Free Republic

In 1953, during an episode of his nationally broadcast television program, Life is Worth Living entitled: "Character Building," Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen said the following: "The real seat of character is in the will and we must not surrender that responsibility either to the masses as Marx would have it, or to any kind of biological determinism. Because if our will is determined by forces outside of ourselves, we no longer will make amendment for our misdeeds." Did you get that? To repeat, if you accept "biological determinism" then you will no longer feel contrition for your sins. Here...

Hawking at Harvard At packed Sanders Theatre, theoretical physicist and cosmologist tackles the contradictory qualities of black holes April 18, 2016 | Editor's Pick Popular Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer"If determinism — the predictability of the universe — breaks down in black holes, it could break down in other situations. Even worse, if determinism breaks down, we can’t be sure of our past history either. The history books and our memories could just be illusions. It is the past that tells us who we are. Without it, we lose our identity," said Stephen Hawking. By Peter Reuell, Harvard Staff Writer Twitter...

From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind. by Greg Swann Chapter 7. A calculus of morality on a first-grade number line. Spirit your mind back to your first-grade classroom. Can you see that number line tacked up above the blackboard? In the middle is the number zero – one of the most important inventions in mathematics, incidentally. To the right are the positive integers – 1, 2, 3 – up to 10 or 25 or 100. To the left are the negative integers – and take a moment to salute the incomparable genius of subjunctivity who first...

From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind. by Greg Swann Chapter 5. The greatest love of all. When the subject of love and sex come up, our friends in the lab coats have a field day. For one thing, gibbons and other critters pair-bond for life, so they’re “just like us.” And for another, when you’re in the thrall of your best-beloved, your brain is all but drowning in pheromones and oxytocin and a mad obsession to rut yourself raw, so you’re no different from a house-cat in heat. Everything they have to say about you omits...

From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind. by Greg Swann Chapter 3. Speaking in tongues. I told you I use the words “human being” as a term of art. Here is why: Because there is a valid and valuable distinction to be made between a genetic Homo sapiens (the surviving issue of the recombination of genes) and a human being (a genetic Homo sapiens within whom has been cultivated the gift of mind). A genetic Homo sapiens can have the potential to become a human being – although this capacity or its existential realization can have been...

There are multiple links in my one post, so if you wish to go directly to them here they are: ----http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/9384/ ----http://www.scribd.com/doc/39228567/Determinism-and-Morals ----http://www.philosophy.ucsb.edu/faculty/anderson/lewisanti.html ----http://www.scribd.com/doc/48738624/Reduction-ism ----http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6fdZqzD2Qk ----http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXaQsybMIQQ ----http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaqmGGOZbeY I piece together these recent and past videos and stories (one is an article from National Review from 2008 scanned in -- not in the links above) that deal with evolutionary psychology and genes being the source of (fallaciously of course) all human behavior. In other words, no choice of free will. I will add an excerpt below. Enjoy the massive amounts of info!!

An Open Letter to My Physicist Friend RE: Darwinism and the Problem of Free Will By Jean F. Drew Dear A — Regarding the discussion of “free will” at www.naturalism.org, you wrote: “I am surprised to find a ‘scientific naturalism’ so similar to the utmost banality, shallowness and false superficiality of the ‘scientific materialism’ that I [had] to learn in … school [during] the communist regime.” I think this is a very striking statement; and I understand what you mean. I read in your Book of the Living Universe long ago that you were aware of the problem of “tampering”...

The primary objection to the notion of free will comes from atheistic contemplation and is defined as determinism. There are other objections, notably the Calvinistic view that would reject free will on the basis that God predestined certain people to be saved. For the purposes of this article I will address the former. Determinism asserts that human beings are nothing more than matter. It declares that consciousness as well as the notion of the soul is a fabrication of religion. To determinists man is a carbon based computer, nothing more than a sophisticated robot. According to such logic man should...

Now it seems variations in a section of the gene coding for a vasopressin receptor in people help to determine whether men are serial commitment-phobes or devoted husbands.

Barack Obama has a point. There are a group of people who are seeing it all slip away. They grab onto what they can hold and use these illusory points of reference as a substitute for genuine power and verifiable free will. They indulge in bong hits of false consciousness to the point where they genuinely believe that reality is the wasteland for individuals not up to the task of handling the narcotic of intellectual self-justification. Barack missed the metro train when he assigned these characteristics to small towns scattered throughout the American Hinterland of Central and Western Pennsylvania. America’s...

