On 10 Aug 2012, at 00:48, Russell Standish wrote:
On Wed, Aug 08, 2012 at 12:33:47PM -0400, John Clark wrote:
On Tue, Aug 7, 2012 Russell Standish <[email protected]> wrote:
I do claim to know what I mean by "free will",
Well maybe you do know what free will means but the trouble is you
are
unable to communicate that understanding to any of your fellow
human beings
and certainly not to me. That's the trouble with mystical
experiences,
even if they really do give you a deeper understanding of the world
and are
not just caused by indigestion, that new understanding helps only
you and
nobody else. I've never had a mystical experience but if I ever do
I intend
to keep quiet about it for that very reason.
The meaning I use for free will has nothing to do with mysticism. I
spend several pages on free will in my book, and I can sum it up by
the statement that "Free will is the ability to do something stupid".
It is very close to the definition of some christians, where free-will
is the ability to do something bad (like killing a child for an
example).
The notion of hell has been plausibly invented by fear of human free-
will.
Bruno
I also note that there tends to be no agreement on the term,
I will agree on any meaning of the term provided it is self
consistent and
non-circular and provided you don't complain when I use nothing but
that
definition and pure logic to take you to places you may not want to
go,
like endowing Roulette Wheels with free will.
I'd like to see you do that. Roulette wheels do what they do, they
never do anything different.
I believe in Spinoza's god.
I don't. When somebody says "I believe in Spinoza's god" it just
means
there is so much mystery complexity and beauty in the universe that
it
causes me to feel a sense of awe. I'm awed by the universe too but
that is
so many light years away from the original meaning of "God" that I
believe
both Spinoza and Einstein blundered in using the same word for both
very
different things; it just invites misunderstanding, it virtually
begs for
it.
Fair comment. I don't feel the need to insist on this, which is why to
a regular Christian, I will just say I'm an atheist.
I think the problem is that even many hardcore atheists have a
residual
feeling that if you don't believe in something called G-O-D then
you're
somehow a morally bad person, so they redefine the word "God" in
such a way
as to make it impossible for anyone to disbelieve in it.
Did you want to take a survey? I, for one, have no such attachment to
the word God. "Spinoza'a god" is just a label for an idea - I would be
just as happy to use the label Tao, as it seems to describe pretty
much the same thing.
It has nothing to do with morals.
For some reason I
just don't have as much affection for that particular word as most
people,
perhaps because no other word has caused more human misery or
ignorance.
John K Clark
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Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected]
University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au
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