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Fruit Flies Show Spark of Free Will
Lucas123 writes "A study performed at the Free University Berlin on human free will has produced some unexpected results showing that fruit flies may have a spark of free will in their tiny brains." From the article: "Their behavior seemed to match up with a mathematical algorithm called Levy's distribution ... Future research delving further into free will could lead to more advanced robots, scientists added. The result, joked neurobiologist Björn Brembs from the Free University Berlin, could be "world robot domination."
I for one welcome our new cyborg fruit fly overlords!
The above comments are not guaranteed to make sense to anyone other than the author...
Who would have known?
Oh yeah? I bet that in 5 years, he won't consider that a very fun thing to joke about!
c++;
By their logic, chaotic systems = free will. So the weather really does have a mind of its own?
The result, joked neurobiologist Björn Brembs from the Free University Berlin, could be "world robot domination."
Well, I guess this means that I, for one, welcome our new Free-Willed Robotic Overlords...
...joked. Then hastily looked over his shoulder and shuddered.
I, for one, welcome our new freely willed robotic overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground uranium mines.
Help I'm a rock.
More like biologists that took a few too many liberal arts classes.
I don't know if it is the MSNBC write up or the "experiment" itself, but this has got to be the most vacuous thing I've ever read.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Okay, I should know better than to divine meaning from a mass-media source, but I tried.
First, Levy's distribution is a, you know, distribution, not an algorithm. I guess it meant to say that the algorithm weights a factor by Levy's distribution.
Then, after going through about eight paragraphs to find out what the hell the experiment did that was so relevant, it still didn't make sense. What bothered me was that one of the scientists see "free will" as being "somewhere between" deterministic and random. Now, I'm all for treating properties as cardinal and a matter of degree. But isn't free will, by definition, BOTH non-random and non-deterministic? How can it fall on a spectrum between them?
And what about the experiment makes "free will in flies" the best explanation?
(Oh, and on a side note: please spare us the story about religion: not all religions endorse free will, and not all atheists reject it.)
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
FTFA "UCLA neurobiologist Mark Frye noted that future work should isolate and understand the brain circuitry and genetic pathways responsible for this spontaneous behavior in flies "and whether or not they are conserved in other animals."
It seems that every week or so (can we get a Moore's law equivalent) we learn something new about brains (ours or some other animal) that we didn't know before. It's looking more and more like we are as programmed as any other lower animal but with higher level behaviors. For instance: your dog doesn't know how the tap water gets to your kitchen sink (maybe you don't either) but we humans do, though we don't know how the Universe was created, some day we might when we learn enough.
This does stand to be interesting to robotics. If you sit down to figure out the algorithm to get a robot out of a tight spot, 'a spark of free will' might be very VERY useful. The simple randomness of such might be what keeps most of us out of trouble most of the time anyway... we just don't realize it, or worse, we blame it on a deity?
I'm just amazed at how much we are learning these days compared to even just 50 years ago.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
We still debate whether humans have free will, but we can show that fruit flies have it.
If humans have an abundance of freewill, is it really surprising that less complex but similar creatures may have a small share?
Play Command HQ online
> Fruit Flies Show Spark of Free Will
If they've got free will, does that mean they can go to heaven or hell?
Not hard to imagine Fruit flies swarming over the Apple in the Garden of Eden, though they would probably have preferred a banana.
So the article seems to be saying that in the absence of external stimuli, the flies tend to move in patterns that match a mathematical model. I fail to see how this precludes them from merely having brains with hardwired instruction sets that tell them how to fly in zigzag patterns looking for food. Couldn't a robot do exactly that?
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Apparently I don't have any free will. Posting that reply was involuntary
Did anyone else read that as Fruit Flies Show Spark of Free Wii ?
Fruit flies are in fact the highest form of intelligent life. They are just baiting us, waiting for the right time to finally make their move and enslave us all. God help us.
And we probably never will be able to. That is what makes discussions like this purely academic. There is no known way to prove or disprove free will. I happen to believe I have it, but I can't prove it. Maybe someday our intelligence will evolve to a point where we will be able to answer these questions.
Even if we make a machine that *seems* to exhibit free will, we won't be any closer to understanding the subject. For now these discussions and dissertations are firmly entrenched in the realm of philospophy, not science.
Fruit flies want to be free!
-Stor
"Yeah well there's a lot of stuff that should be, but isn't"
I will choose a path that's clear... I will choose free will. [Maybe in the future, fruit flies can play the solo, too...]
If it's free will, how come it matches a mathematical distribution?
What theory of free will predicted this?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
fruit flies like a banana :)
-groucho marx (or was it karl)
CowboyNeal told me to post.
Woot, another fun result from UC San Diego, my alma mater.
Everyone put 'UCSD' in their tags! =)
Time flies like an arrow.
