you are welcome, though i suspect I didn't state my point clearly enough. It is not that the particular breed of believer would say that God lies, but that "God lies" is, for them, an inescapeable corollary of the evidence indicating what science says it does. So they deny that the evidence says what science says it does, out of theological necessity.
All because of their (to my eye) false dilemma.
now - a semi-related tangential issue: take a look at "massive"
"massive" is a computer program developed to automatically simulate extremely large numbers of massed INDIVIDUAL combatants for the battle scenes of the Lord of the Rings.
for each species or race, several ranges of physical and behavioral characteristics were developed.
Each individual simulant was given a randomly selected value in each range. These mixed-bag values were intended to create variance between the movement speeds and styles of the combatants, so that the simulants looked and moved like live extras instead of a bunch of, well, computer-generated simulants.
But... it generated a surprise side effect: some of the simulants FLED the battlefield. The programmers were quite surprised by this behavior. But they let it stay, as it adds a little more realism to things.
Now, I will not say that this is an example of "free will"
What I will propose is that this is an example of semi-random assemblages of ranges of standardized components producing unanticipated and apparently "designed" or intended results.
I will also go so far as to wonder... If this illusion of free will derives from combinations of basic elements, what other behaviors which we *do* call free will are in fact just as illusory?
Beautifully put! All because of their (to my eye) false dilemma.
One of the other conudrums is that contradictory evidence based upon empirical studies are NOT fatal to science, because science claims to be *A MODEL* and hence subject to revision. Revealed truth based upon authority claims to be, well, revealed. So one way out is to say "well, it's only *moral* truth, which then runs the risk of making "spritual" become roughly synonymous with "Pickwickian"...
If this illusion of free will derives from combinations of basic elements, what other behaviors which we *do* call free will are in fact just as illusory?
That would be more powerful if "free will" had been posited upon observations of others, rather than (say) the Cartesian je pense, donc je suis.
And then you get into the entire Red Herring, Pandora's Box, Troll Garden extraordinaire of "what is *will*"?, how "free" is it (running the gamut from "totally free" to "conditioned" to "automaton"...
and from there it is but a short step (fall?) to Free Will vs. Predestination, etc.
I mean, come on, this thread's already over 1,000 posts as it is, and I'm too tired to read the last 500 right now :-(
But about the automatons, you could do some nifty stuff in *simulating* evolution if you tweaked the program. In particular, sensitivity analysis on the parameters, to see what combinations led to the aforementioned "Brave Sir Robin" behaviour...which might have *temporary* survival value. The problem is that so much of the behaviour is so dependent on the values of the parameters chosen, (think analogies to semi-empirical molecular modeling), that it has little *direct*, *specific* (ab initio) predictive value...
...and thereby hangs a tale.
Cheers!
I think it's interesting that a variant on that theory was roundly ridiculed...
by two characters in the book The French Lieutenant's Woman...
Cheers!
"Looked" and "moved" seem to be the key words here, milord. There are real things — and there are simulacra of real things, if the experience/testimony of humankind in historical experience might be recognized as material to this dialog.
To suggest that the above statement is in any way aligned with a truthful analytical standard according to which we humans ought to be moving right now, in response to the exigencies of current global realities, strikes me as a bit tendentious. In that it assumes as true (valid) the very thing that remains to be tested, falsified, or "proved." I.e., that simulacra have free will, such that they can, for example, willingly flee a battlefield.
Though it is interesting that cyborgs in this fictional piece reacted the way they did, we have no way of reliably ascertaining, of knowing, why they did so. Are cyborgs "reasonable," strictly speaking?
Somehow I think that C. S. Lewis would have had a field day with the sort of reasoning presented in the article at the top of this thread....
Oh. I just noticed our little conversation has been removed to the "Smokey Backroom".... How delightful! Thanks so much for writing, King Prout! Good night!