Gays spread HIV purposely.

[AngusThermopyle]

Your non answer is all the answer I needed.

Edited January 14, 2009 by AngusThermopyle

[charter.rights]

Your non answer is all the answer I needed.

Your inability to understand is what I expected. However, I provided an answer for those that could understand and were willing to look beyond their own prejudice.

Ever see someone die?

Edited January 14, 2009 by charter.rights

[AngusThermopyle]

Your inability to understand is what I expected. However, I provided an answer for those that could understand and were willing to look beyond their own prejudice.

Actually I believe you meant to say my ability to live in reality as opposed to nonesensical fantasy is what you expected. Once again you prattle about perception. Well the truth is that your "perception" does not change reality one iota, not even a little bit. Just because you believe your own delerium does not make it real or fact.

As to your second question about seeing someone die, yes I have. In fact I've seen many more people die than you ever would if you lived ten lifetimes. So what was your point? If you had one at all that is.

[charter.rights]

Actually I believe you meant to say my ability to live in reality as opposed to nonesensical fantasy is what you expected. Once again you prattle about perception. Well the truth is that your "perception" does not change reality one iota, not even a little bit. Just because you believe your own delerium does not make it real or fact.

As to your second question about seeing someone die, yes I have. In fact I've seen many more people die than you ever would if you lived ten lifetimes. So what was your point? If you had one at all that is.

Ever been in a fire fight where your comrades get whacked one by one? How did YOU survive the onslaught?

You "believe" that you have seen someone die but have not born witness to the actual death. Maybe someone's guts were blown apart beside you but all you really saw was a judgment in your mind that confirmed your buddy's belief he was dead. People with the will to live survive long past the predictions or even past your ephemeral judgment of death.

Years ago doctors judged death to be at the time the heart stopped. Years before that if you stopped breathing you were a goner. Today it is brain activity. Yet in all the years our judgment of what constitutes death has changed, it is still not a final declaration - an absolute certainty. Death is only a perception believed by at least two people.

If you believe you will die then you might want to say your good-byes now since no one knows when they will bite the bullet. However, believe in life and you will live. And though we may finally decide our bodies no longer serve us, our intention - our being - lives on. Our cells and our DNA survive and the molecules that once made up our bodies become other things.

Anyone who believes in death is delusional. The Truth and Reality is it doesn't exist.

[AngusThermopyle]

Ever been in a fire fight where your comrades get whacked one by one? How did YOU survive the onslaught?

You "believe" that you have seen someone die but have not born witness to the actual death. Maybe someone's guts were blown apart beside you but all you really saw was a judgment in your mind that confirmed your buddy's belief he was dead. People with the will to live survive long past the predictions or even past your ephemeral judgment of death.

Years ago doctors judged death to be at the time the heart stopped. Years before that if you stopped breathing you were a goner. Today it is brain activity. Yet in all the years our judgment of what constitutes death has changed, it is still not a final declaration - an absolute certainty. Death is only a perception believed by at least two people.

If you believe you will die then you might want to say your good-byes now since no one knows when they will bite the bullet. However, believe in life and you will live. And though we may finally decide our bodies no longer serve us, our intention - our being - lives on. Our cells and our DNA survive and the molecules that once made up our bodies become other things.

Anyone who believes in death is delusional. The Truth and Reality is it doesn't exist.

You really are supremely arrogant. You talk to me oh so sanctimoniously about seeing, knowing and understanding death when in fact you don't have a clue.

Think about it, three of my tours were Somalia, Yugoslavia and Rwanda. I most certainly have seen death and undoubtedly understand the meaning of it in ways you cannot imagine. You allude to the constant state of energy in the Universe as some sort of immortality when in fact that constant state has nothing in a meaningfull context to do with us as corporeal living beings.

So in answer to your little meaningless disjointed fantasy about a state of no death I can tell you that I have a very first hand understanding of death and I did not have to resort to the fantasies of an Oprah guest in order to gain that understanding.

Delusion and fantasy are not reality. The reality is that when you see someones brains spilling into the dirt it doesn't matter if you think or don't think they are dead. They simply are dead, period.

[WIP]

We are born into mortality with a goal of death. Everything we do is geared to that finality. We may fancy life along the way but the ultimate goal is death.