Fruit flies like a banana.
"Time flies like an arrow".
"Fruit flies like a bananna."
It's hard to wreck a nice beach...
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
If the fruit flies have free will, they can choose to DO EVIL.
And they should.
They've been slacking off! We humans have used our free will to spread destruction and mayhem over the whole earth. Next time I go out for the weekend and forget half of a mango, I expect to come back to a miniature third reich on my kitchen counter. I want to see the fruit flies herding gnats into concentration camps and gassing them. I want to see them goose-stepping their way into my neighbours flat. I want to see little tiny fruitfly propoganda posters extolling the virtues of fruit fly fuhrer and fruit fly folk.
After all, what's the point of having free will if you don't use it?
Evil little bastards will probably disappoint me, though.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Read that as "Future research delving further into free will could lead to more advanced robot jokes"?
I actually worked in the same lab as Bjorn Brembs while in grad school. You can read more about the experiment at his website.
http://brembs.net/spontaneous/
If the fruit flies had no "free will" then their behavior would be completely determined by outside circumstances or be random. As the article says, "free will" must exist somewhere between complete randomness and complete determinism. The result of the study is that flies in sensory deprivation exhibit a non-uniform random distribution -- that is, their behavior shows structure, and is neither completely random nor completely predictable. Hence, a spark of "free will".
For anyone interested in fruit fly brain activity check out this paper by Bruno van Swinderen in Bioessays:
f
http://vesicle.nsi.edu/users/bvs/bioessays2005.pd
Scroll down to section "Selective attention in the fly brain".
Albert
In today's news:
PETA spokesperson Pamela Anderson declares lawsuits against bug spray manufacturers, claiming the manufacturers have 'systematically enslaved, tortured, murdered free-willed, innocent creatures for profit.' On another news, thousands of animal rights activists infested themselves with West Nile Virus and malaria, claiming they would rather die of infectious diseases than to harm a single insect.
at least they're not one of those linux lemming dick smoking faggots. fucking mindless zombies.
Slashdot and various news outlets repeatedly refer to research on the PLOS-One web site as if its published in a journal. PLOS One is *not* a journal. Its a pre-publication, public comment forum, quite like slashdot actually. One editor decided a piece is interesting and the academic community is then invited to comment on it. To sum: if it sounds fishy, it probably is, and this article's argument (as many noted) doesn't make much sense. The fact that the fly canvasses an area in a way that lets is cover area efficiently does not imply either free will or lack of one either. In fact, observing behavior seems to be quite the wrong way to go at it. As Libet shows, people argue for 'free choice' occuring at certain times, where brain activity actually precedes those choices by ~ 400ms.
The report I heard on the radio said that the behavior of the fruit flies and people both followed this Levy distribution. Therefore, people must not have free will.
This is philosophy folks, not science.
What the research describes is the algorithm that fruit flies use when they are tracking down something that smells good. The science describes the algorithm. The publicity seeking scientist speculates about free will. He should stick to science.
"A study performed at the Free University Berlin on human free will has produced some unexpected results showing that fruit flies may have a spark of free will in their tiny brains."
Some of them even post on Slashdot.
That free will just lasts a few milliseconds! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bug_zapper
Engineering is the art of compromise.
That "spark" of free will was that @#@*! fruit fly hitting my bug zapper. Human free will to invent bug-killing devices trumps an insect's free will to kiss the suBZZZZZZTTTTTTT.
After watching a colony of ants outwit myself, my wife, and the poisoned baits we placed to annihilate them, I find it quite possible that the collective intelligence of meek creatures possessed of a little free will could rival the intelligence of a human being. ;^)
Ants can work together as well as we can, why not drosophila too? Remember those stories about the bees dying? Maybe they just decided not to come back to their cage, and are in hiding. Worse yet, maybe they've joined the killer bees!
The bee revolution will not be televised.
--
Toro
I would show a few fruit flies a spark for that.
It's all good.
World dominates robot!
In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
that proves that either fruit flies or banana have free will.
They first use the word "random" in the popular sense, where it means in this context something like "accidental;" after all, will must be purposeful so it cannot be "random". But then they also use the word "random" in a more scientific context. By saying the fruit fly's behavior is not "random", they seem to mean that its behavior at time "t" is somehow correlated with what the fruit fly's behavior was at time "0". These two uses of the word don't really have anything to do with each other. Free will may be incompatible with the former meaning, but it is perfectly compatible with the latter. I can certainly choose to move in a new, uniformly distributed direction every minute, depending on, say, what a random number generator tells me to do, perhaps because I think it will help me to get out of a room. So I don't understand why these biologists are trying to talk about "free will" in the context of this experiment.