In the first longitudinal, peer-reviewed, scientific study of its kind, researchers have concluded some homosexuals can change their "orientation" through religiously mediated guidance. Researchers Stanton L. Jones and Mark A. Yarhouse released the results Thursday of a three-year study during an address at the American Association of Christian Counselors World Conference. Their conclusions contradict the claims of the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association, which contend such change in sexual orientation is impossible and attempting to pursue it likely will cause depression, anxiety or self-destructive behavior. The new study concluded such changes do not cause psychological harm to...

Determinists believe that every event (or every event in a certain category) has a cause that makes it happen exactly as it happens. Among the varieties of determinism are the views of (1) Plato, who held that one’s ethical choices are determined by his view of what is good, (2) B. F. Skinner, who believed that stimuli, dispositions and motives govern all human behavior. (3) Democritus, Hobbes, Spinoza, and many others, who have held that every event in the universe is determined by a physical cause. Of special interest to us are (4) theological determinists, who hold that all events...

From "Orthodoxy": "The man who cannot believe his senses, and the man who cannot believe anything else, are both insane, but their insanity is proved not by any error in their argument, but by the manifest mistake of their whole lives. They have both locked themselves up in two boxes, painted inside with the sun and stars; they are both unable to get out, the one into the health and happiness of heaven, the other even into the health and happiness of the earth. Their position is quite reasonable; nay, in a sense it is infinitely reasonable, just as a...

"It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind … Three generations of imbeciles are enough." (qtd. in Facing History 198) In the midst of the eugenics movement, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., voiced the opinion of most Americans. The eugenics movement was based on the science that contained within itself the possibility of improving the human race using selective breeding. Lisa Lindquist Dorr, professor of American History, contends that...

WE propose in this chapter, to examine some of the principal objections which have been urged against the view taken in the preceding chapter of the freedom of the will. Those most worthy of notice are the following, viz.: I. It is said to be absurd in itself. II. It is said to be irreconcilable with the Scripture account of the divine prescience. III. It is said to conflict with the doctrine of motives. We propose a respectful attention to each of these grand objections. I. It is alleged that the view we have taken of the proper freedom of...

THE subject now before us—the moral agency of man—is one of great interest and importance. It has been said by an excellent writer, that "The proper study of mankind is man." If this is true, as it unquestionably is, when the terms are understood to relate to the true character, moral relations, and eternal destiny of man, it is likewise true that no question ever agitated in relation to man can be of greater interest than the one now proposed—his proper moral agency. This subject has elicited a large amount of philosophical research from the most acute metaphysicians in every...

The " Open" View of the Future by Dr. Gregory A. Boyd Preliminary Considerations 1. All Bible Believers Hold that God IS Omniscient. *God sees everything in creation simultaneously (Job 28:24; Ps. 33:13-15). * God knows the number of the stars and angels (Ps. 147:4; Isa. 40:26) and hairs on your head (Mt. 10:29-30). * God knows everything about the deeds, the thoughts, even the innermost intentions of all people (e.g., I Chr. 28:9; Job 24:23; 31:4; 34:21; Psl. 119:168; 139:23-24; Jere. 16:17; 17:9-10; Lk. 16:15; Acts 1:24; Rom. 8:27; 1 Cor. 4:5; 1 Jn. 3:19-20). 2. What The Issue...

This is a complete article from the Saviour series by Preston Eby MAN IS A FREE MORAL AGENT Just What Do You Mean ... MAN IS A FREE MORAL AGENT! ONCE I read a story about the so-called "free will of man," and it goes something like this. A certain infidel was reported to have raised his hand and dared God, if there be a God, to bring it down. Now the case was such, the story goes, that the infidel was bald, and there was a fly buzzing around which at that very moment landed on this bald pate...

I just started reading this book by Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines, and I'm finding it a little disturbing. It doesn't really tell me anything I don't already know, or that anyone else shouldn't already know; but seeing it in authoritative form (Kurzweil is himself an entrepreneur in the IT field) certainly had a discomfiting effect on me. Basically, the book tells of what to expect in the coming decades. Quoting from the online table of contents, his predictions are summed up as follows (all emphasis mine):2009: "A $1,000 personal computer can perform about a trillion calculations per...

. . . . here's a thought experiment: Suppose I toss a coin in the air. The odds are exactly equal it will land heads or tails. Suppose, then, it lands heads. If I toss the coin again, do the odds change? No, the fact that the coin landed heads the first toss has no effect on the second — the name given the superstition that the first toss affects the second is "The Monte Carlo Fallacy." Even in the unlikely event that the coin turned up heads twelve times in a row, on the thirteenth toss the odds...