That doesn't make death the goal -- it makes life the goal, to be lived until death takes it away. Most people assume that belief in a soul is universal, and has only been knocked down by science in the last century or two, but the truth is there have been skeptics of immortality for over two thousand years -- even back in the days when the world was assumed to be a supernatural creation. The Greek materialists such as Epicurus, and writers of most of the Old Testament do not share a belief in immortality. The writer of Ecclesiastes for example, did not share a belief in a resurrection either -- for him, death was oblivion. The doctrines of surviving death come along later with Greek influence on Judaism. So, it's wrong to assume that a belief in immortality of some sort was a universal way of dealing with the problem of our mortality.

Yet there is no one who can remember a time they were "unborn".

Because there is no existence as a physical, conscious entity before birth. And I know there are people who claim they've remembered past lives when regressed under hypnosis, but people are extremely suggestible under hypnosis, and can be led to believe all sorts of things just by being given a few leading questions from the therapist -- in recent years, the scandals involving child abuse convictions based on false memories from hypnotic regression have provided the latest example.

So, when people asks what happens after we die, I ask where was your soul before you were born? If you were not aware of your personal nonexistence in the previous 13.7 billion years of this Universe, you're not going to be aware of your death after the synapses in your brain have stopped firing.

Physical life and death is a delusion.

I would counter that neuroscientists learning about how the brain functions in the last 30 years are discovering that our sense of self is the illusion. Various regions of the cerebral cortex can be correlated with conscious mental states. Consciousness does not exist separate from brain function.

Once we get beyond the notion that our life is about death, we no longer live in mortality but arise to The Resurrection. We are all capable of raising the dead by changing our perceptions. Anyone who has had a near-death experience knows that life is in the Spirit, not in the body. Anyone can save another by refusing to believe in and confirm their delusions.

Those who believe they are dead cannot be saved. But those who have hope can be saved.

Check out the work of Swiss neurologist Olaf Blanke, who discovered by accident, the region of the brain which creates the mind/body map. When it is disabled by a mild electrical charge, the subject starts feeling like they are floating free of the body. People who believe NDE's are real experiences, have tried to confirm them by providing relevant information that could only be accessed by soul travel -- and they have failed each time despite generous funding from groups of believers who are looking to prove their belief in a soul. You are free to believe you have an immortal soul if you wish -- many people seem unable to deal with death otherwise since our survival instinct is a primal as hunger, sleep and sex -- but a minority of people want to focus on what is useful and relevant information -- and if we are mortal, we make the best of the time we have.

[charter.rights]

You really are supremely arrogant. You talk to me oh so sanctimoniously about seeing, knowing and understanding death when in fact you don't have a clue.

Think about it, three of my tours were Somalia, Yugoslavia and Rwanda. I most certainly have seen death and undoubtedly understand the meaning of it in ways you cannot imagine. You allude to the constant state of energy in the Universe as some sort of immortality when in fact that constant state has nothing in a meaningfull context to do with us as corporeal living beings.

So in answer to your little meaningless disjointed fantasy about a state of no death I can tell you that I have a very first hand understanding of death and I did not have to resort to the fantasies of an Oprah guest in order to gain that understanding.

Delusion and fantasy are not reality. The reality is that when you see someones brains spilling into the dirt it doesn't matter if you think or don't think they are dead. They simply are dead, period.

What you share with another is nothing but delusion - even their brains spilling out is a dream you both have created and manifested. A schizophrenic sees things that are atrocious but that does not make then any more real then your eye witness account of a nightmare.

You share death. You are just like all the other goats that trample the earth and fall off the cliff. It is nothing new nor is it suprising you can't understand.

[charter.rights]

That doesn't make death the goal -- it makes life the goal, to be lived until death takes it away. Most people assume that belief in a soul is universal, and has only been knocked down by science in the last century or two, but the truth is there have been skeptics of immortality for over two thousand years -- even back in the days when the world was assumed to be a supernatural creation. The Greek materialists such as Epicurus, and writers of most of the Old Testament do not share a belief in immortality. The writer of Ecclesiastes for example, did not share a belief in a resurrection either -- for him, death was oblivion. The doctrines of surviving death come along later with Greek influence on Judaism. So, it's wrong to assume that a belief in immortality of some sort was a universal way of dealing with the problem of our mortality.

Because there is no existence as a physical, conscious entity before birth. And I know there are people who claim they've remembered past lives when regressed under hypnosis, but people are extremely suggestible under hypnosis, and can be led to believe all sorts of things just by being given a few leading questions from the therapist -- in recent years, the scandals involving child abuse convictions based on false memories from hypnotic regression have provided the latest example.

