At the beginning of the year, there was a discussion with Marty Fields that was similar to this. His argument was extremely subtle, much more subtle than this, but it amounted to the same thing: mind/brain dualism. Paisley came at it in a ham-handed fashion, but had the same argument: that materialistic positivism (which is often equated with atheism) means we must believe we are simply machines, and that we cannot call ourselves free thinkers.

In fact, that letter sounds very much like dear old Paisley.

Really, even if "the original freethinkers of the Enlightenment were mostly deists and unitarians," how does that negate the atheist claim to free thinking? How much of their deism was itself historically and socially-based, rather than as a direct result of their free thinking? Atheism has a greater claim to the label "free thinker" than theism, in general, as many people arrived at their atheism using the groundwork laid by the Enlightenment. Just because the deists and unitarians of the Enlightenment didn't fully comprehend the ramifications of their intellectual revolution doesn't mean we have to be bound by their own ignorance.

In any case, our quest for artificial intelligence indicates that we believe, at heart, that intelligence is acheivable without divine influence. Our inability to create AI notwithstanding, our growing science of information theory curently hints at true intelligence as an emergent property of stochastic, physical systems, in the same way that life is an emergent property of a stochastic, physical system.

And if we are merely intelligent meat machines, big deal. If the universe is strictly deterministic, big deal. What does it truly change? What is the honest outcome? Are we not here? Do we not at least have the illusion of making decisions? What does materialistic positivism really change?

More important, what does it matter if there is a Deistic God? What does it gain us to contemplate it? There is no current way to gain insight into the nature of this God, and so there is no practical difference between the Enlightenment deists and modern intellectual atheists. A deistic God does not require worship or any other form of ego-stroking. A deistic God would not be interested in the outcome of one tiny little speck of life over another. It gives us no moral imperative, no epistemological methodology greater than the scientific method. From a practical standpoint, there is no difference between a deistic God, and no God whatsoever. It's like saying that somewhere in space is the most beautiful thing ever, but nobody will ever see it, and it will exert no influence over anything else in the universe. From a practical standpoint, it might as well not exist.

Ultimately, this is still an argument from ignorance. Strip away the metaphysics, and the argument is, "We can't explain our intelligence, so God did it."

If you have a chain of natural causes with just a few variables, then yes, the outcome could be fairly narrowly defined.  Given the amount of variables within the human experience, how could someone who is intelligent think that thought and the conclusions drawn from those thoughts would fall within a narrowly proscribed spectrum?  Your biological make-up does not mean you are absolutely going to act in a certain manner and draw certain conclusions in life. 

It's like comparing a life to a simplistic equation with just a few variables - easy to map out.  Each human life I've encountered seems so much more complex (undefinably so) to me.  Being an atheist does not mean you cannot see yourself as a freethinker.  It does not mean that life is predetermined at all to be able to see cause and effect and understand probabilities of action.  Actions that are improbable still occur. 

I'll admit, I've always had a bit of a problem with the way the word "freethinker" is used by modern atheists.  The way it is used now is nothing at all like the way it was used during the Enlightenment.  The thing is, I understand that words necessarily evolve, but it is a bit ironic/humorous that an ideology positing itself free from dogma is so completely contingent upon science, the great dogma of our age.  Also:

Kettle, we've got Pot on line 2. 

Wha ... dje ... oh no you DI-ent!

I wouldn't be pissed off if it were someone stupid who wrote that. You're not stupid. The scientific process is hardly dogmatic. If something's wrong, it can be proven wrong. That doesn't apply to dogma, wherein if something's wrong, it's still right. Completely different, and you know it.

Hardly. I can see how you might interpret it as dogmatism, but it isn't.

It's a simple concept, really, one which can be illustrated with this simple thought experiment:

Imagine the universe is not real. Imagine instead that in the real universe, there exists a super-intelligent race that has been in existence for millions of years. They have reached the point where they can model the entire universe in a computer simulation. They do this for one simple reason: they wish to explore how intelligence evolved.

So, they create a computer model of the universe that is, to the constructs of the simulation, indistinguishable to the real universe. We are nothing but constructs in a simulation that is indistinguishable from the real world. Now, does it matter to us, the constructs? After all, we are mere simulations of intelligence reacting to a simulated, and not "real," universe.

