My Rambling Thoughts On Free Will, Determinism, and Making Choices

I had a nice discussion on metaphysical free will, determinism, and making choices that matter. What follows are my rambling thoughts because it was a discussion, and I was finding different ways to communicate. I just don't want to clear up the repetition. It begins with this quote which I dispute:

My message to you is this: pretend that you have free will. It’s essential that you behave as if your decisions matter, even though you know they don’t. The reality isn’t important: what’s important is your belief, and believing the lie is the only way to avoid a waking coma. Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has.
― Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others

Since we’re alive we must make choices, even if they are determined ones. So why not make those choices good ones, even though those choices are determined ones? At the time we choose we don’t know which ones are determined to be. So the fact that they are determined doesn’t affect which choices we make. Live then, as if it’s all up to us, knowing it’s not up to us. It doesn’t change how we should live by knowing that our choices are determined.

In other words, an action is not yet determined until we choose to do it. We must choose to act throughout our days. Therefore, we are participants in which actions take place. I don’t know in advance which actions I will choose throughout my days. So I am learning as I choose which actions were determined beforehand for me to make. It’s a discovery we make by making our choices.

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Keith Augustine On The Fallacious Reasoning of Christian Apologists In Survival After Death Cases

Keith Augustine is the executive director of Internet Infidels, a mega site of helpful articles, debates, commentary, and book reviews. Their main outlet is The Secular Frontier. Along with Michael Martin, Augustine edited a masterful book investigating the afterlife. If you like my anthologies you will love this one, titled, The Myth of an Afterlife: The Case against Life After Death. Now that Martin has died, Augustine is probably the leading secular expert in after-life claims. If you're interested in life after death cases, you need to be reading what he has to say!

Given that his book is expensive Augustine has written a 3-part blog post (#1 here, #2 here, and #3 here) on 16 items that will be helpful for readers. He begins Part # 1 like this:

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones. — Bertrand Russell, “An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish” (1943).

In my critique of the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies (BICS) essay competition on the “best” evidence for life after death and my response to the summer and winter commentaries on it, I made reference to striking similarities between the arguments made by Christian fundamentalists and survival researchers (i.e., those who purport to investigate survival of bodily death scientifically). In this three-part guest post, I’d like to highlight or elaborate on fifteen or so examples of how those at the forefront of “scientific” research into an afterlife—or in BICS’ framing, the survival of human consciousness after death—have consistently used fallacious arguments that mirror parallel arguments prominent among fundamentalist Christians.

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Reading the Gospels as Informed Adults

Rise above the credulity expected in Sunday School

For many, many people, reading the gospels eyes-wide-open for the first time can prompt serious doubt—and their departure from the Christian faith. It’s awfully hard to divest the gospels of that aura of holiness promoted by the church: the gospels are the greatest story ever told—their authors were inspired by God himself. It’s not uncommon for congregations to stand when the ritual includes a reading from the gospels. 

 

But an adult mentality can kick in, i.e., the assumption that I can “spot a fairy tale when I see one.” For example, eleven verses into Mark, chapter 1, we read that a “voice came from heaven” announcing to Jesus—at his baptism—that he was God’s son. But very few of us believe that gods make announcements from the sky. In Matthew, chapter 1, verse 20, we’re told that an angel of the lord tells Joseph in a dream that Mary is pregnant by the holy spirit. Most of us have weird dreams from time to time, but we don’t believe they’re messages from a god.

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Dr. Sy Garte On the Similarity Between Political and God Beliefs

I had heard of Sy Garte before, but never had any contact with him until yesterday on Facebook. I had posted Bill Flavell's Ten Things We Know about Gods, which I thought was very good. Then Sy decided to inform us about some things. I present to you my discussion/debate with Garte:

Sy Garte: Substitute Political beliefs for gods and religion. Or art, Or love. In other words anything human. The ones that still work also work for religion, that ones that don't work, don't work of any of them.

JWL: Let's focus on political beliefs. Science and reason are helping us accept what is probably best for people. Once we strip politics of religious doctrines it clears our heads to reject homophobic, bigoted, sexist views based on Mill's harm principle. Once we also strip politics of religious certainties it also helps us based on Mill's harm principle.

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"Why Does Creation Groan?" by John R. Schneider in "Christianity Today" is An Extremely Unsatisfactory Answer to Animal Suffering

I like John Schneider, since he's willing to think oustide the box. But he still defends the indefensible when it comes to animal suffering for a cover article in the evangelical magazine, Christianity Today. In Why Does Creation Groan?, Schneider offers readers a quick glance at a book he wrote on the subject.

Schneider does a lot in his book, arguing against apologists who say there was "only one way" for their God to create the universe, given his divine goals. This is noteworthy, but it's not as if it's a big difference, since Schneider goes on to defend the way his god chose to create the universe after all.