So, when people asks what happens after we die, I ask where was your soul before you were born? If you were not aware of your personal nonexistence in the previous 13.7 billion years of this Universe, you're not going to be aware of your death after the synapses in your brain have stopped firing.

I would counter that neuroscientists learning about how the brain functions in the last 30 years are discovering that our sense of self is the illusion. Various regions of the cerebral cortex can be correlated with conscious mental states. Consciousness does not exist separate from brain function.

Check out the work of Swiss neurologist Olaf Blanke, who discovered by accident, the region of the brain which creates the mind/body map. When it is disabled by a mild electrical charge, the subject starts feeling like they are floating free of the body. People who believe NDE's are real experiences, have tried to confirm them by providing relevant information that could only be accessed by soul travel -- and they have failed each time despite generous funding from groups of believers who are looking to prove their belief in a soul. You are free to believe you have an immortal soul if you wish -- many people seem unable to deal with death otherwise since our survival instinct is a primal as hunger, sleep and sex -- but a minority of people want to focus on what is useful and relevant information -- and if we are mortal, we make the best of the time we have.

You are arguing for death - the "ultimate" inevitability of life.

Our experience i much more than just an expression of life and death. Intention changes everything.

[WIP]

You are arguing for death - the "ultimate" inevitability of life.

Our experience i much more than just an expression of life and death. Intention changes everything.

I'm not sure what the intended meaning is, but if you're saying that coming to terms with death and a limited lifespan means glorifying death, that is totally ass-backwards. Just like every job takes on more significance when a deadline is approaching, realizing that we don't get do-overs in heaven or through reincarnation, should lead towards a greater appreciation for the life we have.

And I know it doesn't work for everyone! Jean Paul Sartre and most of the existential philosophers couldn't find real purpose or meaning in life, knowing that it would come to an end at some point. But immortality has its own downside. The biggest one being that the promise of living on after death brings a new fear: will my afterlife be heaven or hell. Fear of displeasing the almighty gatekeeper, who has the keys to heaven, leads many people to live lives of misery, denial and inflict their misery on others to improve their odds of a glorious afterlife -- I'm certain it's the source of the neuroses for the guy who starts all of these condemn the sinners threads.

[charter.rights]

I'm not sure what the intended meaning is, but if you're saying that coming to terms with death and a limited lifespan means glorifying death, that is totally ass-backwards. Just like every job takes on more significance when a deadline is approaching, realizing that we don't get do-overs in heaven or through reincarnation, should lead towards a greater appreciation for the life we have.

And I know it doesn't work for everyone! Jean Paul Sartre and most of the existential philosophers couldn't find real purpose or meaning in life, knowing that it would come to an end at some point. But immortality has its own downside. The biggest one being that the promise of living on after death brings a new fear: will my afterlife be heaven or hell. Fear of displeasing the almighty gatekeeper, who has the keys to heaven, leads many people to live lives of misery, denial and inflict their misery on others to improve their odds of a glorious afterlife -- I'm certain it's the source of the neuroses for the guy who starts all of these condemn the sinners threads.

I not arguing for "life after death". Death is a finality if you believe in it. I am suggesting that birth is simply a phase in our consciousness. We were alive and sentient for at least months before actual birth but have no recollection of it. Even for most people being a baby and toddler are sketchy memories. Yet we were building experiences and memories during those periods, we have forgotten.

Our memories fade and still our experiences are what we are. Our thoughts exist and even when we choose to go to sleep or we choose to die. Our thoughts carry on. The sum of our self in this consciousness is in our thought process - not our bodies. Yet our Spirit the God-Self, exists both within and without. If we are part of that ~something~ whether we call that God or the scientific world we cannot be separated from it. Like energy we exist and will continue to exist as Spirit even if we choose death and drop from consciousness in our dream of death.

Being aware means that we accept our beginnings. We did not begin at birth. Our DNA proves that. Nor will we end at death since both birth and death are delusions. So we transgress the birth-death limitation we have placed on ourselves and choose life as it exists in the real world.

So the question really is do you consider yourself the dreamer or the dreamed? Being both you can accept the inevitability of death you created and blame "nature" or God for your own choices. Even in the scientific world we have free choice. There are no random acts that we have not dreamed before they have happened.

[WIP]

I not arguing for "life after death". Death is a finality if you believe in it. I am suggesting that birth is simply a phase in our consciousness. We were alive and sentient for at least months before actual birth but have no recollection of it.

No, we were not sentient while we were in the womb, since our conscious awareness of our bodies and the world around us takes months to develop after we are born.

Even for most people being a baby and toddler are sketchy memories. Yet we were building experiences and memories during those periods, we have forgotten.

At that stage, the child's brain is still growing and forming the neural pathways necessary to store and retrieve memories -- it's not a matter of forgetting memories.

Our memories fade and still our experiences are what we are. Our thoughts exist and even when we choose to go to sleep or we choose to die. Our thoughts carry on. The sum of our self in this consciousness is in our thought process - not our bodies.

Our thoughts do not carry on after we die, since thoughts are abstract concepts and have no independent existence outside of the conscious decision-making process going on in our brains. If the brain dies, thought dies as well -- and may even proceed brain death in cases of degenerative brain disorders such as Alzheimer's Disease.

Any form of consciousness that exists after death, is not a personal form of self-consciousness that includes our thoughts, memories and perceptions. There are some philosophers, such as David Chalmers, who believe that the subjective, interior feeling of self awareness could be evidence that particles, or some other building blocks of nature, contain conscious properties which make the more highly organized and sophisticated conscious awareness of advanced living organisms possible. This limited form of dualism is usually referred to as Panpsychism; it is no where near being a falsifiable scientific theory now, but it does have a couple of attractive potential benefits if it is true:

One would be explaining how consciousness arises through complexity, rather than trying to propose a method for consciousness to emerge from inert physical processes.

Two would be that explaining how living organisms arise from non-living matter would be easier if the distinction between living and non-living matter is not a sharp distinction, but instead only a matter of complexity and organization of the conscious properties that are contained within the stuff of the Universe.

But, even if this more limited form of dualism is on the right track, it still does not offer a way to cheat death and allow us to take our memories, personalities and emotions to another realm.

Yet our Spirit the God-Self, exists both within and without. If we are part of that ~something~ whether we call that God or the scientific world we cannot be separated from it. Like energy we exist and will continue to exist as Spirit even if we choose death and drop from consciousness in our dream of death.

I have good reason to believe, based on multiple sources of evidence, that there is a natural world surrounding me -- I don't have any evidence that there are spirits or gods. There is no good reason to believe either exists.

Being aware means that we accept our beginnings. We did not begin at birth. Our DNA proves that. Nor will we end at death since both birth and death are delusions. So we transgress the birth-death limitation we have placed on ourselves and choose life as it exists in the real world.

Oh come off it! I've had enough crap from the idiots who believe that a fertilized embryo qualifies as a human life because of DNA, to go through this all over again. Your DNA code is only a blueprint for coding proteins. It does not mark your beginnings as a person, nor does it determine how a person will grow and develop later on, since physical and environmental factors signal when certain genes will get the go ahead to create proteins, and stop protein-coding by other genes. Your DNA is only a rough guide at best, not your fate, and not your beginning as a person.

I would have thought we could at least agree that birth is not an illusion. Death is not a delusion, since everything that we identify as mental properties: our emotions, memories, thoughts, can be correlated with brain activity in different areas of the brain. So what exactly survives death? And what is left for a soul or spirit to do? Death is not the delusion, denying death is the delusion that motivates people to think up all possible ways to live on in some other form of existence.

So the question really is do you consider yourself the dreamer or the dreamed?

??????????? Maybe this is why I don't recall many dreams in recent years.

Being both you can accept the inevitability of death you created and blame "nature" or God for your own choices.

I don't get that one either! Why should I blame nature or "God" for my choices?

Even in the scientific world we have free choice.

Actually, we don't! No psychologist or neurologist can make a case for absolute libertarian free will in the face of evidence that shows how brain function determines the mental properties we have. True free will only exists today in religions and belief systems that still hang on to the notion that we have a non-physical spirit inside of us that is the source of consciousness. This concept is pretty much totally discredited by modern neuroscience.

We are only free to choose within the limited parameters of our physical existence. In other words, our free will is contingent on the neural networks of our brains. Brain abnormalities and brain injuries can make radical shifts in our personalities and decision-making abilities. This eliminates the justification for the fundamentalists to contend that their God has just cause to condemn anyone to hell, since there is no absolute free will, but rather a more limited version that works within the confines of our physical nature.

[charter.rights]

We're too far apart on this to discuss it much further until we have clarified and agreed on some basic things.

Everyone has free will.

We choose to walk or drive. We choose to eat at 12:00 Noon or delay it until a friend arrives. We choose not to shave today. We choose to pick up tickets to the theatre. We choose to step off the curb in traffic. We choose not to strangle the sales clerk that kept us waiting for 1/2 hour only to return telling us that the item we were after was out of stock months ago. The results of our choices might have consequences but they are not random. Our choices influence the outcome and without free will much of our experiences would never happen.

So can we agree that we at least have this level of "free will"? Our choices are ours to make free from outside interference.

Edited January 16, 2009 by charter.rights

[Mr.Canada]

We're too far apart on this to discuss it much further until we have clarified and agreed on some basic things.

Everyone has free will.

We choose to walk or drive. We choose to eat at 12:00 Noon or delay it until a friend arrives. We choose not to shave today. We choose to pick up tickets to the theatre. We choose to step off the curb in traffic. We choose not to strangle the sales clerk that kept us waiting for 1/2 hour only to return telling us that the item we were after was out of stock months ago. The results of our choices might have consequences but they are not random. Our choices influence the outcome and without free will much of our experiences would never happen.

So can we agree that we at least have this level of "free will"? Our choices are ours to make free from outside interference.

Everyone has free will but their are limits. People are not free to intentionally infect others with the HIV virus, as many homosexuals are now doing, for the sake of free will. Homosexual "bug-chasers" who are trying to contract HIV is also a very disturbing and growing trend in the gay community. We need to combat the spread of HIV through education.

[charter.rights]

Everyone has free will but their are limits. People are not free to intentionally infect others with the HIV virus, as many homosexuals are now doing, for the sake of free will. Homosexual "bug-chasers" who are trying to contract HIV is also a very disturbing and growing trend in the gay community. We need to combat the spread of HIV through education.

Actually people do have the "free will" to infect others, including passing on the common cold. The legal consequences do change or alter the "free will" to choose.

Of course we all know you haven't a clue about what you are talking about and are using this forum to troll your narcissistic little manhood.

Caught any gays lately? I know you are just dying to out your hands all over them.....

[Mr.Canada]

Actually people do have the "free will" to infect others, including passing on the common cold. The legal consequences do change or alter the "free will" to choose.

Of course we all know you haven't a clue about what you are talking about and are using this forum to troll your narcissistic little manhood.

Caught any gays lately? I know you are just dying to out your hands all over them.....

Ok, I just want to get this out in the open. For you, it is acceptable in Canadian society for the HIV infected to purposely infect others as free will?

[charter.rights]

Ok, I just want to get this out in the open. For you, it is acceptable in Canadian society for the HIV infected to purposely infect others as free will?

There you go again! Putz.

I didn't say anything of the sort.

People get to choose what they do and beyond any mind control they have the free will to do it.

You can even choose to come out of the closet and declare your gayness. No one is stopping you.

[WIP]

We're too far apart on this to discuss it much further until we have clarified and agreed on some basic things.

Everyone has free will.

Actually we don't have the kind of free will that most people intuitively accept -- a contracausal free will unrestricted or undetermined by the physical effects occurring inside the brain as it processes information......so I'm going to knock this down first and get it out of the way, since this seems to be the type of free choice that you believe in.

You may have the traditional dualistic religious view of the mind on your side, along with our intuitions that we are the "deciders" - to use a Bushism, but I see the growing evidence that our brains unconsciously prepare actions before we make a conscious decision to perform an action, as evidence that our intuitions are wrong -- and our uncaused sense of making choices is the illusion, since our brains are already putting together a "readiness potential" before we are aware of making the decision. The reality is that we are informed of the desire after the decision has been made:

More than 20 years ago the American brain scientist Benjamin Libet found a brain signal, the so-called "readiness-potential" that occurred a fraction of a second before a conscious decision. Libet's experiments were highly controversial and sparked a huge debate. Many scientists argued that if our decisions are prepared unconsciously by the brain, then our feeling of "free will" must be an illusion. In this view it is the brain that makes the decision, not a person's conscious mind. Libet's experiments were particularly controversial because he found only a brief time delay between brain activity and the conscious decision.

In contrast, Haynes and colleagues now show that brain activity predicts even up to 7 seconds ahead of time how a person is going to decide. But they also warn that the study does not finally rule out free will: "Our study shows that decisions are unconsciously prepared much longer than previously thought. But we do not know yet where the final decision is made. Especially we still need to investigate whether a decision prepared by these brain areas can still be reversed."

http://idw-online.de/pages/de/news254676

Libet reasoned that the results of his volition and intentionality experiments 25 years ago showed that we don't have a free will -- but we do have a "free won't".... in other words, our capacity for consciousness provides us with the opportunity to examine our environment, and review decisions and actions we are making -- and that this is the probable reason for the need to be conscious, since most of what the brain does, goes on at an unconscious level.

Conscious decision-making is slow and consumes too many resources in the cortex, so your brain tries to move as many repetitive and practiced movements to dedicated neural pathways, where decisions are made without being brought to our conscious attention.

So, when it's all said and done, the discoveries from brain and consciousness research in the last 25 years show that we are physically determined creatures, and our capacity for free choice is restricted and/or influenced by physical and environmental factors.

This is not enough free choice to excuse the sort of divine judgment that Mr. Canada believes in btw. I'm surprised to find him arguing against unrestricted, libertarian free will, since that is the moral justification for God condemning people to hell, that is presented by his church's theologians. The punishment is excused on the assumption that a person can make the heaven or hell decisions not limited by factors such as brain development. If God sent a psychopath to hell for his sins, even though it can be proven that his brain dysfunction did not allow him to properly evaluate his actions, and caused him to act with careless and wreckless abandon, then that would make God and the system of divine judgment immoral.

We choose to walk or drive. We choose to eat at 12:00 Noon or delay it until a friend arrives. We choose not to shave today. We choose to pick up tickets to the theatre. We choose to step off the curb in traffic. We choose not to strangle the sales clerk that kept us waiting for 1/2 hour only to return telling us that the item we were after was out of stock months ago. The results of our choices might have consequences but they are not random. Our choices influence the outcome and without free will much of our experiences would never happen.

So can we agree that we at least have this level of "free will"? Our choices are ours to make free from outside interference.

Yes, I agree that we have a degree of free will that works within the limitations of our mental cognitive abilities and the environmental influences ( good and bad) along the way, but no, having a more limited, physically determined free will is definitely not free from outside interference. Outside influence is always going to play a part in how we make choices in life.

[charter.rights]

Actually we don't have the kind of free will that most people intuitively accept -- a contracausal free will unrestricted or undetermined by the physical effects occurring inside the brain as it processes information......so I'm going to knock this down first and get it out of the way, since this seems to be the type of free choice that you believe in.

You may have the traditional dualistic religious view of the mind on your side, along with our intuitions that we are the "deciders" - to use a Bushism, but I see the growing evidence that our brains unconsciously prepare actions before we make a conscious decision to perform an action, as evidence that our intuitions are wrong -- and our uncaused sense of making choices is the illusion, since our brains are already putting together a "readiness potential" before we are aware of making the decision. The reality is that we are informed of the desire after the decision has been made:

More than 20 years ago the American brain scientist Benjamin Libet found a brain signal, the so-called "readiness-potential" that occurred a fraction of a second before a conscious decision. Libet's experiments were highly controversial and sparked a huge debate. Many scientists argued that if our decisions are prepared unconsciously by the brain, then our feeling of "free will" must be an illusion. In this view it is the brain that makes the decision, not a person's conscious mind. Libet's experiments were particularly controversial because he found only a brief time delay between brain activity and the conscious decision.

In contrast, Haynes and colleagues now show that brain activity predicts even up to 7 seconds ahead of time how a person is going to decide. But they also warn that the study does not finally rule out free will: "Our study shows that decisions are unconsciously prepared much longer than previously thought. But we do not know yet where the final decision is made. Especially we still need to investigate whether a decision prepared by these brain areas can still be reversed."

http://idw-online.de/pages/de/news254676

Libet reasoned that the results of his volition and intentionality experiments 25 years ago showed that we don't have a free will -- but we do have a "free won't".... in other words, our capacity for consciousness provides us with the opportunity to examine our environment, and review decisions and actions we are making -- and that this is the probable reason for the need to be conscious, since most of what the brain does, goes on at an unconscious level.

Conscious decision-making is slow and consumes too many resources in the cortex, so your brain tries to move as many repetitive and practiced movements to dedicated neural pathways, where decisions are made without being brought to our conscious attention.

So, when it's all said and done, the discoveries from brain and consciousness research in the last 25 years show that we are physically determined creatures, and our capacity for free choice is restricted and/or influenced by physical and environmental factors.

This is not enough free choice to excuse the sort of divine judgment that Mr. Canada believes in btw. I'm surprised to find him arguing against unrestricted, libertarian free will, since that is the moral justification for God condemning people to hell, that is presented by his church's theologians. The punishment is excused on the assumption that a person can make the heaven or hell decisions not limited by factors such as brain development. If God sent a psychopath to hell for his sins, even though it can be proven that his brain dysfunction did not allow him to properly evaluate his actions, and caused him to act with careless and wreckless abandon, then that would make God and the system of divine judgment immoral.