I think the bigger question than 'is there free will' is:
Does the internal process used to determine behavior matter, if the end result can be thought of as a black-box. In other words, if an entity behaves a certain way (random, non-random, semi-random, predictable, unpredictable) but it is impossible to tell if the internal process generating that behavior is using free-will, computations, soul, hampsters-running-on-wheels, then DOES IT MATTER?
How do you define free-will if the result of free-will and non-free-will are indistinguishable? Is there a difference?
Can there be a difference?
Someday the question will be more than theoretical if and when we build an artificial intelligence that swears he thinks, therefore he is.
How is his "fake" being any different from our "real" being if there is no external difference?
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
if the fruit flies' behavior matches up with an algorithm, that would seem to me to suggest that the flies in fact do NOT exhibit free will. sure, one can argue that making decisions is tantamount to free will, but such decision making could simply be a response to the environment. a tiger is trying to eat me so i will 'decide' to run.
multiple stimuli may, of course, suggest simultaneous contradictory responses. i want to see the end of the movie, but i REALLY have to pee. which do i do? the stronger desire (or response to the environment, within or without) will win, but it may take a moment to compute.
people will draw about any conclusion they like from any set of data. i, of course, am a determinist.
A robotic program with a bit of randomness in it wouldn't fit our basic experience: which is that of weighing prospects both immediately before us and beyond our sensory horizon, and from that conscious consideration both forming determinations to take one path or another, and also sometimes foregoing all the paths considered and setting off to explore a new direction. The point is twofold: we're doing this consciously (not to rule out unconscious components), and it's much of what our consciousness is usually concerned with (the "default mode"). If someone does something unconsciously, it's not done of free will.
Randomness in a program does nothing to introduce consciousness; thus the program with randomness added has no more free will than it did before the randomness was added. Randomness has nothing whatsoever to do with free will.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Finally somebody is making sense. I completely agree with crayz. This is a complete abuse of the words "free will", which seems to me to either have the intention of promoting or distorting the religious definition of "free will". Instead of using the words "free will", they should have simply said exactly what it is, some combination of chaos and determinism, and left it at that.
I'm really disappointed in the Slashdotter's responses, once again. Whereas, it seems that they recognized that something wasn't right with the article, they didn't make the effort to explicitly point out what was wrong (excluding crayz). It seems, more and more, that the press, and researchers, are trying to add a "flare" for the dramatic to make the story sound more amazing than it really is.
Furthermore, it's really SAD to think that Slashdotters are supposed to be the "bright" people. It makes me not even want to THINK about the "not so bright" people in our society. We really are turning into an "Idiocracy". It's a funny movie, but it's not going to be so funny when it actually happens in real life. We are RAPIDLY approaching 100% stupidity in our society, and unfortunately, technology is to blame. The pacifying effects of technology have lulled us into a collective "stupor". Unless we counteract the pacifying effects of technology, with some OTHER technology (which SOMEHOW has the reverse effect), we, as humanity, are going to fall asleep someday, and never wake up.
By "choice," do they mean free of self-determination and action independent of external causes?
Is it even possible for a living creature (human, animal, insect, etc.) to elect to do something in such a manner, being based on absolutely no external influence (i.e. environmental influences, genetics, a person's needs/well-being)?
Link to the published workn ?articleURI=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0000443
http://www.plosone.org/article/fetchArticle.actio
More at the author's blog
http://bjoern.brembs.net/
Maybe a serum for Windows users can be developed.
Freedom? In Germany?
I thought the USA was the only place where there was freedom...
Max.
> My free will can't override my instinctual reaction to kill whoever modded that insightful.
Sure, but wouldn't killing them send them to a better place?
#1 should be "Free Willy."
Then you should be modded higher.
God told me to tell you to shut up.
Mod Parent Up (funny)
You're trying to tell me something other than a person has free will?
How preposterous. Next I suppose you'll be telling me animals have souls!
j'ai découvert une démonstration vraiment admirable (de ce théorème général) que cette si
Well, as fruit flies might demonstrate... having free will doesn't oppose the possibility that one can have a teeny tiny brain.
...and you only just shared it with us? Many have died in vain.
Or maybe your essentially newtonian and deterministic view of reality is based on assumptions which conveniently can never be proven or disproven. You know, just like crazy religious people.
I mean, does it even occur to you that if you could, somehow, recreate the *exact* same state of affairs twice to see what would happen, then it might still be possible for two different outcomes to occur? Not because of anything measurable or predictable, but because that's just how things are?
If you think "physics" or, for that matter, "reality" is all newtonian levers and collisions then you will no doubt say that it's impossible. But if reality simply doesn't behave like that then you might be wrong, and you couldn't prove it one way or another.
