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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Is faith a gift from God?
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quetzalcoatl
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# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
but I know that arguments about choice tend to run into the sand. My own sense is that I have little choice in what I believe; of course, I could act 'as if'. But then I tend to see the unconscious as very influential. 'We are ruled by unknown and ungovernable forces,' (somebody or other, Groddeck actually.)
It is interesting that one can have exactly the same discussion about the illusion of free choice in a deterministic model of human behaviour from a completely materialist perspective. I think the heart of it is deciding what it means to be a conscious being. Is this process of thinking and choosing actually an illusion we have and in fact what we do is predetermined by genes and external environment? I have always wondered who it is that perceives this illusion if all it really is is an illusion.
One can on the other hand say "I think therefore I am", and I think that consciousness and free choice are implied by that statement.
Having said that, determinism is being pulverized in science, as far as I can see. But even then, non-determinism doesn't get you to free will.
I think often the solutions are pragmatic rather than intellectual. I mean, we have to assume free will, in order to have a justice system, and I suppose, to have personal relationships. I can't really say to my wife that I was forced to be with her! And I can't believe it either.
I don't see it as a decision really, but there we are. Well, here I am, apparently. But I have been interested in some aspects of Eastern religions, where the self is a bit like Banquo's ghost, sort of floating around, but is it really? As they say in Zen, who is speaking?
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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W Hyatt
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# 14250
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Having said that, determinism is being pulverized in science, as far as I can see. But even then, non-determinism doesn't get you to free will.
I think often the solutions are pragmatic rather than intellectual. I mean, we have to assume free will, in order to have a justice system, and I suppose, to have personal relationships. I can't really say to my wife that I was forced to be with her! And I can't believe it either.
How can anyone disprove determinism of the human mind? It took a really clever and precise experiment to do that for sub-atomic particles with a handful of possible outcomes; how would you do the equivalent for a person making a decision?
On the other hand, free will theoretically could be disproven, but that could take a few eons. In the meantime, how is anything different between free will being an illusion vs. being real? You could say that as long as it seems like we have free will, then we actually do have it.
[ 19. March 2015, 02:52: Message edited by: W Hyatt ]
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A new church and a new earth, with Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life.
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mdijon
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# 8520
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Posted
To me the idea of an illusion of free will is related to the question of whether we are really conscious. If consciousness is an illusion then who is perceiving the illusion? And how can they perceive an illusion without being conscious?
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
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shadeson
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# 17132
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Posted
In what sense is ‘faith’ or ‘what I believe’ different from confidence in anything anticipated in the future? Confidence will vary in degree according to evidence from the past. Maybe a different word should be used - only I can’t think of it.
If it is the same thing then it is pretty obvious that God could give faith through answered prayer. Maybe that was what Paul was talking about when he said faith was a gift.
I think the kind of faith that we are discussing is that which has “no shred of evidence to support it” as Fool says.
It seems to be the kind that Jesus prized most e.g. “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” (John 20:29)
What is special about this kind?
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quetzalcoatl
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# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by W Hyatt:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Having said that, determinism is being pulverized in science, as far as I can see. But even then, non-determinism doesn't get you to free will.
I think often the solutions are pragmatic rather than intellectual. I mean, we have to assume free will, in order to have a justice system, and I suppose, to have personal relationships. I can't really say to my wife that I was forced to be with her! And I can't believe it either.
How can anyone disprove determinism of the human mind? It took a really clever and precise experiment to do that for sub-atomic particles with a handful of possible outcomes; how would you do the equivalent for a person making a decision?
On the other hand, free will theoretically could be disproven, but that could take a few eons. In the meantime, how is anything different between free will being an illusion vs. being real? You could say that as long as it seems like we have free will, then we actually do have it.
I thought that that had been done - I mean showing that our conscious 'decision' comes after the neurological activity. But yes, there's no point in making long philosophical arguments about it; we have to live as if there is free will.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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mdijon
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# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
But yes, there's no point in making long philosophical arguments about it.
Like that's ever stopped us before.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
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mdijon
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# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Salvation is like going up a ski slope on a rope tow. The rope pulls you up the hill, but you have to hang on.
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
I thought the punchline there was going to be something like tearing up hundred dollar bills in a cold shower.
Got it now - just like going up a ski slope on a rope tow. You hang on because someone said it was a good idea and you believed them, only to find yourself plummeting downhill at rapid acceleration, end up cold and wet if you're lucky or injured if you're not, and then struggle to understand why people do this voluntarily and declare it a joyful experience.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
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W Hyatt
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# 14250
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I thought that that had been done - I mean showing that our conscious 'decision' comes after the neurological activity.
I'm always amazed at the idea that that experiment shows anything about free will vs. determinism.
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A new church and a new earth, with Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life.
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JeremiahTheProphet
Apprentice
# 18366
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Posted
To me faith in God is not an abstract concept but a relationship of trust that grows and develops.
The bible seems to describe it in many ways
1] A mustard seed that has to be planted and grows
2] A creative substance that brings something hoped for into reality
3] A way of pleasing God
etc etc
All of which are relational and experiential.
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quetzalcoatl
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# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by W Hyatt:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I thought that that had been done - I mean showing that our conscious 'decision' comes after the neurological activity.
I'm always amazed at the idea that that experiment shows anything about free will vs. determinism.
I don't think it's about that. It's saying that you become aware of a decision after the relevant brain activity - in a sense it's not a new idea, since the unconscious has been discussed since the 19th century. I think the issue of determinism is a separate issue; especially as chunks of science are non-deterministic. For example, it's possible that the brain operates non-deterministically.
Thus, I think you can retain the idea of making a choice; on the other hand, the notion of the agent seems imponderable.
[ 19. March 2015, 22:32: Message edited by: quetzalcoatl ]
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Having said that, determinism is being pulverized in science, as far as I can see.
Hardly. Most of science is not affected at all by the current theory that quantum processes are fundamentally stochastic. And even in quantum theory almost the entire mathematical apparatus is deterministic, it's just deterministic about probability densities. The Schrödinger equation, for example, is obviously deterministic. It's what you do with the evolved wave functions that brings in the stochastic element.
The difference is a bit like playing backgammon instead of chess. And just like the better backgammon player beats the weaker f they just play enough games, so the quantum randomness gets buried by the statistics over large number of particles in nature. If physics has been dominated by quantum phenomena, then because physicists have gone looking for them, not because somehow our entire world has become random.
Finally, "stochastic" is no more free than "deterministic". To seek free will in quantum physics is a priori to deny free will.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
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mdijon
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# 8520
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Posted
quetzalcoatl did have "But even then, non-determinism doesn't get you to free will." as the very next sentence.
In my own area of biological science determinism vs stochastic refers to strategies for mathematical models and wouldn't ring any bells about anything, leave alone pulverization. I think it probably just represents how the rules that we use to predict outcomes change as we jump scales and contexts in the universe.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
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daronmedway
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# 3012
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Posted
Evensong, the Church of England baptismal liturgy at the Presentation of the Candidates says:
quote:
Faith is the gift of God to his people.
In baptism the Lord is adding to our number
those whom he is calling.
People of God, will you welcome these children/candidates
and uphold them in their new life in Christ?
There's more than one way of reading that sentence in terms of how and when the gift of faith is conferred by God and whether what is conferred is corporate or individual, but - according to our liturgy - the fact that faith is the gift of God is unequivocal.
[ 20. March 2015, 11:16: Message edited by: daronmedway ]
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
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# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Having said that, determinism is being pulverized in science, as far as I can see.
Hardly. Most of science is not affected at all by the current theory that quantum processes are fundamentally stochastic. And even in quantum theory almost the entire mathematical apparatus is deterministic, it's just deterministic about probability densities. The Schrödinger equation, for example, is obviously deterministic. It's what you do with the evolved wave functions that brings in the stochastic element.
The difference is a bit like playing backgammon instead of chess. And just like the better backgammon player beats the weaker f they just play enough games, so the quantum randomness gets buried by the statistics over large number of particles in nature. If physics has been dominated by quantum phenomena, then because physicists have gone looking for them, not because somehow our entire world has become random.
Finally, "stochastic" is no more free than "deterministic". To seek free will in quantum physics is a priori to deny free will.
