Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire So you don't think God answers prayers?

Did you mean decision making does not implicate free will? Virtually all the leading materialist mind-science thinkers say otherwise. All thought (they say) is the result of electro-chemical, material processes, including the thought involved in deciding what to do (viz., choosing). You are amazingly ignorant of the implications of the philosophy you constantly (and reactively) defend.

Also, the brain and mind are not the same thing.

Nothing to do with free will.

It hasn't even been shown that there is god, yet alone one that is lovable.

Do you love Zeus? Brahman? Allah?

Show me a mind not connected to a brain.

Mind being the activity of a brain. Anything that effects the brain alters mind. Drink too much whisky, you pass out. You pass out because Alcohol effects brain function.

Except that we know from science that the mind is much more than merely the activity of the brain, but regardless, it doesn't change the fact that materialism denies that free will is anything but illusory.

That they are related does not mean they are the same. Artificial intelligence is not connected to a brain.

Really?

Where exactly is this demonstrated by science?

You clearly don't understand the free will debate. Especially from the point of view of neuroscience.....how decisions are actually being made by the brain. A fly can make decisions, left, right, feed, mate, but the decisions that it can make are determined and limited by the architecture of its brain.

Our own range of cognitive abilities are enabled not by free will, a poorly defend term, but the sheer mind boggling complexity of our neural architecture.

I don't think god answers anyone.. you are on your own to be good or bad.. but you will die the same..

Actually, it is you who doesn't understand it because either you are unwilling to acknowledged or are simply ignorant of the fact that virtually all of the leading thinkers in brain-mind science (of a materialist ilk) deny that free will is possible.

Where you go wrong is in assuming that the ability to make decisions and act upon them is free will.

You conflate decision making and free will. The experts don't deny the ability of a brain to acquire and process information and make decisions....they correctly point out that this ability has nothing to do with free will. Unconscious neural activity precedes conscious experience of mind and tthought.

Do some reading. Mark Hallet, a specialist on the cognition of behaviour is a good start

Just as a small sample of the neuroscience of decision making and motor action;

''This review deals with the physiology of the initiation of a voluntary movement and the appreciation of whether it is voluntary or not. I argue that free will is not a driving force for movement, but a conscious awareness concerning the nature of the movement. Movement initiation and the perception of willing the movement can be separately manipulated. Movement is generated subconsciously, and the conscious sense of volition comes later, but the exact time of this event is difficult to assess because of the potentially illusory nature of introspection. Neurological disorders of volition are also reviewed. The evidence suggests that movement is initiated in the frontal lobe, particularly the mesial areas, and the sense of volition arises as the result of a corollary discharge likely involving multiple areas with reciprocal connections including those in the parietal lobe and insular cortex.''' - Volitional control of movement: The physiology of free will
Clinical Neurophysiology, Volume 118, Issue 6, Pages 1179-1192
M. Hallett

Also by Hallett


How Can There Be Voluntary Movement Without Free Will?
''Humans do not appear to be purely reflexive organisms, simple automatons. A vast array of different movements are generated in a variety of settings. Is there an alternative to free will? Movement, in the final analysis, comes only from muscle contraction. Muscle contraction is under the complete control of the alpha motoneurons in the spinal cord. When the alpha motoneurons are active, there will be movement. Activity of the alpha motoneurons is a product of the different synaptic events on their dendrites and cell bodies. There is a complex summation of EPSPs and IPSPs, and when the threshold for an action potential is crossed, the cell fires. There are a large number of important inputs, and one of the most important is from the corticospinal tract which conveys a large part of the cortical control. Such a situation likely holds also for the motor cortex and the cells of origin of the corticospinal tract. Their firing depends on their synaptic inputs. And, a similar situation must hold for all the principal regions giving input to the motor cortex. For any cortical region, its activity will depend on its synaptic inputs. Some motor cortical inputs come via only a few synapses from sensory cortices, and such influences on motor output are clear. Some inputs will come from regions, such as the limbic areas, many synapses away from both primary sensory and motor cortices. At any one time, the activity of the motor cortex, and its commands to the spinal cord, will reflect virtually all the activity in the entire brain. Is it necessary that there be anything else? This can be a complete description of the process of movement selection, and even if there is something more -- like free will -- it would have to operate through such neuronal mechanisms.
The view that there is no such thing as free will as an inner causal agent has been advocated by a number of philosophers, scientists, and neurologists including Ryle, Adrian, Skinner and Fisher.(Fisher 1993)''[

That didn't even come close to answering the question.

LOL.

This thread is an excellent example, and proof, as are all threads here related to the subject of Christianity.

Matthew 7:13-14 (NIV)
The Narrow and Wide Gates

13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

Amazing how many make the same mistake the flat earth scientists did before being proven wrong ages ago by Columbus.

A few years ago something like 97% believed we were going to die from global warming.

The humanist worshippers keep thinking each time, "This time we got it right", just as they do each time they find the "missing link".

They still can't come up with a credible explanation as to how life started or create an eyelash.

They worship the scientists, rather than the Creator of scientists.

"A few years ago something like 97% believed we were going to die from global warming."

No they didn't. Some Democrat/Socialist woman writer (not a climate scientist) cherry picked scientific articles written by the Democrat/Socialist scientists who were pushing the man caused global warming theory and put them in a book. She was kind of like the people who created the New Testament bible.

You cant say 97% of people thought they were going to die from global warming... then say credible a few sentences later... if you do, your making fun of yourself for us. It really ruins the fun of it all.

Kinda funny, a god peddler poking fun at global warming. The irony of it.

Dumbass. Reread. It was about scientists. Something like 97% were say we were having progressive global warming. Sheesh. English is so hard for the dumb.

Hahahahaha

Mirror mirror on the wall....

I agree, english is hard for the dumb... hurry up and edit this one too before people can keep poking fun at you.