unloveable

Stolen from a random fourm i found.

2004-11-27T08:39:27Z

Free will is an illusion

"Thought experiment:

Imagine you could manufacture a computer chip that can simulate one neuron to the most minute detail in your brain. Take out your one neuron, and put in that chip. are you still you? Do you still have your identity? You will probably say: Yes.

Now exchange a second neuron,
and a third,
and a fourth,
...

When do you stop becoming you? You don't. Even after all neurons have been replaced.

The brain is changing even more radically within a lifetime(new neurons are formed, connections are made and broken, old neurons die, ..) But you still stay you.

Now 'soul' is a tricky part. You attribute soul with a controlling interest. This would mean that an ineffable soul can act on the effable (material) world. However it supposedly acts in a way which cannot be detected. If it cannot be detected, does it act at all? What does soul do? If it is part of the 'you', does it shift neurons towards firing? If so, this should be demonstrable (I haven't seen anyone do so). If it doesn't influence the workings of the brain, then soul is independent of you, your personality, and all the emotional and rational things that make up you.

Personality is situated in the frontal lobes of the brain. Damage in these lobes can change a personality radically. Are you still you after the damage? Of course. Did your soul change? You'll probably say: No, because soul is supposedly immutable. If you said "Yes", then the brain changes your soul, not the other way around.
So from this we showed that soul has nothing to do with personality.

Similar arguments go for emotion (localize in the limbic system) or rational thought (cortex), or identity (temporal area of the brain). All of these can be localized to a certain area of the brain. So if soul has nothing to do with any of these - what does soul do? What is left?

Of course you are free to believe in a soul (or god). But if you feel that soul (or god) has anything to do with what you do or who you are, or what will become of you - then you must try and demonstrate some effect that soul has which makes you 'you'. An effect that has not yet been shown as a function of the brain. "

trouble_lovesme @ 2004-11-26T07:29:00

2004-11-26T15:30:54Z

Skull&Bones

trouble_lovesme @ 2004-07-27T05:11:00

2004-07-27T12:11:32Z

http://www.peoplevashcroft.org/bio/bio.asp

fate, astrology, karma, the phrase "everything happens for a reason"and other hogwash.

2004-02-17T13:34:19Z

This is part of a conversation i was having with someone. Just wondering if anyone would have anything to say about it. The context of the conversation was accepting Christianity as a reason for life. Another reason for posting this is because i plan on making a post in here about fate, astrology, karma, the phrase "everything happens for a reason", tarot cards, psychic predictions, past-lives, and other hogwash.

As far as accepting Jesus as the rationale for it all, I would truly, truly love to (really), but I cant. I cannot believe in something that is so full of logical contradictions. One of my greatest annoyances is the selective suspension of logic in order to ease the sting of life with mindless dribble such as astrology, past-lives, fate, luck, karma, ect. While Christianity stands a better fight then the examples above, it still requires the suspension of disbelief. And it requires that I believe in a soul. And it would be a difficult task trying to explain the exact criteria for a soul. For example I read an article that brings up some interesting questions. I will explain the jest of the article. Two babies are born. One of the babies stuck to the other baby while they were arranging themselves into the magic combination of matter that souls like to hang out in. As a result, one of the babies somehow got mixed up and forgot to make a body for him/herself. The result of this was one baby with someone else’s head growing out of their own. The doctors and the parents of the babies looked at it as one baby with two heads, even thou there were two brains in the babies head, and figured they had better chop one of them off. Now it seems to me that this was murder. I’m not saying that they shouldn’t have done it. But from a Christian standpoint they took somebody’s life. Or was this little fellow punished for the crime of sticking to someone else and forgetting to make a body, and therefore not granted a soul? The point is, what exactly does it take to get a soul. It seemed to be common opinion that this being didn’t have a soul. But I cant understand why, I mean it had a brain. It was as far as we know, a thinking, feeling human being. So does it take more than that to be granted a soul? A torso maybe? What about other deformations? How far deformed can a person be and still be the proud owner of a soul? I mean primates don’t get them and they are something like 98% genetically identical to humans. Besides, it is provable beyond a doubt that information that makes you who you are is contained in you brain, and not anywhere else. So what room then is there for a soul? If everything you are is inside your brain. It all seems very un-miraculous to me, cows have a specific personality, they have memories, they have a “self” and they don’t need a soul to do it. There is no room in logic for a soul. And I cant help but think about how egotistical it really is to assume that humans are special, and that we are the only animal that has a soul, even thou we are so slightly different from other animals.

