Monthly Archives: January 2017

When is Physics Stupid? When it is the Foundation of the Denial of Free Will

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There are several ways to dismantle the fallacy of “no free will”, or “the illusion of free will”.  Frankly, it’s exasperating that this ridiculous idea gets any traction at all, given how obviously irrational and impossible it is.  As soon as you assert the notion, you make a claim to truth; but of course if there is no free will, then by the exact same deterministic logic (man’s thoughts are just molecules and particles conforming to the categorical governance of physical law) man cannot actually know anything, which means he cannot know truth, which means he cannot believe anything to be true, which means he cannot make any assertion at all about anything. And even if we accept that man thinks and man makes assertions (which is impossible if there is no such thing as free will…for free will is merely the volitional exercise of one’s knowledge, which is the very definition of “to assert”) there is no way to claim that one assertion, like “there is no such thing as free will” is true while another is false.

There.  It took me, a stay-at-home-dad sitting on the couch wearing a hoodie and Carolina Panthers pajama bottoms, one paragraph to dismantle an idea held by physicists from Stephen Hawking to Sam Harris.  This ought to tell you something.

These people are being willfully stupid.  They are choosing to believe their deterministic bullshit rather than admit that physics is an abstract description, not a recipe for ontological causality.  Why?  Because they, like so many, prefer power to truth.  If they can claim to be the few mathematical geniuses who understand the Language of the Universe, which is just their version of the Word of God, then they can claim their own Priesthood Class.  They can exist as the Chosen/Called Ones who are God Incarnate to the rest of us.  They can stand in the stead of God and dictate to everyone else, both governments and denizens, their moral obligations, both intellectually and behaviorally; which, pragmatically speaking, means they can tell everyone else what to do with their money.

Fucking sigh.

And I hope you are picking up on the passive-aggression, because I’m laying it on pretty thick.

But let’s, just for fun, because my coffee is not yet cold, elucidate my paragraph above.

The denial of free will is rooted in the argument of determinism.  That is, since we are all just a bunch of atoms and molecules interacting and combining according to very arcane and abstruse mathematical rules, our very thoughts, being a function of our brains, are merely the pre-determined side effects of these rules. (And since mathematical rules/laws of physics are absolute and absolutely infinite, everything is these rules; there are no distinctions between the rules and the objects which are said to act and interact according to these rules because everything is a direct and utter function of the laws of physics…in which case, how is it possible to claim the laws of physics actually govern anything?  To say they govern themselves is pointless redundancy. )

And this completely destroys the deterministic argument against free will.  Because what this means is that there is no such thing as truth.  All ideas are equally valid, since according to deterministic protocol all ideas, being a function of brains governed by the inexorable laws of physics, are a function of the same mathematical rules.  This being the case, it is impossible to make the claim “there is no such thing as free will, is true” or “there is such a thing as free will, is false” since both ideas are a function of brains governed by the exact same rules.  And this is why they must and do appeal to a “superior enlightenment” based upon their elevated mathematical prowess.  There is no rational explanation for why we must believe them, any more than there is a rational explanation for why the laity must submit to pastoral authority since both the pastors and the laity are, according to doctrine, fallen creatures and utterly prone to sin and delusion by their very nature.

But the magic wand of Divine Authority is waved, and as John Immel, a philosopher I admire says, “Alakazaam, POOF!”, we all must just accept that “God” has chosen them and thus it is our moral obligation to agree with them…to bend over and say, “thank you, sir, may I have another”.

To make the claim, “there is no such thing as free will” is to presuppose a person can actually know truth. But, again, according to the very argument against free will, itself, there is no such thing as a true thing versus a false thing since every idea is the product of the same deterministic rules.  When people are not actually free to learn, because their minds are entirely governed by the laws of physics, then by definition they cannot actually know anything.  To learn is to presuppose a difference between knowing and not knowing, and to presuppose a difference between a good idea (rational, or true) and a bad one (irrational, or false).  If there is no such thing as free will (the individual application of perceived knowledge…between a true thing/good thing and a false thing/bad thing, either based upon contextual circumstance or upon foundational philosophical assumptions), and all beliefs and actions are merely a function of brains which are all equally and absolutely governed by mathematical rules, then there can be no difference.  There can be no real ideas, which means there can be no real thought.  Which means there can be no thought at all.  Which means there can be no consciousness.  Which means that people like Stephen Hawking and Sam Harris cannot claim that free will is an illusion, as though this is some truth that they can actually know, and know as true, and of which they should seek to convince others, as though making the point is anything but a colossal waste of time. Because you can’t convince people out of an idea that they don’t actually believe, and this because they don’t believe anything, because their contrary thoughts are merely the effects of the same deterministic forces which produced yours.

