 100% deterministic=quantum-free, won't ever be 100% predictable for us. For all intends and purposes, human interaction can be modelled at the descriptive level of _agents making decisions,_ after insights from biology, neuroscience and psychology are obtained and incorporated. At this level of description it doesn't matter if your neurons are a deterministic clockwork. Fact is, the machinery *_operates_* independent of other such machineries (= agents). Each agent makes their own decisions, free of the will of other agents. Nobody gives a fuck, if it ain't free of the laws of nature, other than the _"free will = libertarian free will" crowd._ We're not doing physics here, we're talking about human interactions... Of course, our will is not free of the laws of nature. Only substance dualism thinks otherwise.
Quakers actually believe God is the inner voice. They're one of the cool religious groups. Unitarian Universalists are another. Not all religions are bad
I have the free will debate/discussion with fellow agnostics/athiests pretty often. Most people seem to have an aversion to the idea that we do not have free will. It doesn't really bother me, I mean, if I know I do or I know I don't, that doesn't really change much about my day to day life. It's interesting to think about though.
You'd have to recreate the experience of making the same decision and compare the results. So, either a time machine or a memory wipe/mind control. An AI might be a useful test subject, depending on how thoroughly its input data could be controlled.
I heard that red meat actually causes Diabetes and not sugar or is it being overweight for lnoong time(BTW ,MAtt you look great) Or is it totally genetic? I'm overweight and not happy trying evrything pure carnvoire if i can but i need sugar after 46 years of it. I thinnk I have free will or is it the stomach bacteria that dictates what I desire to eat then what is healhty? I wish Matt would debunk raw vegan diets. Some would say I need Jesus in my life again I don;t know or believe what to do anymore.
Humans evolved to consume sugars whenever available to add body fat for the lean times when food was scarce. Problem now is that food never becomes scarce so we over consume and the vast majority of us haven't yet learned we need to take heed of our natural inclinations and self regulate. Although we do sometimes call them "diets."
I'm in the same boat. You can ease yourself off sugar by eating healthier types of sugar. For example, I eat berries with oats and yoghurt when I crave cake. High protein diets are good for reducing appetite, but your body also needs the kinds of nutrients in veg (especially leafy greens) in order to repair itself and stay healthy.
To me, it was evident that the preacher at the end felt that his guy lost and lost badly. The inflections and desperation in his plea Gave it away. I tried to watch Hunters “rebuttal” video, but after a few minutes of listening to some tool claim that Matt isn’t using the word “atheism”, correctly, I had to sign off.
If God is real, then an internal witness is something one would reasonably expect. The issue with Dillahunty’s approach is that he’s setting the terms for God to engage with him. He is demanding God know what would convince him and to do just that. The type of evidence he is looking for is empirical, external. And there is that type of evidence available. But there’s several problems with that. (One was explained by Leighton after the debate with the ceiling fan anecdote.) In my opinion this is the top problem. Why would a loving God make someone believe? Why would God violate his own word in making someone believe? I watched the video and read some of the comments, and that seems to be what Matt and others are looking for. They want God to *make* them believe. God doesn’t make people believe. As Pascal said, God gives sufficient evidence without being coercive. I believe this to be the case because God cannot violate his word. He cannot do violence to a man’s will because it would be going against his own creative order. He has given man, in His own image, a will. To violate that would be denying Himself. Besides that, the nature of faith is that, it seems, one must actually be open to a miracle to see one. On the other side of the coin, seeing a miracle doesn’t make someone belief. The Bible is full of examples of this, and Dillahunty said exactly this. He wouldn’t believe in God if he had seen a decapitated man come back to life. “I don’t know; it could be that....” There’s always a way out for him! God has provided many means of seeking him, and each is sufficient. Each can support the other. I’ve personally experienced this, but tell that to Matt, and he would say that’s relying on feelings. No. It’s not feelings; it’s just a different evidence. So the reason Matt poopoos it is because he’s a naturalist. He wants naturalistic evidence for the supernatural. And if he is given that kind of evidence, he just says, “well there must be some naturalistic explanation for that event.” It’s not skepticism or cynicism. It’s willful disbelief even in his own dictated terms. It’s not logical and rational; it’s willful. Here’s an analogy, and then I’m done. Thanks for reading all this btw! How do I know my dad loves me and isn’t just using me to satisfy his own need for significance? Any empirical evidence would support either claim. You have to trust the evidence, rather than dismiss the evidence with, “I don’t know; it could be....” Leighton caught a lot of flack for what he said, but he really hit the nail on the head. Was it the best move, maybe not. But I knew exactly what he meant because I’ve been exactly there. I’ve been the skeptic that opened up to the possibility and experienced a tangible presence of God. I don’t expect you to believe me (or to believe my experience was real), but that’s my story. And when I meet other Christians from completely different backgrounds who have had the same kinds of experiences, experiences that tell me they’ve met the same person, the same God, that is evidential. That kind of experience is grounded in more than simply “feelings.” If God is real, then we should expect that type of evidence, an internal sense of God’s existence and personal interaction. If you’re not open to external evidence being the least bit compelling, then I doubt you’ll be open to any internal evidence. But if that’s the case, you don’t have an intellectual argument, you have a problem of the will.
Question for you. Does Satan know that God exists, in your worldview? Because Satan is most certainly described as being in full rebellion against God. Meaning that unless God is an ultimate monster and forced Satan to rebel, then Satan must be acting on his OWN FREE WILL. Which means that having KNOWLEDGE that God exists...being certain of it...doesn't violate the persons will. God is actually described as allowing several people in the Bible to know for absolute certain that he exists, and yet they still have free will and some of them go against what he wants. So this claim that God "can't" reveal himself because it would do violence to mans will,....doesn't work.
Isn't Libertarian Free Will the null hypothesis? While I agree that you can't prove we have Libertarian Free will, I would posit that until you prove otherwise, it is an acceptable belief.
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I agree that telling Christians who “hear God’s voice” that they are acting like a mentally ill person is a really bad idea.
What I do in those situations is respond with something like “How do you tell the difference between your inner voice and god’s voice?”
That’s a good way to help someone ask questions about their definition of god and point out that they are basically calling themselves/their inner voice/consciousness a god.
brabbit330, yeah for me it was a stark realization, almost life changing,that the entity I thought was guiding me was actually me all along.
" “How do you tell the difference between your inner voice and god’s voice?”"
I'm guessing that god's voice & their inner voice are always in total agreement.
@@cnault3244 I'd be willing to bet that you are correct.
Regarding the 'pencil test' of God, something almost identical actually happens in the Bible in Judges 6 (verses 37 to 40, to be precise), just instead of a pencil Gideon uses a piece of wool and asks God to make it so that the wool gets wet from dew, while everything around it is dry. When it happened, he asked God to do the reverse (so that the wool is dry, while the ground is covered in dew. Only after he tested God multiple times did he actually decide to put faith in him.
