Always Dance

About PCSX2...It seems to need a bios. where do I find that?

Actually, I'm counting the existence of God in here. If God is a being, then he did not create himself either. The same argument applies to all beings capable of making decisions. If he is not a being, then 'he' is useless and 'it' did not have a will at all, resulting in the same thing, really.

Skipping to the key points.


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You are led into wanting whatever you want by things you did not initiate. There are no exceptions to that. You still have a choice whether to give into those things you want, or not to do so.
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That is a contradiction. Whatever you do, it is what you most wanted to do. Every time you sin or do the right thing, that was what you wanted to do the most. That is why you did it. Every decision that you make is a result of one or more impulses fighting another. An example that you seem to struggle with is the impulse to 'obey God'. This is an impulse just like the impulse to sin. Whichever you end up doing is a result of that impulse, or 'want', winning out over the other. Every single decision you make is 'what you want' by nature of being what you choose to do.

Now that I have made that clear, these are the key points:

I reasoned thus:
Every single decision you make is what you want to do because you chose to do it.You said this:
You are led into wanting whatever you want by things you did not initiate.
In conclusion, we would agree:
You are led into every decision by impulses that you did not initiate, regardless of what that decision is.
Because you conceded my point, it is more accurate to say 'what you are led to want'. This holds true whether that decision is for good or for bad.


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I don't know. I am not God. Yes, having more factors would make a choice more free. Why not give us more factors? I don't know. There are potentially thousands of reasons. There are potentially no reasons. We can't know that.
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An argument from ignorance proves only that you do not know. I have at least one reason for him not to do so, and you have no reason for him to do so. At best, you seem to be assuming that because it is God, there must have been a good reason. You default to a loss.


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It's not similar to the instinct that would engage if a mosquito landed on his face. Of that matter, he has no choice. Of willingly slapping himself in the face, he does.
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You said that one was willful and the other was not. What allows you to make this distinction? He did not give himself the instincts that led him to do either of them.


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But for this you have to believe we're made of only analog parts, and I would again argue of the existence of the soul.
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However, there is no basis for a soul without assuming Christianity. You said this yourself. You cannot assume the point as a means of proving the point. That is a begging the question. If there is no reason to believe in a soul without assuming something else that also cannot be proven, then it is useless to believe it. You might as well argue for the existence of pixie dust by assuming that pixies exist. This is essentially a trap. If I argue against the soul, you will argue for Christianity as a whole. If I argue against Christianity as a whole, it will come back down to the soul again, and you will again assume Christianity. I would prefer standalone reasoning for a soul before we move onward.

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I'm afraid I don't have time to the link you posted (Really I should be sleeping right now) so I'm just going to assume you've covered its main points: Yes, consciousness can be created from analog parts- that doesn't make it less real. Yes, it's subjective, but that doesn't make it less physical. It's there, it's a part of your brain, it cannot be ignored, that's all I was trying to say. Your disbelief in individual minds is another matter.
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It does make it less real. If consciousness is made from analog parts, then if you analyze those parts, you can predict all 'conscious' decisions. It only follows.


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I would argue that, similar to how objects with color have parts without color, a person does not necessarily have to be only the sum of his parts. That person may be shaped by nature and nurture, just like objects are shaped by atoms, but the end result, the sum, has the ability to act freely or abstractly from those parts. Of this argument, I would have no scientific evidence, only the biblical belief in the soul, God's promise of free will, and my relative sureness that I made the decision to put on pants this morning.
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Forgoing scientific basis; this is a logical conclusion, not a scientific one. A scientific approach would try to analyze what those factors are. Logic argues that no matter what they are, a person has control over neither their experiences nor the impulses that cause them to react to their experiences in the way they do. There is no logic in support of choice, but there is logic against it. You believe that you are unfettered by your body? If you do not (I would guess not, believing in 'the sins of the flesh'), then on what basis do you think you can separate one wish from another wish? On what basis do you separate one choice from 'the body' and leave the others up the body's flaws? They are all from your nature. I would like to hear any counter you have beyond an idealistic notion of the soul; logical reasoning for a soul, maybe.


