Danny was also banned in the Great Purge. You won't get a reply from him here.

Yes, here. I am quoting the relevant part:

The relationship [between determinism and free will] is relative and metaphorical.

Determinism is the theory that, since every effect is defined by a preceding mechanical cause, and since the content of thought and decision is a mental effect, ergo a description of mechanical causes should (in theory) completely define the content of thought and decision. Free will is the primary observation that a conscious man has about his own decision-making: he notices that he, and not his circumstances, define the content of his thought and decision. At first glance, this seems a paradox, for the determinist logic concludes that the will is not free, any more than the position of the gears in a clockwork at noontime is free: but primary observation, the given we must accept before any thought process (including thinking about free will) begins, is that the will is free.

In my vision, I saw the relation between the two was relative to one’s point of view. From the point of view of the actor, the will is and must be free, or otherwise he is not an actor but a patient. (Here I do not mean a stage actor or a hospital patient, I mean one who acts and that which suffers begin acted upon.) From the point of view of a mechanical description of the actor, the actor described by means of the metaphor as if he is the patient, he is a patient, merely one who passively suffers or observes the outcome of previous mechanical causes, including, oddly enough, the “causes” of that actor’s previous decisions.

By previous decisions here, I mean, for example, if I have previous decided to give into some vice or bad habit, then even within the metaphor of mechanical cause and effect, I am the passive sufferer of what, now, to me is something external to my will. On Monday and Tuesday, I give in to anger, so that by Wednesday, the habit of anger is lodged into my brain: from the point of view of Monday, anger is something within the power of my free will, but by Wednesday, the anger is a merely a fact external to my will, something I can make a decision about, but not itself a decision.

If all this is unclear, let me use an analogy. Suppose you are Shakespeare, and with pen in hand, you set down to write the play Hamlet. Hamlet’s actions are, from the point of view outside the play, entirely controlled by Shakespeare’s pen. Hamlet is a literal imagining: he cannot be said to have a free will in a literal sense. But, let us imagine things from Hamlet’s point of view — and if you cannot imagine things from Hamlet’s point of view, Shakespeare has failed as a playwright. From Hamlet’s point of view, from what we might call the point of view inside the play, Hamlet does and must have free will, because without Hamlet’s free will, his ability to decide and his hesitation to decide, then there is no drama and no play and no Hamlet. While theoretically a play like Oedipus Rex can take place inside a Determinist universe, a play like Hamlet cannot.

Here is the point: From Shakespeare’s point of view, from the point of view of the Creator with a pen in his hand, there is no paradox between determinism and free will nor can there be a paradox. There must be cause and effect inside the play, and things inside the play must be imagined (imagined by the playwright, players, and playgoers) to happen according to fixed and mechanical rules. If Hamlet picks up the skull of Yorick, the motion of the hand causes and determines the location of the skull as it is picked off the ground. If Ophelia falls into the water, and held buoyant by her dress for a time, the mechanical cause and effect dictates that once the fabric is sodden, the buoyancy escapes, and Ophelia drowns. At no point in time does anything happen, no can anything happen, inside the imaginary world of Hamlet where cause and effect does not operate, and the current situation of every particle of matter is determined are defined by the previous situation. If Ophelia falls in the river in Act IV, scene vii, then by the law of cause and effect, she was out of the river before that Act, and in the river after. But there also must be free will inside the play, because when Laertes rushes from the room after learning of Ophelia’s death, there is no drama if Shakespeare portrays Laertes merely as a machine reacting without free will. The anger of Laertes which drives him to plot murder against Hamlet in a later act is “caused” (in one sense of the word) by the death of Ophelia, but (in other sense of the word) it is “caused” by his own character, personality, will and decision.

In yet a third sense of the word, the decision of Laertes to murder Hamlet is “caused” by Shakespeare’s pen.

If the universe is like a stageplay, and the Creator has the pen of history in His hand, then there is no more paradox between cause and effect and free will inside our universe any more than there is inside Shakespeare’s play. If both cause and effect and free will are decided by the Creator, then they are two different names for the same thing seen from two different metaphors. It is both true, from the determinist metaphor, that the news of Ophelia’s death causes Laertes to murder Hamlet, like mainspring A moving cogwheel B to move lever C; and true also from the indeterminists metaphor that Laertes decided and determined to murder Hamlet of his own free will, neither being coerced nor while under the influence.

Please allow me to attempt a clarification. Belief or non-belief does not end with "God" but influences the interpretation/understanding of the material world of those who believe or not. One says reality is engineered the other says it is not. In either case the material world exists. Fools abound on both sides of this issue.

Religious belief and atheism are both faith-based systems.

Atheism is not a system of beliefs. It is the absence of one particular belief. Of course every atheist has a belief system, and its failure to include a belief in God makes it an atheistic system, but atheism is not the system. To say it is would be like saying blue is a kind of car because some cars are blue.

The former has the merit to admit to their faith.

I'll admit to believing some things I cannot prove, if that is all you mean by faith. If you mean something else, you'll have to be more explicit.

I was a champion of atheism who gave arguments in favor of atheism so convincing that three of my friends gave up their religious belief due to my persuasive reasoning powers, and my father stopped going to church.

OK, we lost you, but not until we picked up four for our side. That'll work.

Hi Susan,
Hey i know this thread has been hibernating for a while, but i went back through it and had one question i couldn't seem to get my mind around. I thought if anyone perhaps you would be able to help me understand his experience from your perspective?
Basically i read the article, then read the responses and noticed that the responses didn't really match the article, so i went back and read the article again and still can't see how many of the responses don't match up with the article. what i mean by that is this; Mr.Wright claimed he was having, at the very least, chest pain. his wife said a prayer and the pain went away and a little while later he went to the hospital where he needed heart surgery. after being at the hospital he began to receive visions and other experiences. he said he was in the right frame of mind and was not having any stress that would cause him to hallucinate. these visions or experiences, gave him definitive evidence of God's existence, and answered philosophical questions he had not quite got an answer to on his own simply by employing logic and reason.

When i read the responses about hallucinating and having out of body experiences when one's brain is under duress i couldn't help but to wonder whether many of the responders had read the article at all? it was almost as if Mr.Wright had said he had a heart attack, had an out of body experience where he saw God then came back a believer? But obviously that was not what he had said.

I suppose one could narrow down what actually happened into three possibilities.
1. Mr.Write is lying.
2.Mr.Write is telling the truth, but he has been misled in some way.
3. Mr.Write is telling the truth and the experiences he had were actually real.

It appears that most of the skeptical posters are suggesting #2 to be the most likely possibility, but yet no one discussed what actually happened with him? Or am i misunderstanding the nature and duration of hallucinations? If you don't feel like responding on this site you can e-mail me too if you would like. just go to my website at 2fish.co then click on the "contact" button, then click the "ask a priest" button. Thanks so much for your time and happy new year!

and the paradox of determinism and free will was made clear to me, as was the symphonic nature of prophecy. I was shown the structure of time and space.

Have you shared these insights with your readers?

"What is wrong with you people?"

I take it you fancy yourself a 'people person'?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRifKEf0xr8