It'll probably just piss you off more, but none of what you say really challenges what I said on any meaningful level.
Nick333, again, what makes you think I was interested in changing or challanging your beliefs? I asked you a question- in automation vs free will, what side do you think god falls on? It's a philosophical thing that you are good at explaining from your particular viewpoint so I wanted to hear what your view was. I am not angry, more bemused and excited to see what you will say. I don't get excited to see the replies of someone who posts poorly worded, confusing, grammatically incorrect, half-baked arguments.
Just because we have no free will doesn't mean that we are incapable of changing for the better. It just means some of us are not.
It doesn't mean we should not try. It does mean that we may not be capable of success.
Logically, there is a problem with your argument. We are dealing with an absolute- either we have free will, or we don't. No inbetween. No space for a 'some people get lucky and others don't, we should all just try in any case' argument. There appears to be a spectrum for a number of reasons I don't understand, but if we just byskip all this and go straight for the logic- free will either is, or it isn't.
In fact not having free will really doesn't change the human experience very much at all. It may mean we should be more compassionate towards those who appear to be incapable of changing for the better.
Whoa hold up. "It may mean"... looking for meaning,.. meaning which is not
ultimately possible in materialism. Sure there may be temporary meaning, temporary meaning seeming (possibly even being) of no less value to the individual than ultimate meaning. But temporary meaning is temporary value nonetheless (though temporary value may actually be more valued, depending what the goal is/viewpoint is). Subscribing to materialism means foresaking the existence of
ultimate meaning, which in turn means you take undue liberties when you use the phrase "it may mean" here. (You already create challanges to materialism's foundations whenever you so much as temporarily 'borrow' the idea of
meaning.)
Now- "not having free will doesn't change the human experience very much"? Ok, we need to distinguish here:
1. Not having free will and not being aware of this
2. Not having free will and being aware of this
3. Not having free will, but assuming awareness of having free will
4. Having free will and not being aware of this
5. Having free will and being aware of this
6. Having free will and being aware of this and making conscious choices on:
-.1 exercising this
-.2 not exercising this
-.3 not needing to make the above choice
You say that not having free will 'doesn't change the human experience very much'. There's the obvious question hanging in the background: How would the human experience change if this were true? For that matter, how would the human experience change given any of the above 6 statements as truth? I see the human experience differently when I look through the eyes of those statements one by one. I see a difference. Some of these differences are normative and prescriptive in nature.
In one way I interpret these statements against the question of how the human experience changes, number 1 and 4 have the same implications. Likewise, 3 and 5 have the same implications; and arguably 2 and 6.3 match up. Nick, what kind of 'not having free will' are you talking about? The kind where which of the above statements are true?