This is what led me to atheism - I couldn't get over the fact that in the past, God would seemingly be OK with performing these obvious miracles, while the closer it got to modern day, his miracles became much more unremarkable and indistinguishable from coincidental, mundane incidents. This can either be explained with convoluted theological mental gymnastics - or very simply and easily by assuming the stories of the miracles of old were grossly exagerated or straight-up made up.
Igor Bednarski “grossly exagerated”, I agree. But why is that wrong? As catholic, I belive that Bible is Book about human development. Old Testament is like childhood. People learn about life and do stupid things. Each person has path and is always the same person. After Jesus, we should grow inside. His message was clear- “die for Love”. My grandparants also have had some amazing stories. So what? They were good people. I don’t see eather what good comes from atheists who call theists stupid. Why can’t we live together in peace, without calling eachother stupid?🤔❤️
@@laleydelamor1327
I never said theists are stupid, I think they are simply wrong. The Bible stories are harmful and convey a terrible message, which is why it matters whether people believe it or not.
Igor Bednarski No Sir, You didn’t say that theists are stupid. But now You said how our belief is harmful, and how we are wrong.Please, inlight me what exactly I do wrong;
As catholic I belive in Jesus teaching and in His two golden rules:
1.Put God on first place- if God is Love, and I put Love first, that means i refuse diabolus (division spirit). All I do in my life should be guided with love. What is love, I don’t know. If I love my child and give him everything, I won’t do him a favor. So, child must cry sometimes, must learn about how to deal with life and responsibility. Love and trauma go together, I don’t know exact how, but I have conscience. For me, it’s important to teach a child, not to hate anyone.
2.Love your neighbour as yourself- in this case, neighbour could be enyone that helps me in need. Could be someone with different belif, why not? If Jesus told to Jews the story about good Samaritan, why catholic and muslim couldn’t be friends? Further more, I should love my neighbour AS myself. Not more, not less. I have to love myself first, to give love to needed.
Now please tell me, what exactly I do wrong?❤️
@@laleydelamor1327 I can tell you what you do wrong. The Catholic church promotes harmful beliefs like their position on condoms. This position directly leads to an increase in Aids/HIV in countries where the church is followed. What about institutionalized protection of predators and a view on human sexuality that causes many cases of abuse, secret abortions, etc. You can love yourself and your neighbor by simply following secular humanism. Secular humanism promotes human and planet well being without all the extra filler. That is why religion is wrong, it promotes corruption, control, fundamentalism, wishful thinking, ignorance, complacency, etc. We can do better as a species. I recommend watching the intelligence squared debate: is the Catholic church a force for good in the world. Then get back to me!
By the way, the Jesus that preaches to love your neighbor is the same Jesus that preaches hell for those who don't accept him!
@@laleydelamor1327 What if I told you I love my neighbor (including you and all humanity, and really all life) as myself, but I also don't see any evidence that there's a God?
So we might agree on everything morally, but disagree on whether there's a God. Does that mean I deserve eternal torture?
Furthermore, maybe a Muslim believes from Allah that he should love all life like his neighbor, just as you and I believe. Does he deserve eternal torture?
The frustrating thing is, even with this admission of defeat they just pretend everything is fine and declare their feelings all important. Frustrates me to no end.
That ending was a jerky move from a preacher, not a respectful conversationer. I cannot believe that the host could act like that.
@THE PEOPLE SING Feelings are not the problems when they simply express who we are as individuals. There is nothing wrong with that.
When we base on our feelings as something that other people have to follow, that is where problems occur.
Too often Christians base on this feeling to legislate against other groups.
@THE PEOPLE SING not unimportant, irrelevant. Feelings are not an excuse
IWillBecomeImmortalOrDieTrying You can’t change what someone want’s to be true especially if they aren’t scientifically minded in searching for facts. When you think about how many people are 100% dedicated to their contradicting religions it proves them all wrong. When everyone is right about 1000 opposing beliefs, if you can’t tell this leads to the fact they’re all wrong you’re just not capable of seeing truth. Plain and simple. And I write off most religious people’s views on anything of importance because I know they trust their misleading feelings more than facts. That’s that
As a former make believer myself, I thank you for these great videos. They are quite informative and fun to watch.
'former make believer' - perfect! I was once one as well.
@THE PEOPLE SING That's barely advice. What does it mean to believe in the labels? What is inner wisdom? How does being still and silent give us any information?
Faith is the little voice in your head that says you should believe the little voice in your head.
@Gods Servant Exactly right!! Faith is what people have when they don't have good reasons to believe something. Good job!!!
@Gods Servant Right on point! To put what you said in other words, faith is the wish it was true and pretend that's good enough evidence. I love it when theists trip over their own shoelaces.
@Gods Servant Then enlighten me by deconstructing "the substance of things hoped for" and "the evidence of things not seen" in your words since, going by the standards set by your biblical sentence, you can believe in just about anything, including other gods, seeing that the requirement is just "hope" and the evidence is "invisiblility". Therefore, going by this definition of faith alone, the belief in Allah, Elohim, Shiva, Brahma, Krishna, Hathor, Pixies and the Virgin of Lourdes would also be justified, as they all meet the standard of "things hoped for" and of course, their remarkable state of permanent invisibility.
It's not truth if the same "hope" for unseen gods can be used other gods as well. It's an unreliable path to truth if the same method can lead to what you claim to be the true god as well as false gods.
@Gods Servant You did not address the point, and the truth is what can be demonstrated to be objectively factual, it is certainly not a wish nor a hope, the truth is verifiable. Furthermore, the truth is not commanded through stiff and absolute doctrines presented as inflexible edicts over a foundation of mere fear and intimidation, as is the case with your religion, where the simple acts of disbelief, uncertainty, doubt, skepticism or omission are outright punishable. Again, rather foolishly, that biblical verse you used to define faith can also point into the direction of belief in just about any other god/gods/godessess as long as "hope" and "invisibility" are concerned. It not only DOES NOT single out your god from all others, but gives free licence for belief in whatever crackpot lunacy fancies your whim because if "hope" and "invisibility" are the prevalent conditions, these attributes are quite common to any faith-based belief system. ANY! You're not handfeeding anyone "the truth", you're just tripping over your own shoelaces again and again.
Shout out to Matt Dillahunty for waking me up to the truth about our reality and helping to free me from the shackles of my old biblical religion. Leaving Christianity has made me a better man, more loving and compassionate, more moral, and more interested in a life of value.
If you actually believe what Matt has to say there are no values....only facts. Love, compassion, and morality are merely human constructs produced by evolution. How can one be "more moral" if there is no such thing as free will? And what exactly does it mean to be more moral when there is no objective basis for determining what is moral?
@@oldschoolsaint "If you believe... No values, only facts." And why does that follow? In answering, it would be helpful for you to define what you mean by "values" and how you distinguish them from "facts".
