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Showing posts from September 15, 2020

A Third Conundrum

If you articulate your belief that human beings lack free will, I take it to mean that you arrived at this belief after undertaking mental activities known as deliberation and justification. But if you don't have free will, how could you have possibly done that? Ergo, you must, contrary to your stated belief, 1) have free will and 2) acknowledge that I and everyone else have it too. On the other hand, if you state your "belief" without deliberation and justification, then why should anyone take you seriously or think you could be right? You're just making noise. Atheism and naturalism do not require the abandonment of free will. Quite the contrary. If you really believe in determinism, you will have to stop using lots of everyday words. But then that would be a decision too, wouldn't it?  More fundamentally, you will have to stop claiming that you know anything at all, including determinism. You will have reached the nirvana of skepticism. Good luck with that.