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You misunderstand, I do believe that God exists and I do not believe he is a sadistic fuсk. I do not believe that God set it up so that we would sin, but that God wants to be loved, and giving people no choice but to love you would not be real love. Thus, he needed to give them a choice, and yes, he needed to have consequences in place for what would happen if the wrong choice was made. And it was.
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Your belief contradicts itself. When last I checked, playing carrot and stick was called sadistic. I want you to show that you love me. I put your favorite cookie on a table and tell you not to eat it. If you do not, then I am happy. If you do, then I reveal that I poisoned that cookie. Surprise! All your fault, right?


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It covers all possible choices within the world that God made for us, and the sinful nature we made for ourselves. Yes, free will is limited, but the limited will we have is still free.
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"Limited is still free." You have lost your ability to discuss this already. Let me define limited and free.

lim·it·ed
adjective /ˈlimitid/ 

1. Restricted in size, amount, or extent; few, small, or short
- a limited number of places are available
- special offers available for a limited period
- the legislation has had a limited effect
free (Edited down to the most relevant uses)
adjective /frē/ 
freer, comparative; freest, superlative

1. Not under the control or in the power of another; able to act or be done as one wishes
- I have no ambitions other than to have a happy life and be free
- a free choice2. Not or no longer confined or imprisoned
- the researchers set the birds free3. Able or permitted to take a specified action
- you are free to leave4. Not physically restrained, obstructed, or fixed; unimpeded
- she lifted the cat free5. Not subject to or constrained by engagements or obligations
- she spent her free time shoppingI would especially lead you to definitions one, two and three of 'free'. They refer to 'being free of restraints' or 'limitations' regarding completing things that one wishes to do. To limit is to restrain, to shackle, and to restrain is to take away freedom. If you honestly believe that whatever the one above you gives you is freedom, then I pity you for your submissiveness. You are as a slave unto anyone who gives you ultimatums.


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If you want to use this definition of free will (And I'll admit that it's a fair definition), then you're correct, it cannot by any means be argued that we have free will. I guess the best term would be "Limited will". The keyword is "Will".
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Yes. Now, the question is... If we have limited will, on what basis do you believe that we get to make choices at all? Logic and science both point to the idea that you do not make choices but instead are led to take actions by impulses that you were born with and impulses that you developed over your lifetime to help you survive in the world in which you live. While you include the word 'will' in the sentiment, it is closer to the oxymoron than an existing concept. Will is to limitation as freedom is to slavery.

A slave is free... To do things within the reach of his chains (but only things the master says if he does not wish to be punished). A man's will is free... To choose things within the limitations a god gave him (but only things the god says if he does not wish to be punished). Do you see the similarity?

And that is if I entertain a notion of choice at all.

Once again, one can, say, wish to breath under water, but this is not possible. Even within the scope of choices that we have, there are limitations that make the window of 'choice' smaller and smaller. Another example is touching fire. No matter how much you may wish to touch a hot stove top and keep your hand there, your body will recoil from the pain. You get no choice in that action. At what point do you not get to say, "I was led into wanting to do this by things I did not initiate"?


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It would basically have been a joint effort. God's punishment for us was to basically just toss us into a miserable world, and let us make the punishment for ourselves by living in our own sin. Like a "Time out" for a naughty child, except on a much larger scale. The parent sends the child to time out...if the child chooses to slap himself in the face while he's there, that's on him. Yes, mankind is basically a kid slapping himself in the face.
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Start with nothing
Create miserable world
Create paradisaical garden
Create Lucifer and the concept of Sin
Create man
Put man in paradisaical garden
Give man a choice between the concept of Sin that you created earlier and following you
Give Lucifer a sense of rebellion and antagonism, leading him to tempt man so that they have a reason to disobey; make him take on the title of Satan, the accuser
Give man a sense of curiosity, a sense of rebellion and susceptibility to lies
Withhold billions of other senses you could have given him
Set it up so that man will go into the miserable world you created earlier if he chooses the Sin that you created
Watch as everything goes to hell, literally

Up to this point, most sane people would call this process... Sadistic. Like lab rats in a maze, almost. But wait! You lived after something important happened.
Send Jesus ages later
Stockholm syndrome engage
Now, let's review; specifically the underlined bit. Why would a god want to leave senses like those but forgo billions of others? Even by your standards, in which we have a choice, wouldn't having more factors make the choice more free?

