Enyart replies to AMR's question about God and "will"

[Ask Mr. Religion]

When stipe starts telling others what they really meant to say, caution is in order. Someone will have to get godrulz (a paramedic) to revive Bob. If Bob meant to say what stipe has offered up, my time spent carefully preparing a response to Bob has definitely taken a turn for the better. :think:

 

[Stripe]

When stipe starts telling others what they really meant to say, caution is in order. Someone will have to get godrulz (a paramedic) to revive Bob. If Bob meant to say what stipe has offered up, my time spent carefully preparing a response to Bob has definitely taken a turn for the better. :think:

Aw, rats. I thought you still had me on ban and I wouldn't jeopardise Bob's highly volatile and cliff-edge position because you read a simpler version of something.

 

[Chileice]

In my own words Bob said,

Will is the ability to choose. Everyone has the ability to choose regardless of the situation. To claim that one person can "choose for" another person is only true in:
A) a non-literal sense. "If you had a gun to your head would you have a choice?" "He twisted his arm so he had no choice."
B) a situation where one person foregoes their ability to choose and follows the will of another.

In A) you should be able to clearly see that the ability to choose is not gone. In A) you should be regarding the gun and the arm as literal and the absence of choice as the metaphor.

In B) you should clearly see that the submission of a will requires the retention of that will. If one did not have a will how would one find the will to suppress one's will?

I'm fairly certain that is what Bob was trying to communicate. Though I might be wrong, I suppose.

I do thank you for trying to put it in a more understandable form, if indeed that is what Bob meant.

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

Aw, rats. I thought you still had me on ban and I wouldn't jeopardise Bob's highly volatile and cliff-edge position because you read a simpler version of something.

Well I admit I peeked after seeing you being quoted and wondered what the fuss was all about. Your assessment is correct, too. Carry on.

 

[Stripe]

Cool.

 

[Clete]

Did you HONESTLY understand what he said? I appreciated the affort to answer AMR, but I didn't really get it. I found the answer more confusing than the first one.

What Bob is saying is that AMR effectively asks, "Can a will both exist and not exist?"

Bob answers, "That's an absurd question."


To put it in my own words, AMR's question commits a Stolen Concept Fallacy (Begs the Question). To suggest that a person's will be completely overcome suggests that his will no longer exists at all, and yet AMR's question presumes that it does exist or else he couldn't ask the question. The question therefore "steals the concept" of a will. It asks a question about the will while implicitly denying its existence.

Resting in Him,
Clete

 

[Delmar]

Delmar, here's one time when I have to disagree with you. Brains are not spiritual or soulical (if you'll allow that word), brains are physical, made up of atoms and molecules. Awareness is a non-physical attribute. Trees don't have awareness because they don't have souls or spirits. Atoms and molecules, no matter how complexly arranged, cannot have awareness. That requires a something non-physical. Knowledge, wisdom, pain, these are all non-physical.

Our brain is less like a computer than it is like a telecom switch, it is an interface to our soul/spirit. Our awareness, understanding, all that non-physical comprehension occurs in our soul/spirit, and our brain functions as the super high-bandwidth interface to our soul/spirit.

A PC has a brain (a microprocessor), but does not and cannot have awareness. If you enginered and grafted a brain onto a plant, it would not have awareness. You'd have to give it a soul/spirit to be aware.

-Bob

Bob

I guess I have always seen our awareness of the physical world as residing in the brain, much the way I suppose an animal's awareness does! If we could graft a dogs brain onto a plant so that the plant was providing the brain with the nutrients it needs my assumption would be that the dogs brain would have some sort of awareness, but it would still think it was a dog

 

[Mystery]

I don't think a dog knows it is a dog. Of course, no one knows what a dog thinks.

 

[Delmar]

I don't think a dog knows it is a dog. Of course, no one knows what a dog thinks.

Dogs do seem to know the difference between dogs and cats!

 

[Mystery]

Dogs do seem to know the difference between dogs and cats!

Good point! That makes them smarter then red77 who can't tell girls from boys. :rotfl:

 

[Delmar]

YIKES!

 

[Stripe]

:rotfl: