Resigned in LOSS, without security, in old age, fading away...HOWEVER

Now that I am restricted to a sedentary, post-stroke in-house life, I have far more time to spend on the Great Questions, the conundrums of reality, the bizare misbehavior and fallacious beliefs of billions of smart highly educated humans, etc.

For instance, I am baffled how multi-millions of smart Americans can be deceived by extremism of the left and the right!
However, these absurd tragedies do help me now understand now how in the 20th century, the 19th, and many hundreds of centuries before, billions of smart homo sapiens could become totally deceived by massive untruths.

More and more, I realize now, that no human can be totally objective because he is born at a certain time in a certain place, with a certain temperament, certain sexuality, certain environment,certain family, culture, religion or lack, etc.

HOWEVER, contrary to the determinists, that doesn’t mean that each human has no choice, that he is only a puppet, only a bungle/bundle of atoms jostling about in meaningless matter and energy, determined from the Big Bang.

Each human within his limited situation, does have moral responsibility, moral capability, the ability to create and to invent, to choose among alternative choices, to promise, effect changes in his environment. Even in the worst situation that happens in life such as barely existing in a Nazi Concentration Camp like Victor Frankl did.

The thinker Frankl emphasizes, each human can choose various ways to act, between the stimulus and response of even horrific events. Each individual human can choose creatively choose his attitude.

That is Free Will! Though that word is a misnamed term since no human is totally free of any influence; rather the usual definition of f.w. is that each human does have moral ability, and creativity, the ability to make choices among a limited number of options. Each human isn’t a puppet, yanked hither and thither by cosmic fate, god, or the cosmos.

No, there is no life form in reality that is totally free of its place and time; so we don’t have free will in the unlimited definition of free will that many atheists and creedal Christians define Free Will as. No species is totally free (without any constraints or physical or social limitations); no one has the ability to act from nowhere, independent of where he lives, in any way he chooses among millions of choices.

HOWEVER, within limitations, we can choose among different options, using our reflection and reason and creativity each day.

For instance, while I probably was not likely to become a worshiper of Thor or to avidly enjoy torturing people or believe the earth is flat! there are some humans much smarter than me who did and still do choose such actions. So at some point in my life, if I had given into temptations or propaganda, I suppose I could have even made those highly unlikely choices.

Strangely, there are humans similar to me in many ways who I know personally who did choose to turn to pagan superstition even though they are brilliant, highly educated individuals living in a scientific secular society! Baffling.

Contrary to the determinists, I did have a choice of whether or not to tease my sister, tell a minor lie, whether or not to drive the speed limit, etc. Years ago, I did have the choice whether or not to wait until I was 16 or to get my learner’s permit at 15. I had the ability to reject or accept temptations of such as some teens to drive recklessly, etc.

I did have the ability to finally to accept that Christianity is delusion based upon all of the evidence, though it took many years of study, reflection, discussion, to give up my deeply heartfelt, so loved hope in the Good News.

There are millions of much smarter, more highly educated humans who still choose Christianity, though there is plenty of evidence that it can’t be true. The amazing, powerful thinker Randal Rauser is one of them.

It appears that he has gone through, suffered through many of the same tragic evidences that many others have, but in the end he still chooses to perform a ‘hail mary’ pass of improbable meticulous providence and holds to belief in a strange definition of inerrancy--that God wanted errors, untruths, immoral commands, etc. in the Bible, therefore the Bible is "inerrant" from God's point of view!

The vast majority of humans don’t mean that at all by the term "inerrancy." Instead, they use the common dictionary definition of the term--that the Bible is without a single scientific, historical, grammatical, textural error!

Multi-millions of creedal Christians sincerely believe this, even though a quick glance at historic texts of the Bible will show that the manuscripts even have thousands of textural errors! And an objective study of Scripture shows that it has many errors in science and history.
The most infamous one is that Joshua in the Hebrew Bible commanded the sun to stop still in the sky while he slew his enemies, and God stopped the sun!



In the Light,

Dan Wilcox

IF you could go back in history to any point and place, when and where would you go? And Why?

After mulling this over once and a while* for years, at least for now, I’ve decided I wouldn’t want to go back to sometime in the past—

1. Been ‘there’ enough via reading many tomes of history

2. Many of the most intriguing past times/places had too many negatives, tragedies, and immoral and unjust wrongs.

SO, NOW, at this present time moment, I would, instead, like to go into the FUTURE!

Probably into the future right here on the California coast.

TO the year 2165

I spontaneously pulling that year out of my rabbit-virtual mental hat (an analogy from the philsophical novel, Sophie’s World, by Jostein Gaarder).

#1 Will humankind overcome the current regressive backward fail of the early 21st Century?

#2 Will difficult Life questions have been solved?

#3 How did Life first start 2 billion or so years ago on Earth?

#4 Do humans have moral responsibility and creativity, the ability to make conscious choices from among many different possibilities and to bring new things into existence?

OR
Are all conscious aware humans only “puppets” yanked hither and yon by deep-time deterministic reality because every single event from the Big Bang to the Very Distant End was set in stone the moment Reality came into being billions of years ago?

#5 Will humans be any closer to finally knowing whether or not Reality has meaning and purpose (some form of Process Theism, maybe)

OR
That all Reality is came about by cosmic Chance, and is meaningless and purposeless, and humankind is a strange absurd anomaly (some form of Materialistic Atheism)?

#6 Have humans achieved the space goal of sending some to live permanently on another planet? Which one? Have we traveled beyond our solar system?

#7 Have scientists eliminated the worst diseases such as cancer?

#8 Did robots ever become sentient?

#8 Will humans finally become less violent and less prejudiced, more just and more moral?

#9 What new inventions and technilogical achievements will come about?

*--Reflecting on The Time Machine by H.G. Wells;
11/22/63 by Stephen King;
The Time Traders by Andre Norton
and other such time travel classics of science fiction speculation.

In the Light,

Dan Wilcox

Stepping Through the Door in a Crisis

Most humans spend their time looking through windows…but others take a big step to meet a new challenge or to explore a different world than their past settled ways. They step through the door, cross the threshold and change their future. --Anon

How might you step through the door to meet a new challenge or to explore a different world than your past settled ways?

How have you in the past made a major decision to cross a threshold?

What was the result of your decision?

At present we are facing a number of crises in 2020. Many are looking through windows, trying to keep what is or return to the past.

Write about how you might step through the door to explore a different world than your past.

Words of Hope and Moral Choice even in the worst evil

In Every Crisis
when flailed, blind-sided,
going down fast in
a basket abyss shrivel of worth-loss
and hope fails all drowned,
do we launch deeper into the deep?

do we weep,
do we shrive?
thrive?

for in every crisis
chry-sal-is*


*From crawler to butterfly--chrysalis
Even in the worst, most evil events, each of us still has the difficult possibility of heeding Viktor Frankl’s shocking words about their horrific experiences in Auschwitz Concentration Camp:

“Between stimulus [even trying to survive at Auschwitz!] and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response.
In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
“As we see it, an analogous relationship between the realm of human freedom and a realm superior to man is quite imaginable,
so that man is endowed with free will...”
Viktor E. Frankl, survivor of Auschwitz Concentration Camp. However, his wife died in Bergen Belsen.

“(26 March 1905 – 2 September 1997 was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and a Holocaust survivor, of Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, Kaufering and Türkheim. Frankl was the founder of logotherapy (literally "healing through meaning") a meaning-centered school of psychotherapy…part of existential and humanistic psychology theories. He is the author of over 39 books; he is most noted for his best-selling book Man's Search for Meaning based on his experiences in various Nazi concentration camps...
"In 1941 he married his first wife Tilly Grosser, who was a station nurse at the Rothschild hospital. Soon after they were married, she became pregnant but they were forced to abort the child. Tilly died in the Bergen Belsen concentration camp. His father Gabriel died in the Terezin concentration camp (Theresienstadt) in 1942. His mother and brother, Walter, were both killed in Auschwitz."
from Wikipedia

In the Light of Moral Realism,

Dan Wilcox

REALISTIC HOPE

REALISTIC HOPE
Once one has discovered the fallacious nature of organized religion, its superstitions, denials of verified scientific study, and illusions, where does one turn for new hope?

Definitely not to the nihilism and illusions of many non-religous humans who claim that moral realism is false, that the good, the true, the just, human rights, equality, meticulous honesty, inherent worth, meaning, and purpose are all “myths."

They claim all those values are delusions, not true, and that all humans are incapable of moral choice, are only “biochemical puppets,” and morality is subjective, a mere preference of a human or a society.

INSTEAD, we humans ought to start searching for what is true, good, and just. Study the thinking of the Enlightenment
(though obviously not the darkness of the French Reign of Terror or the hypocrisy of leaders such as Thomas Jefferson).

1. Reason is central to start one’s trek up toward that impossibly difficult climb toward God, Ultimate Reality (using Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary first definition of “God”).

A beginning caution, however, is immediately in order because all of us humans have a way of rationalizing/misguiding our reasoning. Or we start with fallacious presuppositions and thus our brilliantly reasoned conclusions are based upon a foundation of quicksand.

One example of how this happens is Benjamin Franklin’s famous example from his autobiography of how he managed to reason himself into anything that he already wanted to do;-)*

2. A realistic humility is very important through out one’s life. The older I get, the more I realize how little I (and all humans) ‘know’. We live, experience, think, test, hypothesize, revise, repeat… NO ONE KNOWS in the sense of certainty. How could a finite human primate, a brief blip /conscious spark in a cosmos of billions of galaxies, possibly KNOW?

I still am baffled and shocked how many creedal Christians, Muslims, orthodox Jews, and Atheists, etc. are sure--certain--that they ‘KNOW’ the ultimate nature of reality.

Famous scientists including Einstein strongly emphasize humility is the beginning of real learning and wisdom.
For, instance, Einstein wrote, “I am not an atheist...The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different languages.

“The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God.

“We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations.”
Albert Einstein
--
BUT billions of humans in the past and the present claim to be certain. Not, that such a certainty wasn’t an essential part of my own childhood faith in non-creedal Baptist religion. We were constantly told and preached at, that everyone can KNOW.

However, I never had such assurance. Though I sought that "assurance, "to KNOW," instead, I always had questions, doubts, could step outside of my genuine hope, and observe Existence and the Cosmos from other contrary worldviews and life-stances.

As I used to joke, I was born with a “why” in my throat, instead of the infamous spoon.

To be continued--


In the Light of the Good, the True, and the Just,

Dan Wilcox

Jordan Peterson - The Existence of Free Will--meaning conscious moral responsibility

A very thoughtful reflection from Jordan Peterson, Canadian clinical psychologist, professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, Ph.D. in clinical psychology, McGill University.

Don't be confused by the contrary claims of various thinkers who state that all humans are only helpless "puppets," incapable of moral responsibility and creative choice, etc.


Seek the Good, the True, the Just, the Altruistic, the Kind, the Equal,

Daniel Wilcox

ALWAYS define terms, carefully, first!

AronRa, a strongly convinced atheist, has created a number of powerful YouTube videos explaining why theism is a delusion.

BUT what is strange and baffling is that I, a strongly convinced theist, actually, agree with a fairly large number of his central points!

For instance, I completely agree with AronRa's opposition to "creationism" being taught in public schools. The religious concept is a delusion! It has been proven over and over by countless scientific evidence that earth wasn't created about 6-10,000 years ago.

Creationism is fallacious, anti-scientific and contrary to biology, genetics, anthropology, physics, etc.

As a former teacher, it deeply troubles me that millions of Americans still call for "creationism" in its various forms to be an option in public education! And that the government of Turkey has decided to eliminate the teaching of evolution in its schools!
Etc.

In one of AranRa's almost humorous, tongue-twisting, exact phrases he states that his atheism represents--
"secular, humanist, skeptical, rational, scientifically literate, intellectual..."

Without going into a lot of detail, based upon AronRa's videos it appears that I am by his definitions--
secular
humanist
skeptical

rational
scientifically literate
intellectual
!

So, then exactly how is it that he and I have completely different central worldviews and lifestances toward reality?

According to his central definitions of atheism, theism, and religion, I am an "atheist"!
(This isn't all that new. In 2017, a number of atheists claimed that I was really an "atheist."
At about the same time, a famous Christian leader emphasized--as no doubt many others would--that I was NEVER a Christian in my 55 years as a devout, dedicated Christian, not even when I was a liberal Baptist youth minister, elder, mission worker, Bible teacher, etc.)

YET, I am intellectually convinced theist.

HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?!

Here's one example of why definitions of terms are vital.

One point I especially appreciate about AronRa is that he, carefully, explicitly defines his words, even in his short popular videos.

Consider this:
"Anti-theist Answers to Slick Questions" by AronRa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6qRT6MjjSs

1. How do you define atheism?

"Atheism is a lack of belief in a deity...
“a deity being defined as a magical anthropomorphic immortal”
--AronRa

Lightwaveseeker (my response):

Baffling! Confusing and Bemusing.

In at least 61 years of my 70-year-life, I NEVER believed in "a magical, anthropomorphic immortal."

What I believed before I was about 7 or 9 years of age, I don't remember, but probably whatever I was told by my parents, others, and books. All I do remember is having been born with a "why" in my throat, always asking questions about life, until it often drove my parents to tell me to stop asking, to just accept...

That I refused to do.

However, by the time I was about 9 years of age, when I often tried to conceive of "God," I thought of God as like oxygen--real, invisible, everywhere, and necessary for life:-)

To my knowledge, as a child, I NEVER thought God was "magical,"
and NEVER thought God was "anthropomorphic,"
and certainly didn't think so as a teen, a university student, a thinker, mental health worker, educator, etc.

If one defines theism as belief in "a magical anthropomorphic immortal," then I've never been a theist as long as I've been a thinking, questioning, doubting seeker.

Of course, most of my adult life I have viewed "God" as defined by Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary in its opening definition:
God "1 capitalized : the supreme or ultimate reality:"

I don't recall ever using the term "immortal" to describe "u.r.", however, I did think the ultimate nature of reality was everlasting or eternal, which are synonyms of "immortal."

So in the last word, guilty as charged.

AronRa also thinks there are moral absolutes, that there are human rights, and so forth.

Heck, AronRa and Lightwaveseeker have a lot more in common than one would first suppose.

Wonders never cease;-)

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

It Is the Set of Our Sails...

You can’t learn to sail
if the weather is still.


Neither hurricane nor calm will provide a good life.
But the daily stresses and challenges, like the Trade Winds for so many sailors, give us the energy for which we can choose to set our course.

In the Light of the Trade Winds:-),

Daniel Wilcox

The Worded Confusion of Those Who Deny Free Will

Sometimes advertising totally confuses an individual, especially if the ad commentary is contradictory.

Take a look:

"Public Meeting: "The Illusion of Free Will & its Impact on Moral Responsibility"*
May 18, 1:00 PM
Ramsey County Library, Roseville, Minnesota

August Berkshire speaking on 'The Illusion of Free Will and its Impact on Moral Responsibility'

If free will is an illusion, what does this say about praise, blame, responsibility, ethics, justice, revenge, punishment, rehabilitation, cooperation, and altruism? Is life worth living? Should we be optimistic or pessimistic about the future?"
--

HUH?

If "free will" is an "illusion," then we won't be able to decide whether "life is worth living." If we have no choice, can't make alternative decisions, then we are passive objects/beings and can't choose to be either "optimistic or pessimistic" about our future.

There can be no "moral responsibility" if we are incapable of choosing between right and wrong.

Each of us will instead be done to--

Our body will do whatever has been cosmically determined by the universe or fate or whatever.

In philosophical determinism, there can be no "should" which, contradictorily, the presentation blurb seems to advocate.

But the strange ad continues:
--
"Our speaker, August Berkshire, will discuss the ramifications of a natural universe without gods or free will, in which evolution shapes our thoughts and actions."
--

Oops! So evolution has "shaped" some humans to think there is free will but shaped Berkshire to think there is no free will?

Also, how can evolution "shape" anything? Evolution, according to most scientists, is "purposeless and meaningless." Natural selection is an action that doesn't shape, it only moves forward in time and space.

Do I detect a little personification here?

--
Then the blurb says: "He will conclude that it's a good thing that we don't have free will!"
--

Huh, again?

How can not having any choice be "good"? That's a judgment, a choice. How can anyone make a judgment if they don't have free will? Calling something good, can only happen if one has the ability to choose to do so.
--

"August Berkshire is past president of Minnesota Atheists and a past vice president of Atheist Alliance International. He has been a atheist activist since 1984 and is the author of numerous pamphlets. He is the owner of the ATHEIST car license plate for Minnesota and is proud to be listed in the reference book "Who's Who in Hell."
--

Wait a minute! If Berkshire has no choice, how can he choose to be proud of his accomplishments?

Besides, he isn't capable of accomplishments, if he has no free will. Merriam-Webster: "something done, achieved..."

If Berkshire thinks no one, himself included, has free will, then he hasn't been capable of "achieving" any accomplishments.

How can he even choose to believe he can't choose?

How can he choose to be an "atheist activist"?

If there is no freewill, he didn't have any say in whether or not to be an atheist, and theists didn't have any say how they are either.

Also, how can one choose to be an "activist" if there is no free will?

In determinism, humans are DONE TO-- We never get to make our own choices. In fact the famous determinist Sam Harris even claims our sense of "i" our identity is an illusion.

But the advertisement continues about Berkshire:
--
"His following the trail of reason and evidence has led him to the conclusion that neither gods nor free will exist, and that we can live happy, fulfilled lives without either one."
__

Reasoning, NOT!

If everything is determined, then we, illusions, live whatever has been determined, whether happy or despairing.

There can be no "fulfilled" because we have no choice. If it's destined that we be impoverished,destitute, and unfulfilled,then that's the breaks, whatever the cards of the cosmos will.

What a mangled weave such an advertisement makes of the English language. I hate it when speakers twerk the normal meaning of words, the dictionary definitions.

It drives this former English teacher to drink--where's my Mountain Dew Live Wire?:-)

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox


*www.meetup.com/minnesota-atheists/events/18237502/