BIG NEWS!!

The Think Atheist Radio's new home on the web has gone LIVE. Now your favorite podcast has a site of its own to match the quality of the interviews themselves!

You’ll find that you can easily see who’s coming up as a guest on future shows, see all of our past shows visually…

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Introduction:

I've grown disappointed with philosophers on the subject of free will. The great philosophers of the past knew nothing about the brain. Modern philosophers contradict each other. What I've been trying to do is to stick with the knowledge we have and avoid philosophical entanglements and conjecture as much as possible. However, certain philosophical conundrums must be addressed, such as: (1) the false dichotomy of free will versus causality; (2)…

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Let’s Put Claus Back Into Christmas:

A modest proposal

 

Remember Christmas when you were a child?

The Season was a time to come together as family and friends...and even make Peace with your enemies for at least a few days.  Christmas was all about bringing people together.  Religious differences were just like social class or politics or even gender...every town was like Mayberry and had their…

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welcome back everyone! thanks as always for stopping in to see what i've gathered together for your Sunday (and into the new week) reading pleasure.

 

first of all, if you haven't already, you simply must get entered into the contest we're currently running to…

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When asked why I'm a vegetarian, my answer is, "because of the dolphins." Well, that used to be my answer anyway, back in the early days before I realized that the actual reason most people asked me why I was a vegetarian, was not because they were actually interested or curious, it was because they wanted to tell me why they ate meat. No, but really, it's because of the dolphins! :)

 

In the summer of 1991 I had gotten a job at Sea World in San Antonio, TX.,…

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First of all, I'm going to be arrogant and solipsistic in my approach to understanding Free Will. This is a personal feature every human has, whether it's "real" or a delusion or illusion. At this point, I don't see enough consensus out there, except for the Godidit talking point that "God gave us Free WIll". (Bullcrap! I mean, even if God did didit, we're still stuck with the "science" of understanding how it works. Even if God left us billion year old fossils six thousand years ago, He…

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The problem with free will, as I see it, is that people have the wrong impression of what it means. Free will is not all it’s cracked up to be but there’s no doubt we have a modest form of it. I prefer to call it “self-determinism”. This self-determinism is empirically proven every time we conceive and execute a plan. I've found this is hard to explain because so many people assume that any free will must contradict causality and, thus, determinism. I claim that the only free… Continue

So I am currently reading The handbook to Higher consciousness by Ken Keyes Jr, and i have to say, Nothing I'v ever read or experienced has opened my mind more than this book. i'v never been more happy or enlightened(if I may use that word) in my life. It's showed me all the unnecessary things people strive for to be happy, when all along it was right here in front of them. Weather that be money, skills, possessions, or anything material in nature. It's showed me, and I'm not there yet, how to… Continue

Free will can be a very contentious topic. People can't seem to agree on what it means, exactly. Much of the difficulty arises from the use of the word, "free", in the term, "free will". To be truly free would require supernatural agency. We CAN'T act contrary to natural law, so we are constrained by nature.



Free will, therefor, exists in context of the most basic of natural laws: causality. Free will constrained by causality? To those who believe… Continue

This blog post stems from another discussion (elsewhere) that segued into the topic of mind versus brain. In order to illustrate that the mind is more than just the brain, I described the following scenario . . .

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What it would be like if you were born completely paralyzed, with a normal brain but without a sensory nervous system to deliver stimuli to your brain from your sensory organs? Would it be possible to think or to have memories? In what ways could you be considered… Continue

Atheism, free will and scientific paradigms

To me, free will is not absolute or limitless. Free will is constrained by physical laws, ethics, and circumstances.

There is evidence that thoughts arise from diverse modules within the brain. These diverse sources of thought, within the brain, are integrated somehow (i.e. in the brain’s electromagnetic field) and passed back for a decision. It’s the decision – yes, no, maybe, I don’t know, not yet, if…

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