Another problem with Christianity, is that a lot of the ideas are based on the idea of free will, which requires ultimate self creation. Logically impossible.(for more on this, refer to post:free will is an illusion:)

Souls are egotistical

2004-01-03T12:29:31Z

You don't have a "soul" telling your brain how to feel and what to do. Your brain controls these things. This is provable. If you were to cut a specific part of your brain out, you would lose all ability to experience specific emotions, depending on what part you cut out. Not only would you not be able to experience this emotion, but you would be completely unable even to imagine the emotion. Meaning, this information is stored in your brain, making it impossible to have "spirits" walking around thinking and doing things. What happens when you are medically dead then brought back to life? people have been medically dead for up to 40 minutes and come back. Was there soul just waiting around to see what happened next?

trouble_lovesme @ 2004-01-03T03:55:00

2004-01-03T12:14:24Z

this has been bugging me lattely..

There is truth.

2+2=4

if you discount logic and science then an ifinite amount of things are possible.

if an ifinite amount of things are possible, then you will never guess which ones are actually happening.

just because you cant explain something, doesnt mean its magic

The late hour #6 by cassidy liston

2004-01-02T10:01:00Z

I am posting this both because i think it is good, and because i have been thinking about making a post about babies, and this serves as a good introduction.

The Late Hour #6
Good evening.

Ladies and gentleman, it has come to my attention that getting pregnant is no longer neccesary. It's ok, people, don't worry. No really, there's enough. Enough of us to make any so-called God wonder Now why the heck did I do that? Whoever marketed pregnancy gets high marks on a job well done. I can't go anywhere without seeing a born person. Heck, everyone's doing it. Even people as young as 15 or 14, even.

Several days ago, my mother called my sister Crystal. It was Christmas Eve and my mom called to wish my sister, as well as the rest of us, a Merry Christmas.

My mother, you see, recently moved out of state, far away. Probably because she was so lonely and ashamed, I don't know. By the time the youngest child, Brock, moved out, she had screwed so much up that we hardly involved ourselves with her at all.

Any matter, she called using a pre-paid phone card. There was less than 2 minutes left on it, so the conversation had to be brief. My mom explained this at the end of the conversation, as a way to wrap things up. She then cried.

You might be analyzing the reasons why I'm outright against people fertilizing woman parts. Allow me to throw you a bone; I was an accident.

Here's the story:

My mother went to go have a doctor tie her tubes so that she couldn't have babies anymore. At this point she had already had Crystal and my older brother Denali, and she figured there's enough. Well the doctor began the operation, opened her up, and discovered that she was already pregnant. He proceeded to tie her tubes anyway, even though he wasn't supposed to(Good man!). He didn't tell my mom, who's name is Catherine, until after the operation.

That was me inside that uterus, that day. After that day my parents had fears that the drugs used for the operation messed some things up. After I was born, they viewed my feeble infantile intellect full of childish non-sequiturs with great suspicion. When they started to bring newspaper to lay on the floor around me at the table, in a restaurant, because of my seeming lack to understand where my mouth was in three dimensional space, they concluded Yup, our son is a retard. Thanks mom, thanks dad. The special ed courses in 1st grade did wonders for my self-esteem for the rest of my life.

The rather unexplainable part of this story is the existence of Brock, my younger brother. After having Brock, who of course, was also an accident, my mom had herself opened up again a second time. The doctor said that there was barely a trace, a tiny scar, that her tubes had been seperated. I guess sometimes those things just untie themselves and reattach.

In conclusion, the name "Catherine" makes me think of the word "catheter".

Here's the problem with getting pregnant; people get born. You would think that this is a "No duh" answer, but I think that if people really took that into consideration, they'd think twice before mixing baby batter and popping it in the oven. Now that I'm here, I have to enjoy everything. Every morsel of life. If I don't then I'll be miserable. And there isn't a single day that goes by that my happiness isn't somewhere at the expense of somebody else's. Most importantly, there isn't a single day that goes by that makes me realize I'm a day closer to death.

