Creation Vs. Evolution = Free will Vs. determinism

The computerreruns are a way to study interminism. You asked for a way to study it. Then you begin to complain again that it may not be inditerminate, eventhough you agree to speak about it as though it is indeterminate. You are constantly using this bizarre absolute predeterminism for when your arguments against creationism run into trouble.I think you need to show me you can do science without referring to things going one way or another at any point whatsoever. Failing to do that shows the belief in absolute predeterminacy to be a philosphical irrellevancy by our current understanding, and that our current understanding allows for both cause and effect, and chance and outcome as equally valid descriptive tools. Show that you can describe chances without referring to things turning out one way or another.There were 3 replies to my challenge to describe choices, 1 openly failed the challenge, 1 didn't get much further then saying coinflip, and lastly you got stuck with identifying the nature of the owner of the choice, whether the owner was material or not, and then you ended up with meandering about absolute predterminacy. What does that show then according to you?What one might expect from a science enthusiast is intellectual curiosity to trace back the likelyhood of the appearance of things to where the likelyhood was set, but none of that. Not even the most basic interest in describing things going one way or another. That shows that it is not scientific interest what drives evolutionist activists, which leaves the abundant associate atheist / materialist / social darwinist ideology as the true motive.It's not the goal of the creationist movement to develop a general theory of creationism. They are just there to protect religious knowledge about creation in the first place, and common knowledge about creation also, and they are doing a pretty good job of it, considering the broad opposition they face.People generally don't say that their choices come from nothing, but they don't generally refer to material as where their choices come from. They talk about things like choices coming from the heart, which illustrates again that to view material in terms of determinations, is quite different from viewing material in terms of cause and effect. It is possible to reconstrue material as being owners of choices, but this is an entirely different view then the more common cause and effect view. That's why it is practically true to say that choices come from nothing, because it refers to no material predetermining what happens.Evidently your position in the creation vs evolution controversy depends on the denial of social darwinism, and on the bizarre belief in abosolute predeterminism.I think i raised your awareness about your own knowledge about choices and creation, and the possibility for further investigation. It's up to you to support scientific, common, and religious knowledge about creation. And any meaningful self-aware support of that class of knowledge would inevitably lead you to change sides in the creation vs evolution controversy, while still accepting evolution theory as true to fact in a narrow sense.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

In what way are the computer runs a way to study indeterminism? This is no more sophisticated than saying that flipping a coin is a way to study indeterminism, it is only true if your initial assumption that the phenomenon is indeterministic is valid. What I agreed was that we don't know if the universe is fundamentally deterministic or indeterministic. Your study presupposes that it is fundamentally indeterministic, therefore it cannot hope to demonstrate that it is. This is just a ludicrous accusation. You are the one who decided that determinism was inherently linked to evolution, I don't think that at all. I don't think my views on evolution would change substantially whether I knew the universe to be fundamentally deterministic or indeterministic, it certainly wouldn't change the way evolution operates or the history of life on Earth. Why on earth should I need to do that. As I am rapidly getting tired of pointing out to you the theoretical possibility that the universe is fundamentally deterministic does not magically give us the ability to predict everything. This is still the opposite argument to the one you previously made that evolutionary scientists never talk about things going one way or another without ascribing them some material cause. Now, why didn't you say so before? I am quite prepared to concede this point, indeed I made it myself previously, provided you are equally prepared to concede that the same is true of absolute indeterminism. Of course since your argument against evolutionary science was based on a fundamentally indeterminate phenomenon, your argument falls by the wayside as well. That is inherent in discussing chances, the resolution will always be that the event falls out one way, the probability of an alternative outcome was arguably only ever a measure of our lack of knowledge about the system. I gave you an example with an unsatisfactory final ascription of cause, which was surely the entire basis of the challenge? If I could have ascribed it a material cause I would have obviously failed. It shows that we don't know enough to resolve these questions one way or another. Arguably all of evolutionary biology is in the process of doing just that, the problem is that the volume of knowledge we need before what you propose could become even remotely possible is vast, there are still many fundamental aspects of evolutionary processes about which our understanding is rudimentary. Given this vast gap in our knowledge how can you possibly expect us to hand out probabilities about single insatnces of mutation millions of years ago. We can sometimes track down instances where such things have ocurred, but not often enough to be able to meaninfully ascribe them a probability. Again you appear to be saying that all evolutionary science papers do something which you just claimed no science papers do, and something which you have never shown to not occur in the literature in the first place, unless you want an explicitly ex nihilo explanation in the scientific paper, which is something you are unlikely to see for any scientific discipline. That is very much what critics of the creationist movement say, except for the part about it being a good job, it is the creationists themselves who claim to be actively pursuing scientific research supporting their beliefs. 'Practically true'? What a wonderful phrase, do you mean that in practice we can reach useful conclusions assuming it to be true, or that it is nearly true but isn't actually true? The rest of that paragraph was just so much gobbledigook. People saying that choices come 'from the heart' is clearly a metaphor, it doesn't argue one way or the other about the issue. Not at all, I have never denied the existence of social darwinism, but I do deny that it is a component of modern mainstream evolutionary science, which is what you are trying to use it to discredit. And as I have said any number of times now, I have no firm belief in absolute predeterminism. Only in as much as I am now aware of your own idiosyncratic opinions on the topic. Sadly I fear I haven't raised your awareness of anything at all due to your stubborn refusal to actually learn anything about modern evolutionary theory or to actually look at any of the papers that you so freely criticise and dismiss as unimportant. You mean in the narrow sense of being a coherent model which fits the evidence and is actually useful for making predictions? All you really seem to be saying is that if I were to agree that certain phenomena in the universe came from ex nihilo acts of creation then I would have to fit those into my model of the universe, which is patently obvious. Unforunately you have yet to offer one scintilla of scientific evidence that any such event has ever occurred, although I know many people consider the mere fact that the universe exists to be sufficient evidence this is not a scientific conclusion but a philosophicl one.

Wounded King:"Unforunately you have yet to offer one scintilla of scientific evidence that any such event has ever occurred, although I know many people consider the mere fact that the universe exists to be sufficient evidence this is not a scientific conclusion but a philosophicl one."There you go again imposing extremist philosphical beliefs. Saying there is no scintially of evidence of any indeterminacy basicly denies all the science which describes in terms of things going one way or another. There is in fact lots and lots of evidence for it, eventhough there is no absolute certainty about it.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

wounded king:"I gave you an example with an unsatisfactory final ascription of cause, which was surely the entire basis of the challenge? If I could have ascribed it a material cause I would have obviously failed."I think you fail the test as well, because any ascription of cause, wheter material or immaterial is as by definition of "cause" a predeterminant excluding the possibility of an alternative outcome.I think the definition of the word determination as decision shows that the terminology was constructed as a determination setting a cause which then had it's effects. It was never the point to put up cause and effect, and chance and outcome against each other, the one excluding the other. They were constructed as dependent on each other by determination. I think you must be undercutting the rational coherency of a whole lot of words and logic you use, by cutting choice / determination from cause and effect.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

It is really simple Syamsu, if the universe is fundamentally determinate there are no possible examples of such a thing. You presupposing that there are such cases also presupposes, automatically, that the universe is fundamentally indeterministic. It is your inability to understand that this is an unresolved question and blithely assuming that your position is fundamentally sound simply because it is your position, that brings in the extremes of the spectrum. If you can show how the universe can fundamentally be both deterministic and indeterministic I would be very impressed, or perhaps you have some other fundamental basis to propose?If you produced some actual scientfic examples it would be easier to characterise what you are trying to describe. At the moment you seem to be falling back on your argument that probabilities somehow represent some real fundamental level of reality, rather than being a human tool. But my entire point was that I didn't ascribe the effect to any cause, I could not identify any particular, or for that matter general, source from where I could say the idea originated. By your argument you should be even more vehemently opposed to christian creationists who not only say there is an immaterial cause but are highly proscriptive and specific about what that cause is. But it has to come down to this, the cause has to be caused in turn or if not then it is itself an effect without a cause. But you are the one who keeps switching terminology and conflating the usage of words in totally different contexts. All I have done is ask you to try and show a bit of consistency.TTFN,WK

But science in general is not concerned with absolutist philisophical questions like that everything is predetermined from the start of the universe or not. By the same token there is no evidence of cause and effect either, just as there is no evidence for chance and outcome.Yes absolutely I just assume that science is describing reality with probabilities, just like I assume that science is describing reality with cause and effect explanations. So what.It's pretty clear that Christians are talking about spiritual things and their words have to be reinterpreted in that way.As before indeterminacy and determinacy go hand in hand. If you choose between red and blue, and you choose blue, the scenario goes from indeterminate from before the decision, to determinate after the decision. There isn't this absolute of opposites between determinacy and indeterminacy.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Actually there is a vat amount of evidence for cause and effect and none for chance and outcome. This is because, as I pointed out, chance and outcome are tools for studying systems and making predictions using incomplete data. The fact that science uses probabilities to describe the universe does not mean that the universe is probabilisitic, or do you think it does? That clearly isn't what they are saying. If it was they wouldn't insist that what they are doing is science and make the effort to at least appear to address theissue in solely scientific terms. How would ascribing a 'spiritual' cause be any different from an immatterial one? They are still clearly ascribing a cause, which you said was the flaw. This is just a statment of opinion Syamsu, it says nothing about how you think indeterminacy and determinacy are reconcilable, simply that you think they are. you are arguing something which is totally beside the point. What is meant by determinism and indeterminism should be abundantly clear to you by 80 posts into a thread, but you seem to have decided that it is once again time to redefine the debate. You have no way of showing that you actually could have chosen red, your assumption that you could presupposes indeterminacy.Why is it so hard for you to simply agree, as you already said you did but your subsequent arguments have belied, that the question of determinacy Vs. indeterminacy is unresolvable at the moment? Why do you insist on assuming a priori that the universe is fundamentally indeterministic?TTFN,WKThis message has been edited by Wounded King, 08-17-2004 02:36 AM

Your position is not that it is unresolved, because if that were your position you would give equal support to view in terms of cause and effect, as to view in terms of chance and outcome. Your position is that cause and effect is what you assume to be true, indeterminacy is what you doubt. You don't doubt cause and effect same as you do indeterminacy. You don't say well maybe there is no cause and effect whatsoever in the universe, but you do say this of indeterminacy continuously.The meaning of the word cause is simply different when referred to in respect to spiritual things. I've never seen any creationist picture-impression of God creating a kind, so that we could say creation by God is simply a cause and effect equation. I doubt you used the word cause in a different meaning then the regular.Determinism simply refers to what's been decided, and indeterminism refers to what's not decided. It's not a statement of opinion, it's a logical construct, probably formally constructed by theologians hundreds of years ago, and it is hard to make sense without using the construct, which is why you also use it in science and in daily life. Where is the future in a universe without determinations? Where is the present? All these things depend on each other in the construct, and rational coherency of the entire system of knowledge is lost when you essentially cut out determination / choice.There is no required purpose to descriptions of chance and outcome that the dataset must be incomplete. Besides if the dataset is incomplete then the uncertainty is referred to as being in the mind of the observer. There is then still inherent uncertainty asserted, but not in what is observed, but in the observer.For instance when a woman is already pregnant some months but you don't know if it's a boy or girl, then you can say 50/50 chance it's a boy or girl. So the gender of the baby is not an uncertainty anymore, but there's still inherent uncertainty asserted, your uncertainty about it's gender.regards,
Mohamamad Nor Syamsu

That is almost right. What I am saying is that cause and effect have frequently been observed whereas probabilities are arguably simply a measure of our ignorance of a system. I am however saying quite clearly that I don't know one way or another whether the universe is fundamentally deterministic or indeterministic. No you are right, I don't, and it is possible that there is no such thing as cause and effect, but that would be entirely against all of the evidence we have at the moment. It would rely on the supposition that by chance the same effect was produced time and time again from the same supposed cause but was actually triggered by some freak ex nihilo creative event in exactly the same way every time.There is no way to distinguish this scenario from the actual outcome of cause and effect however as they are identical. I agree that my hypothetical fundamentally deterministic universe is similarly indistinguishable from an indeterministic one unless one can reverse the flow of time, but I have never claimed they are distinguishable by practical means, all I have claimed is that you cannot know one way or the other which is true. Any support for this assertion? I know that this is certainly a favourite tactic of yours, giving a unique definition to a commonly understood term, but I doubt most creationists would be glad to hear you ascribing it to them. No, they don't. Determinism is 'The philosophical doctrine that every state of affairs, including every human event, act, and decision is the inevitable consequence of antecedent states of affairs.' (From the American Heritage Dictionary, 4th ed., 2000) and indeterminism is 'The doctrine that there are some events, particularly some human actions or decisions, which have no cause.' (ibid).Indeterminism can also be used synonymously with unpredictability, but that is clearly not the context it is used in for this discussion.The rest of that paragraph says nothing. Once again you make an assertion which assumes the position you are trying to prove to be correct. This would be true if we knew probabilistic descriptions of phenomena to be accurate representations of the underlying phenomena, but we do not. This is an especially acute problem considering you wish to determine the probability of what may be totally unique events.I would agree that frequentist probabilities arguably are not measurements of ignorance, but bayesian probabilities, which you would have to use in this instance, certainly are. Once again you try to totally change the basis of the discussion. Uncertainty in someones mind is not similiar to a fundamentally indeterministic phenomenon being unpredictable.Your baby example makes the flaw in your thinking clear. As soon as the baby is concieved it is genetically a boy or a girl, barring chromosomal abnormalities. From the point on it is clearly not a probabilistic phenomenon, your view that the fact that a subjective observer may not be able to predict what gender the child will be in some way reflects a fundamental uncertainty in the universe is absurd. All you have done is confirm my original contention, that you want to enshrine subjective experience as fundamental to the operation of the universe. There is no inherent uncertainty in your scenario, only uncertainty due to an insufficient knowledge of the available data.TTFN,WK

The point is that even when you know the dataset is limited as with a pregnant woman, there is still inherent uncertainty asserted, that of the observer. You said that limited datasets may exclude inherent uncertainty, but this is not true, it only transfers the assertion of uncertainty towards the observer. And this uncertainty reflects an uncertainty prior, the genderdetermination.Now you are trying to exclude inherent uncertainty as by definition, when in effect you say the purpose of chance and outcome descriptions is to describe cause and effect where you don't know all the causes and effects.It is also untrue that a fundamentally indeterminate system would neccesarily result in disorder. Genderdetermination is fundamentally indeterminate, but it results in a neat 50/50, male / female order.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Now you seem to have decided on a unique definition of 'inherent', if the uncertainty is only a subjective experience/judgement of the observer then it is clearly not inherent in the system. Once again, if any system is inherently indeterministic then the universe must be fundamentally indeterministic, you continue to presuppose your conclusion. There is no possible way you can show this unless you have evidence that the universe is fundamentally indeterminstic, once again you presuppose your conclusion.TTFN,WK

Personally, I am a creationist when pertaining to how the Universe came about, but I tend to shy away from Biblical literalism. Perhaps the Flood, for example, was but a parable. The idea was that a minority of people,(1 family) was spared so as to fullfill the future. Free Will? They had it.
As for believing in "Fairy Tales"? Well, in Star Wars when Luke Skywalker had to hit the mark, he closed his eyes and relied on the innate inner wisdom to guide him. This theme crops up in human literature again and again.

It's not a subjective experience, it's an asserted reality. You are asserting the observer is uncertain, which may be wrong just as well, the observer may be totally sure it is a boy for instance.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Is that how this works, you make an assertion and therefore it is a reality? Seriously though Syamsu, how do you distinguish an 'asserted' reality' from a subjective experience. No Syamsu, actually you are the one who asserted that there was uncertainty about the gender in the observer's mind. What I'm suggesting is that the subjective experiences and mentations of the observer are totally irrelevant to the actual situation.TTFN,WK

It just means you can't use your limited data example to support absolute predeterminacy, because either uncertainty is asserted on the part of the observer, or it is asserted on the part of what is observed. In all cases inherent uncertainty is asserted to be there, denying absolute predeterminacy.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu