Comments by "Taxtro" (@MrCmon113) on "PragerU" channel.

  1. +MrJimFIt I'm pretty tired of this quantum mysticism from juvenile dimwits, who have never seen the insides of a university.
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  2. +NoNameC68 Yeah, it's just passing the bucket. Fairies and pixies don't make free will any more sensible.
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  3. Even if you wanna tell people comforting lies - Christianity is like the least comforting thing. The universe is created and governed by a psychopath who just can't help but torture his creation.
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  4. ***** Yes they have and so has any serious philosopher, who has spoken on this.
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  5. ***** Not a study rules out free will, but sober reasoning. "that Harris relies upon" That's a lie. Harris points this out himself. Even an immortal, magical soul could not have free will. It has nothing to do with neurology. You've either not spent any attention at all or you're dishonest. : /
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  6. This is not philosophy but religious propaganda. And this guy is an embarrassing preacher. Free will is indeed a superficial illusion. It makes no sense and a mysterious soul does not help you there. You did not choose your soul, the type of person you are. And this soul, you, still could only make decisions based on current circumstances and stored data / structure of the soul. You'd be no more free than as a product of your brain. Not even god could have free will.
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  7. +DifferentGuy4 "He believes that we have freewill, then there has to be a God" You guys got that pretty backwards. I think your belief in the Christian god perpetuates your illusion of free will, not the other way around. Free will does not make any more sense, when you insert supernatural agents. Indeed it was rejected before we knew anything about neurology.
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  8. +GrilledChickenTV I think you have correctly assessed the severity of this issue. Many people only acknowledge that free will doesn't make sense and then go on as if nothing happened. What you have incorrectly assessed are the consequences. You have fallen into the misconception of fatalism, which almost everyone goes through when confronted with the questioning of free will. Firstly I'd like to know what exactly you mean with having "free will", what you fear to lose. Different people sometimes mean different things with that.
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  9. ***** Pedro, you must be one of the most stupid people, I've ever spoken to. I just told you, that there IS NO evidence in logical questions. Also it is YOURS to show that "free agency" is a coherent concept, since that's YOUR claim. We have to repeat ourselves over and over again, because YOU DON'T READ. Read and understand. Talking to you is like talking to a wall.
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  10. Prove what? He failed to make an argument that has been refuted thousands of years ago. Instead he showcased an astounding lack of comprehension of every scientific discipline and philosophy. If he had at least stated Aquina's version of the argument, he would have spared himself some of the embarrassment.
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  11. "Where is grandpa, mommy?" "Grandpa believed in Aryanism, so he's burning in hell."
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  12. You need both.
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  13. But it's not a beautiful lie, it's infinitely worse than reality.
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  14. +Luis S. As far as we know no significant one. You should check out scale comparisons online. Single atoms are still very small compared to single neurons. Further the probabilistic nature of quantum objects doesn't make free will any more believable. What people mean with free is not a probability distribution.
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  15. +ShufflinRhino I'm baffled how a "university" can support such pathetic proselytizing in the 21st century.
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  16. Matt I cannot prove that there are not pink unicorns. But I can explain why it is foolish to believe in them. The same is true for all possible, but improbable things.
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  17. MrJimFIt "Sam Harris was asked about the Uncertain Principle of Quantum Mechanics and he replied that Free Will CAN EXIST under quantum physics." Well then Harris would be wrong, or at least confused about what people mean with free will. However I don't think he said that - he's often misquoted and he made it very clear that free will, the thing most people think they have, is nonsense. "our materialist assumptions (which are assumptions, not facts) that something like free will is denied in principle" That has nothing to do with materialism. I grant you all the immortal souls and gods you can ask for, and you still wouldn't have "free will". "if free will and consciousness are just an illusion" Free will is a rather shallow illusion, but consciousness is the most evident thing in the world. Any illusion of consciousness would again be consciousness. You can tell that I don't like the way combatibilists like Dennett deal with that. They themselves generate another illusion: The illusion of a controversy about free will amongst philosophers.
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  18. ***** "About time someone referenced the real science" Take the edged circle and the married bachelor as examples. You don't need research to show how they are nonsense. It's not an empirical question but a logical one. "No one knows if free will exists" Well I could have made a mistake in my reasoning when declaring free will self contradictory, but so far noone was able to point out this mistake. Until then, I'm more sure that free will is nonsense than I am about the existence of my own butt. "why would we have evolved to have the illusion of free will" It's rather how, not why, although "why" questions can sometimes be good approximations in evolutionary biology. In my opinion consciousness is a far more intriguing problem, while the feeling of authorship of ones own actions seems little mysterious.
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  19. ***** "How in the world can logic ever determine the answer to an empirical question like free will" Well it's not. What is free will in your opinion? Can you even clearly define it?
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  20. MrJimFIt That's meaningless. In a definition or explanation you cannot use the word you are explaining or defining.
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  21. MrJimFIt I don't think you really mean to say this: "if you choose not to do something that's free will" Then when someone chooses to do something, it's not? Please calm down and come back when you've found the right words to explain what you understand with free will.
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  22. ***** No shit? Did you figure that out on your own. Why don't you present me what you mean with "free will", so I know whether it aligns with what most people think they have?
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  23. MrJimFIt Please shut up about quantum mechanics; you obviously don't have any idea what you're talking about. You could as well say that Newtonian mechanics supports your mythology.
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  24. ***** You will not believe how often I have corrected this notion of a conscious observer before. It is extremely tiresome and they will just continue with their quantum mysticism.
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  25. Devin Stafford I guess you mean Kaku's contribution to "Big Think" about Free Will. I'm a big fan of him, but here he really fucked up imo. He argues from extreme bias towards free will and from the dichotomy free will vs determinism. There's two problems: - There is no reason to assume that quantum level indeterminacy plays any role in the brain. - A distribution of probability would not be, what people call free will. Free will is the notion that you could have chosen otherwise, all things staying the same. Quantum Physics can be interpreted in a way that things could play out differently, all things staying the same - but that's not what people mean when they think they have free will. The "*I* COULD HAVE chosen otherwise". It is the notion of ultimate authorship of ones action. The self is not the intermediate, a cog in the clockwork, but the ultimate cause of a decision, an action.
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  26. Infidel Heretic Even with a magical soul, free will makes no sense. Until someone can present a universe to me, in which free will is even possible, I will consider it an issue of logic and semantics, not biology or physics.
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  27. +Joshua Hults "Quantum Physics disproves materialism as well." Yeah an Newtonian laws of motion disprove physics. XD "We already know that unless conscious awareness is present" You obviously don't know anything about quantum physics. The observer effect is about interacting particles, not a conscious observer. It's rather amusing how mystics misinterpret this. Next time better get your knowledge from a physics textbook instead of a preacher.
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  28. MrJimFIt You have no idea about physics whatsoever, but you are attacking the very method of gaining knowledge with reference to advanced physics we only discovered through critical inquiry. Again: Deepak has lied to you. Nothing in quantum physics is about consciousness. I can only hope, you'll pick up a physics textbook for once...
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  29. Conundrum "Holding accountable" for the goal of reaching an improvement for everyone. What we are doing at the moment is taking revenge. Even the most liberal judicial system is promoting as much vengeance as it promotes rehabilitation. Now there are arguments for revenge (the comfort of the victim), but we must acknowledge that hatred, pride, shame all are fundamentally nonsense. We should not feel entitled to be proud or to take revenge, but rather use these emotional states when they are of an advantage and make important decisions soberly.
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  30. Samuel sefue "If there is no free will there is destiny" I don't like the word destiny. It seems to entail that our actions have no bearing on the future, when they really do. Your future is determined nonetheless; and that's independent from your fuzzy philosophical notion of free will. "If there is no free will everything is ultimately predictable" You've got this the wrong way around. People were arguing in the past that since everything is ultimately predictable, we have no free will. I disagree there. Free will makes no sense, whether things are predictable / determined or not. Physics and biology are not the issue, but simple semantics and logic. "If there is no free will there are no surprises" WRONG. You don't know everything, you cannot know everything, unless you have a computer larger than the universe. There are surprises in what happens around you and even in your own actions. This is not even a debate among philosophers; this was settled a long time ago: "I will what I do, but I don't will what I will."