To use your own wording, let us say that God made a kid and gave him the brain process that led him to choose to slap himself in the face. I will assume for the sake of this example that he is led to literally slap himself in the face, in the sense that the hand that he believes he controls comes into contact with a face that he believes he controls. There were no genes to speak of to lead him to it—there was nothing, in fact—so God gave him that instinct from scratch. Similar to the instinct that would engage if a mosquito landed on his face. Then the god blamed the kid for slapping himself in the face.

There is no sense to be made of it. We have your notion that this is somehow a good idea or that it demonstrates 'choice' and my notion that a piece of analog machinery slapping itself and getting punished for it is rather senseless. Those are the two options being gathered from the evidence.

Ah, late at night. /yawn


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This page contains links to plenty of studies. At the very least, it can be verified that the human mind does have a conscious mind in addition to an unconscious mind. Therefore your statement that "I don't believe in 'consciously'" Disregards quite a bit.
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Ah, perhaps I should have been more clear. I do not believe in individual minds. I do not believe in them because all evidence and logic points to the idea that no mind may make a choice that is not determined by things it cannot control. No individual mind can move outside of itself and edit its own parameters. That is what makes it a 'subjective experience'.

I am listening to one link in particular, the last reference on the opening section of the article.

http://www.pointofinquiry.org/daniel_dennett_the_scientific_study_of_religion/|

Listening to it from 24:00 on, he makes great points, including one that helps my argument. He expresses a basic principle of 'reductionism'. He expresses how people love to believe that atoms have color because molecules and objects have color, though this is not true. Furthermore, they would like to think that cells are alive though none of their parts are alive. And then people would like to think that animals are conscious while their parts, their cells, are not. He says that you can create consciousness from parts that are not conscious, those being cells, just as you can create living things from things that are not alive, and things that have color from things that do not. Creating consciousness with analog parts; isn't that very similar to the AI you mentioned below?


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You seem to be making the argument that randomness = choice. That isn't true. AI in video games will make different choices if they are put in the same situation over and over again, but do they have free will?

We don't have control over our nature or our nurture, but we have the choice not to let those things shape who we are.
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I am not making that argument. I am arguing that choice cannot exist for a subjective consciousness. They do not have free will. We are exactly like AI in videogames. We just have many, many more factors.

We do not have that choice. All of our thoughts, including rebellion against what we perceive to be our nature, are by definition 'in our nature'. You say that we choose, but what led us to choose? You cannot choose not to let your experiences shape the way you are. In 'choosing not to let them shape you', you are reacting to their existence, and they have already shaped you; they have shaped you into rejecting them. Your choice to reject them was defined by a mix of your nature and previous experiences. If this is your first experience, then the only thing that guides your choice is your 'natural' impulse. Someone without either an impulse to avoid (pain) or an impulse to pursue (pleasure) will have no reason to act at all.

Your choice is made through either internal factors (natural preferences) or a reaction to external factors (experiences or the environment itself). Internal and external covers all of the bases. If you have inborn morality, then that is your nature. If you also experience pleasure by breaking that conscience, that is also in your nature. If you fear external consequences for seeking the pleasure, that is nurtured. When you make a choice on one side or the other, it is a result of your natural factors and your nurtured factors compromising and overpowering each other. Regardless of which one wins, you did not create any of them. What do you think the third influence is?


