29-03-2005 07:17									#1
	An essay titled simply, beliefs Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

Digging through my files I found this essay that I kept.

I will not reveal the author.


Throughout the course of life, our belief system changes as a result of our experiences. Therefore, for each person, their belief system will be unique from anyone else. One belief that I have rejected is that God controls one's destiny. What this means is that our future is not predetermined and is only formed as a result of our actions and the choices that one makes. I cannot accept that something has occurred or will occur simply because God has willed it to. By accepting that argument, we allow ourselves to escape responsibility for our actions. If I were to kill someone, I could state that it was in God's will that that person should die. Any past conflict or holocaust could be attributed only to God, rather than to those who perpetrated the event. I also cannot accept the future as being predetermined. Then, our lives would mean nothing. We could not change our future in any way. Why should we desire to change ourselves, to seek our dreams, if we are assured of our future? Why would life be interesting if we could foretell every crisis, every celebration? One may argue that if God has decided our future, that everyone's life is now purposeful. Are our lives not already meaningful? Must we impose our will upon the universe in the form of an Almighty God? I believe that we must treat our lives as meaningful only to ourselves, and that we are merely cosmic dust motes within the universe as a whole.

The second belief, which I believe that I will never discard, is that there is a capacity for good things within every human being. This comes as a result of my experiences. I have seen many people do kind things for each other without any secondary motive. Even those which have hurt me or my friends, I have seen do volunteer work, among other altruistic tendencies. However, how can we define 'good' in other terms? I will define good as being beneficial to other people. Even Adolf Hitler had done good things within his life. To the Germans after the Depression and World War One, Hitler was a savior of the country. He aided Germany's recovery and brought a period of great prosperity to a German peoples who had known only strive and conflict. Perhaps we can conclude that the desire to aid others, to cooperate for the general good, is a natural tendency of the human race. This may have emerged from pre-historic times when humans needed to work together in order to survive. This is true, even now. No matter how independent one is from other people, one still relies upon others. It may be for emotional, material or labour needs, but it still constitutes a dependency. It is sad then, that people in today's market are required to compete so strenuously in order to get a job. Perhaps success would be more common if it required cooperative effort.

	29-03-2005 07:30									#2
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Nice, if a bit short, essay.

The God thing is a typically secular/modernist strain of thought, and I wholeheartedly agree with it. I'm less enthusiastic about the second paragraph (unlike talks about God which are purely theoretical, the second paragraph could have had some empiry, but I'm a nagging guy ), but it's cute.

	29-03-2005 07:33									#3
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Okay.

That's me. I wrote this in 1999.

	29-03-2005 07:36									#4
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I'm not really surprised. The tone sounds like a late teen / early twentysomething, and you told us your spiritual beliefs were completely different back then

The question is: with what of this do you disagree now, and what led you to change your mind in these years (if it's not asking too much about your private life)?

	29-03-2005 07:44									#5
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What I find really intruiging, is the attempt to find a reason behind these altruistic thoughts. I ascribed that completely to natural causes.

The biggest thing for me, is when I finally got to study Darwin in earnest in first year university. What really caused me all kinds of troubles is where he says that all those with an inheritable disability are subhuman, and should not be permitted to reproduce.

My first thought is that he was wrong in this and right in everything else, but I couldn't make that fit, and really struggled for a long time trying to make that fit.

Then pretty much everything in my personal life fell apart in my second year. With school, with my parents, with my girlfriend at the time. Everything came crashing down at once, and I had to make the choice whether to go back to uni, or to stay home.

	29-03-2005 07:48									#6
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I wanted to stay down, but I didn't know how I could do that, and I felt that I had to stand on my own at some point. If I went back at that time, my life would not be as it is now.

Instead I withdrew from all my classes, and lived on campus for the four months, and returned home as planned, in the summer.

In January, when I first got back, I was really depressed wouldn't go anywhere and stayed in my room coming out only to eat. I had one friend who insisted on watching out for me and that one friend came up to my room, after about a month or so, and told me that this isn't working out.

He invited me to come to his church, where he thought I could find what I was looking for, and I went, because at that time, I had cleared everything away for 4 months, and had nothing else to do.

	29-03-2005 07:52									#7
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Oh.

It's good news you found comfort in religion then If there is one thing I appreciate in religion, it's the fact that it often helps those in emotional need (although my cynical self knows full well it is not purely altruistic )

	29-03-2005 07:53									#8
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I went, and as I confessed to him later, it was like I knew what I had been looking for, but didn't really see that until I went with him. My confession then, is the same as mine now, that I could not do this on my own, that I needed God's help to live my own life. I confessed after 3 weeks of attending there, and after about 5 months of working through Christianity with my friend, whom I knew from the start of second year.

For the time that I had left open, this was the only structure I had until I had a chance to decide, what do I keep in my life, and what do I throw away. The only other thing I felt was good about my life was the stuff that I had been doing with the prolife club on campus, although I had really done very little at that point in time.

	29-03-2005 09:50									#9
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quote: Originally posted by Ben Kenobi The biggest thing for me, is when I finally got to study Darwin in earnest in first year university. What really caused me all kinds of troubles is where he says that all those with an inheritable disability are subhuman, and should not be permitted to reproduce.

I'll need a cite on that, please.

	29-03-2005 10:43									#10
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quote: Originally posted by Ben Kenobi Digging through my files I found this essay that I kept. I will not reveal the author. Throughout the course of life, our belief system changes as a result of our experiences. Therefore, for each person, their belief system will be unique from anyone else.

In that single independent clause, you already have a bad pronoun reference and a faulty parallelism. For shame.

	29-03-2005 12:01									#11
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blablablablabla

	29-03-2005 12:02									#12
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quote: Originally posted by Ben Kenobi Okay. That's me. I wrote this in 1999.

We had to drag it out of you.

	29-03-2005 12:14									#13
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That is a terrible essay from a terrible person.

	29-03-2005 12:26									#14
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You future may be predetermined with or without god...what has god got to do with things being determined or not?

Interesting idea I once heard is that, in order for us to hold people morally accountable for their actions, their actions must be 'deterministic'.

Think of it like this: In a determined universe, people's choices are made based on other factors and are determined entirely by the 'sum of factors', like historical events, knowledge, observation, etc.

But in a non-determined universe, the choices people make seem arbitrary or even random. What 'determines' a persons choice in these universe? Free Will you say. But what determines what 'Free Will' desires? Does free will add up all factors, and then make a decision? No that's determinism. 'Free Will' seems to argue that there is some sort of 'fudge factor' at work in human decisions that just seems so totally random and arbitrary to me.

	29-03-2005 21:26									#15
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Even if God knew everything that was going to happen... what matter? We don't know what is going to happen... so presumably we can live life as we would normally. Just because someone else knows what happens in the crying game... doesn't mean we don't think she a chick and then all of a sudden ARRRRGGGHHHH!!!!! MY EYES ARE BURNING!!!!!... know what I mean?

The fact that God knows the future would be meaningless were he to exist. We would still have to live out lives based on our lack of future knowledge.

And what I don't get is this infantile insistence that God is necessarily what we think of as good and wants what we want.

	29-03-2005 22:13									#16
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quote: Originally posted by Ben Kenobi What I find really intruiging, is the attempt to find a reason behind these altruistic thoughts. I ascribed that completely to natural causes.

Intriguing? It scores zero points for originality.

quote: The biggest thing for me, is when I finally got to study Darwin in earnest in first year university. What really caused me all kinds of troubles is where he says that all those with an inheritable disability are subhuman, and should not be permitted to reproduce. My first thought is that he was wrong in this and right in everything else, but I couldn't make that fit, and really struggled for a long time trying to make that fit.

Sounds like you thought of Darwin as some sort of prophet. Why should we care about his moral views - he wasn't exactly a moral philosopher, and his times were quite different from ours.

	29-03-2005 23:04									#17
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quote: Originally posted by Comrade Tassadar quote: Originally posted by Asher That is a terrible essay from a terrible person.

	29-03-2005 23:40									#18
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quote: Originally posted by Seeker You future may be predetermined with or without god...what has god got to do with things being determined or not? Interesting idea I once heard is that, in order for us to hold people morally accountable for their actions, their actions must be 'deterministic'. Think of it like this: In a determined universe, people's choices are made based on other factors and are determined entirely by the 'sum of factors', like historical events, knowledge, observation, etc. But in a non-determined universe, the choices people make seem arbitrary or even random. What 'determines' a persons choice in these universe? Free Will you say. But what determines what 'Free Will' desires? Does free will add up all factors, and then make a decision? No that's determinism. 'Free Will' seems to argue that there is some sort of 'fudge factor' at work in human decisions that just seems so totally random and arbitrary to me.

To be honest, I find that quantum mechanics provides a lot of leeway even when not treated as a magic black box.

Is rolling a dice deterministic? Not quite, but it is structured. There are six possible outcomes, and none of them involved the moon turning into a giant bovine. Similarly, at the lowest level, particles aren't quite deterministic. There are n possible effects on a particle from a single cause, and they are all well defined.

This scales up to a Universe that is predetermined along infinitely many paths, rather than along one path or that is purely random.

	29-03-2005 23:47									#19
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BTW, there are different kinds of infinities.

There's the Aleph-Null infinity. The set of all integers belongs to it. Integers go on indefinitely -- ..., 0, 1, 2, 3 ... -- there are infinitely many.

Then there's the Aleph-One infinity. The set of all real numbers belongs to it. Not only do real numbers continue indefinitely, but you can also find a new real number between any two other real numbers. So, the span of real numbers is both inwardly and outwardly infinite.

Integers aren't Aleph-One because you can't find a new integer between any two others. Is there an undiscovered integer between 2 and 3? No.

Mu.

	29-03-2005 23:53									#20
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quote: Originally posted by Ben Kenobi The second belief, which I believe that I will never discard, is that there is a capacity for good things within every human being. This comes as a result of my experiences. I have seen many people do kind things for each other without any secondary motive.

Hitler had a secondary motive.

	30-03-2005 00:01									#21
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Devils advocate question:

If free will and nondeterministic future is real how does one reconcile biblical prophecy and the chain of events required to facilitate end times?

Of course there is the St. Leo/Asimov psychohistorical explanation.

	30-03-2005 00:43									#22
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Why would I defend this essay?

I think y'all have the wrong idea about it.

	30-03-2005 00:43									#23
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I think you're giving St. Leo way too much credit here.

	30-03-2005 00:45									#24
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Intriguing that I would make that argument because it is so unoriginal, and bears the imprint of my schooling at the time.

quote: Why should we care about his moral views - he wasn't exactly a moral philosopher, and his times were quite different from ours.

When his moral views are intertwined with his model of biology, and how the species ought to operate, then they are important.

I make no defense of my previous fascination with Darwin, but those were my thoughts at the time.

	30-03-2005 00:50									#25
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quote: In that single independent clause, you already have a bad pronoun reference and a faulty parallelism. For shame.

I didn't say this was my best work, this is just the one where I come out and say which beliefs were central to me at the time.

	30-03-2005 00:56									#26
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quote: Originally posted by Ben Kenobi Intriguing that I would make that argument because it is so unoriginal, and bears the imprint of my schooling at the time.

So it's intriguingly unintriguing! I'll have to grant you that.

quote: When his moral views are intertwined with his model of biology, and how the species ought to operate, then they are important.

I'm not aware of Darwin intertwining his moral views into his biological models, but whether he did or not has solely historical interest. There's nothing moral about modern evolutionary biology.

Well, as said, it seems you had a very strange attitude to Darwin back then.

	30-03-2005 01:34									#27
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From the Descent of Man: Chapter 5

http://www.infidels.org/library/his...chapter_05.html

quote: on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

	30-03-2005 01:39									#28
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quote: but whether he did or not has solely historical interest.

We can look at the same evidence Darwin had access to and ask ourselves how his moral views shaped his analysis of the data put forth before him.

	30-03-2005 02:01									#29
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quote: Originally posted by Azazel I think you're giving St. Leo way too much credit here.

Lousy ingrate. I swear that one day I will express myself coherently, and you shall rue the day you ever dismissed me as an Asimovite.

	30-03-2005 02:04									#30
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If you had any respect for asimov, you wouldn't allow your worthless name to be mentioned in the same sentence as His Glory.