I was unborn for an eternity, and I will be dead for an eternity. What is happening now is just an unfortunate circumstance of conciousness. Temporary. It will pass, someday. The same can be said for all of us, and when you think about it that way...

... then perhaps we're all accidents.

free will is an illusion

2003-12-15T11:55:08Z

Disclaimer: The ideas expressed are totally open to argument.. so if you see a flaw in my logic then please feel free to point it out.. all things said will be based on logic, so I would appreciate that you not argue with points based on spiritual or religious beliefs. this applies to all posts. thanks

What is it to act freely? What is it to be morally responsible for your actions? Is anyone truly free? To be morally responsible you must have the ability to act freely. But acting freely doesn’t mean you have free will.

In all situations a person decides what they will do, turn right or turn left. Eat rice crispys or frosted flakes. Kill their step mom or not kill their step mom. Different people will make different decisions depending on the way they are, who there character is. Everyone reacts to the situations differently. So then, to be morally responsible for ones actions, one must be responsible for the way they are. One must be responsible for their character. A person can never be responsible for there character because, “in order to be truly morally responsible for what one does, it seems that one would have to be the ultimate cause or origin of oneself, or at least of some crucial part of one’s mental nature.” As I pointed out in the situation over character post, one is not responsible for there character from the start of there life. If you were to take two clones and put them into different families at just after there birth. One in a poor family in Africa with barely enough money to feed themselves, the other, an upper class family living in a condo in downtown New York. Already they have no responsibility for the way there character is, having been born with character traits out side of there control. But even as they get older you would see that even thou they are the same person.. They would have completely different outlooks on life, and on “good” and “evil”. If a person were to be responsible for their character, they would have to create themselves. “In fact, nearly all of those who believe in strong free will do so without any conscious thought that it requires ultimate self-origination”. In a situation which a person must make a moral decision, a person is self-conscious and usually aware that there is a choice, but that doesn’t mean they are responsible for making the “right” choice. In other words “One can certainly be a morally responsible agent in the sense of being aware of distinctively moral considerations when one acts. But one cannot be morally responsible in such a way that one is ultimately deserving of punishment or reward for what one does.”

Thou it is true that a persons character inclines a person to do one thing or another, it does not force them to… or does it? What factor would ultimately make a person choose one thing opposed to another? “For once again, it seems that the agent-self must be responsible for being the way it is, in order to be a source of true or ultimate responsibility. But this is impossible”

Free will defenders seem to be only looking at these two things: a person can conceivably decide to change themselves. And their experience of making choices.. But “the particular way in which one is moved to try to change oneself, and the degree of success in one’s attempt at change, will be determined by how one already is as a result of heredity and previous experience.”. “The conviction that fully explicit self-conscious awareness of one’s situation can be a sufficient foundation of strong free will is extremely powerful. The no-freedom theorists’ argument seems to show that it is wrong, but it is a conviction that runs deeper than rational argument...even after the validity of the no-freedom theorists’ argument has been admitted.”

If time had already happened, and a person could see in 4 dimentions and move through the fourth dimention as we move through 3d space, they we would know that free will didn’t exist. But no form time travel like that is even theorieticly possible(not to say that no forms of time travel are theoretcally, just none that would prove that time is perdetermined) in either quantum phyisics, or relativity, so we can never know if time is “moving”. but even if time is not predetermind, free will is still imposible.

So because no one can be held responsible for there actions.. There can be no “bad” people. It also means that every one is the way they are simply by chance.

thank you for reading

you saw god

2003-12-12T13:07:42Z

i would like to thank people for actually reading and responding. although it does suck that the reason most of the people responded is because i mention god in a way that they dont like. the god entrys comments more than double situation over character's, and something tells me thats not because they all agree with situation over character.

i would like to appologize for taking so long with the upcoming posts.. but the time travel one took some research.. and as i turns out, i couldnt really answer my theisis.. so, i may touch on it a bit in the free will post.. also im going to orginize my cases a little better, and talk more about both sides of the argument. but anyway.. expect a 'free will is an illusion' post very soon

thanks again to those who commented and read(esspecially if you did so for more reasons then just because you saw 'god')

Upcoming topics

2003-12-09T02:58:48Z

philosophy of time travel - discussing the possibilities using the special theory of relativity, and quantum physics..

free will can free will exist? and if it can, does it? what is the significance of free will?

i think i'll spend a while on free will, because it is of special interest to me.

k thanks

The Logical Problem Of Evil

2003-12-08T15:29:11Z

"Mackie and McCloskey can be understood as claiming that it is impossible for all of the following statements to be true at the same time.

