Creation Vs. Evolution = Free will Vs. determinism

In a recent debate with Syamsu (all my topics seem to start off like this) he proposed that 'creation' was embodied in acts which had no physical/ material basis. He further suggested that while such acts were recognised in science in general, presumably in things like the uncertainty principle and the statistical nature of QM, they were irrationally excluded from evolutionary science.Leaving aside the merits of the argument that evolutionary science ignores non-deterministic phenomena this seems to boil down to a claim that religious creationism presupposes free will while atheistic materialism neccessitates the universe being wholly deterministic.I think this is a somewhat idiosyncratic, if not unique, interpretation of 'creation' but it does raise the question of free will. I was wanting to open a thread both to give Syamsu a chance to discuss his ideas, and his challenge for people to 'describe an event where things can turn out one way or another', without derailing the 'Evolution is NOT science' thread and also to ask what the split is between believers in fore-ordination/determination and free will in both the evolution and creation camps. I suspect that all Syamsu's challenge is doing is showing how hard it is to actually demonstrate any such thing as free will existing.I know there are already a couple of threads this overlaps with, such as the 'Just an Evo robot', so if you feel the topic is redundant or unfocussed just let me know.TTFN,WK

I'm not quite sure, to be honest I was interested in seeing where you would put it. I would think that either 'Faith & Belief' for the discussion of different attitudes to free will or 'Miscellaneous'. Personally I'd prefer F&B as I suspect more people would see it there who might be prepared to offer an opinion and that is the thread where the debate originated.TTFN,WKThis message has been edited by Wounded King, 07-23-2004 10:51 AMThis message has been edited by Wounded King, 07-23-2004 11:24 AM

I hope you realise that my point and Syamsu's point tend to be points diametrically opposite each other.I see absoloutely no problem with randomness in evolution, it is after all a probabilistic phenomenon.As far as QM being in some way a guarantor of randomness in natural laws I am not so convinced. While random effects are clearly dominant at the quantum level there is a huge disconnect from that up to the macroscopic level. Random events on a quantum level give rise to the, as far as we can determine, deterministic effects that we rely on in order for our way of life, indeed life itself, to continue.The real issue is one of free will, i.e. did you really have any choice about starting that domino or was your brains biochemistry in such a state that you actually had to push it even though your mental processes tell you you had a choice. Syamsu seems to be proposing that a purely materialistic view of the universe would require this, while I would only say that a purely deterministic view would be neccessary and that religious or materialist views are irrelevant.Syamsu furthers posits that the source of the free willed choice is the same sort of phenomenon as that of creation, i.e. an apparently causeless and immaterial event having a specific effect on the material universe, I may not have this exactly right, I hope Syamsu will drop in to elaborate his ideas in his own words at some point.I suppose the most obvious QM event to use as an analogy would be the creation of virtual/vacuum particles. Could choice be the result of virtual particles acting transiently on brain biochemistry, would this really be free will anyway? I am starting to tread on Roger Penrose activity now so I'll take a break and lie down in a darkened room.TTFN,WK

Just as a point of information, here is what that hack Hawking (JK ) had to say on QM as a basis for a deterministic universe. So maybe QM is only random in a 'folk' sense and at a more fundamental level it too is deterministic, i.e. a many worlds universe may be entirely deterministic but to an observer in any one trouser leg, to steal a metaphor, it will seem probabilistic.TTFN,WKThis message has been edited by Wounded King, 07-23-2004 03:31 PM

Just to continue my trend of talking to myself I thought I would provide some background reading on the subject. here is a good little brief precis of the issue of free will and dterminism and a number of related philosophical positions. From the sound of it you, 1.61803, are a 'libertarian' but not of the gun toting whack-job variety, although maybe you are what with being a texan, alternatively you may be a 'compatibilist'.I have to admit I'm not quite sure where I fit on the spectrum myself. I suspect that I might be a hard determinist, in which case Syamsu is totally correct in his suggestion about my lack of belief in an uncaused event but is wrong in saying that I can't conceive of such a thing in the abstract.TTFN,WKP.S. Hopefully someone other than me will be the next person to post a reply.

I don't think your criticism of Hawking is valid. I don't think that particle-wave duality is any barrier to Hawking's discussion of the evolution of the proability wavefunction, what he is saying is specifically that while we observe the collapse of the wavefunction we don't really know how that 'collapse' occurs and it may not truly be a collapse outside of our on particular frame of reference.Do you think Hawking's is unaware of wave-particle duality?As to your stand, well to be honest I don't really know what 'Freewill in my opinion is an emergent property of existance' really means. It could just as well cover both a true form of freewill based on indeterminism and an experienced form of free will which is really only a mental byproduct of deterministic factors.TTFN,WK

Hey Hangdawg13,What is your opinion of fore-ordination? Do you believe that God knows everything that will happen in the future, can God be surprised?Do you agree with Syamsu that the sort of random factor God has used to allow us free will is similar to the apparently causeless, in purely material terms, creation of the universe?TTFN,WKP.S. I'm not trying to make you go nuts, honest.

