there is a difference between real omnipotence and magic

if you use magical thinking then god can do anything even make a square circle

if you use real omnipotence then he cant make a square circle because its illogical — OmniscientNihilist

So the first problem here is that "logical" is a property of propositions, not of things. Logic doesn't tell reality how to behave.

The second problem is that you haven't established why it is illogical to have a world with free will but without evil.

even an omnipotent being would still be limited by the factors of the creation he setup, he cannot contradict his own creation. otherwise it just pure magic, which is just nonsense magical thinking — OmniscientNihilist

Everything that includes omnipotent gods is nonsense magical thinking. That's actually the reason the problem of evil is so intractable.

Anyways if the setup is too limiting, just create a different setup.

any creation, no matter which it is, will have limitations of some kinds somewhere. it can never attain the fake perfection of the idealist. — OmniscientNihilist

How do you know that?

what your asking may be nothing more then words in your mind that are impossible in real existence. like a square circle, its just two words put together, it cannot exist outside of words. — OmniscientNihilist

You have this backwards. If your words don't describe reality, your words are wrong, not the other way around.

Thanks for that point, but I don’t quite understand. Do you mean that the simulation hypothesis only applies to sims because sims came up with it, and therefore is limited to that specific simulation? — NOS4A2

The simulation hypothesis is a new take on an old question: is what I experience real. You can't ask that question for other people, because you only have access to your own experience. In that sense, it's not about whether "the world", or some part of it, is being simulated, but rather about whether you can trust your senses.

creation is not omnipotent. it is finite and limited, and therefore may not be perfectible for that reason. material creation creates a bottleneck upon omnipotence. — OmniscientNihilist

That's contradictory. If you argue that some things just cannot be done, you have to drop the "omni" in "omnipotent".

if god changed your thoughts then he would violate your freedom. you have to take responsibility for it yourself and learn and grow a person. which is part of gods plan for you. — OmniscientNihilist

God doesn't need to change my thoughts. God just needs to set up the world so that my thoughts cannot cause harm. God can make a plan that works without anyone suffering.

This checks out for me, and makes logical sense. However, in the moments of personal tragedy and evil, I cannot help but question why God couldn't make the simple exception to spare me from the pain. — robbiefrost

If God is omnipotent, then it must be possible for God to create a world that has free will, and no evil, no?

Evil is illusory and it doesn't exist outside of our own minds. There is no problem of evil, since there is no evil (outside of our own minds). — Tzeentch

It's sufficient for the evil to exist in our own minds. Whether or not the evil is illusory, the suffering it causes is real.

Does the simulation hypothesis also apply to those running the simulation?

If it does, then they are just as likely as the sims to be in a simulation, as are the ones running their simulation, and so on to infinity. It’s simulations all the way down. — NOS4A2

The simulation hypothesis is a self-sorting problem. As the name implies, it only applies to yourself. It asks whether or not what you, personally, experience is the result of a simulation (an ancestor simulation, specifically). So you can't apply the hypothesis to those running the simulation (they could presumably apply it to themselves, and their conclusions may or may not be different).

SO what's that telling us? :joke: — Banno

That you're all just not reading properly, of course. :razz:

It's biology that decides moral issues? Nah. Naturalistic fallacy. — Banno

If I get the facts wrong, I'll get the wrong results, even if I apply the correct moral rules. If biology was irrelevant, it wouldn't make sense to draw the line at the second trimester (or anywhere, for that matter) either.

Yep. So, how do you value the interests of the foetus compared to those of the mother? Make a choice. — Banno

I consider abortion for any reason moral until the pregnancy is so far along that the foetus would stand a decent (let's say higher than 50%) chance at survival if born. After that, I think it would only be moral if conditions are fairly dire, like a significant health risk (including certain psychological risks). I am not sure how to consider genetic defects. I am personally hoping I never have to make that kind of decision.

I have this weird sense of deja vu. Didn't we have a similar situation a while back, where my stance was confusing to you both?