![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif) - brilliantly explained
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
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itsarumdo
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# 18174
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Posted
Nice book worth reading - Life on the Edge (Quantum Biology) by Jim Al Khalili.
I wouldn't use "stochastic" to describe the quantum wave function, because that still implies there are lots of individual particles with a certain distribution. The point about the wave function is that the effect may be in many places, and it can ALSO be in all of them. There is no large scale analogue that we can look at and use to comprehend this quantum world. And it is hardly true that we only find quantum effects because "we go looking for them" - the Jim Al Khalili book is particularly interesting because it shows that without quantum mechanics, biology is impossible. We have to acknowledge quantum tunnelling (the equivalent of a bicycle passing through a wall so that it can be on a road the other side of the wall) MUST take place - otherwise we would not exist. This only occurs because the quantum wave function is not a particle until it is "measured" - so as a "wave" (maybe best thought of as a radio transmission) it is not affected by obstacles.
I'm sure it is possible that free will and quantum states have nothing at all to do with each other, but at the moment the search for a biological seat of consciousness inevitably ends up looking at quantum states, and then the way that free will works (or not) seems remarkably similar to the quantum fields that are being looked at.
From this pov, Faith and Belief end up being fields of coherence which allow "things to happen" - if the field of coherence is strong enough, then there are very few limits to what may or may not happen. Whether this is just a convenient analogy or whether QM is at least part of the "mechanism" of faith - I don't think it really matters.
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
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itsarumdo
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# 18174
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Posted
well, yes ,it does. With a sufficiently coherent field, you could exist in several places at once.
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
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# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by itsarumdo:
well, yes ,it does. With a sufficiently coherent field, you could exist in several places at once.
Do explain how this would work...
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
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itsarumdo
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# 18174
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Posted
Well, given sufficient coherence, the wave would not collapse - not just the wave for a few particles, but for the whole body. There would not be just proton tunnelling for e.g. enzymes - the whole organism would participate in tunnelling.
I think that would require the whole person to exist as a bose-einstein condensate (rather than having lots of little islands of self-coherence constantly coming and going and remaining largely incoherent relative to each other).
This is probably irrelevant to the OP, but you did ask.
[ 23. March 2015, 20:50: Message edited by: itsarumdo ]
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
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PaulTH*
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# 320
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
According to the Wiki article, the early church father's believed in free will before Augustine. Fascinating!
quote:
Originally posted by Mousethief:
But I'm happy you discovered that the early Fathers weren't Calvinists. On our side of the Adriatic, of course, we've known that for nigh unto 2000 years.
This serves to illustrate how far Augustine and Calvin have taken Western Christianity along the wrong road from its origins. While salvation is by pure grace in that it can never be deserved, we must at least co-operate with the process. If that's Pelagian or at least semi-Pelagian, I'm happy to own up to it.
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Yours in Christ
Paul
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itsarumdo
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# 18174
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Posted
They don't have to be near-zero. Ths point is that there is a laser-like coherence of particles. Such a state in microtubules was proposed by Zohar in the 1980's as a possible seat of consciousness and it's still by far the best contender.
One surprising recent discovery is that living organisms contain pockets of coherence capable of sustaining quantum effects - e.g. DNA could not faithfully replicate unless that replication was ordered by quantum coherence - if it were purely chamical there would be many orders of magnitude more errors, due to thermodynamic effects.
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
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mdijon
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# 8520
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Posted
It sounds like words out of place pasted together to me. There are microtubules in every human cell. Does consciousness reside in every cell?
[ 25. March 2015, 15:30: Message edited by: mdijon ]
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
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# 76
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Posted
I prefer my salads made from vegetables rather than words.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
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itsarumdo
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# 18174
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
It sounds like words out of place pasted together to me. There are microtubules in every human cell. Does consciousness reside in every cell?
That is the inference. Yes. Interesting research by Buehler well worth looking at - he presents all the data on this website for inspection.
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
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mdijon
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# 8520
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Posted
The simple inference obtained from the fact that a tap on the head can render one unconscious but a tap on the elbow can't ought to cure that misconception.