1) God is omnipotent (i.e., all-powerful).
2) God is omniscient (i.e., all-knowing).
3) God is perfectly good.
4) Evil exists

If God is omnipotent, he would be able to prevent all of the evil and suffering in the world.

If God is omniscient, he would know about all of the evil and suffering in the world and would know how to eliminate or prevent it.

If God is perfectly good, he would want to prevent all of the evil and suffering in the world.

If evil and suffering exist, then God is either not omnipotent, not omniscient, or not perfectly good.

Putting the point more bluntly, this line of argument suggests that—in light of the evil and suffering we find in our world—if God exists, he is either impotent, ignorant or wicked."

another note... if god were God is omnipotent (i.e., all-powerful), you should not be able to fill in this blank... god cannot _____________.. yet it is queit easy to fill in that blank

God cannot lie
God cannot cheat
God cannot make a rock soo big that he cant pick it up
God cannot make 2+2=5
and so on

Charicter vs. Situation

2003-12-06T11:39:58Z

disclamer:the 'opinions' expressed are totally open to argument.. so if you see a flaw in my logic then please feel free to point it out.. all things said will be based on logic, so if you are religious or spirtual.. they dont apply to you, and i would appreciate that you not argue with points based on spiritual or religious belifes. this applys to all posts. thanks

ok so now on to situation over character.

do you beleive in situation over character or character over situation?

i have asked many people this question and im suprised at the number of character over situations that i get

i have trouble understanding this.. if we start from the begining of a persons life, they are born with character traits.. They do not chose these traits, they are compleatly situational. Then they live with parents whom they do not chose, in a country they do not chose, in a city that they do not chose with an income that they do not chose.. All these things that are totally situational, and they all afect who you will be for the rest of your life. So from the begining you have no chose in the type of person you will be. You have no choice in the intellegence you will or will not have.. In the pacients you will or will not have.. Just as you have no choice of the color of your skin. Or your outer beauty.

Yes it is true that "you" have the ability to make decisions, or put yourself into situations that will shape you into the person you want to be.. But when you say "you" have the ability: "you" is a thing made up of situations that are totally out of your control. Made up of chance.

so if you still say you believe in character.. then where do you say your character came from if not from situations?

You could look at a person as a clump of clay that, from the start is a random shape. and as they go throu life everything that they observe bounces off of them and makes an impresion that will never go away. And that is what makes them who they are.

I have noticed that people have a hard time accepting this. Even if that can't think of a reason why, they still hold to charicter over situation. I also noticed in my 2 years of asking people this question.. I think only one girl has ever said situation over character.. i attribute this to the fact that girls thinking emotionaly.. Wich is fine. As i just described.. Its not there fault. In fact as i just describe, nothing is truly anyones fault.

After coming to the conclusion that situation drives a persons life. I had a hard time decideing how that would change my life.. And i think that one of the major changes, is that it means there are no 'bad'people. you should then be able to frogive anyone for anything .. Of course we are still human, and we still have emotions, so.. it is sometimes hard to forgive people.. But i can honestly say that i dont hate anyone. And i also realized how lucky i am that im not a total peice of shit.. cuz it could'ev happend to anyone.

I also realized S over C makes all complemnts the invalid.. Any complement that you give or recive could be replaced with "your lucky!"... but i still like complemnts so i still give them out. : )

OH AND P.S I DONT CARE IF I SPELLED ANYTHING WRONG.. I DONT THINK YOUR SPECIAL CUZ YOU CAN SPELL. SO PLEASE DONT CORRECT ME. cept for you tareh : )

topic: situation over character

2003-12-06T10:37:27Z

ok i suppose i should write in my new journal..
even thou i dont expect that anyone will read it

ok i'll start a little of topic just to make sure we're all on the same page..
the 'opinions' expressed are totally open to argument.. so if you see a flaw in my logic then please feel free to point it out.. all things said will be based on logic, so if you are religious or spirtual.. this doest apply to you, and i would appreciate that you not argue with points based on spiritual or religious belifes. this applys to all posts. thanks