As soon as one makes the assertion, “there is no such thing as free will”, they have destroyed the argument.  And because of this fallacy, and the sheer stupidity and rank rational inconsistency and destructiveness of the underlying apologetics, I strongly urge you to reject it.

No, We Do Not Get Our Righteousness From God; We Have Our Own, Which is the Entire Biblical Point

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If God gives man His righteousness (as a gift, so it’s said), then there must be something in man which brings value to God; for who gives gifts to those they hate?

This means that man cannot be utterly evil. In which case, there must be something good, inherently, in man.

This goodness, in himself, of himself, is his own righteousness.

God does not give man righteousness, he teaches man that man is righteous ALREADY.

Let’s break down the rational atrocity of the claim, “Man has no righteousness.” Which just means that man can do no good thing. NOTHING. At all. Ever. Because he cannot transfer ANY righteousness to his actions. Because he has none. Zero. There is no righteousness to waking up, nor to going to bed, nor anything in between.

Think about that.

Can’t you just feel the madness of it in your bones?

If man had NO righteousness…that is, his righteousness was nill, this would mean that man’s very existence is unrighteousness. In other words, the very fact that you were born at all is why you are evil.

A few problems:

If you’re very existence is evil–let’s just call it evil, because that’s what (fake) Christians really mean–then your very essence is evil. This means that everything you do–you think, you believe, you say, you are–is evil. Whether you save a drowning puppy or burn down an elementary school, both acts, proceeding from your utterly wicked existence as You–are equally evil. This means that you cannot actually choose evil. Evil action and evil thought ceases to become a moral choice (which means they cease to become choices at all). Which means that you are no longer in possession of moral agency. Which means that you’re not a moral agent.

And guess what this means for man.

He’s not actually unrighteous, nor is he righteous. The very concepts are irrelevancy to him.

He has neither righteousness nor unrighteousness.

And this means…

He is an animal, possessing only instinct; without thought. He cannot choose good or evil, and thus has no knowledge of good or evil. Which means he has no knowledge, period. Because if man possesses not the ability to choose good or evil, then knowledge is utterly pointless, and lacks any efficacy. And absolutely irrelevant, useless knowledge is not knowledge at all by definition.

Which means that God cannot give man His righteousness as a gift, because:

A. Man couldn’t recognize it in the first place.

B. Man couldn’t know what to do with it

C. Man wouldn’t have any use for it.

D.  Man, unable to understand good from evil, couldn’t understand truth from falsehood, and thus wouldn’t know anything at all; wouldn’t see God AS God, and thus wouldn’t take anything GOD had to offer. He might take a scrap of food or a treat from God, like a dog from his master, but he would comprehend no spiritual or moral meaning or purpose; no alteration of his identity in the eyes of his master. He would and could have no concept of “righteousness”, because morality, like truth, has nothing to do with that which is pure instinct.

E. God would know all of this, and so wouldn’t give man His Righteousness in the first place! 

Stop listening to people who lie to you! Stop believing those emissaries of death and the devil who tell you that you need God because you are so categorically baaaaaad.

Understand that when they say you have no righteousness of your own what they mean is that you are Unrighteousness itself! You have no value or worth or goodness…as a function of BEING YOU!

This does not promote a relationship between you and God, it utterly wrecks it, and eradicates its possibility! Because what is entirely Good (God) MUST as a function of its existence be completely exclusive of what is entirely Evil (You) as a function of IT’S existence. 

The lie that human beings are inherently unrighteous has only one purpose and one outcome:

Tyranny, and Death.