Anyways, to clarify I don't think you can't make statements like "abortion is moral up to the end of the second trimester". It's perfectly plausible that, to that point, there'd be no normal circumstances that could possibly make the abortion immoral. I am not up to date on the biology, but I probably agree with you.

I just think where you draw the line is a question of how you value the interests of the foetus compared to those of the mother. You can't simply say "but the foetus is a potential human" or "it's the mother's bodily autonomy" and be done with it. And there'll always be circumstances (like rape, or medical risks) that can shift the line.

I said: if abortion is immoral, a woman cant have the right to do it.

And you disagree with that because to you, morality is dynamic and resistant to generalization. Honestly, it sounds like you're a moral nihilist. Or relativist? — frank

Well for one I'd say we need to define what we mean by "right". If we mean a moral right the sentence is just redundant. If we mean a legal right it doesn't follow (immoral acts can be legal).

I don't see my stance at relativistic at all. You can assess the morality of acts, and that assessment is general. But of course the assessment depends on the circumstances.

So, you would redo my statement as:

It's impossible to state as a general rule that x is immoral. Therefore, morality cant have any bearing on rights, civil or otherwise. Is that right? — frank

I wouldn't say it can't have any bearing. Even if we're talking about legal rights, we'd consider morality when deciding on what those should be.

So aborting a pregnancy is immoral (in the same way homicide is), but under certain circumstances it's ok? — frank

Personally, I wouldn't structure it that way. In my mind, a single action, with a specific intent, can be moral or immoral. Generalizations like "Killing is immoral" are either simplifications (which isn't necessarily a problem) or begging the question (i.e. assuming specific circumstances or intentions). So I wouldn't say aborting a pregnancy is immoral, but exceptions exist, but if someone described their stance that way, I'd consider that a reasonable starting point.

Self Defense would be an easy example.

If abortion is immoral, what sort of right could a woman have to one? — frank

It's not that you could have a right to an immoral behaviour. It's that a right you have might make an otherwise immoral behaviour moral under the circumstances.

Do video games have the potential to becoming an acceptable enough outlet for maladaptive behaviours? So if they are of a successful quality of emulating more realism and injecting more stimulation to our senses that even the most sadistic and prolific killer prefers that to the real thing? — Mark Dennis

Possibly, though I am not Sure whether there is such a thing as an outlet for behaviour. Repeating a behaviour that you find rewarding will usually reinforce that behaviour, so there's a chance this would make bad tendencies worse.

Could they also form an ethical life and consented sentence for criminals incapable of not committing crimes in the real world by just getting them to agree to go to a place where they can do whatever they want for the rest of their life, free of real consequences? — Mark Dennis

I think the technology will probably get there. I also think people will vehemently object giving criminals a fantasy world as "punishment". Humans have a strong psychological inclination to punish rule breaking.

If abortion is immoral, a woman doesn't have a right to one. The issue is not about rights. It's about morality. — frank

The term "right" isn't usually rigorously confined to positivist legal rights. There is a more general notion of "moral rights", as in basic human rights.

Do our computer simulated realities have the potential to allow us to free moral thought and diversity within improving simulated consequence free realities, while accepting an objectively human moral standard outside these simulations within our own reality? — Mark Dennis

Could you rephrase that? I find this sentence confusing.

The similarity is that Southern states were insisting on the right to engage in an activity that's immoral. Were they right to make that claim? (don't read any emotion into my question, I'm just asking). — frank

If it's immoral, then it follows that they weren't right. But it's not inconceivable that states rights might influence a question of morality. For example, it'd be difficult to establish some moral tax rate across all states, so that's a question where the individual decision of state legislators matters.

In the case of abortion, arguing that women are insisting on the right to engage in immoral behaviour is begging the question.

Eggs and sperm don’t have a potential for anything in particular. — Congau

What's potential, exactly? Some physical notion of cause and effect? A value judgement?

A fetus at its earliest stage already contains all the data of the fully developed human being. The potential is real and specific. — Congau

So does any given combination of sperm and egg.

If you think it’s wrong to murder people because you think they are valuable in themselves, it would also be wrong to kill potential people. — Congau

Can you demonstrate how this is supposed to follow?

