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Is Jesus's "this generation will certainly not pass" valid grounds for scepticism?

Minor disagreement?

The Third Way Of Evolution:
The DNA record does not support the assertion that small random mutations are the main source of new and useful variations.
Yes. Despite 5e blustery of the title, it attempts to kick in an open door. Everybody working with cells are aware of changes happening by other means than random mutations.

It is interesting that the authors use the creationists’ terminology of “Darwinists” and “Neo-Darwinists”. Maybe because otherwise they couldn’t find any opponents.
 
Yeah, I don't know why you keep mentioning Darwin either. From what I know, Darwin was never even a materialist.

But yes, the logical conclusion of materialism is that there is no free will.
But it's not a consensus view among scientists.
That is also the logical conclusion of the Christian belief system, and of every world-view ever imagined by man. The supernatural doesn't actually solve this issue.
Source?
 
Does he indeed? It is a long time since I read some of his books, but I really doubt that he would term the universe as “Darwinian”. After all, there is no variation and no selection.

A quote would be nice.
 
Does he indeed? It is a long time since I read some of his books, but I really doubt that he would term the universe as “Darwinian”. After all, there is no variation and no selection.

A quote would be nice.
 
But it's not a consensus view among scientists.
The consensus doesn't really matter in this case. No scientist has ever presented a workable mechanism for free will. On the other hand, the mechanism for a reality without free will has been both presented and is pleasingly simple and logical (see for example Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will by Robert Sapolsky).
The same reasoning as above, but worse. The Christian world is imaginary, but they can't even imagine a mechanism for free will. The best they can do is state that there is free will without anything to back it up (and much that argues the exact opposite, like God's omniscience).
 
Yeah, I don't know why you keep mentioning Darwin either. From what I know, Darwin was never even a materialist.

But yes, the logical conclusion of materialism is that there is no free will.

That is also the logical conclusion of the Christian belief system, and of every world-view ever imagined by man. The supernatural doesn't actually solve this issue.
I think that the only way you could get to the old-fashioned view of free will requires a universe in which at least information can be passed backwards along the timeline. As a silly for instance, I come to a fork in the road and I take the left one and get attacked by wolves but before becoming lunch and dinner for the pack I manage to send a message back to myself at the time I get to the fork in the road, I then hear myself saying "not the left fork" so I no longer take the left path but the right one. And get set upon by a bunch of bears... but I do manage to send a new message back to myself and this time when I get to the fork I hear myself saying "you're ◊◊◊◊◊◊".
 
But it's not a consensus view among scientists.

Now is the time when you present the list of 500 "scientists" who disagree with evolution. The one that contains TV weathermen, engineers, and people who didn't realize that they disagreed with evolution.
 
Now is the time when you present the list of 500 "scientists" who disagree with evolution. The one that contains TV weathermen, engineers, and people who didn't realize that they disagreed with evolution.
I won't be doing so. Why do you suggest I should?
 
Why do we continue to punish criminals? No free will, no culpability.
Why does a decision being made based on the state of someone's mind, as opposed to some form of ill defined decision granting fairy magic, mean that there is no culpability?
When most people say something was done by someone's "free will" they mean that it was done based on some sort of conscious choice made without coercion.
You don't need magic decision granting juice to realize that when someone pushes another person off a cliff, them doing so because they tripped, because they were forced to at gunpoint, or just because they felt like it are three very different scenarios requiring three very different responses. It matters in a real, practical sense because it speaks to how this person is likely to behave in the future.
 
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If any member believed there was no free will, they wouldn't bother arguing. But that would be a choice, too. 'It's complicated'.
 
If any member believed there was no free will, they wouldn't bother arguing. But that would be a choice, too. 'It's complicated'.
I'm with Olmstead:

Define hesitation. At some point in my life I went through all sorts of mental gymnastics to make free will work, probably to stave off some sort of existential dread. But that was a long time ago. And the mental gymnastics didn't make sense. It's impossible to make free will work on any level. Once I accepted that, there were no more mental gymnastics, no more struggle to make anything work, because everything made perfect sense. The only problem were the implications, but life is what it is, and nothing can be done about it.

As for accepting it in daily life, it doesn't really work like that. Most of us, me included, live our lives in the delusion that there is free will. I can deduce it rationally, but ironically my body won't let me truly accept it, because it goes against everything billions of years of evolution have been striving towards. Life needs things to matter, especially one's own actions and decisions, even though it is all a lie. At best, I can force myself to see certain situations from that point of view for short amounts of time, or keep that idea at the back of my head, but I never really had any choice in the matter either.

The only other option would be a sort of enlightenment where one accepts everything, especially one's own death and suffering, with absolute detachment, without horror, blame, or the desire for something better. There might have been people throughout history who approached that state of being, but it's hard to tell, and it's not something a person can actually make themselves into. If it happens, it just happens.

To use a modern analogy: we are "programmed" at root level to believe we have freewill, if we weren't then we would have a "null error" as soon as the first human thought of the ramifications of a deterministic universe and we would have stopped. Thankfully mother nature (to use an older analogy) was wise enough to ensure she had a null error capture function in place that stops us stopping.
 
You made me waste my time watching a video that does not mention “Darwinian” or “materialistic”. Please provide a transcript next time.
There is no such thing as free will
(Richard Dawkins website but written by Stephen Cave)

The sciences have grown steadily bolder in their claim that all human behavior can be explained through the clockwork laws of cause and effect. This shift in perception is the continuation of an intellectual revolution that began about 150 years ago, when Charles Darwin first published On the Origin of Species. Shortly after Darwin put forth his theory of evolution, his cousin Sir Francis Galton began to draw out the implications: If we have evolved, then mental faculties like intelligence must be hereditary. But we use those faculties—which some people have to a greater degree than others—to make decisions. So our ability to choose our fate is not free, but depends on our biological inheritance.
 
I'm with Olmstead:



To use a modern analogy: we are "programmed" at root level to believe we have freewill, if we weren't then we would have a "null error" as soon as the first human thought of the ramifications of a deterministic universe and we would have stopped. Thankfully mother nature (to use an older analogy) was wise enough to ensure she had a null error capture function in place that stops us stopping.
And yet we have not the foggiest idea if that is a realistic model. Before you say it, yes, we are all familiar with the 'study' that showed a run-up to decisions (the "push the button when you feel compelled to" study). Not only was that methodologically ridiculous, but about a third of the reactions showed no run-up at all, which blew the conclusion right out of the water.

We don't even remotely understand how thinking actually works. It's only a wild assumption that there is an 'if chemical/experience A, then choice B' absolute and inviolate chain going on. We have no evidence that this is an accurate model.
 
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There is no such thing as free will
(Richard Dawkins website but written by Stephen Cave)

The sciences have grown steadily bolder in their claim that all human behavior can be explained through the clockwork laws of cause and effect. This shift in perception is the continuation of an intellectual revolution that began about 150 years ago, when Charles Darwin first published On the Origin of Species. Shortly after Darwin put forth his theory of evolution, his cousin Sir Francis Galton began to draw out the implications: If we have evolved, then mental faculties like intelligence must be hereditary. But we use those faculties—which some people have to a greater degree than others—to make decisions. So our ability to choose our fate is not free, but depends on our biological inheritance.
Or it is a partial explanation. The last line does not follow from the previous reasoning.

ETA: we are very likely influenced in different mental directions by our genes and whatnot. That doesn't make intellectual activity an inevitable chain of billiard balls.
 
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There is no such thing as free will
(Richard Dawkins website but written by Stephen Cave)

The sciences have grown steadily bolder in their claim that all human behavior can be explained through the clockwork laws of cause and effect. This shift in perception is the continuation of an intellectual revolution that began about 150 years ago, when Charles Darwin first published On the Origin of Species. Shortly after Darwin put forth his theory of evolution, his cousin Sir Francis Galton began to draw out the implications: If we have evolved, then mental faculties like intelligence must be hereditary. But we use those faculties—which some people have to a greater degree than others—to make decisions. So our ability to choose our fate is not free, but depends on our biological inheritance.
Where did Dawkin’s comment about a “Darwinian” universe come from? That was what I objected to.
 

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