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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[Rolepgeek]

Actually wait a minute

You just told someone that they're getting hung up on semantics

And then use a definition pulled directly out of a dictionary without really putting thought into it

Orange Wizard, I am disappoint.

All I can really say at this point is that if you're going to define away the solution (eg. only magical outside source can give us free will somehow), then...I mean, really now, people. When someone says everything will turn out the same, I bring up quantum randomness having sequentially larger effects, particularly due to mutations of the genome (though I didn't get into precisely that detail), they say that doesn't count because we don't control it. Free will is the space between determinism and randomness. Plus, we are our brains and nervous systems and other assortments of cellular tissue. As long as that is free to act as it will, and thus we are free to act as we will, without a magical outside source forcing us to behave a certain way, we have free will. Otherwise, even with magical outside force giving us free will, you may as well say we don't have it because other people can affect us and force us to do things, and we still have to breathe and eat and blah blah blah.

[Rolan7]

Can I choose not to care about this argument over a poorly defined concept?
I'm not sure, but here we are.

[penguinofhonor]

I don't care about it and I'm happy about it whether I chose to or not. That's what really matters.

[TheBiggerFish]

Can I choose not to care about this argument over a poorly defined concept?
I'm not sure, but here we are.

Yeah, agreed...

[Rolan7]

I mean, to be fair, it is one of those grand philosophy questions supposedly.
But like a lot of philosophy questions, it seems to inevitably become a semantic argument because the concept has no universal meaning.  And a lot of personal interpretations.

[TD1]

I always assumed that "free will" in the deterministic argument simply meant the absence of a determining force or "causer." Free will as basically the definition of non-deterministic.

I'm beginning to see it may be slightly more nuanced than that.

[ChairmanPoo]

...Incidentally, I met a Coptic yesterday. Really nice guy.

[Loud Whispers]

...Incidentally, I met a Coptic yesterday. Really nice guy.

Closest I've ever gotten to meeting a Coptic was a funeral

[Ghills]

The LDS position on choices and free will is that the whole point of this life is to prove whether or not we will, when outside of God's presence and unaware of His majesty, choose to follow Him.  His plan is for us to exercise our agency, much like parents plan space and time for their kids to practice and learn walking. 

Relevant quotes:
"Your Heavenly Father has given you agency, the ability to choose right from wrong and to act for yourself. You have been given the Holy Ghost to help you know good from evil. While you are here on earth, you are being proven to see if you will use your agency to show your love for God by keeping His commandments." 

“Our agency, given us through the plan of our Father, is the great alternative to Satan’s plan of force. With this sublime gift, we can grow, improve, progress, and seek perfection. Without agency, none of us could grow and develop by learning from our mistakes and errors and those of others.”

“Because the eternal principle of agency gives us the freedom to choose and think for ourselves, we should become increasingly able to solve problems. We may make the occasional mistake, but as long as we are following gospel principles and guidelines, we can learn from those mistakes and become more understanding of others and more effective in serving them.”

https://www.lds.org/topics/agency/what-the-church-teaches?lang=eng

Frustratingly, if God intervened on the basis of 'this decision will have horrible consequences', the whole point of this life would be wasted.  He will help people bear their burdens and be healed through the Atonement, but He can't thwart the entire reason He set this earth up.  Well, He could, but then He would be changeable and cease to be God. https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/morm/9.19?lang=eng

Other relevant LDS doctrines: We believe we have a duty to relieve suffering, not increase it. Our baptismal covenants are to bear others' burdens, mourn with those that mourn, comfort those who stand in need of comfort, etc.  It's our job to help those who need help, not to judge them - God is the judge and we shouldn't usurp that.   

[Bohandas]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In what way is being tortured eternally better than being unmade?

If life in the bible days was capable of seeming bearable then it's not totally unimaginable that life in a lake of burning sulfur could eventually seem bearable too

An attempt on the life of Mohammed was made at Khaibar by a Jewish woman named Zainab, who, in revenge for the death of her male relatives in battle, put poison in a dish prepared by her for the prophet. One of Mohammed's followers who par-took of the food died almost immediately afterward; but the prophet, who had eaten more sparingly, escaped. He, however, complained of the effects of the poison to the end of his life.
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/10918-mohammed

Bishar and Muhammed both ate the poisoned lamb. Bishar died almost instantaneously, turning green, whilst Muhammed who ate lesser amounts of the lamb and poison survived - though he complained of its symptoms until his death. Ibn Sa'd recalls that the people thought it was pleurisy, an illness affecting the lungs that can cause a constant dull ache, shortness of breath and premature death. Bishar turning green would support their speculation that it was a failure of the lungs. Muhammed complained that he felt as if his aorta/jugular vein was severed, an expression used to indicate extreme pain (not literal severing of either).
Off of a very brief search that I'm sure summons the NSA, something like arsenic which was commonly known from Rome to China could in higher concentrations cause rapid death in higher concentrations, green skin discoloration, and in survivors of lower concentrations lead to permanent nerve damage, renal failure, liver failure, chronic respiratory illnesses and a whole host of other symptoms which would kill you later and lead to a premature death.
And that's the most basic bitch of poisons, the Arabian peninsula bordered the Romans and Persians both with their own rich poisoning traditions and the Arabs clearly had access to their own poisons too, as with the assassination of Ali. It is nonsense to see only the possibility of either fatal wounding, perfect health or divine intervention; causing enough damage to the lungs (or the circulatory system and really anything else, no modern medicine to undo what has been done) to ensure death.