When the State Asserts that Man is Both the Standard of Good and the Threat to the Good: The rational failure of a Government by and of the People

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Man must be protected from himself is the argument for government in a nutshell. And this? Is a very bad argument. This sophist rationale is why freedom is never to be found under the auspices of government.

Any government.

Ever.

Anywhere.

Because freedom which is function of what an external monolith of “legal” violence, like the State, will allow is not freedom. It is, by definition, control. The phrase “that which allows us to be free” contains a fundamental contradiction in terms. Freedom does not and cannot operate under the auspices of threats of violence for stepping out of external, codified boundaries. And to say that these boundaries are what guarantees that freedom itself (in the form of unfettered wicked indulgence by the naturally depraved human being) doesn’t become oppressive is another contradiction, as it makes the restraint of freedom the foundational moral operation; it makes the limitation of freedom the means, so the argument goes, of ensuring freedom.  But unless man is able to choose his actions, by not having his behavior fundamentally dictated and coerced through threats of violence should be stray from an abstract, subjective (yes, subjective) legal code, there can be no morality. Why? Because there can be no choice. For if man cannot choose to do good, then man cannot do good at all. And actions which are compelled at gunpoint are not choices!

It is not necessarily intentional. It is not necessarily rank deception. It is most likely a function of the prevailing philosophy regarding the nature of man which has never, to my knowledge, been reconciled to reason…where reason is a place that cannot ever, under any circumstance, accommodate contradiction.

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Because of man’s tendency to do evil, so the argument goes, left to his own unfettered (un-governed) devices society must inevitably dissolve into an orgy of tyranny and oppression.

This is a contradiction which nullifies the argument, and renders the practical application of it both impossible to any efficacy and ultimately destructive. For man cannot be both good and evil. What I mean by this is that he who is the standard for morality–for good–cannot also be he who wrecks this standard. He from whom rights are said to be derived cannot also be the one who poses the threat to the those very rights. Man cannot be the primary thing worth saving and the primary thing which jeopardizes that salvation.

Now, of course we may rightly assert that some human beings truly do evil and therefore are capable of harming others, but this is not the argument with which we are presented in defense of government. The argument is that human beings on the whole cannot fundamentally be trusted to exist outside of the power of coercive authority because human nature itself is depraved.

Human beings have the natural tendency toward evil, so it is argued. They are prone to it–not by choice, but because of naturally determined instinct. What this mean is that when presented with the option of good or evil, human beings, absent any external arbitrating, force, will do evil. They must…because they are driven in such an unfettered circumstance by their nature, and their nature is evil. Therefore, human beings must be governed by an outside force–a governing authority– in order to keep their natural evil in check, and to (hypocritically) ensure the existence and perpetuation of the human race by means of a rigid and regulated social apparatus that ultimately dictates all behavior by threatening its denizens with violence should they dare resist its self-proclaimed mandate to control man for the sake of man. And this is the metaphysical and ethical foundation upon which government stands. Go and see for yourself. Ask 20 people why we need government and I guarantee you that 20 of 20 will regurgitate, in some manner, the hypocritical philosophy I just explicated.

This foundational philosophy ironically and certainly inadvertently undermines the oft-trotted argument that government can exist of the people, for the people, and by the people. That is, it undermines–by its inherent and fatal contradiction–the assertion that people are the standard of the law which the government exists to uphold. If people are by nature evil, and this the root of their very being, then it simply cannot be argued that they may simultaneously represent the good which government must protect. On the contrary, if man is by nature evil, and can no more help doing evil when left to his own devices than he can help walking upright, then people in fact represent a singular threat to good. Because their nature is inexorable and absolute evil, they are the antithesis of good. And therefore, people must be controlled, not set free, by an external coercive authority. And this is exactly what they are, no matter what anyone says to the contrary. You cannot claim to be free in an environment where all of your actions are ultimately a function of what someone else says you are allowed to do.

Further, the  idea that a government can exist in the interest of a humanity which is by nature evil is to assert that the government is a proponent of evil. This, however, is never the argument for government, because though true, it wrecks the benevolent facade of coercive authority. On the contrary, the argument is always that government exists for good, and that without government, man’s evil nature will reign supreme. And what this means is that it is not man, but the government which is actually the standard of good. The people are not the standard. The people are not that from which moral “rights” are derived. The government is. For the “rights of the people” are irrelevant absent government, because absent government man’s natural evil must subordinate them. The people, then, are not the source of moral dictums, but are the singular danger to them. They are not the value of the law. They are the enemy of it. So they must be controlled.

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You cannot legitimately argue that man represents that from which natural moral rights are derived, and yet at the same time claim that he is evil and represents the singular existential threat to those rights, and therefore must be governed. This is to create in man a dichotomy of nature which contradicts and nullifies itself. If man is good, and this as a function of his very nature, then it is both irrational and counterproductive to establish an institution which exists to compel moral behavior by “authoritative” (legalized)  violence. For to insist that the naturally good man must be compelled to good through violence is to deny that man can do good on his own, and this denies that his nature is in fact good.  And if man is evil, and this a function of his nature, then man cannot possibly be compelled to good, for good is utterly exclusive of his being. To compel him to good is an impossible task. For man, being evil, perverts good, he does not cultivate it. It’s like adding poison to a meal and calling it seasoning. The only thing for which the naturally evil man is fit is destruction. In either case, government is utterly beside the point.

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To attempt to use force to compel the naturally evil man into goodness, or to prevent the naturally good man from losing his goodness is like attempting to compel the frog out of his frog-ness, or to prevent the frog from losing his frog-ness. The frog is by nature absolutely a frog. No amount of violence and no amount of coercion can make him a rabbit. And since the frog is by nature a frog he can pose no threat to his own frog-ness. No centralized coercive authority is necessary to prevent, nor is it effective in preventing, the frog from losing his frog-ness.

The man who is good by nature has no use for government, because by definition he cannot lose his goodness. Nor can he pose a threat to his own natural goodness (i.e. left to himself, man who is “naturally” good when governed somehow becomes “naturally” evil when free of government). Because to claim that he may pose a threat to his own goodness is to deny that he is, in fact, naturally good. And the man who is evil by nature has no use for government, because he cannot be compelled to do good. Because to claim that the man who is evil by nature can be synthesized into good is to deny that he is, in fact, naturally evil. The naturally evil man is fit only for destruction. And if he is destroyed, then there is no one to govern, and thus there is no point in government.

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And all of this leads us to another truth.

Man cannot be defined according to a moral nature. And of course once we no longer define him this way, there is no rational philosophical argument for the existence of government. Why? Because government is force, and force is violence, and violence nullifies choice. The man who cannot choose is a man who cannot express his own agency; and the man who cannot express his own agency cannot express SELF. Thus, he cannot BE himself in any relevant way.

You see, man is not a moral agent in the sense that morality defines him. Man is a rational agent. What this means that man is the epistemological frame of reference for all he knows; all he thinks; all he does. That is, man being himself, where “himself” is the agent who conceptualizes existence and thus makes it relevant and meaningful, is why man knows what he knows. Because he is SELF, and absolutely so, he is able to make distinctions between good and evil, and truth and fallacy. He is the arbiter–the reference–for knowledge.

Man’s nature is not a moral one, it is to be the reference for morality—for good and evil; truth and fallacy.  HE defines and applies these things. Therefore, it is HE who governs them, not the other way around (the other way around being to make man subordinate to the very ideas and concepts which are meaningless and useless without him). For what is Truth unless it is true TO AND FOR MAN? And what is goodness unless it is good TO AND FOR MAN?

These things are worthless. They are nothing. They are non-existent.

It is man who serves as the epistemological and moral standard for all of the reality in which he exists. Man cannot rationally or productively be subordinated to a legal moral standard that derives the entirety of its value and relevancy and meaning from him. Man cannot serve moral standards, moral standards must serve him. Man does not serve truth. Truth serves him.  To erect a set of rules for man to follow and by this claim he is good is to strip man from his rightful place as the only rational moral and epistemological reference for all of truth and goodness. And once this happens, truth and goodness have no meaning…and so the rules are pointless. Rules to which man is subordinated by violence are ultimately his destruction, not his salvation.

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