@@reasonandsciencecatsboardcom It's the cut and paste angel come to another comments section.
Paul Beaulieu Examples of facts: there are mountains, oceans, and stars. There are murderers, thieves, and liars. Examples of values: mountains, oceans and starts are beautiful. Murder, thievery, and dishonesty are wrong.
If humans are but the product of undirected chance, how can beauty, justice, or morality be anything but an illusion? If there is no free will how can humans be moral agents?
@@oldschoolsaint Firstly, examples are not a definition. Secondly, are you saying there has to be a God for me to find beauty in a mountain? If yes, you need to make an argument that a God is a necessary condition for me, or anyone, to perceive beauty in anything.
It was lack of answered prayer that collapsed my faith. Once it was gone, my filters on taking in the world were gone. In that instant something like scales fell from my eyes. Suddenly I could see and think clearly. Much later I re-listened to a song that used to deeply affect me "spiritually", and it gave me a deep emotional response. I then realized all those so-called spiritual events in my life were nothing more than my own personal emotional response. Listening to that still, small voice in my own head and relying on those feelings, while ignoring the reality of the world around me is what kept me in religion for decades. Too soon old, too late wise.
Russell Brooks,
Love that last line. Is it a quote or your own saying?
@@mabatch3769 quote from a coworker's mother
You know I've learned so much from watching your debates Matt. Since I was a Christian for 40 years I pretty much consider myself an expert on the subject. You have taught me how to identify the fallacies (or at least have a clue about it)now I can use this in all the other areas of life when I'm dealing with people.
Thank you Matt.
May I ask what kept you in for so long and what made you begin to doubt? I’m just curious because I’m fascinated by some of the things religious people believe especially young earth creationists, not that you were one, that’s just an example.
It seems to me that theists arguments boil down to, "This feels so good... If this is wrong, I don't want to be right". It reminds me of what my uncle used to tell me when I was very little while we were playing in the bathtub.
Sort of like most of John Lennox's arguments. I don't want to live in a deterministic world, so I choose to believe in free will.
Yeah... I bet he did
2016 @matt you woke me up from the religious comma after 36 years of being religious thank you, you are awesome
, 🙏
@Gods servant continue serving your biblical God and fairy tales I'll keep my dead brain
@@bongani_trinity We know the truth - that you're tons better off thinking for yourself rather than believing religious crap on faith. Kudos!! :-)
TK Englander 🤣 So, atheists know the truth, hundreds of christian denominations know the truth, different muslim denominations know the truth, hindus budhists.. name it! Oh, so many people know the truth! But atheist’s truth is the best one! Ok, I’ll be atheist from now on, because you have onley truth! Ummm..🤔? The truth is that all scientist agree how negativity from social media can harm whole society and cause brain damage. But we still continue to insult other people.. Strange.. wish You all the best❤️
@Gods Servant hell of an argument. Never has anyone made such a compelling argument for the mythology. Well done.
Doesn't it say in the bible (preemptively) "thou shall not put god to the test"?
It's as if people 2000 years ago also wanted to see some real evidence first :)
it's exactly like that. Similar to the "the fool says in his heart: there is no god!". Almost as if there were people calling the early Christians foolish. Almost.
I imagine that scene of them coming up with that line with the Monty Python cast
Exactly! What I find most fascinating is the fact that the Bible is an actual record of the existence of atheists even thousands of years ago. Even without all the scientific knowledge we have nowadays there were people who were skeptical and wanted evidence before believing. And there were people who had already reached the conclusions that “there is no god”. And if the authors of the Bible took the trouble of mentioning them in the holy book it means that they were particularly bothersome and certainly didn’t limit themselves to deny god in their hearts.
I wonder if they had an atheist experience even back then...
Pat Pezzi I belive that atheists and theist exist so long as any religion. For me, doubt is logical. In Bible, we have a story about Doubting Thomas. I’m doubting Thomas among catholics. If someone would have come to me and say “I saw Jesus yesterday!” I would say “ok, I belive you. Come on and let’s go to tell this story to person that likes to hear stories, that person do that for living..” As great philosopher Soren Kierkegaars says, faith and doubt should go together, he disliked mass religion. Wish You all the best❤️
@Gods Servant prove it
Person 1: I choose not to believe in free will
Person 2: I can't help but believe free will is true
Hitchens: Do I believe in free will? I have no choice.
"I cannot just ask God to move a pencil" wait... is that not exactly what the "debate" between Elijah and the prophets of Baal was all about? I would bet my life on that kind of debate any day of the week. I doubt any apologist would, which demonstrates they do not believe the God of the Bible.
A good question would be " how was this inner voice created in a person's mind?" That is obvious. Indoctrination.
To debate you, Matt, would be the ultimate to any debater - you always listen and are amazingly logical. Love to listen to you!
There is another argument against the Kalam Cosmological Argument that I don't usually hear. I think the KCA commits an equivocation fallacy. (I think WLC changed his wording of it at some point and I suspect it was to avoid this.) The first premise says that everything that begins to exist has a cause. But this refers to all the things we've seen in the world such as bicycles, footballs, chairs, trees and so on. But none of those things began to exist from nothing. They are all really just a change in form of what already exists. When a chair came to exist it was actually a change in form of the wood. The wood came from a tree, which in turn came from water, sunlight, and minerals. None of it began to exist ex nihilo, i.e. from nothing.
The second premise says that the universe began to exist. But in this premise, "began to exist" implies that the universe began to exist ex nililo. That the universe came from nothing. This is a different thing. Our experience from things within our universe can't be imposed onto the universe itself. (You might also want to call it a fallacy of composition.)
Matter cannot be destroyed right? Must have been a rearrangement.
And as Matt has said before, the KCA establishes the universe had a beginning, then the theists shoehorn in their God. I think Sean Carroll has a valid point as well, being that talking about causation for what is prior to the big bang as "not even wrong."
What you are talking about is how the Kalam equivocate between all causation we have observed, which all have material causes(the matter or stuff it is made of) and efficient causes(the action or process that effected the change) but then, when applying this to God creating the universe _ex nihilo_ (from nothing, no material cause) the argument leaves out the material cause. This objection cannot be fixed without abandoning the ex materia. Craig reworded his so that both uses of cause are efficient causes to avoid equivocation, but that still leaves the problem of every thing we have ever observed to "begin to exist" had a material cause...but his idea on how the universe began does not. To use our experience as an argument(everything beginning toexist has an eficient cause) but leaving out how it also had a material cause imo is special pleading and cherry picking.
@MinutemanSam no sir you are incorrect
www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.physicscentral.com/experiment/askaphysicist/physics-answer.cfm%3Fuid%3D20120221015143&ved=2ahUKEwiThbHEzcPhAhUD1qwKHSACBDIQFjACegQIDhAO&usg=AOvVaw0AzqUXnlufB3fM_2rbNUsA
@@wj3438 did you read this article? The second sentence says"The first law of thermodynamics doesn't actually specify that matter can neither be created nor destroyed, but instead that the total amount of energy in a closed system cannot be created nor destroyed (though it can be changed from one form to another)." Matter can be created and destroyed but not energy.