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Mankind's punishment for Adam and Eve's acts is that we have to live in the sin they created. For God to disallow certain sins would be counterproductive to this punishment.
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Okay, so you do not counter me on the fact that God set it up so that we would sin and set up the consequences for it. Thus, you acknowledge that God is a sadistic **** if he exists. At least we agree on that.


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It's more of a limitation on your abilities. The human body is simply unable to comprehend those other senses, I imagine it was this way even before original sin. And the point stands- however limited, you do have a range of choices.
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However, this range is not free; it does not cover all possible choices. We do not have 'free will'. Your argument that God had to allow rape in order for us to 'have free will' has failed because there are choices that he has not given us the ability to make.


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That's the thing though, we don't know if God "Eliminated" those senses, we might never have had them in the first place. The inherent difference is that man created rape, God created the other senses. God gave us a world and bodies, we made rape. Him limiting our own creation is something he is shown not to do. God is only shown to highly disapprove of our sinful creations, and to punish us for them, but limiting our free will by making them impossible is just something he doesn't do.
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Did I miss something? I was under the impression that it did not matter whether he 'did not create them' or 'took them away'. The question was one of whether he gave us one choice and not the other, and why he gave us one and not the other. The question had nothing to do with which came first. It had to do with his results. His design started from nothing either way, correct?

You completely ignored what I said. I demonstrated that God made it impossible for us to choose more things than he gave us the ability to choose, particularly with senses. You are being blinded by the statement, 'he didn't take it away if he didn't make it in the first place'. Not making it is the same as taking it away. Freedom means "no limits". For the purposes of this discussion on "free will", we will assume that he started with "free" will and anything that we do not have was taken away from it. You brought this subject up, so please keep up.

Worse, you contradicted what you said earlier in the post. God planned out the punishment ahead of time. You just acknowledged that. Let me quote you again. "Mankind's punishment for Adam and Eve's acts is that we have to live in the sin they created. For God to disallow certain sins would be counterproductive to this punishment." Now you say that we made the punishment. Did God plan out what would happen when he gave us the choice or not?

Yes. Yes it would. However, you insisted that it was a good thing. Like I said, just because its a "better" option doesn't make it moral or good.

No, I'm saying that the "better" option isn't necessarily a good thing.

Hey, *******, regardless of what your book of myths says, regardless of what happened in history, it doesn't make it good, moral or ideal in any situation. Go be misogynist asshat elsewhere.

Ah, there you are.


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Well then you're ignoring quite a bit of research, because the conscious mind does exist, and it makes decisions constantly.

Again, you can physically measure the energy needed to make a decision, it isn't made for you.
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I would like to see said research, and an explanation of how a decision is not determined by impulses. Every study I have seen, every piece of evidence, has pointed to determinism. 'Consciousness' loses meaning if it is not you trying to evaluate it. Objectively, individual wills do not exist. If you exist as an individual, then you are still trapped within a body and the things that you choose are a result of the body you were given and the environment that your body is reacting to. You are very far from free. I felt I explained this well enough in the thread, but apparently not.

Free will cannot exist because a person has no control over either their nature of their nurture. This is true whether a god created you or you were the result of random events. You cannot expand beyond your current parameters, and you did not create your own parameters. Every decision that you make is a result of your parameters causing you to react to the input they are given, such that if you repeat the same circumstances over and over, wiping your memory each time, you will always make the same decision. How exactly do you get a choice in all of this?


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Because when God crafted human bodies, there was no need to make it impossible to rape anybody, because without sin nobody would have raped. If you're assembling a car with the sole intention of using it for city driving, you probably aren't going to equip it with off-road bonuses like four wheel drive and increased suspension. For what God created humans for, something that caused death by raping would have been an unnecessary precaution.
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So, your argument is that God did not plan for the contingency of or have any way to stop his clock from malfunctioning? When last I checked, God created everything that factored into the creation of sin, and it was by his hand that suffering extended to the rest of the world after Adam and Eve disobeyed.