Potentiality is no less valuable then actuality since what is actually existing also derives its value from its potential for continued existence. — Congau

That would imply people who have a terminal illness are less valuable. In fact, since all life is finite, it would imply that life has no value at all, since it ultimately has no potential for continued existence.

I appreciate this approach. Too many defend abortion by saying it's a matter of women's rights. That argument is similar to that of Southern slave owners who defended slavery by insisting it was a matter a state's rights.

If slavery is immoral, no one has a right to own another person. If abortion is immoral, no woman has a right to have one. — frank

How is the argument substantively similar? The mother is a person, and personal rights can conflict.

To state it succinctly, modern theories of "chance", which propose that the universe originated in quantum fluctuations, are simply incoherent. Space-time is understood as a property of the universe, which emerges with the universe. The quantum "fluctuations" which are responsible, as cause of, the universe's existence are necessarily prior to the existence of the universe. Such "fluctuations" without space or time are incoherent. In this case "fluctuation" is a term referring to an impossibility, activity without space or time. — Metaphysician Undercover

This specific incoherence is a result of the incoherence of special and general relativity and Quantum physics. In quantum physics, space and time are static givens, whereas under relativity they're dynamic properties.

In other words, almost every event appears extremely unlikely from the perspective of some point in the distant past before that event. — ModernPAS

You're on the right track here, I think. But the fine-tuning argument does not rely on there being a long chain of events that, cumulative, is unlikely. The basic form is simply that the exact values of the physical constants are "fine tuned". There is only a single "throw of the dice" required, all else follows from that.

However, there is a sense in which every observer is, by necessity, special. We can only observe fine-tuned universes because only those universes have observers (known as the anthropic principle).

Behe, Dembski, and others make the claim that, for example, life forms appear to be “irreducibly complex,” such that they could not have developed from simpler forms, but must have been designed in their complexity from the start. — ModernPAS

As Wayfarer has stated, this intelligent design argument is distinct from the standard "fine-tuning" one.

But the whole point of the anthropic principle/fine-tuning argument is that the causal chain that leads to the development of living beings, really does seem to stretch right back to the 'singularity'. Opponents often say, well of course that's the case, otherwise we wouldn't be here to debate it! But I don't think that objection does justice to the magnitude of the mystery, which is the sense that, as scientist Freeman Dyson put it, 'the Universe knew we were coming'. — Wayfarer

I don't really see what additional mystery you are referring to here. Per the anthropic principle, we'd expect the universe to "know we were coming", because we'd only exist in such a universe.

So I think the issue seems to be that 'randomness' or 'chance' doesn't do justice to the order that science observes. But the question is, then, whether the only two choices are chance, on the one hand, or intentional design, on the other. And I think one thing that might be stated is that, whichever of the two obtain, or whether there are only two options, is not itself a scientific question. Natural science assumes the order of nature; I think it's a mistake to believe that it can, or should, explain that order. But even if it can't explain it, it's then a stretch to argue that therefore it's the result of intentional design. — Wayfarer

Yeah, unfortunately the difference between physics and metaphysics is often ignored in these debates.

I never said the time and effort spent going through the process is the reason one is allowed to immigrate. I was merely differentiating between those who break into the country and those who do so legally. The larger point was that to conflate legal and illegal immigration is anti-immigrant. — NOS4A2

And I was merely pointing out that making this about "hard working legal immigrants" Vs "illegal immigrants" is misleading, because hard work is not what differentiates the two.

That’s a weird red herring. It takes much more time and effort to go through the legal process of immigration than to refuse to do so. — NOS4A2

But the time and effort spend going through the process isn't the reason one is allowed to immigrate.

And, on the flipside, the reason people enter the US illegally is not to avoid paperwork.

But this conflation is itself anti-immigrant, because it refused to recognize the difference between those who subvert the laws of the country with those who spend the time and effort to become American. I suspect this conflation will lead to a growing resentment among immigrants. — NOS4A2

That's a weird juxtaposition. Legal immigration to the US is not based on the comparative "time and effort" put in.