Yes, I agree that we have a degree of free will that works within the limitations of our mental cognitive abilities and the environmental influences ( good and bad) along the way, but no, having a more limited, physically determined free will is definitely not free from outside interference. Outside influence is always going to play a part in how we make choices in life.

Quit with trying to intellectualize a very basic premise.

Do you have the free will to walk down the street and turn left or right on a whim?

[Mr.Canada]

There you go again! Putz.

I didn't say anything of the sort.

Name calling won't help. Sure you did, right here.

Actually people do have the "free will" to infect others...

So you think it's free will and shouldn't be illegal for some homosexuals to infect others with HIV. An act of free will, you've said. Sorry I don't agree with you.

[charter.rights]

Name calling won't help. Sure you did, right here.

So you think it's free will and shouldn't be illegal for some homosexuals to infect others with HIV. An act of free will, you've said. Sorry I don't agree with you.

Again you can.t imply I support it when I never said it.

Free will means that anyone has the free will to pull a gun out and blow someone away. My saying that it is our free will does not condone murder. It just means that we can think and choose anyway we want and nothing would stop us.

You don't agree with anyone here so what is one more? But that's ok because trolls rarely look for support. They are here just to stir things up.....kinda like that Rabble Rouser from Binbrook when he shows up in Caledonia.

[WIP]

Quit with trying to intellectualize a very basic premise.

It is not a basic premise if you want to understand the full implications of the question you are asking! Philosophers have been debating the question of whether we have free will, and if so, is free will uncaused or unlimited, or are there physical limits to our choices. The only reason this seems like a simple question to you is because the mysticism that you base your worldview on, gives you a child-like, magical interpretation of self and the world around you. Your mysticism is based on the faulty premise that the world around may be illusory, but your sense of self gives you a perfect interpretation of your soul, or mind -- and it doesn't! Your sense of mind is a creation of a brain, just the same as the 3D maps of the world that are put together in your visual cortex. Your mind has no separate existence from brain function, regardless of how much you want to believe it does. With no separate, immaterial mind, no decision can be truly uncaused by pre-existing physical causes -- so, everytime you decide to do something, your brain has already worked through a set of options and your mind is off and running with the results, thinking it is the master of its own destiny.

Do you have the free will to walk down the street and turn left or right on a whim?

Yes, as soon as the brain reaches a decision and provides you with the conscious sensation of making a choice.

Now, let's go beyond walking down a street -- do you have free will to decide whether or not to be a sexual offender? And you might want to read at least the first three paragraphs of this article in New Scientist from Patricia Churchland, before you answer that question. Churchland cites a recent case of a middle aged man who became a sexual offender without warning, and with no prior incidents. In response to his complaints of migraine headaches, he was examined by a neurologist, who discovered a tumor that had moved into the septum and hypothalamus (areas involved in regulating sexual behaviour); when the tumor was removed, his compulsive sexual habits and desires for young girls disappeared -- a few months later, he suffered a relapse (or at least he reported that he was becoming sexually aroused by young girls again) -- a brain scan revealed that some of the tumor was missed and had grown back in the hypothalamus -- after the 2nd surgery, his sexual interests and behaviours returned to normal.

Now, how much free will did this man have and what degree of responsibility did he have for the sex crimes he committed before his first diagnosis? Since he acted responsibly the 2nd time, and informed his doctors that his pedophilia desires were returning, there seems to be an argument that he had at least some degree of responsibility to recognize that his changing sexual desires could eventually lead to bad consequences before that first offense.

But, if he hadn't had the tumor, he would not have become a sex offender in the first place! After the 2nd operation, when his sexual behaviours returned to normal, should he still be considered a compulsive pedophile or not? If the tumor doesn't return, there doesn't seem to be a reason to place him in the same category with other sexual offenders who have more integrated abnormal behaviours that would not be as quick to diagnose, or as easy to fix.

[charter.rights]

It is not a basic premise if you want to understand the full implications of the question you are asking! Philosophers have been debating the question of whether we have free will, and if so, is free will uncaused or unlimited, or are there physical limits to our choices. The only reason this seems like a simple question to you is because the mysticism that you base your worldview on, gives you a child-like, magical interpretation of self and the world around you. Your mysticism is based on the faulty premise that the world around may be illusory, but your sense of self gives you a perfect interpretation of your soul, or mind -- and it doesn't! Your sense of mind is a creation of a brain, just the same as the 3D maps of the world that are put together in your visual cortex. Your mind has no separate existence from brain function, regardless of how much you want to believe it does. With no separate, immaterial mind, no decision can be truly uncaused by pre-existing physical causes -- so, everytime you decide to do something, your brain has already worked through a set of options and your mind is off and running with the results, thinking it is the master of its own destiny.