Wow 3 in one day. You're really on it.
Make that 4 now
Its not 4 in one day, its just he releases to patreon first, and then eventually batch uploads to youtube after a bit.
To be fair even if the theist could demonstrate that we have libetarian free will it would just be another faculty that we have like vision or awareness. From here there is absolutely no link to a god.
Damn Matt! You are on the ball today! 3 videos in one day. lol. Keep up the good work! I really enjoy listening to your point of view. You are one of the people that helped me out of the delusion of Christianity several years ago! You sir, are a badass! ~BA
@@reasonandsciencecatsboardcom It's most certainly a delusion! ~BA
@Gods Servant BTW, which men wrote the bible?
@Gods Servant Read the first chapter of the Bible, which is the creation, plenty of inaccuracies in just that chapter alone. There's a difference between idolizing and having respect, which Matt has more than earned. By the way, you could change his mind with the proper evidence, and that's where people like him and people like you differ, and it's called intellectual honesty.
@Gods Servant Right... Nothing anybody has ever said or written is wrong, just wrongly interpreted. Correct? Or are you engaged in special pleading?
@Gods Servant So you're saying everything everyone says is correct? Okay...
Believing that guys argument about not relying on physical evidence(pencils) while also believing that God performs miracles(physical evidence) is completely ridiculous. And believing miracles from other people's experiences is completely ridiculous.
Libertarian free will isn’t just an argument from feeling, it’s also an argument from a valid epistemology, if you’re determined to believe what you believe, how can you possibly make a truth claim including the ‘truth’ of determinism?
I agree with you, Matt. If someone else from the church had to step in at the end of the debate and say don't look for evidence in the real world and just trust your inner "voice", then he knew that their theist lost the debate and he figured that he better step in and say something.
I think that it's telling that free-will is almost entirely predicated on magic.
The "tests" for free-will often have magic as their basis and how is that not laughed at if you posit : "if you did action X the first time, and then we reset time and you go back to that exact same point..." You can't reset time. We never will be able to.
There's literally no imaginable test that could demonstrate free-will. And I think that philosophy has to admit that it's less than a dead-horse. The more refined our analyses become, the more impossible it becomes to even define/test free-will.
Even to the point of programmed android vs human -- if I make an android that can do TRULY random alternatives every so often, and compare that to a human, can we distinguish whether either had real free-will vs the artifice?
This is the way I look at it, and even taking god and magic out of it. Every choice we make is based on past experiences. so everything we experience in life is what determines the choices we make. So based on that, I don't see how we have free will.
When I was a Christian, I used the argument from free will. Now, as an atheist, I don't believe in free will.
I love when you do debates at churches. I’m sure a lot of theists are hearing good arguments for the first time and a lot of preachers regret inviting you
This is off subject of the video, but when something hits my brain, my ADHD forces me to address it at that moment or risk losing it. I have to say thank you Matt, for Atheist Experience and Atheist debate. I started transitioning into an atheist around age 18 and finally became confident about the improbability of the existence of the supernatural about 10 years after. Listening to you has really helped me learn how to articulate my thoughts into words. Being able to do this has allowed me to train my mind into being more logical, leading to more reasonable conclusions. Beyond the atheist position, this has helped me recognize fallacies within my other views and within the positions of others. I am not sure how much you know about ADHD, but having this disorder can definitely be a challenge, especially when trying to learn and in social interaction. Because of you, I have learned to take control of my mind in a way that makes my ADHD less noticeable. I can focus my thoughts better and absorbing knowledge is less of a challenge. I can't say thank you enough for your teachings and the impact it has had on my life. Please keep up the good work and know that what you are doing is truly a benefit to the world on a whole.
The bigger question to a Christian is surely how do you know "The voice" is god and not the devil?
lol, and if the devil is so bad, why doesn't God just kill him?
@@SolidAir54321 Free will, "not in his nature" (he did cause people to die, but only physically, not totally stop existing), dumb crap like that...
Satan is also his child, too...
I also feeeel like I'm standing still right now. I definitely don't feel like I'm moving east to west at 1000 mph, or hurtling around the sun at 67000 mph. But the evidence says my feelings are wrong.
Relativity proves you correct (sort of).
You are both standing still and moving depending on the frame of reference.
You were so nice, Matt. The ending from that Christian clearly shows Christians are jerks in disguise.
A respectful conversation ended in preaching.
Leighton was really pathetic even on a civil level.
Question, even if you could go back in time and do something different to demonstrate libertarian free will, wouldn't the desire to go back in time to demonstrate libertarian free will also just be a subconscious desire in your brain that you have no control over? What about that would count as free will?
Matt!
Fantastic, straightforward, sensible presentation of reality.
Much respect and appreciation.
Your final thoughts on "feelings " was the most valuable. The whole " inner voice " nonsense was a predominant part of my own journey out of belief.
Thank you.
If we do have free will, I believe it's very limited. For the first 18 years of my life, most choices were made for me by my mother including my birth, where I lived, where I went to school, who my teachers were, who my mother married, who my siblings/family were, what I had for meals, what I wore etc. In turn, the rest of my life's "choices" have been directly influenced by others.
Yep,you did not choose your genetics either which also determines as well as environment choices.I put it on par with believing in God that you believe you have free will..
Matt, have you listened to Robert Sapolski from Stanford? He has some amazing stuff on free will from a neurobiological standpoint. His evidence suggests we have no free will. But we live as though we do...
Isn't there an equivocation underlying any notion of going back in time to be able to do or not do something different? As far as we know, we CAN'T GO BACK IN TIME so any conclusion you might draw from this popular thought experiment simply cannot follow.
not to mention that was only the first faulty premise
lets nod deterministically with our pointless heads to that free will is a illusion, as is meaning, which doesn't matter.
Great video and loving that shirt.
18:07 It's not just that he's _willing_ to accept feelings - he is actually _able_ to. The "liberterianist" is going to claim that I am able but unwilling to accept, to which my response is "Fine, but I don't _feel_ like I have a choice."
It just felt super dishonest that the moderator took side in the debate after the actual debate was over. Glad I saw this video too.
LOL.When the debate is over the moderator is no longer the moderator.
Matt is correct when he talks about feelings. My very well qualified and experienced pychologist has told me feelings ( emotions) come from our thoughts, so if you're thinking is wrong then your feelings are too. Thoughts become feelings and if feelings persist then that can lead to actions. Cheers sky
Are you sure they are your thoughts ?.
@@daviddeida idiot
Trying to help a Christian with logic is like trying to explain to a kid that Santa is not coming ..
Except most kids eventually do grow up ...
@@reasonandsciencecatsboardcom observations of objective truths.