Ability to set future goals, is this not free will in itself? — Zelebg

I think it's close. I would add some notion of self-actualisation, i.e. free will is the ability to set future goals in accordance to a set of self-given rules.

In my mind, perfection is a relation between one entity (not necessarily something physical) and an idea. A tool can be "perfect" for the job if what it does matches up exactly with my idea of what I want to happen. An argument, a song or a picture can be "perfect" if they fit with my idea of what either should invoke in me.

The idea of "absolute perfection" therefore strikes me as incoherent.

What a fantastic definition for 'free will', I thought at first. Then I realized it's not excluded those future goals be in fact determined by the past state of mind. The circle closes and we conclude no free will. — Zelebg

This response was intended less as a definition of free will and more as a baseline for such a definition. The idea I was trying to communicate is that "causality" and "freedom" are both human perspectives on the world. We don't know whether, and to what extent, either perspective is "objectively real". This, as the first step, opens up the possibility of freedom.

But what other possibility is there? If the future goals are determined by anything but the past state of mind, the freedom of intention is that much more restricted. — Zelebg

I think the problem when searching for a mechanism for free will is that the very question presupposes a deterministic perspective. Outside of such a perspective, the question is meaningless, there are no fixed processes of how things work, events are not structured according to causes and effects within time.

You simply have actors, and the reasons they have for acting.

– but it just seems wrong, doesn’t it? The first sentence or two, maybe – but the whole thing? Maybe some things will never happen by chance, even in infinty. — Chris Hughes

Not really. I mean this example is one of the least weird examples of infinity. What makes it seem wrong to you?

Then there’s the origin of DNA. Scientists say it can be explained by random chemical events occurring over a very long time. There are several different theories as to how this might have happened, but none of them sounds remotely plausible. As with the randomly reproduced Shakespeare, it just seems impossible. — Chris Hughes

Perhaps what might help here is considering other very unlikely events that we know happen. Like winning the lottery. A great metaphor I have read about winning the lottery: Imagine a highway many miles long, and somewhere along that highway, there is a board stuck in the ground at the side of the road, say 1 metre wide. Playing the lottery is like driving down that highway, blindfolded, and trying to hit the board with a single shot from a pistol fired out a window of the car. Completely absurd, yet people do win the lottery.

The works of Shakespeare exist because they have meaning. — Chris Hughes

It's probably more accurate to say that "the works of Shakespeare" are the meaning of a body of text.

That meaning comes from human consciousness and its medium, language. The unique sequence of six million characters comprising that product of meaning could never be reproduced by chance, I’d suggest. — Chris Hughes

I think there is a contradiction here. If the meaning "comes from" consciousness, it cannot at the same time be "comprised" by the characters on paper.

Again, I’d suggest that meaning is never the product of random processes. — Chris Hughes

That's a difficult statement to untangle. It would be true insofar as meaning is a mental interpretation and the mind isn't "random". But, humans are evidently capable of seeing meaning in random occurrences: the shape of clouds, the pattern tea leaves make in a cup etc.

Why do they approve of those things? — Mark Dennis

Perhaps they think compromise and moderation are for pussies. Or they think "progressives" want to destroy men and replace whites. Or they think that their situation is down to the evils of "globalism" and only Trump is willing to actually fight it.

Or they just like anything that makes "the left" angry.

Ask what it is about trump that makes them feel good, listen to their beliefs about what he is going to do for them personally and instead of going directly up against them, try and find the rational route of the problem and explain how other candidates are genuinely more aware of this problem and have actually shown success in tackling said problem at a smaller scale than national or international and provide evidence that this candidate cares about what they do and can get things done about it, and show them all evidence of trump actually making things worse for the addict. — Mark Dennis

Quite apart from whether or not I think your analogy is apt, you're not going to get far in treating addiction with rationality and evidence. Addicts are not usually ignorant of the negative effects of their addiction, I think.

Concerning the topic at hand, I think it does us no good to consider Trump supporters "addicts", "cult members" or "duped fools". I think it makes more sense to start from the basic assumptions that Trump supporters approve of the things Trump does.