Yes, as soon as the brain reaches a decision and provides you with the conscious sensation of making a choice.

Now, let's go beyond walking down a street -- do you have free will to decide whether or not to be a sexual offender? And you might want to read at least the first three paragraphs of this article in New Scientist from Patricia Churchland, before you answer that question. Churchland cites a recent case of a middle aged man who became a sexual offender without warning, and with no prior incidents. In response to his complaints of migraine headaches, he was examined by a neurologist, who discovered a tumor that had moved into the septum and hypothalamus (areas involved in regulating sexual behaviour); when the tumor was removed, his compulsive sexual habits and desires for young girls disappeared -- a few months later, he suffered a relapse (or at least he reported that he was becoming sexually aroused by young girls again) -- a brain scan revealed that some of the tumor was missed and had grown back in the hypothalamus -- after the 2nd surgery, his sexual interests and behaviours returned to normal.

Now, how much free will did this man have and what degree of responsibility did he have for the sex crimes he committed before his first diagnosis? Since he acted responsibly the 2nd time, and informed his doctors that his pedophilia desires were returning, there seems to be an argument that he had at least some degree of responsibility to recognize that his changing sexual desires could eventually lead to bad consequences before that first offense.

But, if he hadn't had the tumor, he would not have become a sex offender in the first place! After the 2nd operation, when his sexual behaviours returned to normal, should he still be considered a compulsive pedophile or not? If the tumor doesn't return, there doesn't seem to be a reason to place him in the same category with other sexual offenders who have more integrated abnormal behaviours that would not be as quick to diagnose, or as easy to fix.

You're trying to rationalize your answer before you even understand the question. If you would put that aside we might be able to get somewhere. If you can't then there is no sense going any further.

[WIP]

You're trying to rationalize your answer before you even understand the question. If you would put that aside we might be able to get somewhere. If you can't then there is no sense going any further.

As you wish! My objections boil down to one proposition: your sense of understanding your mind is no more reliable than the interpretations of sensory information from the world around you. You can assume that your mind is independent from the body, but there is no reason to believe so, and a mountain of evidence against such an interpretation.

[charter.rights]

As you wish! My objections boil down to one proposition: your sense of understanding your mind is no more reliable than the interpretations of sensory information from the world around you. You can assume that your mind is independent from the body, but there is no reason to believe so, and a mountain of evidence against such an interpretation.

Ah a stumbling block!

Your sense, or a scientist's sense of understanding the world around you COULD be wrong.....as I stated before they have been wrong about the definition of death a number of times before and I would maintain that they still don't understand it fully since they approach only from a physical examination.

I make no such claims that the mind is independent from the body. The two co-exist. However, thought neither is "invented" by the mind nor does it statically disappear moments later. Energy is the common thread and our bodies at the quantum level are nothing but energy. Therefore we are part of something much more than the physical vessels we inhabit.

I am fully aware of the limitation of sensory perception, as well as the prejudices and conditioning our minds have been bombarded with from birth. I merely assert that it is possible for thought to influence our surroundings and that our physical encounters are not random. They are carefully choreographed by our thoughts and our free will is the cause of every experience we have or had - even as simple as walking down the street, choosing whether to turn right or left on a whim, and being hit by a truck.

The minute you ignore "possibilities" in science and instead rely upon certainties you have turned your argument into a religious one.

[Mr.Canada]

I know it's hard to fathom the growing trend within the gay community of homosexuals intentionally infecting others with the HIV. While other members of the gay community who call themselves "bug-chasers" are, imo most likely, dancing all night in gay clubs while high on narcotics and alcohol then having unprotected sex purposely with HIV infected homosexuals in hopes of being infected with the HIV.

This is a growing and disturbing trend among homosexuals. The gay community needs some positive role models to look upon and strive towards. Hopefully ex-Conservative Party MP Scott Brison will speak up and speak to his community and be a positive role model for gay Canadians everywhere. I'm not sure of the answer but pretending this problem doesn't exist is the wrong approach. We need effective leadership to educate homosexuals to draw them away this disturbing growing trend of "bug-chasing".