By analogy, this just seems to me to be equivalent to if somebody, for example, hacked his leg off at the knee and the Lord stopped him from bleeding out, and then later, after three years of hobbling around on crutches either A.) the stump suddenly started bleeding and he bled out or B.) he fell down the stairs and they wrote it down as complications from losing a leg which would be true in this hypothetical but also kind of a cop out.

It seems I owe Loud Whispers an apology. According to the documentary "American Experience: The Poisoner's Handbook" poisoning, radium poisoning specifically, can indeed kill a person several years after the poison is ingested (although it also notes that this is effectively unheard of in poisons and makes clear that it the particular poison mentioned by the documentary in this context, radium, effectively always takes a long time to kill)

So apparently I jumped the gun saying there's no way this could happen; sorry.

(I still think it's unlikely though)

[Orange Wizard]

That'd be radiation poisoning, then?

[Bohandas]

That'd be radiation poisoning, then?

Only partially.

If I understand their explanation correctly the type of radium poisoning they were talking about is not radiation poisoning from the initial exposure to the radiation given off by radium, but rather the result of ingested radium; which tenaciously stays in the body and and 1) Continually irradiating it from within and 2) Being incorporated into bone and other tissues in place of calcium and then decaying into other elements that are no longer chemically similar to calcium, thus disrupting the function of whatever it's been incorporated into.

[Orange Wizard]

Neat.

[Putnam]

Spoiler: okay i'm sorry, but i need to get this off my chest somewhere and I keep mucking up threads with it wherever it turns up (click to show/hide)

What happened to my mind that i find it completely, utterly impossible to understand how anyone could be religious?

I don't understand the point of believing anything like that, I don't understand how people reconcile the horrible morals in most religions with their current, often mostly independent morals, I don't understand why people would subject theirself to mystery, to something beyond truth¹, it seems self-destructive and worthless to me. I can see how Zen Buddhism, for example, is helpful, but you don't need the spirituality to do all that. Yeah, meditation and hypnotism are real, but real precludes spiritualism, you don't need any spiritualism because everything that actually exists has a real explanation. That's something completely fundamental in my mind, I guess, something so obvious that it never really needed to be said. Huh, maybe that's why. Can anyone give a serious explanation for why anyone would want to be religious, though? I can't think of any good reasons. I used to say to myself that piety was a virtue, but looking back that's just something I said, not ever actually believed, and every time I said that I just thought of the guy who held his arm up for years on end until it no longer functioned at all.

¹Though that's based on the idea that religion is irreconcilable with science, which... uh, it sort of is. I can't really think of anything religion can be other than something that one believes is true regardless of what is actually true.

On-topic, free will: seems obviously false to me. There's nothing that could create free will that I know of within our current models of physics, and our current models of physics are hilariously accurate on the level of brains and neurons that make them up.

Spoiler: Reply to thing in happy thread (click to show/hide)

okay, but

Deuteronomy 13:6-11
Suppose someone secretly entices you—even your brother, your son or daughter, your beloved wife, or your closest friend—and says, ‘Let us go worship other gods’—gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known. They might suggest that you worship the gods of peoples who live nearby or who come from the ends of the earth. But do not give in or listen. Have no pity, and do not spare or protect them. You must put them to death! Strike the first blow yourself, and then all the people must join in. Stone the guilty ones to death because they have tried to draw you away from the Lord your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt, the place of slavery. Then all Israel will hear about it and be afraid, and no one will act so wickedly again.

and now the all-benevolent, infallible god can change his mind? how curious.

[Orange Wizard]

Here's what Putnam's replying to above:

i care greatly what they actually believe in because there's shit like every major abrahamic holy book saying explicitly to kill people who don't believe in what you do, which is a Very Bad Thing

Spoiler: This should really go in the religion thread but eh (click to show/hide)

1 Samuel 24:17
"You are more righteous than I," he said. "You have treated me well, but I have treated you badly.

Proverbs 19:11
A person's wisdom yields patience; it is to one's glory to overlook an offense.

Proverbs 25:21
If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.

Luke 6:27
"But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,

Luke 6:28
bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.

Luke 23:34
Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." And they divided up his clothes by casting lots.

John 13:34
"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.

Acts 7:60
Then he fell on his knees and cried out, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." When he had said this, he fell asleep.

Romans 12:14
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.

Romans 12:20
On the contrary: "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head."

1 Thessalonians 5:15
Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always strive to do what is good for each other and for everyone else.

...

Deuteronomy 13:6-11
Suppose someone secretly entices you—even your brother, your son or daughter, your beloved wife, or your closest friend—and says, ‘Let us go worship other gods’—gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known. They might suggest that you worship the gods of peoples who live nearby or who come from the ends of the earth. But do not give in or listen. Have no pity, and do not spare or protect them. You must put them to death! Strike the first blow yourself, and then all the people must join in. Stone the guilty ones to death because they have tried to draw you away from the Lord your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt, the place of slavery. Then all Israel will hear about it and be afraid, and no one will act so wickedly again.

and now the all-benevolent, infallible god can change his mind? how curious.

Short answer: Yes

Long answer: The basic principle on how one should behave has stayed the same. What's changing is the covenant God is operating within. In the Old Testament, we have the Covenant of Works, which is God saying "do what I say or I'll smite you, also racial purity and blood sacrifice". Often expressed by attempted genocide of neighbouring people, mountains of foreskins, and similarly brutal things.
The (slightly) newer Covenant of Faith (i.e. what Christ established) changes the basis of how God works from a very Earth-centric view to a Heaven-centric view. God no longer requires the brutal OT stuff from his followers. Basically, it's a different religion.
Don't ask me why it's that way, though. I might actually try to answer >.>