I wasn't saying that creation itself was random but that the underlying basis of any randomness in the universe comes from a similar non-material source as whatever the primary cause was, i.e. God. In fact I personally am saying no such thing, but that was the argument I was putting up.TTFN,WK

Have you been taking intelligibility lessons from Brad?TTFN,WK

Yes, in that case I would inevitably fail the test. But I didn't do that, which was all you said was required.What difference do you see between vagueness and not knowing where choice comes from. If I knew I wouldn't have to be vague. All I can give is an account of my own subjective experience of choice, what more can you do?TTFN,WKP.S. Would you like to expound upon your viewpoint somewhat for the other people reading this thread? I don't know how accurately I portrayed your argument.This message has been edited by Wounded King, 07-26-2004 02:16 AM

That's kind of the entire issue Mr. Jack. You may not be your brain, you may simply be a complex epiphenomenon produced by your brain incapable of choice but with the illusion of choice or you may have an immaterial contribution to what you are connected in some mystical way to, but not physically part of, your brain. Certainly people who believe in a soul or some intangible spiritual element are unlikely to ascribe to your opinion.That aside, the 'you' pushing the domino includes the larger physical presence you think of as yourself which actually does the pushing. My arm is not my brain but it is a part of me.I don't really see how what I wrote said that your brain caused you to do anything. I simply proposed that everything you do is due to physical phenomena in your brain and that if those phenomena are deterministic then so is human behaviour, but that doesn't preclude the subjective experience of choice.TTFN,WK

This reminds me of an episode of 'The Prisoner' in which No.6 (The Prisoner) is put in a drugged state and conditioned, amongst other things, to take flapjacks for breakfast by being electrocuted when he tries to eat anything else. When he subsequently is offered a choice, having no conscious memory of the conditioning, he automatically chooses the flapjacks.I realise that the scenario is fictional, and I am dubious of the extent to which you could effectively produce such effective conditioning unbeknownst to the subject, but given such a situation where you have just 'voluntarily' chosen the flapjacks from a wide array of food would you then believe that you liked flapjacks? Would you be able to consciously distinguish your liking for flapjacks from that of foods you had not been conditioned to like?TTFN,WK

You don't want to do that, there's barely room for me in here.

Well you are obviously entitled to your opinion but you haven't provided one scintilla of evidence which would lead me to agree with it.Isn't this almost exactly the opposite of what you said on the other thread we discussed this? There you were claiming that evolutionary scientists were incapable of describing a situation where there was a choice of outcomes, perhaps you don't consider them 'real' scientists.You claimed previously that 'uncertainty is an integral part of current science', but failed to expand upon what you meant by this, could you explain in some detail? Were you referring to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, Chaos theory or some feature of stochastic phenomena in science?There are religious determinists, there are atheist determinists, there are religious indeterminists and atheist determinists no particular view on the existence of god neccessitates believing in either determnism or indeterminism. There are accepted theological positions both in favour of and against the existence of free will. There are plausible scientific hypotheses for both a fundamentally deterministic or indeterministic universe. At the moment we are incapable of discriminating which is more likely. The mere fact that people experience feeling as if they have made a choice shows nothing other than that people commonly experience this feeling. Believing in determinism does not mean that we are automatically capable of accurately predicting everything. There is no mental disconnect neccessary between believing that the universe is deterministic and that, to the best of our ability to resolve, a situation may have a number of possible outcomes.TTFN,WK

Impressive Syamsu, nonsense from end to end.No-one is compelled to acknowledge that choices come from nothing simply because they cant describe exactly where they do come from. The fact that its having a material basis would predetermine the outcome, not neccessarily true but we'll allow it for the sake of argument, doesn't produce an argument against its having a material basis and would make perfect sense. You then come back to your old hobby horse of the evil of value judgements in science. I can't for the life of me see how you can possibly hope to argue that a deterministic philosophy would introduce 'value judgements' into science, what it woulkd actually do is give the lie to our perceptions that we prodcue meaningful value judgements which lead us to make informed choices of our own free will. Once again it is simply a question of Determinism Vs. Free will, the materialist/ athesist factors you are trying to introduce are totally redundant.TTFN,WK