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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: briskit who wrote (16360)	2/20/2004 1:44:43 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

You ignore the heart of the argument: You are omniscient. You are omnipotent. And you are responsible for NOTHING. Is this your story?

To: briskit who wrote (16360)	2/20/2004 4:57:49 PM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

I think I need to make my free will position clear. Was it necessary that Solon exist? Leaving aside a gazillion smaller and more refined events we will look at a few gross events. My father's sperm (one of them) fertilized my mother's egg. Before that, different nutrients and proteins went to make the sperm and egg. Before that, my father and mother were born from the same process...and back as far as we can imagine. In between, a gazillion other events occurred and a gazillion events did not occur. Now the birth of Solon was determined by past events. But it was not a NECESSARY eventuality. It has a precise (though unknown) trail backward through time. But the making of the trail involved infinite moments of uncertainty as quanta expressed itself. We can never know the future because no quanta has a precise position at a precise moment. Even looking backward we see only the record or the trail--we do not see the events. The process of living involves responding to perceptions with action. Our responses originate in a quantum environment and thus partake of uncertainty. They are influenced by desire and thus may take direction. So the old idea of causality no longer fits with modern physics. Events can be said to be "caused", after the fact. But it cannot be said that the eventuality was NECESSARY, before the fact. Indeed, it matters not what direction I face or how fast my electrons spin when two solar systems rip through one another. But that comes under the heading of "meaning" which is another matter.