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

Darat said:
We certainly do believe we have the magical type of free will, but we also believe we have a soul, that there is god looking over us, that crystals can heal us, that water retains memory and like cures like at unimaginable dilutions. What we believe is real does not make something real.
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...and you are conflating the actual experience of every human with religious indoctrination. How quaint. You do know that they aren't the same thing? I believe in none of those other irrelevant things you mentioned.

And quite frankly, your side of the equation is the one that effectively believes in the equivalent of "fate" or "destiny." How's that for being religious?
 
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arthwollipot said:
The church is a lot more split than science is on evolution.
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There isn’t a singular church, what there are is many different religions that label themselves as a Christian religion, many of those religions don’t consider the other Christian religions to be true Christian religions. Now there are some things that individual Christian religions internally can be split on, for instance in the Anglican religion there is a split regarding the ordination of women. But it is quite rare for a religion to remain internally split regarding major theological and doctrinal issues, what tends to happen is that one side or the other starts a new religion whilst claiming they are now the true religion.
 
Manopolus said:
...and you are conflating the actual experience of every human with religious indoctrination. How quaint. You do know that they aren't the same thing?
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Really? People who believe crystals can cure diseases have been religiously indoctrinated? People who believe in homeopathy have been religiously indoctrinated?
 
Darat said:
Really? People who believe crystals can cure diseases have been religiously indoctrinated? People who believe in homeopathy have been religiously indoctrinated?
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Yeah... I'd say those things indeed belong in the same category. Maybe a weaker version, but more or less the same. It's like an information virus they caught from other people in most cases, rather than a direct result of their own experience. I suppose somebody had to originally have the imagination to think it up, but even that is clearly not a result of observation. It's just fantasy gone awry... assuming that the originator actually believed their own con, which isn't always the case.
 
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There is no such thing as free will
(Richard Dawkins website but written by Stephen Cave)

The number of court cases, for example, that use evidence from neuroscience has more than doubled in the past decade—mostly in the context of defendants arguing that their brain made them do it. And many people are absorbing this message in other contexts, too, at least judging by the number of books and articles purporting to explain “your brain on” everything from music to magic. Determinism, to one degree or another, is gaining popular currency. The skeptics are in ascendance.
 
Poem said:
There is no such thing as free will
(Richard Dawkins website but written by Stephen Cave)

The number of court cases, for example, that use evidence from neuroscience has more than doubled in the past decade—mostly in the context of defendants arguing that their brain made them do it. And many people are absorbing this message in other contexts, too, at least judging by the number of books and articles purporting to explain “your brain on” everything from music to magic. Determinism, to one degree or another, is gaining popular currency. The skeptics are in ascendance.
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Argumentum ad populum. Proving mainly that many people can be fooled into denying the legitimacy of their own faculties. Don't even get me started on that ridiculous experiment with the moving hands which proved precisely nothing (other than that you can fool people... typical of psych, but expected better of neurology... mostly by using the power of suggestion).
 
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Manopolus said:
Argumentum ad populum. Proving mainly that many people can be fooled into denying the legitimacy of their own faculties. Don't even get me started on that
ridiculous experiment with the moving hands which proved precisely nothing (other than that you can fool people... typical of psych, but expected better of neurology), mostly with the power of suggestion.
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Which?
 
Oh, and I don't "believe in" free will, incidentally. I merely experience it. No belief necessary.
 
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Poem said:
Which?
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Hmm... thought it was in popular culture enough for everyone to know what I was referring to. It was all over Youtube several months ago... popular science claiming that determinism was "proven" by what turned out to be nonsense as far as I could tell. I'll see if I can look up an example... may take me a bit.
 
Poem said:
Surely, #719 proves nothing?
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Not sure what you mean. It's pretty clear to me that having the ability to make a choice shows that subsequent outcomes aren't predetermined. If anyone would like to challenge that, then I'd say the burden of proof is on them, since it's reasonably empirical. Yes, you could say it's an illusion, but I see no reason whatsoever to take anybody's word on that without appropriate evidence. Being unaware of a mechanism doesn't qualify.

I'm not speculating on the nature of the mechanism, but I would assume that it's the same thing that makes me a conscious being. Those concepts seem to be appropriately identical, or at the very least related. Call it "soul" if you want to, but I don't speculate to that degree. There's too much irrelevant nonsense associated with that word to accept it as the proper term without redefining it much more narrowly.
 
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The experiment I was talking about was just a more recent variation on the Libet Experiment. I saw it on several science-related Youtube channels months ago, but all I'm coming up with on a search is Libet... which was done in the 1980s (not recent). I'm pretty sure it's a variation on the same theme, but I haven't watched any of the full videos on Libet to be sure.
 
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Just one final note: I'm not necessarily arguing against determinism. Free will and determinism can coexist. All you have to do is add in a multiverse and/or perhaps just a little randomness. Obviously, many effects have causes... won't deny that. Some things we can only calculate as probabilities, though... which isn't strictly deterministic in my book.

But yeah... I'm aware that we're on a derail. A thread on this question likely already exists that goes way back to the beginnings of the forum.
 
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What about Young's double slit experiment? The resulting pattern on the screen is different if we observe which slit the particle goes through - you don't get the interference pattern you get when not observing - you just get two strips of light.

That's mere observation altering a future outcome. And no one understands it.
 
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