This is the same situation with "real free will" vs. the "illusion of free will." (Substitute "intelligence" for "free will," if you desire.) All we really have is some suspicion of what "free will" and "intelligence" really mean. We don't have a method of distinguishing between real or simulated free will or intelligence, whatever they might mean.

So, all I'm saying is, whether the universe is fundamentally deterministic (that is, if the setup were exactly the same, it would play out exactly the same) is irrelevant to our own perception of reality. Whether we're in a perfect simulation of the real universe, or in the real universe itself, makes absolutely no difference as far as our ability to gain knowledge is concerned.

That's all I was saying.

I'm failing to see how that is dogmatic in any way. Also, I don't quite understand what you mean that science is the great dogma of our age. The reason we accept the scientific method as the greatest epistemology is because it works, where no other epistemology works. It gives results. How is it dogmatic, if it has given us real knowledge of our real or simulated universe?

Granted, I'm not a scientist, but I'd hardly classify myself as "ignorant".  I'm familiar enough with the history of ideas to at least feel my way around. 

I'm familiar with Hawking.  I actually started reading him as a teenager.  He's a good example of a relatively un-dogmatic scientist, along with Stephen Jay Gould and Carl Sagan.  Those guys seemed genuinely interested in dispensing information, which is quite different than the impression I get from most scientists/scientific texts I've encountered--many of them seem to pride themselves in being incomprehensible to "regular folks".  I don't dig that sort of elitism. 

Whether true or not, these comments having nothing to do with being 'dogmatic'. You are definitely not using the word in its normal sense.

To me there's an element of relativity to the definition which must be addressed before any comparison between theist and atheist on the question of "free thinking" can ever be made.

As pointed out above by several people in different ways and for probably different reasons there is no good definition for "free thinking" since it is easy to demonstrate how thought processes can be influenced and determined conditionally, and how thinking is as much a product as it is a process in any case. Strictly speaking the term is an oxymoron.

But few or no people who employ the term "free thinking" mean to imply an absolute freedom to think unrestrained by any influence or rule. Just the notion itself is idiotic to contemplate - it implies that thinking devoid of logic when addressing a problem of logic, for example, is somehow preferable to a process of thinking which applies logic. While lateral thinking might sometimes resolve such problems, even this is the application of a seemingly unrelated logic in order to arrive at a result. It is not random, and is therefore not "free".

But the term does mean relatively unfettered by unhelpful restrictions and this is where the chasm opens up between those influenced by religious dogma and those who, for example, operate within the restrictions imposed by scientific analysis. In the age of enlightenment, as we have come to refer to the era, those people who stepped even marginally outside the hitherto restrictive intellectual shackles imposed by organised religion, achieved remarkable insights by the standards of the day - some of which continue to benefit society in some meaningful way. Through the prism of history however we can now evaluate much of what passed for enlightened thought with these same people as hopelessly rigid and thoroughly unenlightened in modern terms, though this is a pointless observation given the long-term benefits we have derived from the bits they did and got right. But even more importantly, for religious people to hold them up now as "champions" of free-thinking fellow theists is equally absurd. Their enlightened attitudes were formulated as much through a rejection of prevalent religious principles and notions as to an adherence to them, and in many cases were achieved completely despite them. The same people however did further develop and popularise a completely other kind of restriction on the thinking process - the absolute requirement to be sensible.

Hamby is right to prefer the term "rational", especially since the term "free thinking" has increased in ambiguity since it came to mean in more recent times that thinking "any old thing" was intellectually viable behaviour. However when used in the correct context it retains the meaning it held three hundred years ago. Ironically therefore the atheistic and rationalistic "free thinker" requires a very disciplined mind, and above all one which is not disciplined by religious dogma (which in its insistence on confusing assertion with truth negates intellect completely). The "free thinker" must identify, in other words, that which insensibly attempts to influence their judgement and reason, and in doing so eliminate it. They must then recognise the limitations imposed by that which sensibly dictates the perimeter of reason. Only then can they proceed in any constructive way to "think" about anything.

The author of the piece quoted at the start of this thread is attempting to devalue this adherence to sense and reason, not by comparing the relative values of the two different sets of shackles that science and religion apply, but by falsely assuming that the religious adherent recognises his shackles while the atheist (rationalist) thinks he is free of any and is therefore misguided.

It is therefore either scurrilous writing by a person who knows the real truth of the matter but chooses for the purpose of his religious point to misrepresent rationalism, or else it is simply ignorant writing by a person who hasn't a notion of the true liberation of the mind when it no longer has to accommodate irrationality at all in its thinking process.

One can't help but feel that its author has indulged in just a little too much "free thinking" himself, and in the worst modern sense of the term.

Eh, I'm probably just projecting. 

I thought exactly the same thing.

Well, shelley, the problem is in the definitions, as per usual.  Neither "free will" nor "determinism" has one set meaning.  Both have essentially "hard" and "soft" interpretations, much like atheism.

When I say that free will is an illusion, I mean that decisions are made and then we become aware of them.  Like I said in my essay, the "computation" has to occur before the state of decision can be reached.  Therefore, once we have reached a decision, it is beyond the laws of time for us to go back and reverse it.  At any given moment in time, we can only be in the state we are in, and that state was determined before we became aware of it.

The flip side of this is that we can make decisions which, if viewed from a slightly different perspective, can be considered a sort of limited free will.  That is, from a practical point of view, strict determinism is sort of irrelevant.  If we take the restaurant example from my essay, there is no practical way to know with certainty whether my dinner guest will choose fish or chicken.  For that matter, if asked beforehand, there is no way for me to know my own future preferences.  Even though in reality, the state of preference, and the logical processing of that preference through a filter of other considerations like diet, cost, etc, is unavoidable and inevitable, there is no way for a human to experience life without the perception that choices are being made.

Here's another way to think of it.  Take the next ten minutes and try not to make any choices.

[/cue Jeopardy Theme for 10 minutes]

Ok.  You couldn't do it, right?  The thing is, when you are faced with options, you can't help but weigh them.  The mental machinery that makes the decision doesn't operate instantaneously.  Sometimes (often) we take quite a bit of time to reach a decision.  Imagine the restaurant again, and suppose that you don't have any clear opinion on whether fish or chicken would be better.  You have to make a choice, but neither one is jumping out at you.  You'll spend several minutes imagining various scenarios.  You'll imagine yourself eating each dish, imagine what each one will taste like, how you will feel, etc, etc.  During this process, the same kinds of things are going on.  Each moment of awareness is the result of pre-conscious mental calculations.  Even so, to you, it feels like movement from one place to another.  You are having to consciously think about what you want.

This is where the apparent paradox happens.  Theoretically, there is a set of causal events that has made your course inevitable, but you cannot mentally exist in that awareness.  Practically, though, there is no way for a human to utilize or even be consciously aware of, this fact.  Here's where the classic "brain in a vat" comes in handy.  Remember that the usual answer to the brain in a vat problem is that if the illusion is so complete that there is no way for humans to pierce it, then for all practical purposes, the illusion is real.

The same applies to humans with regard to free will.  Our perception is limited to the appearance of choices.  We are incapable of perceiving ourselves as not choosing, so the illusion is essentially complete.

If it helps you to think of it in a different way, consider the following two statements, both of which are true:

1) My chair is made almost entirely of empty space.

2) My chair is a solid object.

Both statements are true, despite being apparently paradoxical.  The reason "My chair is a solid object" is true is that I cannot help but perceive it at the level of human perception.  I am incapable of perceiving it on a quantum level.  The illusion of solidity is complete for me, and therefore, the illusion is pragmatically real.

So, I can understand intellectually that determinism is real.  Yet, I cannot help but perceive the complete illusion that I am making choices, so at the same time, I perceive free will.

Well, that's just horse shit.

Logic is the codification of the way we think.  Nothing more.  We think the way we do because rationality, in most cases, survives better than irrationality.  Suppose there is a rodent gathering food on a plain.  A shadow passes overhead.  Logically, the best thing to do is run as fast as possible to the nearest shelter.  Whether it's an owl overhead or not, quick retreat is the most logical course.  Rodents who retreat consistently are going to survive better than those who don't.  Evolution chooses the most rational creatures, whether they are aware of their rationality or not.

As I elucidated in my essay, sentience isn't really an on/off switch, and the philosophical divide isn't particularly important.  Consciousness developed very gradually, just like every other thing about... well.. everything.  As we began developing the ability to think abstractly, and to use language and symbols, evolution did just what it always does.  It favored creatures that, whether conscious or not, followed the most rational course most of the time.  Why would we think that as consciousness evolved, rationality would somehow disappear?  That would be very surprising indeed!  Why would evolution suddenly dispense with rationality?

I think the problem your interlocutor may be having is in the realization that simple math produces rationality.  That is, evolution, as a purely mathematical and non-conscious process, produces creatures that behave rationally.  It helps to try to imagine the opposite.  Try to imagine a system by which evolution could produce creatures which consistently make decisions that don't make any sense at all.

Calling it a flaw is giving more respect to theist dogma than is necessary.

Nah.  Again, we function as if free will is true, and for the most part, we have the power to change our lives in ways that will make them better.  Think about it.  Evolution wouldn't have favored creatures that weren't out to improve their own lot in life.  Whether it's deterministic or not, when we get the chance to go to a four star restaurant, we perceive the choice as real, and feel damn good about ourselves as we descend into an orgiastic mastication festival.

Nahh. You didn't miss anything. We're still having freethought defined for us by people incapable of experiencing it.

Who is the more free: The person who must have a god or the one who has no need for one?

If this is true for atheists:

You are obliged to believe that you are nothing more than a machine, freewill is illusion, and your mind is a mere epiphenomenon, a dead-end byproduct of the chain of cause and effect. 

then this must be true for theists:

You are obliged to believe that you are nothing more than a machine, freewill is illusion, and your mind is a mere epiphenomenon, a dead-end byproduct of the chain of events initiated by the creation.

I'm guessing you're not quite understanding the extent of my argument, then.  I'll try to explain in a sec.

I'm not saying that.  I'm saying that pre-conscious behavior is selected for rationality.  That is, the paramecium that moves toward food sources rather than away from them will survive better.  It has no rational mental processes, yet it behaves rationally.

As we move up the chain of brain size and complexity, we move closer and closer to conscious rational thought.  (I would argue here that apes, chimps, dolphins, and parrots have all shown the ability to use rudimentary abstract logic, so it's not just humans that can do it.)  It would be a staggeringly improbable event for conscious thought to develop without rationality.

Why not?

I stringently disagree.  I submit that 99% of all the actions you've performed in the last week have been essentially rational, as have those of virtually every human alive.  When was the last time you tried to eat through your nose?  Dunked your head in the toilet when your bowels hurt?  Screamed "NO MOMMY!!! I DON'T WANT THE ANAL PROBE!!!" when asked whether you'd like fries with your burger?

I think what you're trying to say is that in a post-industrial society that is vastly different from our evolutionary environment, we often fail to make the most rational decision.  This doesn't mean we're mostly irrational.  It means we are not perfectly rational.

I really think you're reading too much into this.  Conscious rationality is rather superfluous.  If you pretend like all the things we think are important aren't important and look at humans from about a mile up, we look an awful lot like ants.

If I ever get around to my third career, I'm going to be a confidence man.

OMFG!  Lost/Low-income Housing Crisis, LHC?  Large Hadron Collider, LHC?  This whole financial crisis was just a conspiracy by the scientists to create a black hole via one means or another!  First they caused two world wars and the holocost (according to ben stein) and now this!  WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!! *adjusts tin-foil hat*

Thanks, KB.

Just to put an even finer point on it, think of a gigantic super-computer that could contain absolutely every bit of relevant data pertinent to a decision you're going to make.  We must realize that this computer is the stuff of fantasy, for the amount of information would surely be more than could be held by all the computers ever made on earth, with only a small fraction of the data being accounted for.  It's staggering to think of how many bits of data would be required for such a task.  Even with modern miniaturization, the computer would likely be continent-sized, and this would be just to make one human decision.

Even so, let's imagine such a computer.  It would know absolutely every single detail of your entire life, right down to the moment of conception.  It would have a complete and 100% accurate knowledge of every piece of your DNA, and would know with 100% accuracy each and every chemical reaction that had ever taken place in your body.  (When you consider that we have trillions of cells, each of which engages in virtually constant activity, you realize just how staggering this amount of data is.)  Furthermore, it would know each and every perception you had ever had, through all of your senses.  It would know the exact way your brain is built, and thus, exactly how each neuron would fire, and exactly how this firing would manifest in your consciousness.

If such a computer was to exist, and we asked it to predict your "choice" when asked if you prefer fish or chicken for lunch, it ought to be able to get it right 100% of the time.  That's because you're just as much a product of the laws of survival of the stable and survival of the most able to survive as anything else in the universe.  (Seriously.  Read the essay, dammit!)

If we accept this as true, it's impossible not to be a determinist in one sense of the word.  The thing is, there is no such computer, and it's rather naive to suppose there ever could be.  Even if such a powerful computer could be built, the logistics of feeding it 100% accurate and complete data about a human would be insurmountable.  The fact is, nobody will ever be able to predict human behavior with 100% accuracy.

What you're going to do in ten minutes is somewhat predictable in many cases, but there are so many unpredictable forces in the universe that there will always be a sense of uncertainty.  More importantly, humans are incapable of not making choices.  We are also incapable of not thinking of them as choices.  Determinism is an exercise in philosophy, not a viable way of life.  Like a brain in a vat, we are totally immersed in our own awareness, which cannot help but recognize choice as a moment of decision in time, and we cannot help but see ourselves as the agents of these changes.

AHA!

I see the problem.  I mean "rational towards the end of good or successful."  The difference is slight, but important.  Humans have learned to be rational towards ends that are not always good or successful because we've learned to think in the abstract so well that we can fuck ourselves up.  We can also artificially manipulate DNA and so forth.

The broad point I'm trying to make is that it should be no surprise that abstract thought, once evolved, would develop a system of quantifying and codifying logic.  Everything in nature functions rationally towards the end of "good" and "successful" (and yes, I know we can quibble over "good."  I think you know what I mean.)  The point is, when humans became able to decide what is good and successful, rather than move towards it blindly, it should be no surprise that they figured out how to do it rationally.

I'm also trying to say that with all its bells and whistles, abstract logic has given humans a lot of things that humans think are really important, but we're not doing anything qualitatively different from any other animal.  We're different from ants by a huge degree, but not in kind.  Just possessing the capability of abstract thought is not particularly interesting when we recognize it as just another adaptation.  Ants have six legs.  Humans only have two.  Dolphins have echolocation.  Humans don't.  (Yes, I know we can find walls with echolocation.)

Remember, animals have been hunting other animals to extinction since before humans came along.  They've been ruining their habitats.  They've been over-multiplying.  Everything humans are doing is just being done on a much grander scale.

If you think about it, natural selection through competition is artificial selection.  When a tree mutates and proliferates because its leaves are higher off the ground, it's responding to selection from the giraffe.  The giraffe responds to selection by the tree and grows a longer neck.  They are selecting each other.  Human selection is conscious, and that's interesting to be sure, but it isn't really all that different.  Like any other animal, we are molding our environment through our actions.  We just happen to be conscious of what we're doing.

Yes there is a big difference in human society now and chimp groups in the jungle, but many studies suggest there is certainly not a 'gigantic' difference in many attributes of the mind and behaviour. It doesn't take major differences to cross some critical threshold and allow rapid divergence in some aspect, which is pretty much what seems to have happened here. Its like how a few percent difference in our genome has lead to the significant physical and mental difference with chimps.

Don't be ridiculous. Most scientific texts are written for scientists. The bulk of scientific texts are either textbooks or journals. I don't think that when the authors of these journal articles or (especially) textbooks are writing them, they are thinking "how do we make this as incomprehensible as possible to most people"? I think they are thinking "How do we communicate to our audience of undergraduate/graduate/professional scientists"? The fact that such material is incomprehensible to most people is because you have to crawl before you can walk. You won't be able to pick up a journal article on the evolution of quantum systems without being able to solve basic problems of linear algebra and vector calculus. This requires hard work, not a decoder ring and a super-secret password.

As brief as my scientific education was (I did two years of physics before realizing that I would be better suited to other things) it taught me - more than anything else - the concerted effort that science requires. Not just in an educational setting, but more so in the application of the scientific method. The amount of time, energy and sacrifice it takes is huge.

To echo Sam Harris's statements from earlier this year, we don't tell Lance Armstrong that he's an "elitist" for winning the Tour de France. We don't tell Curtis Joseph to let some pucks in the net once and a while so he doesn't make the opposing team feel bad about their skills. The whole freaking Olympic Games is about finding the elite, and they have to work.

Yes, to get to a level of understanding where you're in the game of competing ideas is becoming part of an elite. Even just being a spectator requires a certain amount of "elite" knowledge. But not that much. Once you understand the game, it's not difficult to watch rugby, for instance, and understand what's happening. It is at first, but that's because you don't know what's going on. That's not a matter of elitism.