gjm comments on Rationality Quotes Thread September 2015 - Less Wrong
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Ah, let me elaborate, then.
Whether God exists or not, one can postulate a universe in which people are puppets - philosophical zombies, moving and acting according to some purely deterministic set of rules.
In the atheistic universe, those behaviours may be at odds with one another, because the rules are not guided; they do not have an aim. They may optimise for some goal on the individual, or even the group level, but there is no reason why they should do so in an efficient manner; a puppet universe may include humans who oppose each other.
In the theistic universe, the presence of an omnipotent, omniscient being suggests that there is some purpose to the universe. If all people are puppets, then, it is to be expected that all people work tirelessly towards a single goal, without opposing each other.
Therefore, the observation that people oppose each other cannot be used to argue for free will in the atheistic universe, but can do so in the theistic universe.
You've got it backwards. I'm not using it as evidence for God's existence; I'm using it as evidence for free will, given the existence of God as a postulate.
You were earlier when the topic first came up in this thread.
Er... no, I wasn't.
The question that was asked was "What can you predict with the existence of your God that you can't predict without?" I parsed this as "What can be shown, taking the existence of God as a postulate, that cannot be shown without that postulate?"
And one of the things that can be shown to be at least more likely with that postulate than not, is free will. Thus, I included it in the response to the question.
...I'm now beginning to wonder if I entirely missed the point of that question.
I think you did (but maybe I was the one who did); I took it to be presupposing that your belief in God is (or should be) the result of thinking that God explains some things about the world better than absence-of-God would, and asking what such things you had in mind. But maybe raydora was asking a question more like "what use is your belief?" than "what basis has your belief?". raydora, if you're reading this, which (if either) did you have in mind?
Anyway: my apologies for failing to consider the possibility that you were interpreting the question so differently from me and consequently misunderstanding the point of your answers!
No worries, it's all straightened out now.
Incidentally, TheAncientGeek found a severe problem in my argument for free will elsewhere.