The link is pseudo-scientific nonsense without a methodical presentation of experimental data or peer review.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
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itsarumdo
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# 18174
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Posted
you have looked at the Bibliography, I presume?
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
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mdijon
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# 8520
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Posted
I've looked at a few references. None of the ones I looked at that had reviewed experimental data offered support for the seat of consciousness in microtubules idea.
Why are you so keen to reference these guys on the edges of science rather than the mainstream work in every area from autism, physics, consciousness or vaccines?
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
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itsarumdo
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# 18174
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Posted
well, the topic here is "Is faith a gift from God?"
But actually, it should have been "Is faith in God a gift from God?" because faith in God has been partly supplanted by a faith in science - or more specifically, a faith in the current mainstream scientific consensus. I have to laugh - that's rather like having faith in a committee. And there is a lot of good quality science out there that questions and undermines the current consensus. Faith in human ingenuity is a dangerous thing.
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
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mdijon
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# 8520
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Posted
Less dangerous than faith in any random idea on the internet that looks interesting.
There is plenty of good science that challenges the current consensus but one has to have a method for identifying it.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
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Fool
Apprentice
# 18359
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Posted
Isn't the question a somewhat self patting back? As there are no gods then faith (or anything else) cannot be a gift from them.
Faith (in the religious context) is the continued belief in things you were indoctrinated with as a child particularly in the face of evidence that they are untrue.
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Fool:
Isn't the question a somewhat self patting back? As there are no gods then faith (or anything else) cannot be a gift from them.
Faith (in the religious context) is the continued belief in things you were indoctrinated with as a child particularly in the face of evidence that they are untrue.
Bollox. Too many unexamined assumptions there. I grew up in an atheist family, and got interested in religion.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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itsarumdo
Shipmate
# 18174
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Fool:
Isn't the question a somewhat self patting back? As there are no gods then faith (or anything else) cannot be a gift from them.
Faith (in the religious context) is the continued belief in things you were indoctrinated with as a child particularly in the face of evidence that they are untrue.
a) you seem to be determined to inflate One God with many Gods - a position that I'm not sure many people on here will gel with
b) you have made a statement of faith ("there are no Gods") - which rather contradicts your position
c) I agree with the "Bollox" because I also was raised as an atheist, and realised quite soon that the description of the world was incomplete and inadequate.
d) evidence - please what is your evidence other than your faith that your opinion is correct?
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
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Fool
Apprentice
# 18359
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Posted
We may be in flogging a dead horse territory here but I'm sure you're pretty well aware that we can't prove a negative and that the absence of faith is not a faith.
You cannot prove the the flying spaghetti monster is not real, you cannot prove that the Book of Mormon is nonsense or that the q'oran is wrong or any of the other world religions or that David Koresh was not a legitimate prophet yet I'm willing to bet that you be happy to say that they are wrong. Yet they all have as much proof and legitimacy as your belief.
Its not really up to non believers to prove anything. Its believers who are asserting something but whenever they are asked to say why they believe they can't or won't give a straight answer.
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BroJames
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# 9636
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Posted
The absence of faith is indeed not a faith. The belief that no faith is possible, or that there can be no reasonable belief in God is a faith, since it is founded on a (logically unproveable) negative statement.
As for me, my answer is in two parts: first there is credible historical evidence which makes it possible to believe, reasonably, that Jesus died on the cross and was raised to life again (this also, btw, adds to the widely acknowledged authority of his teachings and gives credibility to his 'wilder' claims); secondly, the account of the nature of being human in the world which flows from Christian faith seems to me to make sense.
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Evensong
Shipmate
# 14696
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by daronmedway:
Evensong, the Church of England baptismal liturgy at the Presentation of the Candidates says:
quote:
Faith is the gift of God to his people.
In baptism the Lord is adding to our number
those whom he is calling.
People of God, will you welcome these children/candidates
and uphold them in their new life in Christ?
There's more than one way of reading that sentence in terms of how and when the gift of faith is conferred by God and whether what is conferred is corporate or individual, but - according to our liturgy - the fact that faith is the gift of God is unequivocal.
Missed this. Been off the ship for a bit.
Could you elaborate on some of the ways of reading it daronmedway?
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a theological scrapbook
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