To take one, limited example: what if in a given situation a whole range of outcomes happen, but the infinite number of different outcomes lead to an infinite number of different, quasi-parallel universes? Simply because your consciousness is limited to observing one of these at a time doesn't mean that it's "the only thing which could have happened", does it? However, to you, there is only one, seemingly consistent, version of reality. I'm sure there are problems with this example but perhaps it conveys the essential point.
More significantly: if everything is deterministic based on "physics", could you please tell us where the rules of physics come from, and why they are as they are and not some other way? For instance, why do massive bodies attract and not repel? Why does light travel at the speed it does? At some point there is an arbitrary "decision" as to how things work which cannot be explained by pre-determined rules - unless it's just elephants all the way down...
Read Pynchon.
Assuming for the moment what this group is trying to measure is reasonable, how do we know "completely uniform white surrdoundings" would be uninteresting to a fruit fly? Isn't this a bit anthropocentric? What are their sensory modes and ranges? Perhaps the glue or copper had an interesting smell or burned them -- or the "white" walls appeared like a intricate visual field of some kind. What was the temperature? How isolated was the air (could the flys smell the tech's lunch)? What was the control group? I'd like to assume the researchers picked this environment for good reasons...but without a personal understanding of fruit fly physiology it isn't clear to me at a glance they have isolated the variables of interest.
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
I misread that one, thought it said "Free Wii" :)
Naturally my interest was immediately sparked
The Bigger The Headache The Bigger the Pill
Wow! I've been /.ed. Well, I never... :-)
/. discussion, I think I've lost my free will. Now where did I put it? Anybody here seen it? Maybe these pesky flies stole it? :-)
Once I realized it, I felt so compelled... I, I just had to address the
Of course, our original study makes no mention of free will, it is not a scientific concept. However, spontaneity even in flies makes us ponder what, if anything, this might entail for our subjective experience of free will in a macrocosm we believe to be largely deterministic. Therefore we addressed the issue with an ironic question in our press release: "Do fruit flies have free will?"
http://brembs.net/spontaneous
Of course, the media will drop the question mark, because questions don't sell. Some journalists even told me their editors told them to emphasize the free will thing precisely for this reason. That's fine with me. The debate got re-ignited and that's a good thing, I believe. The discussion here shows that. You can see all the coverage and blogosphere discussion linked at:
http://bjoern.brembs.net/
Scientifically, the most important aspect (which understandably got a little buried by the media) is that we found evidence for a brain function which appears evolutionarily designed to always spontaneously vary ongoing behavior. There is tentative evidence that such a function may be very widespread in the animal kingdom, including humans. Why would all brains have this function? If this were indeed the case, we might have discovered the first evidence for something truly fundamental to our understanding of brains.
Take it easy folks,
Bjoern
Science is a lot like sex. Sometimes something useful comes of it, but that's not the reason we're doing it.
"I for one, welcome our old human overlords!" - a fruit fly
Where?
Those god damn fruit flies got my free Wii.
The scientists inferred free will from observing the fruit fly apply for a job in Dell desktop support.
(It was turned down due to being overqualified).
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...why do they deserve a free Wii?
It's become self aware.
Yup, that's why we call them animals.
Throughout history, people felt that what they experienced is what reality is, and they said 'that's just how things are'. But then science came along, and showed that things may be analyzed even further, and objects that seemed to be atomic were actually composites.
So why should we accept the 'that's just how things are?' perhaps it is true, perhaps not. Given that science has revealed so many things in the last few centuries, I am inclined towards not having found the limits to reality.
You mean we can not explain, not 'cannot be explained'. In fact, we are not able to know if its elephants all the way down or not. By the way, both outcomes seem illogical: the infinite elephants hypothesis seems illogical for obvious reasons, but the single elephant that designed the universe is also illogical, given that the term 'creation' assumes cause and effect, as we know it.
Here is what might be relevant in Pubmed. The abstract does not really mentions "free will". The closest it gets to "free will" is
"spontaneous behavior". The relevance to humans you could scratch from (if you really try) "Lévy-like probabilistic behavior patterns are evolutionarily conserved".
The author (righfully so) says that. I will add to it my 2 cents that the concept of "free will" is more philosophical and moral than scientific.
So much for the "spark" of "oxymoron"...
Just one more way overstretched title at
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Not sure what they think they found.
Jokes can and do get old.
Look up "superdeterminism".
Amazingly, most of the pain and *weirdness* from interpretations of QM comes from an assumed free will of the human observer. John Bell talks about this and has used the term "superdeterminism" to explain a universe where even us, the human observer, lacks true free will.
Spooky action at a distance is explainable in a universe that is 100% predetermined. But physicists for years have been assuming human free will for their explainations of what QM tells us.
So while you say "What exactly do you think you have proved with by observing that in an identical world, things would be identical?"
I reply, no one's proved anything, but amazingly that very obvious statement has escaped the physics world for decades.