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  31. Samuel sefue "How can you take physics and biochemistry out of the equation?" You don't need sociology to say that a "married bachelor" makes no sense. The same goes for the notion that you "could have chosen otherwise" at any point. "*but the computer would also be able to predict that*. So my future IS determined. If it is determined, how come it is not predictable by such computer" You contradict yourself here; I don't know what you mean. O_o
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  32. Samuel sefue "I say it is predictable. But you say that I am wrong when saying that everything is ultimately predictable." Our decisions are theoretically predictable with vast amounts of information and calculation power. But we can't foresee our future in practice. Determinism does not mean fatalism. "Physics, bio chemistry and that type of scientific research is what will be used to try and disprove free will." No. Did you not pay any attention?! Sociology will not provide any new knowledge on married bachelors. Biology will not provide knowledge on hamsters that are brown and not brown. Those are simply nonsense. Not everything, that can be put into an English sentence, is a coherent, logical concept.
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  33. Samuel sefue What people feel they have, free will, is self contradictory. The notion that you, yourself are the ultimate cause of your own action. It leads to an infinite regress of agency. We may do what we want to do, but we can't decide what we want to do and even if so, we can't decide what we decide to want to do.
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  34. Brian LiuConstant Some quite famous philosopher said: "I do what I will, but I don't will what I will." Don't know, who it was right now, though.
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  35. ***** Yes, you have not build yourself.
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  36. ***** It's not am empirical question, there is no evidence, only definitions, consequences, conclusions, etc. What is the evidence against or for married bachelors?
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  37.  @lysanderofsparta3708  Virtually all common people believed in gods. Philosophers were the ones that often rejected their existance and argued against it. Also Aristotle didn't believe that there was a three-headed god, that partly became human and killed himself and that wants to torture you after you die.
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  38. No, living your life solely to appease a celestial psychopath is not beneficial. It is indeed an absolute horror and has the cause of unimaginable suffering for millennia.
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  39. Yeah, the one path being atheism and the thousand being the religions. Nice own goal.
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  40. Bob is a moron. If you believe in something, you believe in it. And telling people the opposite of what you believe in would be a lie.
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  41.  @ryderwilson7955  No, people didn't become depressed, because they were less religious, they became depressed, because they were in a city among strangers. And most people weren't worried about "leaving a mark" ever.
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  42. Scholarships shouldn't be given according to athletic achievements anyways.
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  43. They pass then?
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  44. Some people have short legs. Some people have few fast-twitch muscle fibers. Some people are born female.
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  45.  @CaptnEmu  Most people remain believers precisely because it's popular and they were brought up in it. The minority that followed reason are the ones that became atheists.
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  46.  @timothybrewer5470  > that you want them to make that choice for themselves There is no "choice" in lying to people.
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  47.  @007kingifrit  That just means you have no clue what Christianity is. The "values" and "practice" are the same. And nothing in Christianity makes any sense if you don't believe in a god. Can you swim if you don't believe in water?
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  48. Prager? Come on, Jocko, you're better than that.
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  49. It's very possible to know that no gods exist in precisely the same way you know anything else.
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  50.  @Colddirector  But I do know that you're gonna die as well as I know pretty much anything else. And I know that all of those religious folks are delusional. Presenting this as some open problem would be as dishonest as telling my kids that the earth might be flat or that we don't know whether there's a continent south of Australia.
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  51.  @laurenedson6258  Sucking up to a psychopathic creator deity as your only goal in life is a selfish existence.
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  52. This argument, and it is only one, was refuted thousands of years before we knew anything about the Big Bang or chemistry or evolution. The argument, this moron fails to state clearly, goes as follows: There is something moving / complex / thinking, therefore there must have been a motion / creator / thought to preceed it. The first motion, creator / thought, is god. It is clear why even ancient philosophers instantly saw through this infantile attempt to reason, since the introduction of god just adds another motion / thought / complex thing to be explained. We can explain a watch with a watchmaker, but we cannot explain it ultimately thus, because it would require a watchmaker - maker, a watchmaker-maker creator, the creator of the watchmaker-maker creator and so forth ad infinitum. If you allow this regress to be stopped at any point and the watchmaker-maker, ie god, to be uncreated, then you must also allow the same for the watchmaker. We distinguish between designed and natural things and design can, by it's very nature, never be an ultimate explanation. That is the central flaw in deism.
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  53. What study? I wouldn't tell people atrocious lies and indoctrinate them into noxious delusions even if it meant that they get a 30cm dick and wings.
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  54. >disillusioned with the whole movement What movement? Rejecting some noxious delusions is no more a movement than rejecting others. >they blindly reject any sort of purpose or positive effect religion has had over humanity You mean people argue against your apologetics? >in no small part thanks to Judeo-Christianity The term "Judeo-Christianity" itself is part of some really modern, lazy apologetics that tries to sweep the constant conflicts between Christians and Jews under the rug. There is no Judeo-Christianity. And the positive aspects of Western civilization are a direct result of religion having LESS influence here than elsewhere. >predilection to 'believe' in science, without any form of critical thinking or skepticism Science is critical thinking and skepticism applied to general matters like physics. >much of atheist movement is virulently on the leftist political spectrum Outspoken anti-theists are frequently attacked by the far left, among other things, because they refuse to criticize religion outside of the West.
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  55.  @Kalimdor199Menegroth  >Judaism and Christianity were spiritual revolutions though. No, they weren't. They were just as morally bankrupt as other people at the time. The bible unambiguously encourages slavery and even sexual slavery of little girls. That's your "Judeo-Christian" values. Raping little girls.
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  56.  @lysanderofsparta3708  That's not a cop-out, that's how you reason about anything that's not your god.
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  57. Having your own league is not equality, it's a privilege. We don't have a separate basketball league for short guys.
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  58.  @JohnAlbertRigali  If your god existed, you wouldn't have to "feel" anything calling and there wouldn't be any ambiguity. This kind of story doesn't even fit into it's own mythology: there's never any ambiguity when Yahwe talks to people in the bible. He just straight up speaks. "Kill those people, give me their foreskins and I'll grant you 1000 goats."
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  59.  @007kingifrit  >suffering is necessary to have a happy life No, it's not. Happiness is precisely the absence of suffering. Your attitude is the cause of suffering. >what they can build with that suffering Your god torturing others forever is totally unnecessary and pointless. It is purely about his sadism. There is absolutely nothing accomplished by it. >just telling them raw ugly truths That your god doesn't exist is not an ugly truth, it's a very good and obvious truth. >creates loneliness and nihilism You have literally become a psychopath through your religion. You just can't seem to admit that torturing someone forever is bad. It literally doesn't get any worse as far as bad influences are concerned.
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  60. When you're lying to someone they don't decide jack shit. If I told you that all spiders are deadly poisonous, you'd have a very different life even if I eventually told you the truth. You must be down bad for that catholic poon, otherwise I don't know why one would lie to ones own children like that.
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  61.  @kuddlykennen2893  He's the pope of the church of prefixes.
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  62.  @abhcoat I became an atheist, because I learned more about religion to defend it.
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  63.  @lysanderofsparta3708  The idiotic arguments you're parroting have literally never persuaded anyone, who wasn't already persuaded. Firstly a necessary entity is not the same thing as the Christian god. It's a complete bait and swtich. Secondly any argument for a necessary entity might just as well argue that the entire cosmos as it is is necessary. In general if you have to make recourse to philosophy to argue for your favourite cryptid, it just means you have zero evidence. You also completely missed the point of the conversation. Your co-religionist didn't argue FOR his religion philosphically. He argued that his evidence is as good as the evidence of 2vnews.
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  64.  @bradleymcdonald6273  >We can't definitively prove that goblins don't exist... Do you believe in goblins? Do you murder or abuse people, because goblins told you so? If people applied the same standards of evidence to their god as they do to goblins, the world would be a much better place.
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  65.  @B.Mega.D  >science and faith are NOT at all mutually exclusive... They are literally opposites. Faith is about ignoring all evidence and holding on to handed down dogma. Science is about trying to match reality as well as possible, questioning and checking yourself systematically. >You're free to believe whatever you like No, I'm not. Believing something isn't voluntary. You believe in something that has been demonstrated to you, whether you want it or not. You cannot make yourself not believe in the existence of cows.
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  66.  @ImperiumMagistrate  Firstly that you're gonna die is simply the truth and unavoidable. Secondly if I'm gonna lie to someone to comfort them, the absolute last thing I would do is to tell them that the cosmos was created and is ruled by a ruthless egomaniac psychopath, who loves nothing more but to torture his helpless creation. If you think the cosmos being ruled by a ruthless egomaniac psychopath is preferable to you simply dying, then you're most egoistic madman I've ever met. If I wanted to lie to someone to comfort them, I'd tell them that their soul goes to another dimension or some other new age stuff.
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