Thanks. Given your explanation, I wholly agree :up:

he chain is quite simple. In countries where women are educated social inequality falls, family sizes fall, poverty decreases, etc.,. The knock-on effect of this is people in extreme poverty are not chopping down forests in order to grow crops and there is less strain on healthcare and education, less strain on law and order too. Family planning is a key issue. — I like sushi

Is this based on some resarch you're familiar with or are you extrapolating?

My main point for asking in this vein is less that I disagree with the idea of focusing on the education and women, and more that I am sceptical that lowering birthrates is something we should worry about, rather than just something that happens as we improve other, more relevant things.

My bingo is not necessarily "alt-right", but your criticism is certainly classified as "left": — alcontali

That's a very weird distraction you're mounting there. Anyways, I don't think anyone outside the alt-right, with the exception of the people mocking them, is using the term "soy-boys", so this is rather a shibboleth.

The moral of the story here is if you want a better world (environmentally, economically or whatever) your best bet is to invest in young women in countries where ready access to healthcare and education is limited. It’s the nest way to combat global warming, economic inequalities and environmental concerns. Sadly people are more obsessed with uses most of their resources on the symptoms rather than paying attention to known underlying causes. — I like sushi

What kind of causal chain are you envisioning here?

IQ strongly correlates with the number of years of public-school indoctrination camp. It does not necessarily correlate with anything else. It is therefore mostly a measure for how often a local feminazi herded you into the school's lecture hall in order to listen to a transvestite pornstar expounding the virtues of gender fluidity. Next, you grow up to become a soyboy that no girl wants to have kids with, or an aggressive lesbian that no man would want in his house. Total number of kids: zero. — alcontali

Is this an actual post or were you just playing alt-right bingo?

This is what (bored) - and (boring) people say. Write a book, climb a mountain, cut the ribbon. — Swan

If you're about making new experiences, having children is a pretty good example of an experience you can not get any other way.

If we take "the Cold War" to describe a certain geopolitical arrangement, it certainly has ended. America is, for the time being, still the only superpower on the planet, and militarily there is nothing even close to the power of NATO. The situation is moving more toward a multipolar world, so e.g. what Europe looked like in the early 20th century.

So, what's Russia's goal here? Obviously, they vehemently hate NATO and want to see what little is left of it in ruin and disarray — Wallows

I think the Russian relation to NATO is not quite hate. For the leadership, NATO is merely inconvenient. For many people, NATO may still be the big boogeyman, a leftover of decades of propaganda.

Germany is still infested with loyalist Stasi officers from the Eastern block, and the US has no idea if they are allies or foes. They seem to have a very cozy relationship with one another. — Wallows

Uh, what? Have you been to Germany?

China is trying to forge an alliance with Russia in the One Belt Road that would pass through Russia, stopping at Europe. — Wallows

Russia is going to end up being the junior partner in that alliance though.

It strikes me as an obsession that Russia would want it former glory to remerge on the global stage again. Yet, they are economically struggling despite being the most resource-laden land in existence, probably more so than China.

So, what are your opinions about the aspirations of Russia? — Wallows

I think the Russian leadership is selling the idea of a return to former glory to it's people. For the moment it's working quite well for them, though there is also strong dissent. In practical terms I suspect the Russian geopolitical strategy is to become a great power in a future, multipolar world, with it's own sphere of influence and, importantly, economic control over that sphere. I suspect the window of opportunity is closing though. Being resource-rich is likely going to matter less and less going into the future.

There are quote and reply functions. Please use them so people notice when you reply to them.

"rule of law", a phrase, not a word, has a vast and some think an almost indeterminate meaning, and, is commonly held to mean that our civilization is predicated upon all persons therein being ruled and ruling themselves by law(s). — Duane Meehan

There is a difference between saying "no person is above the law" and "the actions of every person are determined by law".

The magistrate who passes sentence upon persons will tell you that he is bound and determined by law to do so; I was once in traffic court when the judge informed me precisely that he is bound and determined by law to do that which he has just informed me of... — Duane Meehan

A court case may be the closest you'd come to laws outright determining actions. You still decide to abide by the law though. You're not determined to do so.