And please, realize that true determinism has *never* been disproven. Amazingly, every time we've read that, it's always been under the assumption that the human observer *has* true free will. In which case the rest of the universe acts oddly. Remove that assumption and everything falls in line.
We must teach these flys religion to crush this spark of free will from them!
Wikipedia knows all. Hmm, it doesn't appear that Slashdot likes Cyrillic.
Oh, great, now I've triggered the lameness filter. Maybe by adding this paragraph, I can get around it. Really? 6 simple Cyrillic characters (and 6 question marks) makes this lame? Maybe if I add some more to this paragraph, it will forgive me. Now it's accusing me of making ASCII art. Huh, well, just look at the Wikipedia article, and I'll delete my "art".
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
"Free will" is just a fancy name for decision-making that we don't understand. No-one knows what it is, or how it could be measured, or even whether it's meaningful or just a by-product of decision-making interacting with the language faculty.
Let's start calling them Freedom Flies.
..... best things in life are not so free..........
Confused by your argument.
"If there are souls and magic and God(s) those all would be obeying some set of laws, and as far as I'm concerned these would be a part of the whole set of Universal laws (i.e. physics that we haven't discovered yet.)"
I thought the whole concept of a God(s) was that the God(s) is the one who made up the "laws of nature" and the universe in the first place and can bend or break them at the God(s)'s will/desire (since he/she/they are the one(s) who laid that down in the first place)? Or am I missing something from your argument? Not trying to get in on the whole "Does Free Will Exist?" debate, just trying to get your point... if you have one.
If you don't have "free will", then you never make any real choices, as all your decisions have been pre-made by God.
If that is the case, then God is just a puppeteer, playing out whatever puppet show He happens to like.
There is no Good or Evil, there is only God - and God wills the acts of the murderer or rapist every bit as much as He wills the actions of the teacher, preacher, or scientist.
No heaven, no hell, no salvation, no redemption - because these depend on humans making CHOICES, and choices are only meaningful if there is "free will".
"Free will" is a core aspect of Christianity. Without it, Christ Himself is meaningless.
Personally, I'm an Atheist, and a Secular Humanist at that. There are no gods or any other form of supernatural forces at work in the Universe. We, our sentience, and our free will, are the result of a spectacularly unlikely series of events, and so are immeasurably precious.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
I thought the whole concept of a God(s) was that the God(s) is the one who made up the "laws of nature" and the universe in the first place and can bend or break them at the God(s)'s will/desire (since he/she/they are the one(s) who laid that down in the first place)? Or am I missing something from your argument? Not trying to get in on the whole "Does Free Will Exist?" debate, just trying to get your point... if you have one.
Well, it does actually touch on Free Will since I believe that even God would be a slave to It's own nature. If God exists, as far as everyone and everything else is concerned the law of the Universe could be "whatever the hell God wants, is." However, not even God could control what to want. In essence the fundamental law of the universe would be God's nature, whatever that is, but nothing can ultimately control it's own nature because any decisions to change one's nature stem from the current nature (as well as external input of course, though for God there may not be any external input.)
This isn't the place for a theological debate but your conception of Christianity ignores the thinking of Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Bezos, Spurgeon, Edwards, Gill, Broadus, Boyce and countless others. You are adopting an implicitly Pelagian/Arminian position that was rejected by the Roman Catholic church for centuries (although later adopted) and rejected vehemently by the Reformers. Luther's "Bondage of the Will" is a classic text along with Augustine's writings "Against the Palagians." The Bible presents a sovereign God who governs all of creation and simultaneously holds humans responsible for their actions. Predestination and Election are central doctrines of the Christian gospel and they don't allow for "Free Will" as it is typically conceived.
Redemption is God's sovereign choosing of some persons unto everlasting life out of His mere mercy, not on the basis of foreseen merit or anything good within us. It is He that quickens the spiritually dead heart and illuminates it with the light of the truth. We then respond naturally in favor of this illumination if and when it comes. Salvation is a work of God, wholly of grace.
The workings out of God's sovereignty are mysterious and ultimately unknowable since He has not revealed the "how" of it. But as a Christian I accept it and believe it, many would not and unfortunately they miss a big part of who God is and how awesome salvation truly is in light of our natural condition.
And that is my last word on this theological line.
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
So you're saying that god can't exist because the very existence of such a being is impossible? But even if it did exist it really wouldn't? I agree.
So you're saying that god can't exist because the very existence of such a being is impossible? But even if it did exist it really wouldn't? I agree.
Depending on your definition of "god." I believe true free will to be logically impossible. A being could no more have free will than it could make 1+1=3 without redefining the terms "1", "+", "=", and "3". So if your definition of a god requires it to be able to do the logically impossible, the existence of such a being is a logical impossibility itself.
Zap! ... Crackle ...