@@reasonandsciencecatsboardcom you can trust your reason because it came from god? That doesn't make sense at all you can reason he's perfect or trust that he says so but how can you trust that reason any more than the evolutionary explanation.
@@reasonandsciencecatsboardcom evolution DOES explain these things (consciousness is harder to explain though or perhaps it's the one I've studied the least) also the reason to trust your reason is it keeps you alive quite often so for it to be wrong we'd have to somehow be wrong in such a way that it works anyways which while possible I don't find likely and falls under the category of "can't prove it's wrong" which I don't believe to be proof that it's true.
@@reasonandsciencecatsboardcom our senses, even if completely wrong, is the building block from which we form reason and it's the building block for which we percive reality. So to suggest that the reality we percive is different from the one we live in is pointless because it's the one we percive and build everything off of it. Also most Atheists do not believe in objective morals I'm not sure why you'd lie about that . I need to sleep but if you actually want to know a skeptics side to your arguments just look them up. I realize it's harder for you, you assume that when science doesn't have an answer it just points to god but it doesn't so go out and genuinely be curious and skeptical about things. Realize that when science doesn't have an answer that's an opportunity to learn not discredit. I do fundamentally disagree with your argument because it's basically taking scientists and saying they can't trust anything if they believe what they do but you can if you believe what you do when that's not true there's no reason to trust God(if he exists) for the same reason you claim you can't trust reason without him.
Just watched the debate on Braxton's channel. Not surprised that he had nothing interesting or new to present. I thought you did a good job holding to relevant points to counter his assertions.
To be fair the pencil moved, just not relative to the watchers
Thank you Matt. I agree with your comments. I look forward to more videos!
I don't think libertarian free will could even be a possibility. Time being linear, what will happen will happen, the hypothetical of "if you could go back and do X again" is pointless, as it's not possible. I think those that think libertarian free will is a thing either don't understand it or are coming from a position of incredulity
This video started out SUPER slow but near the end Matt made a great point about "following your inner voice" wow mic drop
About the 'pencil test'. Should the atheist say 'If there is not god, then make the pencil not move'?
Admittedly, I'm not as smart or eloquent as Matt, but I feel that we do have libertarian free will. If I come to a fork in the road and could go either way, let's say I go left, it's hard for me to believe that I couldn't have just as well gone right. But at the same time, I agree that there's not really any conceivable way to demonstrate that.
Sorry, but how a question about the origin of experience it self can be solved by experimental or empirical means? Isn't that kind of trying to climb on yourself?
Whether libertarian, compatibilist, deterministic, or synaptic, it's hard to argue that free will exists at all within a coercive religious construct like Heaven/Hell.
Matt Dilahunty; besides, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens; is awesome.
If I dropped the pencil 5 minutes ago what difference does it make that I could have made an infinite amount of choices at that exact moment in the past? Time is linear and looking and wondering what could have been, although interesting to ponder is useless. Having said that though, even if you take into consideration all of the aspects that shape a person and make them who they are, until that present moment in time when they are faced with a particular choice, they still would have an infinite amount of possibilities to choose from even if within the framework of their past experiences. I would further argue that human evolution and progress would be impossible without the ability to take in new information and use that new information to formulate new thoughts and opinions. New information provides us with more range of choice in decision making.
Compatibilism confuses me. Isn’t that the same thing as God knowing what you’re gonna do but saying you have free will? Aren’t they pretty similar? Matt I heard many of your talks about compatibility and even though I understand most of that you’re saying I don’t quite understand all of it. Like when you say you can either drag Don across the room or ask him to leave. What does that mean? And why would you drag him?
My question on free will is, if we truly have it, why don't we all have a precognition of accepting to be created?
If free will is what we have and in order for it to be consistent, when was I freely give the choice to be created?
It seems to me that without being given the choice to be created then I simple don't have free will and was forced into exsitance...
That is not a free choice, that is being forced in to something I have not chosen. There is nothing free about my exsitance!
I think I'm with Hitchens on whether or not I have free will: I don't believe I have a choice in the matter.
While I'm no expert, I'd like to know if anyone you're aware of has ever tried to connect the delayed choice Quantum eraser experiments, you can TH-cam to learn more, if these experiments might be a physical way to support free will. At first glance you might automatically say no but if you take the time to understand this particular experiment, could it in anyway support free will? I'd be very interested in the thoughts of somebody more knowledgeable in this then myself.
Great job Mr Matt.
I’ve watched a thousand videos of yours
Really
I also believe free will to be a complex issue. A simple double pendulum shows a very complex path, imagine a system with billions upon billions of parts (neurons, experiences, body's current chemistry based on recent food intake, etc.), determining our choice may not be practical to calculate but may be deterministic anyway.
Then throw in quantum uncertainty, ah crap!
i heard something like...if we have free will then our future could not be determined........
Matt I’m still totally confused. When you say you can ask don to leave the room or you can drag him out... is that an analogy? Or literal? If you don’t have a choice different than your determined path, how could you do one or the other? This is where I don’t hear 👂 ya. Something isn’t adding up to me.
You are correct. Compatibilism is non-logical. "Everything is determined but there is free will."
I'm baffled at the fact that someone could actually believe they do not have free will yet they have complete and total control over their lives and the way the lead their lives.
But whatever you do is motivated by some factor there for - it isnt without cause, meaning: it's not out of free will, rather: out of need to react and take action due to this or that...
I've thought a lot about the notion of free will lately. I've come to the conclusion it is impossible. I am not aware of the unconscious processing going on in my brain before things pop into consciousness. I'm an EE and during the development process solutions pop into my brain and only afterward do I evaluate the notion and most times it is a good solution. I don't control or understand the processes that cause this to happen.
In addition looking back over my life most of my major decisions seem to be on autopilot. I felt compelled to do certain things and if I resisted the force of the feelings increased.
There is a feedback loop between conscious and unconscious thought because I was not born knowing about electronics. However that does not diminish the notion that I am not in total control of my actions. While I don't agree with Dennett's notion of compatibility I like his definition of consciousness: an edited digest of current activity.
Life is about making choices.What determines what is chosen is based on genes and conditioning.Did we choose our genes and the environment where we were brought up?.No.Conclusion we do not have free will.I am also in the camp of we are not an agent,though yes "it feels like " we are not the doer of actions and we are not the thinker of our thoughts.We cannot even know what thoughts we receive and when we receive them.These are all concepts that can be agreed upon or not.What is'nt a concept is the notion that I exist.So if I am not the doer of action,if I am not the chooser then who am I?.Does the realization I exist assume that I have a will,I choose and do actions?.There seems to be a fear around this realisation as if somehow the realization would change behavior.If you were never the doer the realization you are not will change very little behavior..It may bring more peace ,acceptance and forgiveness in oneself and others..Society that is based on doership will quite rightly still hold you accountable for your actions.Deep down the realization everything that happens had to happen AND live your life as if.. you have free will.
Where can I get that shirt?
The reason I don't trust inner voices is because I know for a fact you can't trust them to be true. I've imagined my mother call my name at night, walked out of my room to find her sleeping on the couch (she clearly didn't call my name). I remember being able to levitate off the ground in a trance like state; it turns out it was just me hallucinating by bending my perspective based on memories (the way I could tell is that specific details like words and numbers on the walls would be blurred out, not there, or I was incapable of focusing on them). This is how I know I can't trust what I hear in my head, I can just be letting my imagination run wild.
I also don't truly believe people actually have freewill. I would love it to be true, but I don't think it is. I could say I had an equal chance of choosing vanilla or chocolate, but I know there was a 99% chance I would choose vanilla purely do to bias. If I was basically guaranteed to pick that it can't really be freewill then.
I don't think that you can have this discussion without first defining "free" and "will", and you surely can't use time travel to describe it. Unless of course, you really can accomplish time travel. Otherwise, get a different argument.
Matt, I watched the debate and I thought you did a good job. Also, how does having libertarian free will prove a god? There was never an explanation and I don’t see any connection. Keep up the good work!
Where did you get that shirt? It's nice.
If we do not have free will, is Dillahunty then arguing against imprisoning people for the crimes they commit since they could not have done differently? A secular moral system must be fair so how could it imprison people who are not to blame for their crimes? Sam Harris has a beautiful argument against free will th-cam.com/video/pCofmZlC72g/w-d-xo.html
"A secular moral system must be fair so how could it imprison people who are not to blame for their crimes? "
Why not? The Bible has god punishing people for sins committed by others.
This problem of how free our will is looks unsolvable to me. We can never know if we could have made another decision, if we go back in time. I also think our decisions are at least partly made automatically by the programming of our brain, but I do think we have free will in what programming we allow into our brain and that we have free will to change our programming.
We do a lot of things subconsciously. If someone drops a cup of coffee on the table, we move away, before we can think 'that hot coffee is going to flow over the table on my legs'.
However, we also make a lot of decisions consciously, like 'what will be my next car?'. We have values on the subject, that originate from consciously thinking about past experiences.
During the thinking about such a decision, we can consciously chose to prioritize some values over others or go searching for information on the subject to influence our decision.
Then at least a lot of random factors come into play, that would influence our decision making. Than we would probably have a big change to not make the same decision twice,
even if we didn't have libertarian free will. So my question is more, who thinks our brains are so predictable, that we would make the same decision twice and if not, is that free will?
_We can never know if we could have made another decision_ I think we can, because the question is a bit silly. If we went back in time, we are not repeating the conditions, since we have new knowledge and so new inputs or desires. Thus, under both free will and determinism, we should not expect the same result _(though of course, it could be the same, context dependent)._ Only if our actions are the result of true randomness at a fundamental level, should they be expected to change under identical preconditions, and that would be undesirable I think.
_we also make a lot of decisions consciously_ Do we? Or do we feel that we do? Like you say, we have our values, but how does our thinking begin, what are our first values? It's all external, so in one way we lack free will. More concretely however we can ask, how can a "choice" even be made? What could be the physical mechanism?
It just seems to be physically impossible for free will or even choice making to occur. We are fortunate however, to be complex enough to have a feeling of making choices, but not so powerful to know all our choices before we make them. Even if it's just a powerful illusion, it's incredibly useful: for purpose, responsibility, novelty, and so on. The only place its reality matters is to apologetics in defense of of omnipotent god who is suppose to love all, yet allows suffering. Only free will or universalism could be compatible with such a being. Of course, omnipotence itself is incompatible with free will....
@@Rogstin Obviously, what is meant is not going back in time with new knowledge and so new inputs or desires, but with the exact same ones as before.
I think it matters how long of a period we were reset back by. I can imagine that we would react the same, to most situations, when we were reset by 10 seconds.
However, I see no good arguments for the idea that we would repeat things step by step in the same way, if our time had been reset by 5 minutes or longer.
Whether we actually make decisions consciously or we just feel like we do is a hard question, but why assume that it's just a delusion when it doesn't feel like it?
What evidence is there FOR the claim that our consciousness is just an delusion, stronger than our internal evidence of feeling that our consciousness is real?
(I know about the experiments showing that consciousness is delayed, but I think that it's not necessarily evidence for consciousness being a delusion.)
Our thinking begins even in the womb. Why would you say all your thinking is external? It's obviously not, just listen to the never ending debate in your brain.
That internal debate is at least partially random (random means things happening, without a cause) and partly controlled, I think by ourselves.
There are surely external causes initiating our thinking and those are (I'm sure) partially deterministic, but I see no evidence to conclude all of it is deterministic.
I don't think free will's only use is to do apologetics in defense of of omnipotent god. I think free will is much more useful to defend secular humanism.
I think apologetics has appropriated the free will debate, to serve their circular arguments. I'm not not going to let a honest debate about free will be muddled by apologetics.
We don't need to attack free will, in order to destroy apologetics. Apologetics can be easily dissected with more apparent arguments.
@@FlipjevanTiel_What evidence is there FOR the claim that our consciousness is just an delusion_ Be careful, you're moving the goalposts here. We aren't talking about consciousness.
_Why would you say all your thinking is external?_ What is thinking? It's the signals moving in your brain. How is your brain formed? Firstly by it's DNA, then its environment, then it's experiences _(an extension of the environment)._ The point here is that who we are is always outside our control, in a fundamental way. At this point I can examine myself and make goals for change, but the very act of doing so and the methods picked are the result of a lifetime prior. This is a soft no free will to me.
_That internal debate is at least partially random (random means things happening, without a cause)_ I can grant that we can have thoughts that have no _apparent_ cause, but I deny that they have no cause. Whether it's a change in room temperature, subsonic noise, or a supernova's disruption of the magnetic field in my brain, there is a cause. This is the hard no free will to me.
_Obviously, what is meant is not going back in time with new knowledge and so new inputs or desires, but with the exact same ones as before. I think it matters how long of a period we were reset back by. I can imagine that we would react the same, to most situations, when we were reset by 10 seconds._ You seem to be contradicting yourself here. If we have no new knowledge, that includes the event that just happened, how long is irrelevant. If this is the case, we should always expect the same outcome unless the universe is fundamentally random. If we remember the last 10 seconds or 5 minutes or whatever, then it's not the same, and we shouldn't expect the same outcome. The point here is that no experiment can distinguish between free will and determinism, only fw/dt and fundamental randomness.
At the risk of sounding like Jordan Peterson, I think the issue of whether or not we have "free will" is very much about what we mean by "free" and "will". If "free will" literally means that my decisions are actually not "caused" by anything at all, then I can't make sense of that idea. Whether the causation underlying my decisions can be called a form of "will" that is "free" is another matter. It seems there is a difference between my "freely" choosing to do something, for whatever reasons are going on in my own head, and my being compelled to do something by having a gun put to my head. And I think that is what we are getting at when we speak of freedom to choose one's actions.
I don't think there is a bible verse that actually says "all things in moderation" or some equivalent of that. I have tried to find such a verse before with no success after someone quoted that from the bible. He couldn't cite the book, chapter, or verse and was unable to find it after.
Braxton kicked butt on this one.
were you unable to include the clip you mentioned and cut to?
Elijah and Moses is a good example that God likes to boast about his power and has no problem being tested.
I love listening to people talk about free will. Determinism is true! :)
It would lead to a "pencil moving god?" No. If evidence for God was ubiquitous (and anyone could have proof at any time) there would be no question that God was real, so people would get over moving pencils pretty quickly.
I think there's a better way to describe libertarian free will than to say it's the belief that if you could go back in time you could change what choices you made. First of all, it's not possible to go back in time and change things anyway, and Matt always has this unstated condition that any hypothetical time travel would erase your memory of the future, and therefore you can't just use future knowledge to affect the outcome. This might seem obvious to some people, but people often don't consider this, and I can only assume that Matt thinks it's elementary because he seldom gives this condition until after people fail to answer the question as stated. I have a simple solution to this confusing. The way I think about libertarian fee will is that it's just the idea that a person is able to act without being influenced by prior events. When you talk about libertarian free will in this way it seems to me that no one could agree that a person is able to act without being affected by prior events. Almost everything in a person's life it controlled by things that happened at some earlier point. That's how cause and effect works. A person doesn't choose where and when to be born or who their parents will be, and all these things have a huge affect on what choices a person will make. An easy example would be this: a person with a broken leg cannot simply will their self to be the fastest runner in spite of their broken leg, as if the broken leg has no effect on the person's desire to run fast, because they will that the prior event (broken leg) has no effect, and it would be absurd for someone to suggest otherwise, but this is exactly what libertarian free will is claiming. So maybe dispense with the time travelling scenario, because I don't think it achieves the desired result, and libertarian free will really isn't hard to understand, there's just a lot of misconceptions and bias.
@matt I was also waiting for you to point out an obvious contradiction: that if there is a Free Will, and the voice of god is also present in our minds (that we are ought to listen to), then is there truly Free Will? One can't claim to be both an agent of free will and also claim that there is a voice of god in one's head - (essentially another agent guiding them)...
Also, my understanding of how feelings occur is through a chemical reaction in the brain, therefore experiencing a feeling about something is an involuntary reaction to stimuli. Hence having a feeling that Free Will exists is closer to a demonstration that free will actually doesn't exist. In my view, a better case in favor of Free Will would be when one makes a decision that is contrary to one's feelings...
You can’t change what someone want’s to be true especially if they aren’t scientifically minded in searching for facts. When you think about how many people are 100% dedicated to their contradicting religions it proves them all wrong. When everyone is right about 1000 opposing beliefs, if you can’t tell this leads to the fact they’re all wrong you’re just not capable of seeing truth. Plain and simple. And I write off most religious people’s views on anything of importance because I know they trust their misleading feelings more than facts. That’s that
I've done the pencil thing before as a kid, and it's frustrating that the magic genie in the sky won't give some proof of his existence. The whole faith excuse is just an admission of its falsity. People are just desperate not to die, and want to believe that they won't. I'm over it though, billions have died before me and billions will die after.
Matt has the BIGGEST hands, ever...
Very well said Matt
What is logic?
I love your logic of what happened; I only wish those who listened to their 'inner voice' had such logic as well. Unfortunately, that seems to be the problem. When the preacher pleaded to stop looking outside for God and trust within, it was a call to put on blinders, to shut out any possibility of truth, facts, or logic, and just disregard reality. Because their beliefs only live within--a concept conceived by a mind that has no stimuli to change but merely reconfirm by repeated narrative--it is unlikely the minds who practice closing off from reality will gain any actual enlightenment or plasticity. They will just continue to believe while justifying their rationalization because it is the easiest choice.
It's quite an amazing coping strategy, actually. When your concepts of the world are questioned, hide within and redefine until it's such a habit of thought, you never feel uncertain again. People do it all the time; we use affirmations to improve ourselves and overcome our base programming. PTSD literally creates a false image of the world in the mind, and then the mind reconfirms it with narratives all in an attempt to keep one safe. The human mind is primed for disconnection of perspective from reality.
So, although I adore how clearly you saw his admittance of the impossibility in finding God outside oneself, does it really change the believers' perspective who merely hear confirmation to believe and have faith--the only thing that has kept these fanciful fantasies alive for so long? These believers can just reprogram themselves to continue believing in the unproven because of the Pavlovian whistle from the preacher to 'look within.' It may reflect the flimsyness of their argument--which was so baseless, those opening remarks were like trying to listen to a man create the universe and then jump through convoluted hoops to prove God did it first--but for those so indoctrinated, they already have a skewed view of reality that can only see confirmation of the beliefs that make up that structure of thought. When some people claim they see God in light or a tree or baby smiling, how could they even plausibly not see God when the celestial smear is ingrained within the perceptive core of their mind?
I wonder sometimes the point of it all. Not to say one should stop--reality needs to be confirmed as many times as possible to break people out of their false realities--but does the debating work? Are people merely staying with the sides they chose, with resistance to their ideologies only giving them reason to stubbornly reconfirm their beliefs? I notice in arguments that it's not acceptance but resistance to a stance that people build their strongest defenses. Conflict is where their thoughts grow rigid. Are eyes ever opened with this medium? I confess, I don't know much about debate, but I've certainly found it appealing to discover so many sharp minded individuals who can actually construct a thought and convey it entertainingly. I like narrative sliced down to the bone of reality, and atheists in debates rarely disappoint.
As someone who had PTSD for 30 years, even with the seeds of thoughts planted that my perception was not matching reality, the PTSD was a greater program ingrained in my mind to the point I was facing death before I could finally push myself to see a therapist (ironically, I tore myself from religion a good 10 years before that.) Even with a mind made for rationalization, unless the ideology was in some obvious way causing me harm, I wasn't motivated to be free of it. Are those who are deeply religious suffering enough to want to escape, when religion offers so many promises to relieve their suffering in the first place? The logical argument will only appeal to a logical mind, but is there another approach to reach those who aren't religious because of logical reasoning? Honestly, is anyone religious because it's perceived as 'logical,' or have they all just found ways to rationalize it after the fact?
I'm rambling. You got my mind thinking, and I greatly appreciate it. I would rather a question than an answer any day.
From what I understand the perfect experiment would be to set up everything the same and see if you'd do something different but this is impossible since you can't replicate time.
This is almost paradoxical to me.
I tend to work with .. given what I know as fact, is it probable ?
This makes "free will" likely and God not.
"You can't prove free will" just reminds me of the irritating rhetoric you usually get from the other side.
What is the difference between a biological robot making decisions and enacting plans which benefit itself and others like it and human free will which does the same?
What is "a biological robot"?
@@PaulinaPaulino a robot that is biological... Pss duh. Smh
What is the will free of?
We are all moist robots.
dilbert.com/strip/2012-03-18
@@machintelligence your a moist idiot..
link to the debatte?
I feel like everything is determined because our universe as we know it is bounded to the laws of physics and even if quantum mechanics showed that there is randomness we could not control it
What opponents to compatibalism do not understand is that there are different fields of science for a fuckin reason. Each discipline uses different levels of description. You wont use excitations in quantum fields (aka particles) as base elements to build theories in biology or sociology. And when it comes to human interactions we're describing complex emergent phenomena which, even if they were 100% deterministic=quantum-free, won't ever be 100% predictable for us. For all intends and purposes, human interaction can be modelled at the descriptive level of _agents making decisions,_ after insights from biology, neuroscience and psychology are obtained and incorporated. At this level of description it doesn't matter if your neurons are a deterministic clockwork. Fact is, the machinery *_operates_* independent of other such machineries (= agents). Each agent makes their own decisions, free of the will of other agents. Nobody gives a fuck, if it ain't free of the laws of nature, other than the _"free will = libertarian free will" crowd._ We're not doing physics here, we're talking about human interactions... Of course, our will is not free of the laws of nature. Only substance dualism thinks otherwise.
Hey! A Dillahunty Dump. A Mattstravaganza. Cool.
Quakers actually believe God is the inner voice. They're one of the cool religious groups. Unitarian Universalists are another. Not all religions are bad
I have the free will debate/discussion with fellow agnostics/athiests pretty often. Most people seem to have an aversion to the idea that we do not have free will. It doesn't really bother me, I mean, if I know I do or I know I don't, that doesn't really change much about my day to day life.
It's interesting to think about though.
What would a demonstration of libertarian free will look like?
You'd have to recreate the experience of making the same decision and compare the results. So, either a time machine or a memory wipe/mind control. An AI might be a useful test subject, depending on how thoroughly its input data could be controlled.
I heard that red meat actually causes Diabetes and not sugar or is it being overweight for lnoong time(BTW ,MAtt you look great) Or is it totally genetic? I'm overweight and not happy trying evrything pure carnvoire if i can but i need sugar after 46 years of it. I thinnk I have free will or is it the stomach bacteria that dictates what I desire to eat then what is healhty? I wish Matt would debunk raw vegan diets. Some would say I need Jesus in my life again I don;t know or believe what to do anymore.
Humans evolved to consume sugars whenever available to add body fat for the lean times when food was scarce. Problem now is that food never becomes scarce so we over consume and the vast majority of us haven't yet learned we need to take heed of our natural inclinations and self regulate. Although we do sometimes call them "diets."
I'm in the same boat. You can ease yourself off sugar by eating healthier types of sugar. For example, I eat berries with oats and yoghurt when I crave cake. High protein diets are good for reducing appetite, but your body also needs the kinds of nutrients in veg (especially leafy greens) in order to repair itself and stay healthy.
To me, it was evident that the preacher at the end felt that his guy lost and lost badly. The inflections and desperation in his plea
Gave it away. I tried to watch Hunters “rebuttal” video, but after a few minutes of listening to some tool claim that Matt isn’t using the word “atheism”, correctly, I had to sign off.
If God is real, then an internal witness is something one would reasonably expect.
The issue with Dillahunty’s approach is that he’s setting the terms for God to engage with him. He is demanding God know what would convince him and to do just that. The type of evidence he is looking for is empirical, external. And there is that type of evidence available. But there’s several problems with that. (One was explained by Leighton after the debate with the ceiling fan anecdote.)
In my opinion this is the top problem. Why would a loving God make someone believe? Why would God violate his own word in making someone believe?
I watched the video and read some of the comments, and that seems to be what Matt and others are looking for. They want God to *make* them believe.
God doesn’t make people believe. As Pascal said, God gives sufficient evidence without being coercive. I believe this to be the case because God cannot violate his word. He cannot do violence to a man’s will because it would be going against his own creative order. He has given man, in His own image, a will. To violate that would be denying Himself.
Besides that, the nature of faith is that, it seems, one must actually be open to a miracle to see one. On the other side of the coin, seeing a miracle doesn’t make someone belief. The Bible is full of examples of this, and Dillahunty said exactly this. He wouldn’t believe in God if he had seen a decapitated man come back to life. “I don’t know; it could be that....” There’s always a way out for him!
God has provided many means of seeking him, and each is sufficient. Each can support the other. I’ve personally experienced this, but tell that to Matt, and he would say that’s relying on feelings. No. It’s not feelings; it’s just a different evidence.
So the reason Matt poopoos it is because he’s a naturalist. He wants naturalistic evidence for the supernatural. And if he is given that kind of evidence, he just says, “well there must be some naturalistic explanation for that event.” It’s not skepticism or cynicism. It’s willful disbelief even in his own dictated terms. It’s not logical and rational; it’s willful.
Here’s an analogy, and then I’m done. Thanks for reading all this btw!
How do I know my dad loves me and isn’t just using me to satisfy his own need for significance? Any empirical evidence would support either claim. You have to trust the evidence, rather than dismiss the evidence with, “I don’t know; it could be....”
Leighton caught a lot of flack for what he said, but he really hit the nail on the head. Was it the best move, maybe not. But I knew exactly what he meant because I’ve been exactly there. I’ve been the skeptic that opened up to the possibility and experienced a tangible presence of God. I don’t expect you to believe me (or to believe my experience was real), but that’s my story. And when I meet other Christians from completely different backgrounds who have had the same kinds of experiences, experiences that tell me they’ve met the same person, the same God, that is evidential.
That kind of experience is grounded in more than simply “feelings.” If God is real, then we should expect that type of evidence, an internal sense of God’s existence and personal interaction.
If you’re not open to external evidence being the least bit compelling, then I doubt you’ll be open to any internal evidence. But if that’s the case, you don’t have an intellectual argument, you have a problem of the will.
Question for you.
Does Satan know that God exists, in your worldview?
Because Satan is most certainly described as being in full rebellion against God. Meaning that unless God is an ultimate monster and forced Satan to rebel, then Satan must be acting on his OWN FREE WILL.
Which means that having KNOWLEDGE that God exists...being certain of it...doesn't violate the persons will. God is actually described as allowing several people in the Bible to know for absolute certain that he exists, and yet they still have free will and some of them go against what he wants.
So this claim that God "can't" reveal himself because it would do violence to mans will,....doesn't work.
Isn't Libertarian Free Will the null hypothesis? While I agree that you can't prove we have Libertarian Free will, I would posit that until you prove otherwise, it is an acceptable belief.
how is even an eternal "pencil test" in any way taxing for a god? he's _GOD_ , for fuck's sake!
The answer to all 'could I do different' questions is "Dunno." We cannot reality check it.