That assertion strikes me as a bit silly; everything, even nothing, is a state of affairs ! — Duane Meehan

Rules are not states of affairs. "You should do X" is a rule, it tells you what to do. It's not a state of affairs, a description of the way things are. You're missing the distinction between "the law" as a description of the laws e.g. a country has enacted, and "the law" as the body of rules thus established.

It follows 'free will' ought to be defined not in terms of choice, but naturally in terms of independence and autonomy. And most importantly this new definition must specify whether this freedom is supposed to be from the environment, from itself, or what. Until then the only true answer might as well be that it depends on the context given by the level of abstraction, i.e. depends on the point of view. — Zelebg

One approach to the solution would be to ask why we care about whether or not we have "free will". Is it because we want our decisions to be free from the environment, or from ourselves? Perhap what we want from free will, is for our decisions to accurately reflect just who we are. To represent those parts of our identity that we wish to become operative in the world. That implies a certain freedom from circumstance. It also implies a certain freedom from ourselves.

We need to figure out what we consider to be autonomy, and then, as @Mww has already stated above (an excellent reply btw, as usual), we can perhaps identify the necessary conditions for said autonomy.

True, they weren’t comparable, but the dossier and the Russian dirt within it reached higher levels within our institutions, sowing the discord and meddling that we have been continually told were Putin’s objectives from the get go. Everyone who used it, peddled it, believed in it were the FSB’s useful idiots. It’s classic active measures, and unfortunately it worked. — NOS4A2

No doubt Putin does not mind mounting internal divisions in the US. Whether feeding Steele lurid information in order to increase said division was part of a wide-ranging Kremlin plot, or just an accident is ultimately of little importance. Either way, if Putin intended a Trump presidency to reduce the international influence of the US and further weaken it's political system, he clearly succeeded.

The intentional conduct of an individual human freedom cannot be determined and initiated by given law. — Duane Meehan

A law is not a state of affairs. The state of affairs is that a given law is in force. But the law itself is normative.

Civilization is currently predicated upon the putative rule of law and American civilization is founded upon the erroneous presupposition that language of law is determinative of both overt human conduct, and of human forbearance to act. — Duane Meehan

That's not what the term "rule of law" means. The "rule of law" is the principle that executive power is exercised according to a set of rules, and it's adherence to those rules can be adjudicated.

The venal jurisprudential attempt to monitor/control human conduct via language of law is a vain project unsuited to and in contradiction with the ontological structure of being a human being, wherein all determination is negation.

The world-wide presupposed efficacy of language of law as an originative determinative source of human conduct, is, when considered in the light of both Spinoza's dictum, and, of the human ontological structure of the upsurge of an act, a completely nonsensical presupposition.. — Duane Meehan

No-one who has given the matter some though assumes that laws somehow determine human actions.

We might also react with sorrow. Psychologically, this might not be a bad response to something we cannot individually do much about.

No, it's a term baptized by Adam Smith, although he never would have imagined that it would be the grand signifier of his neo-classical economic theory, in his magnum opus, being The Wealth of Nations. — Wallows

I am aware of the history of the term, but Smith never referred to market forces as an "invisible hand". Indeed Smith's usage of the term is highly questionable, since the term is never explained and seems rather like a deus ex machina (and Smith may have meant literal divine intervention) to salvage a conclusion that otherwise just would not follow.

That’s true, but contrast these connections to the ones in the Trump campaign, where every Russian was in some way “connected to the kremlin”. FSB agents are quite literally Russian spies, and quite literally gave the DNC dirt for the purpose of influencing an election. There was no investigation or anything, even as this information was literally finding its way into American institutions, literally threatening democracy. — NOS4A2

But the key difference is that in the case of the Steele Dossier, domestic political players used information of dubious quality for domestic political gain. It just so happened that the information was allegedly based on russian sources.

Meanwhile, the allegation regarding the Trump campaign was that foreign political players directly influenced domestic affairs.