Hmm, I'm thinking free will for a fruit fly might not work so well in practice.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Fruit Flies Show Spark of Free Wii? Where do I sign up?
Animal abusing fucks can fuck off, fuck you fucking animal murdering fuckers of fuck.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Many people argue that philosophy has nothing to do with the problems of real life. Nonsense, say the philosophers, we're very interested in the problems of real life, such as "how can we reach an empirical definition of 'real'? " and "what do we mean by 'life'? "
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
How do we know the robots want to have free will? Do we have a right to force free will upon them?
... "But it's turtles all the way down!"
Cool! This information is bound to come in useful at a later date.
"I find your ideas fascinating and would like to subscribe to your newsletter".
BTW on the Satirical Show the Chaser they asked "How much have we really learnt?", dressed a guy up in a snake outfit, took a basket of apples and handed them out in front of churches, synagogues and mosques (yes, they're open too) over Easter. Everyone who took one was labeled "SINNER". An Orthodox Jew took the Apple and said "C'mon, what are you selling, really?" The snake replied "Why can't a snake hand out apples without being accused of doing something wrong?" The only person that refused the Apple was Sydney's Gay Archbishop George Pell (or is he Anti-Gay? I keep getting that mixed up!) I think the Easter Episode was #6: http://abc.net.au/tv/chaser/war/vodcast/
I think your argument boils down to the first cause argument, but I could be wrong.
This argument can't be won on physical grounds alone.
I think the determinism argument holds, but the randomness argument is much weaker. Events that are random within a given system could simply be events that are acted upon by entities outside that system. Thus, in order to prove that randomness is really randomness, you must prove that nothing exists outside the given system to cause that randomness. This is inherently impossible, and I think is precisely what the incompleteness theorem is all about.
If we assume that there are forms of randomness in the universe that are unpredicatable within the system of the universe (I think a reasonable assumption, given modern physics) then that leaves a great deal of room for what is popularly called free will. Trying to describe events outside that system can only be done on a philosophical basis, since, as previously stated, they are unobservable from within the system of the universe. I agree that your first cause argument makes sense, but it is fundamentally a philosophical argument, and not a scientific one.
To put it more succinctly: Physics says "yup, that's random." Philosophy says "what if it really isn't?"
Ahhh, but there's the rub, and it's one you're missing but the philosophers already know about.
Physics is largely based on the idea that the universe is experienced the same by all observers (I'll leave relativistic effects out of the discussion.) Observability in physics, especially in the form of experimentation, really means observable, in the same way, to multiple individuals. However, there is one well-known area of the world that is observable, but not observable to multiple people at the same time. That is consciousness. I am able to observe my own consciousness, maybe even make some measurements of it, but it is impossible for me to observe your consciousness in any way. This is a dramatic failing of our physical laws, and for the time being, something that they are utterly unequipped to describe.
It's possible that science will one day have a way to observe consiousness, but as an observer, how will I know if I'm observing your consciousness, or just altering my own?
That's how I first read the subject for this and I was thinking, "Great. The fruit flys will soon start spamming everyone telling them how they TOO can get a 'Free Wii'..."
I do not believe in any "supreme beings" on/above earth controlling our minds or destiny. Most of our future and faith can be build and broke down by our very own; humans. I believe in the creations of every single individual on this world; I believe in the word "unique" together with the characteristics of our fellow man; which gets defined by growing up, learning and falling, which will make one dense or sweet as heaven; it defines .. us - like we are ..
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Although, I also do not deny there is NOT any superbeingwhatever above us; but; if there is, I'd first like to have a good chat with it before I really believe such. I'm someone who needs to see before I believe in invisible faith. I trust in science but do also accept some of science is still not fully understood by us; maybe because we are so locked in that idea "something else" must be part of all this instead of keeping the mind neutral
On the other hand, I do not deny certain positions of planets and stars can have influence on a human life; as we can see many people with same characteristics as others in the same zodiac although, how far can you think and how far can you believe ?
Not everything I ever believed in was always true, why shouldn't that affect religion? I'd say I am probably partially atheist and agnostic; I don't deny but I will sure not start to believe in extras in it praying to any diety what-so-ever
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
At first I thought the subject said "Fruit Flies Show Spark of Free Wii". Will Nintendo stop at nothing to gain market share? -- Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Whoa there!
You can't just drop that particular bomb and then scamper away and hide.
A "sovereign God who governs all of creation" (by which I take you mean that nothing happens without God's direct intervention) and "a God who holds humans responsible for their actions" are mutually exclusive - otherwise you have a God who makes humans do certain things and then punishes them for carrying out His will.
That's a pretty sadistic God, don't you think? To hold out the possibility of salvation (via the Gospels) but then deny it to all except those he chooses to make follow his commandments?