Furthermore, when God introduced pain into the world and explained the rules to Adam and Eve, he would have known then that rape was going to happen and he made it possible, unto editing the whole of creation such that it was along with creating pain in childbirth and other harmful things. This was the purpose of the tree. The 'choice'. He had the whole lineup of 'ifs' and 'thens' planned out when he gave them the 'choice' of the tree in the first place. Why give them the choice if he had not planned for what would happen if they made the wrong one?

There is no such thing as 'natural' when you specifically create the consequence.


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Right, I misunderstood what you meant by making it impossible to rape.
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It did not really matter, but I added it for your benefit. Use it if it makes it easier to grasp.

I could easily go back into the 'senses' argument. A man who sees cannot explain sight to a blind man, nor can one who hears explain sound to a deaf man, and so on. This being the case, what other senses could we simply not be able to comprehend, not having them? God made it impossible for us to not only experience but conceive of the world with any of the other senses that could exist. We assume that the five are the only ones that could exist, and yet we know that higher physical dimensions can exist outside of our experience. With the senses we have, we are told 'to gauge out our eyes should they lead us astray', or something close to that. This is based in choice. However, what of the other senses? I am not given a choice to gauge out my sixth, seventh and eighth sensory organs. God has limited my choices and indeed my will to either experience or not experience five senses alone. This is an extreme limitation on my range of choices.

Rape is the same. God could easily have eliminated rape instead of a sixth or seventh sense and we would not be able to choose to rape. Why is there an inherent difference between the two? Why should I be given one choice and not the other, and how exactly is my will 'free' if I may choose to rape but have a vast store of senses taken away from me?

No, it wasn't a good thing. You're sitting there trying to justify the fact that women were forced to marry rapists. Just because women didn't have rights back then doesn't magically make that scenario any better.

Ah, had to expect this. Tired, sorry.


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Your premise about choices being determined by impulses and emotions is correct, you seem to disregard the ability to deny such impulses, something I have to do every day. It takes a measurable, electric force to make any decision. Despite the bases (Nature and nurture) of that decision, it is still a decision you need to consciously make and put effort into.
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Your impulse to deny that impulse is still an impulse. Consider a fight-or-flight response. You have both in you. Whatever you choose to do is a result of one impulse winning out. You cannot disregard the winning impulse as an impulse without reasoning. I do not believe in 'consciously' at all.


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You seem to use the term "Will" synonymous with "Wish" here, that's not what I mean. By will, I mean the ability to make choices, not the ability to do things. God created the human body, which has limitations. We have the free will to make any decision, within the limitations of our body.
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The ability to make choices is not the issue here. If that were the issue, then God could have made rape impossible (cause death like with breathing underwater, for example) and people could still have 'chosen' not to or to rape in their minds, just like they could 'choose' to go underwater or not. Why make it physically possible if will has nothing to do with what physical ability?


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Limitation of the ability to rape would have been a limitation of the ability to make a choice, which impedes free will. Limitation of the ability to breathe (breathe) underwater is a side effect of the human body, which does not impede free will.
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See above. You can choose to go underwater or not or to rape or not regardless of your physical ability to complete the task. You are contradicting yourself.

Haha funny thing is that I was planning to bake cookies. XD But I don't have some of the ingredients so I can't just yet.

Haha thanks. I so would if I had the money and actually LIKED to cook. My preference is baking but I'm learning cooking so I could do better.

Culinary arts. They think it'll get me nowhere and I'll be poor the rest of my life.

Haha I know. I come from a mexican family too. And they're always looking down at my career choice. -sigh-

Interesting indeed. If you do move, where do you plan to go?

Wow. Happy belated birthday to you. Now that I know your age, I'm curious in which country you're in. @.@ And what are you studying?

Wow you poor thing! D= How old ish you???? I hope things calm down some.

Well that's good. Me too. But I'll be starting my classes again so I won't be on too much.

Haha I wonder as to why. XD I'll only know you by that. Things are fairly well. About to start my classes next week. I'll be so happy to finally be out of the house. @w@ How about with you?

Bushi Bushi!