I’m trying to understand exactly what you mean when you say that God cannot be an object of experience, for he is the subject of all experience. Are you saying that my sense that I, a being purportedly independent of God, am the subject of the sensations associated with typing on a keyboard, is in fact illusory, and that in fact God is the subject of this (as well as all other) experiences? The only way that I can make sense of this is in an understanding of consciousness usually associated with eastern religions such as Buddhism, in which the self is ultimately an illusion, and God is, in some sense, the unity of all consciousness. This is by no means a silly view, and although it’s not exactly orthodox Christianity, it may well be that some Christian mystics would have identified with it (I don’t know enough about Christian mysticism to say myself). Is that what you’re getting at?

Incidentally, if this view of God is correct, then God ought to be provable (or at least arguable for) in an analogous way to how one proves one’s self–I think therefore I am. I think that Descarte’s proof works, personally–I think it’s absurd to say that there is no such thing as subjective experience, as some empiricists are wont to do. But by your logic (if I’m interpreting you correctly) we can simply take this proof a step further, saying that yes, that’s right, but your sense of your self isn’t quite right–in fact you are (or are a part of) God. This is not proving God in the way we prove (or rather, give probabilistic support for) the existence of material objects, but then I don’t think anybody thinks that God is a material thing. And actually, some of the most popular arguments among Christian philosophers for the existence of God at present are arguments based on religious experience (although they might understand it differently than you do).

God is not a mental concept, nor a “thing”, nor an idea. God can never be proved - only certain mental constructs can be proved or disproved, and then only based on underlying presuppositions which themselves must remain unproved.

God as a mental construct is not God. God can only be known through presence, through subjective experience of oneself as contained in and by God. God can never be the object on experience - God is the subject of all experience. To draw near to God is to experience one’s own consciousness as more and more like God.

Christianity has a whole mystical tradition addressing the direct experience of God, but we haven’t heard much from it in the last 500 years. Our ways of thinking are formed almost entirely by post-Enlightenment empiricism, so much so that we now try to “prove” the Bible based on pseudo-scientific arguments rather than understanding it as an opening into a journey toward God. The mind’s concept about faith - I think this is what some people mean when they use the word “belief” - get substituted for the thing itself.

(I submitted that before I meant to. That’s why this went on to two posts.)

I think the main difficulty with your argument is your assumption that if naturalism is true, determinism follows. There are good arguments for this position, some of which you articulated, but it’s by no means necessary. Indeed, I think most modern physicists are probably indeterminists, because of what we’ve discovered about quantum mechanics. According to most interpretations of quantum mechanics, even if you are given all the conditions of the universe at a given time, that will only allow you to predict the *probability* of future events, not say what will definitely happen.

Of course, whether quantum indeterminacy can be made to support free will is a whole ‘nother question. John Polkinghorne thinks so, but he’s in the minority. Libertarian free will is problematic no matter how you slice it. But if other things in the universe are indeterministic, it at least seems more plausible that perhaps our actions are also indeterministic.

At any rate, even our best physical theories of the universe are not infallible. Especially when it comes to quantum mechanics, there are good arguments for anti-realism–the position that science tells us what works, not what is literally true.

Right up until you add chaos theory into the mix.

You got it right the first time: our “choices” would be the same all the time, every time, because our body chemicals determine our decisions. But it seems to us that we have “free will” because our chemicals react to our environment and over that we have NO control. So instead of eggs, we have cereal, not because we so choose, but because our taste buds are being stimulated by chemicals in the air put there by, say, an increase in carbon production in a little town in Belgium.

Some of us do seem to “decide” to change our behavior, even our personalities, through, say, psychology or religion, but is it due to “free will”, or more because a butterfly wing flutter caused the “right” teacher with the “right” biology to come into one’s enviroment at the “right” time?

That’s why I’m down with Taoism, don’t ‘cha know. Jes’ follow the path, ‘cuz you can’t really get off it anyhow.

I guess that means I believe in “predestination,” but, again, given chaos theory and the size of the universe, it may not be literally true that anything’s possible, as far as we can perceive with our tiny li’l brains, it’s certainly virtually true.

(Apologies if my my understanding of chaos theory is foxed up. :) )

I guess my post title is misleading because this doesn’t prove God, but claims that God is necessary to provide free will. And I use the term God loosely (essentially, “the force that gives us free will”).

There are lots of things that are impractical to explain in terms of atoms and particals and physical science — including love, anger, happiness, money, nationality, family, war, peace, freedom, race, culture, humor, harmony, beauty, life, death, idealism, sarcasm, loneliness - all of these things can’t be easily explained by physical science, and yes I agree with you that free will also can’t be explained by science.

But this doesn’t say anything about God any more than it says anything about Santa Claus… It just means that science is a tool that’s better suited to explaining some things than others.

As an aside, there are a lot of different kinds of science. Life is explained in part by biology, but biology has more room for free will in it than, say, physics or chemistry.

anyway, thanks

Tim: My point is that, like a coin toss, a choice is (to us) a generally unpredictable outcome of complex variables. The variables involved human brain calculations are immensely more complex than those involved in a coin being tossed in the air, but, scientifically speaking, they are still natural happenings that conform to the laws of physical science. WE cannot calculate this stuff, but a being of massive intelligence with a full understanding of all variables involved, right down to the neural pathways in our brains, could. I think at some point we suspend how far we are willing to take our scientific explanations because it’s more comfortable to think we’re in control. But if we are, in fact, free beings, I think there has to be a point at which we cross beyond what science can explain, and that takes us into the realm of the divine.

Also, my philosophy major roommate informs me that C.S. Lewis came up with an argument that much resembles mine long before I did, so apparently I once again fail to produce something new.

On the coin flip…a flip of a coin is not a choice (unlike making eggs vs. pancakes or whatever) you could calculate the variables to produce the result before it happened. Yet, you could not produce an equation to answer a breakfast choice beforehand.

I was watching Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chonicles Friday night. Discussing a terminator one human character says to another something like: “This macine produces more calculations in a minute than we produce in a lifetime.”

How wrong they are.

Take the simple wasp, one of the lower beings on our planet. It is born. Makes a nest. Procreates. Flies. Lands upside. Is generally smart enough to not drown itself. Can hover. Stings when threatened. None of this is learned behavior. Simple life is more complex than we could ever dream. It cannot be calculated.

I believe we make our own choices. If not, than what’s the point?