You seem well educated, but this moral philosophy/theology is frankly horrifying. It means that any particular person is either saved or dammed at birth, and nothing they do has any bearing whatsoever on their ultimate fate. Furthermore, it makes God directly responsible for all the evil in the world, because those doing evil are only carrying out God's instructions to them.
What sect are you? Seriously?
Every Christian philosophy that I have encountered to date has centered around the concept of free will. One must CHOOSE to be saved. One must CHOOSE to live one's life in a godly manner, and so earn a place in heaven (or a deserved place in hell) Different sects differ on the mechanics of the process, but at the core they share the belief that one's eternal reward is a function of the consequences of one's choices and actions, not on a rigid pre-destiny.
I'm frankly horrified - what a nihilistic worldview you have!
Please, enlighten me on where I have got it wrong.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Fine, I'll go a little further...
A "sovereign God who governs all of creation" (by which I take you mean that nothing happens without God's direct intervention) and "a God who holds humans responsible for their actions" are mutually exclusive - otherwise you have a God who makes humans do certain things and then punishes them for carrying out His will.
By those statements I mean that God is able to control all aspects of creation via whatever means he desires: supernaturalism. Nothing takes place that God does not either expressly decree or willfully permit. God's restraining grace (an expression of common grace) is that thing which keeps the human race from annihilating itself or otherwise expressing its totally depraved state. We actually will to do evil. Our fallen natures incline us inescapably towards sin to the extent that we are all born spiritually dead and without hope in and of ourselves, this is the taint of original sin that gives rise to the reformed doctrine of Total Depravity/Inability. This state is what Paul talks about in Romans when he describes all having sinned and having fallen in Adam.
That's a pretty sadistic God, don't you think? To hold out the possibility of salvation (via the Gospels) but then deny it to all except those he chooses to make follow his commandments?
Your overall concern is again addressed by Paul in Romans when he describes vessels "prepared for wrath" in contrast to those "prepared for mercy." Paul addresses whether God can be called just in doing this and Paul's reply is that the pot has no business questioning the potter.
You seem well educated, but this moral philosophy/theology is frankly horrifying. It means that any particular person is either saved or dammed at birth, and nothing they do has any bearing whatsoever on their ultimate fate. Furthermore, it makes God directly responsible for all the evil in the world, because those doing evil are only carrying out God's instructions to them.
Regarding my education I have an undergraduate degree in Christian Ministry and a minor in Biblical Studies from a Southern Baptist seminary and am planning to enroll in a Masters of Divinity program focusing in church history this fall. Hopefully one day I'll earn my PhD, so while I am not overly academically credentialed I have aspirations of such and try to keep myself sharp as I go.
All persons have either been elected unto salvation or passed over and condemned by their own sin before the foundation of the world. Before Adam was ever created the eternal condition of every soul that has ever, or will ever exist was already decided and fixed. Because of Adam we are unable to make any truly right decisions apart from the grace of God. God is the one responsible for salvation, which is why it is gracious. Were it up to us our sin would keep us from it, but nothing can separate a person from the love of God. Man is responsible for sin, Adam's original defiance has tainted all of us and placed us in a state where we naturally desire to sin. God permits and restrains sin according to his own purposes, but we actually will to sin, sin comes naturally and we are responsible. The fact that God permits sin does not make Him chiefly responsible since He does not commit the sinful act and because He holds us responsible. The exact way this works is lost on us because of the incomprehensibility of how God supernaturally interacts with His creation. It's a matter of faith, not logically explainable.
What sect are you? Seriously?
I am a Reformed Baptist. I am a member of a Southern Baptist Church and am Calvinistic. Conservative Presbyterians would have similar doctrinal views. The views I hold are not unusual in the context of Christian history and have been around for centuries in formal teaching. Not to mention the biblical basis for the doctrines of predestination and election are inescapable in Paul and other new testament writings. In Ameri
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
Let me ask you this, not as a Christian, but as a thinking, rational human being:
Are you OK with this?
Is not the Christian God supposed to be a God of Love, a God who so loved the world (and by implication, humanity) that he sacrificed his only son such that they might be saved?
How does that jibe with this version of God, who has a priori decided who will be saved and who will not, such that the masses of the unsaved are doomed to everlasting torment from the day of their birth? How can you justify a God who willfully - WILLFULLY, given that nothing happens in His creation that he does not allow, so this is ON PURPOSE - condemns the majority of his creation to graceless lives and eternal torment?
In your world, nothing any man does is ever of any consequence. No act of personal heroism, no act of grace, no act of love or sacrifice means ANYTHING, because everybody is just following the script? Then what's the point?
At least in a theology that admits free will, one's choices mean something. One can choose to live a virtuous life, and be rewarded. One can choose to live a life of wickedness, and be punished. And most importantly, one can start wicked, and reform, and be redeemed.
