Reason #4: The idea of an all-loving God is inconsistent

Current Verdict: Don't know
Certainty (-5 to 5): 0

1. God is all-good and all-loving.

2. God has free will.
- makes sense actually. We are made in the image of Him. He created us out of love. He gave us his only son. Jesus died for us when he could have chose not to. A being that has free will is more perfect than a being that is acting as a robot would. All these imply that God has free will.

3. Free will means the ability to do evil, as well as good.

4. Since God has free will, then he could have done evil.

5. But if God could have done evil, then he is not all-good.

6. Therefore, the idea of an all-good God is inconsistent; God cannot be all good.

Reason #2: The possibility of Artificial Intelligence

Current Verdict: Against the existence of God
Certainty (-5 to 5): -2

Ever watched the show A.I by Steven Spielberg? Do you believe that Artificial Intelligence is possible? What I mean is that one day we would be able to create life, real life that thinks and has free will.

I am convinced that one day this is a certainty. This is because I believe that our intelligence came about through natural causes (evolution). I believe that if we recreate the same steps that created us, new sentient life can emerge. My confidence comes from the twin enterprises of genetics and computing. While this process should be much more complicated and take much longer than one usually imagines, I still think that is possible.

Edmond (a philosopher friend) believes that AI is incompatible with Catholic beliefs, for God is the creator of life and we are not God. I think he might be a little too fast in saying this. It is possible that by giving us free will, God has given us the ability to be like God, and thus to create new life. Another possibility is that God has guided our hands in creating this new life. Thus, should AI one day be created, Catholics might still be able to reconcile this with their faith. At this point, the existence of AI appears neutral with regards to the question of whether God exists.

But imagine that we could arbitrarily create life, with varying abilities - some with incomplete intelligences. Imagine a race of slave robots that are semi-intelligent. Imagine that instead of robots they were flesh and blood beings. Remember the restaurant at the end of the universe in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? In it a sentient cow asks the protaganist which part of the cow he wants to eat and starts to promote the different sections of its body. It explains in a bored voice: "Don't worry. I've been bred for this purpose. I'm happy to give up my life for your dinner. Now, the sirlion.. i must say, what a choice.."

Is such a being even possible? If it is, it does goes against the idea of a God that is loving and just. I don't believe that if a sentient race of aliens existed God would prefer Humans over them and give humans dominion over them. Instead, all sentient life appears to be equal in the eyes of God. The possibility of "semi"-sentience and the arbitrary creation of life thus opposes such a concept of God.

Another way of looking at it is to say that the soul appears to be created by evolution. If we understand 'soul' here to mean the same thing as minds having consciousness and rational thought, then evolution does seem able to explain how the human mind, or 'soul', came about. Pope John Paul says that evolution can be accepted as creating the human body, but not the human soul. The possibility of A.I. contradicts the idea that the soul comes from God, since we can create and manipulate these souls arbitrarily.

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Reason #1: The Problem of Evil

Current verdict: Against the existence of God
Certainty (-5 to 5): -3

"Perhaps the greatest obstacle for religious belief met by a christian believer in his or her own reflections and coming also from unbelievers, is the obvious existence of evil in the world evil seems to negate any possibility of a loving God and of a revelation from Him. I am not thinking here of moral evil (sin) Sin is perhaps inevitable considering the fact that man is free to obey or disobey God's commandments Rather I am thinking of things like natural catastrophes (floods, earthquakes, fires, plagues) which apparently destroy indiscriminately the good and the bad alike Plainly this is not a perfect world. If Godi s all-powerful and all-loving, why did God create a world in which there is so much suffering? One answer is that the Creator did not, but suffering came in as a retribution for the sin of the first man ("original sin") when he disobeyed God. While this answer still tries the faith of the Christian believer it offers nothing to the unbeliever. For the , unbeliever a more acceptable answer might be that God created a world good enough to serve as the theater of man's activities, yet imperfect enough to force man to use his own ingenuity and skills to control the forces of nature Including the destructive ones. A third answer, satisfying again only to a Christian believer, is that all sufferings, all injustices and inequities, will be set right in the next life. In the final analysis, the problem of evil in the world remains unsolved."

Ever heard of the silly question: "If a tree falls in the forest and no one sees or hears it, did it fall?" Well, suppose that a tree falls in the forest and kills an ant that happened to be passing by, which I am absolutely sure has happened before. Now, could it not have been that God could have made is such that the tree fell without killing the ant. Surely there are moments when no ants are underneath. The ant need not have died needlessly. Isn't it in some sense evil that it died when it need not have?

But that is the reality of the world that this supposedly perfect God created. Nature is not really perfect. The reality of nature is that many animals die horrible deaths and only a few survive to reproduce and almost none survive to a 'ripe old age'.

For me, there is no satisfactory answer why a God that is all good would make the world the way it is.

Is a probalistic cause a problem for free will?

Is a probalistic cause a problem for free will? A sociobiologist might want to claim that epigenetic rules (or - behaviour causing genes) only play out probabilistically. Let us suppose that the sociobiologist is able to provide a clear account of a truly probalistic mechanism, perhaps quantum fluctuations, such that an action is really is caused by genes say 90% of the time. Although not strictly deterministic, this scenario still seems to pose a problem for free will.

Take for example William Rowe's account that an action is free if the agent causes the volition to do the action, and it was in his power not to cause his volition to do the action. According to a sociobiologist, it is the gene that causes the volition to do the action (my defective gene caused me to hate and thereby murder). It does not seem to matter that the causation is effective only 90% of the time, for the cause of the action was not you as a free agent, but your genes. Therefore, the charge of genetic 'determinism' seems to remain even though the process is not deterministic.

Quantum physics a way out of determinism?

The true probablistic nature of quantum mechanics provides a possible mechanism for free will. However, there are problems with stating clearly how it might work.

First, the macro will wash out all the micro fluctuations at the quantum level. Take the computer. Electronics make use of quantum processes but yet always produce a determined outcome. Yes, it is possible that a computer bit might flip once every 100 years because of quantum flux, but that obviously is not enough to get us out of determinism. Instead, one must claim that the brain, for example, makes use of quantum processes such that the randomness actually transmits to our actions. Perhaps this is plausible after all

Second, true randomness seems to suggest pure chance. There must be an explanation of how real decisions have a basis on random fluctuations. I suppose that our decisions can be defined as randomness that takes place in us. At least its not determined.

Third, String theory suggests that quantum fluctuations might be predictable, or at least explainable. Does that pose a problem for quantum free will? I'm not sure about this.

Probablistic cause poses no problem for free will?

If someone could predict your action 99% of the time, do you still have free will?

It is conceivable that even if someone's action were predicted 100% of the time, that his action were free. For example, if Gary hates durians, and I predict 100% correctly that through his whole life he would choose an orange over a durian. Yet, his action was free.

But this is the case with only one particular action. What if every action of a person were predictable a 100% of the time. Suddenly, the person doesn't appear to have free will anymore; if we can predict a person's every action 100% of the time, it would have to be that his actions were caused by something known to us.

Let's seperate the implicit premises. If my prediction was by pure chance, and not based on some deterministic cause, it appears that 100% predictability of a person's every action and his having free will is not incompatible. Of course the chance of getting it 100% right is vanishingly small, but it is not impossible.

Yet, we believe that the chance is so small that it should be taken as being impossible. I believe that it cannot be taken as so. Probablistic cause is only an indicator that free will might not be present, but it is not incompatible with free will.

What is Cause

Let's say plunging this knife into my chest, X, has a 99% chance of killing me, Y. Let's say that this knife actually does kill me. Therefore, plunging this knife caused me to die. We use cause here to show that X is sufficient to cause Y, and that Y did actually happen.

In the 1% chance that this knife does not end in my dying, then X did not cause Y. X is therefore not a necessary cause.

Free will seems to be a problem only when causes in a causal chain are necessary.

But such probabalism should not be present in the mechanistic universe unless quantum probabilty or some other similar mechanism were introduced into the system.

But doesn't a high probabilty, even in a probablistic universe, cause a problem for free will? Isn't it a problem when your actions are caused at least 99% of the time?

The Knowledge Argument

The knowledge argument is an argument against physicalism. We are to imagine that Mary is a person that learns every physical fact possible about vision, but since birth has lived only in a black and white room. Even if all physical facts are known to her through her black and white television and books, if she goes out to the colourful world, it seems that she will know something more - namely what it is like to experience colour.

If there is something more to know besides physical facts, then there must be knowledge that is not about physical facts. Therefore, physicalism (the doctrine that there are only physical facts about the world) is false.

One objection is that colour is related to physical facts as aesthetics are related to physical facts. It appears plausible that a particular wavelength of light enters our eye and therefore red is an experience that is subjective upon those facts. But beauty is so much more subjective than colour. We can diagnose someone as colour blind but no one is ever 'beauty blind'. There is something about colour and pain that is more solid fact and qualia like than the subjectiveness of aesthetics.

I think it is possible that colour is epiphenomenal, and furthermore, that all phenomenal experience is exhausted upon the knowledge of all physical facts. That is, knowing all the physical facts about the anatomy of our visual system will result in us knowing the exact nerve firing pattern N that results in E, a e.g. red experience. Even if Mary has never experienced redness, knowing N, and reproducing N in her brain will result in an experience that is indistinguishable as seeing red. There exists no other experience that lies beyond this possibility.

No More Nietzsche!

I've decided that this shall no more be a blog about Nietzsche. I was forced to start this blog for my module last semester on Nietzsche. From now on, it shall be a place to post stuff that has to do with my thesis, or perhaps other interesting philosophical stuff.