Anyway, I wrote the editor about his article. Here's an longer version of what I said:

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Goddess Timeline

We must go further back in time before patriarchal religions existed folks. The evidence shows women goddesses were worshipped not male gods. Take that Yahweh. Checkmate! Seriously of course. God is/was a woman!

Spanish Translation: Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught

Aimed at Catholic, Pentecostal and Evangelical audiences

The church has always promoted an idealized Jesus. Magnificent cathedrals, with depictions of Jesus in stained glass and sculpture, illustrate the success of this strategy. For its first 1,500 years laypeople didn’t have access to the gospels, so they trusted what their clergy told them about Jesus. Even after the Bible was finally widely available—due to the printing press and translations into the languages of the people—careful reading of the gospels doesn’t seem to have caught on. Surveys have shown how little churchgoers read their Bibles.

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If We Can't Do Science This Way, We Can't Do It At All.

Emailed to me by Ciarán Mc Ardle: In this video Randal Rauser accuses Ehrman of being “woolly” for not admitting of the supernatural when doing New Testament History, which is why I link this video [below].

Eugenie Scott, when debating Kent Hovind on the radio defined science as a limited field of inquiry with limited scope.

Science assumes, for the sake of enquiry, that all phenomena are natural and that all phenomena are the result of natural causes. Only this way can science proceed.

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God’s Bad Habit of Oversleeping

And the Christian bad habit of being OKAY with it

On Saturday, 10 June 1944—four days after the Allied landing at Normandy—the rural village of Oradour-sur-Glane, in Vichy occupied France, was surrounded by an SS Panzer division of German soldiers. They rounded up all of the residents, forced the men into barns and stables, the women and children into the church. Then, with machine guns and fire-bombs, they murdered all 643 of them: 462 women and children were killed in the church. The women had felt safe in the church, because, of course, that’s where God is paying the closest attention to those who worship him. So how could a caring, attentive, powerful, competent god have allowed this savagery to happen? “God is good, God is great, but since he works in mysterious ways, he allowed the German soldiers to do their job that day.” Such a response illustrates the all-too-common incoherence of Christian theology: it doesn’t make sense.

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In Memorium of Dr. Hector Avalos Written by Dr. Christopher Rollston

A Memorium of Dr. Hector Avalos was written by Dr. Christopher Rollston in the journal he edits, which included Hector Avalos's very last article.

Rollston starts with a personal comment on Facebook, saying,

Two years ago yesterday, Dr. Hector Avalos passed away. He was a distinguished scholar and a cherished friend, and he passed away much too early. In the current issue of MAARAV, I wrote an "in memoriam" regarding him. I have pasted it in below.

In addition, I should like to mention that in this issue of Maarav, one of Hector's final articles (perhaps his final article....I'm not entirely sure) is published, one entitled "By Him" or "Against Him/Them" in El Amarna 364:23?: Implications for the Destruction of Hazor. It's a very fine article and I sort of look at this as a core love of Hector's: history and philology. I'm so glad that this article appeared in Maarav. He had hoped to live to see it in print....this was not to be...but I'm so glad that it appeared within our pages. And again, the full "In Memoriam" is pasted in below.

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Ciarán Mc Ardle asks of Randal Rauser, "How is 'Progressive Christianity' Substantially Different from Atheism?"

This came to my attention by my friend Ciarán Mc Ardle. He sends me an email from time to time. Hopefully you'll like his comments below on this interview:

 

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David G. McAfee's Review of "The Case Against Miracles" on Amazon

I will be keenly interested in what people say about "The Case Against Miracles" now that a good deal of people downloaded the free book off Amazon yesterday. David G. McAfee reviewed this book a few years back saying;

The Case Against Miracles’ is the Best Anti-Apologetics Book Around!

If you are ever forced to deal with Christian apologists, who spend their lives defending the Christian religion with philosophy and (often incredibly bad) reasoning, then you need this new book by atheist author John W. Loftus.

Let’s start with the obvious: The Case Against Miracles has some of the biggest names in the atheism and skepticism communities. Not only is it edited by Loftus, who also edited The Christian Delusion, but it contains blurbs and essays by Michael Shermer, Dan Barker, Peter Boghossian, David Fitzgerald, and other legends.

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Michael Shermer, "How To Think About the Resurrection: Was Jesus Really Raised From the Dead?"

I hope readers are taking advantage of my offer of a free copy of the Kindle edition of The Case Against Miracles. The offer is only for today! Go ahead, make my day!

This morning in my feed was the latest essay by Michael Shermer, titled How To Think About the Resurrection: Was Jesus Really Raised From the Dead? It is a must read essay by him! In it he quotes me and recommends my book. As you should know, Shermer wrote the Foreword to The Case Against Miracles.

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Get a Free Kindle of My Book "The Case Against Miracles"

I’m giving away free copies of my book on Easter Sunday! Just click here. It’s received some high praise!

Barring any glitches it’ll be free on Amazon all day April 9th, from 12 AM until 11:59 PM Pacific Daylight Time. I’m hoping you’ll recommend it to others. THAT would help pay it back.