Effectively, there is no redemption in your worldview. We're all just automatons, living out our script, and whatever evil we do is of no consequence, either to our own souls or to the lives and souls of our fellow man.
And you are OK with this?
How does someone, a student of divinity no less, paint themselves into a theological corner that requires them to transform the Christian God of Love into a grim puppeteer?
I'm sorry sir, I remain utterly horrified and shocked to my very core. That anyone could read the Bible and come to such grim conclusions (and clearly you aren't alone) is perhaps the saddest (in terms of sorrow and despair) thing I have ever encountered.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
LOL!
You're defining God's love as omnibenevolence, assuming that God must love all persons in the same way. This isn't born out by Scripture. Did God love Pharoah and the Egyptians in the same way He loved Moses and the Israelites, killing thousands in the process of redeeming a nation? God hardened Pharoah's heart and poured out wrath on the nation of Egypt while expressing love for the Israelites. Certainly God was not being equally loving in this circumstance, was He?
God is not omnibenevolent. He shows a universal love for creation in that He sustains it and restrains sin in any fashion. Yet He expresses particular love for His chosen people, the Israel of the Old Testament and the Church after the work of Christ. Christ did not die to redeem all mankind, that is universalism and it is not in line with scripture. Christ died to redeem a particular people, chosen before creation to be the object of God's special and gracious love. The offer of salvation is universal but only those whom God effectually calls are able to respond positively.
The way the Doctrines of Grace, as they are typically referred to in Reformed circles, fit together are intricate and leave certain aspects of God's working in this world a mystery.
God sovereignly governs all aspects of creation, permitting and restraining sin and working goodness in many. Yet we have a will that we are accountable for, when we act we must accept the consequences and be responsible. The exact way this fits with God's sovereign governance in light of the vast evil in the world is a mystery to us for now.
We our condemned for our sins and it is a positive working of God that raises many to spiritual life from our naturally dead state, this is the grace of the gospel that while we were dead in our trespasses and sins we were made alive together with Christ. Somehow all that is wrong in the world will glorify God, how that will occur is a mystery. But God is supreme and sovereign Lord over creation and we are responsible for our actions. How these two fit together is a mystery, it is a result of our natural minds being unable to grasp the supernatural mind of God.
The mystery that keeps coming up is the tension between God' sovereign authority over creation and our accountability before Him for our actions. They do not seem to match-up but they are both testified to in scripture. "Free will" is not part of the Bible, yet man's accountability is. How our moral responsibility squares with the absolute sovereignty of God is not explained fully in the Bible and even if it were I doubt we would be able to comprehend it. How can we as finite creations possibly understand the workings of the infinite God who created us. How can we as the pots, shaped by the potters hands, understand the purposes and mind of God?
It is a mystery of faith. And this side of eternity it is incomprehensible.
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
So God prefers one people over another (over all others, in fact)
Is that right? Would we accept that conduct out of any human institution?
If there is tension - another word for "contradiction" - between God's sovereign authority over creation and human accountability for our actions, does that not suggest that one tenet or the other is in error?
The Bible is a human work, subject to human fallibility. Could this not be a case where human hands and hearts and minds failed to properly express God's will?
I'm sorry, but all this "the pot questions not the potter" is a cop-out, an intellectually bankrupt philosophy.
Let me ask you this again - are you OK with this?
I give you permission to temporarily cast God in your own image - would the God you would create be THIS God?
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
God is free to love whomever He wishes. We do not deserve God's love, that is the lie of universalism. God loves all persons in some form or they would not be alive, but God has chosen to love some in a particular way, redeeming them from sin and giving to them redemption through Christ.
Tension exists wherever the natural and the supernatural meet, Jesus was fully God and fully man. We don't know how it works. God is sovereign, yet man is responsible. It is a divine mystery that is not reasonable or logical, but that does not make it untrue. It's a matter of faith.
I am fine with what I believe. If I weren't I wouldn't believe it. I am often confounded by it or fail to understand it. But that's ok, I seek to know all I can and recognize my own failings when I fail to grasp certain things.
I give you permission to temporarily cast God in your own image - would the God you would create be THIS God?This question is somewhat faulty in my estimation. If I were to create God as I saw fit, or were free to imagine that God was as I wished Him to be He would be markedly different, because I would be casting myself into who I wanted God to be. He wouldn't be God, merely a reflection of myself.
But I don't have that liberty. I am constrained by what God has wrought in me, making me to believe and to look to the Bible for the revelation of Him. I do not believe the Bible to be merely a human work. I am an inerrantist. I believe the Bible to be divinely inspired and inerrant in the autographs and without the stain of human failings. It expresses all that man needs to know about God and is God's final and sole revelation to man of Himself.
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther