Dear GP
afraid this must be my last post - I've run out of time. The problem is a little like looking through binoculars at one's feet. There is a problem but nearly as large as you imagine. Reasons are most certainly causes for actions but reasons are also a part of the material world - think 'language'. How can sound be meaningful in a meaningless universe? -because there are entities for whom sound CAN be meaningful and they ARE themselves part of the material universe. Hence there is meaning in the material universe just in case there are entities for whom there can be meaning. Same for reasons and values.
cheers
M
p.s - check out David Chalmer's stuff on zombies - for a non-materialist approach to minds - huge fun.

Matilda – just on the off chance you will read this I must make one more reply.

You refer to language – what is ‘language’ in a deterministic universe?

Volcanoes make noise. Do they have language? Volcanoes do not have any control over the noise they make – the noise just happens as a consequence of the past and prevailing physical conditions. I don’t think anyone would suggest volcanoes have language.

People make noise. Do they have language? People, in a deterministic universe have no control over the noise they make - the noise just happens as a consequence of the past and prevailing physical conditions. But unlike with volcanoes people, like you, do believe that people have language.

So we seem to have four options available:
1. both volcanoes and people have language – which seems ridiculous to suggest – of course volcanoes don’t have language
2. neither volcanoes nor people have language – which seems to be equally ridiculous – of course people do have language
3. volcanoes have language but people do not – completely ridiculous
4. volcanoes don’t have language but people do – which seems to fit with our experience of life

But since neither volcanoes nor people can control the noise they make, there is no reason to believe that either volcanoes or people actually do have language, despite appearances to the contrary, and therefore 2. above is true for a deterministic universe.

Absurd? Yes, but that’s determinism for you. As I’ve said before, if determinism is correct then everything is a weird farce. We all live like we have genuine free will but it is all a delusion – how bizarre is it that the mindless stuff of the universe managed to play such a weird trick on us all.

GP,

Whilst language is established through mutual understanding of shared symbolic values between conscious actors (and indeed, the foundation of language is the same as the foundation of moral behaviour - simply replace 'values' with 'actions'), to get back to original article, I fail to see why atheism necessitates total determinism.

I do not seen any reason to suggest that it is not plausible that natural processes themselves cannot give rise to the diversity of languages, especially in those creatures who the capacity of forward planning and (importantly for the moral argument) those which have "mirror neurons".

Okay Kenneth, I’ll take your point that we cannot know when atomic decay will occur. So that just seems to move us from determinism to indeterminism because of the randomness involved with atomic decay. Indeterminism means that I might happen to do (a) or (b). But if I do (a) or I do (b) just because of certain statistical laws of nature then I still don’t have control over what I do. And if I don’t have control over what I do then I cannot exercise free will.

Regarding your last question – it seemed a bit odd that you used the word predetermined instead of undetermined considering what you said earlier, but leaving that aside – I think we all believe we can tell the difference between undetermined behaviour and free will.

Unless a person is exercising genuine free will there is no sense in praising or punishing anyone for their behaviour. But we do praise and punish. And if we believe someone has done something seriously wrong but we do not think that they have been fully responsible for their behaviour we don’t send them to jail but to a psychiatric hospital instead. It makes no sense whatsoever to make such distinctions unless we genuinely believe people do, usually at least, have true free will.

Philosophising is merely a pass time , to pass time. The philosophical approach is meaningless at best and nonsense at worst.

God exists because somebody says so and they know so because they say so. Truth , evidence , reality and fact are meaningless because faith demands unquestioning loyalty to the words of Gurus , fictional like Jesus or real like Joseph Smith , Mohommed , Stalin or Hitler. God is said to save such as one person here called for god , if god then does exist one must accept that same god is evil for all the suffering he has inflicted on people. An example is a child who is starving and orphaned because it happened to be born in Somalia. God only helps those who have the means to help themselves, God will save a farmer who can afford a tractor who was not being saftey conscious but will torture and kill the innocent farmer with a wooden plough with a simple infection.

The only people who say god exists are the very same who put the cart before the horse. They say god exists yet had no proof to base god on. What are they saying then? The answer is as obvious as the belief in ressurection and parting oceans is stupid, obviously they made god up.

The point is god never said he exists. If god existed there would be no need for faith. If god existed there would be no such thing as atheism.

free will is not a puzzle once you accept consciousness. how can a mechanical universe give rise to consciousness? damned if i know. but it obviously has.

so what? what on god's earth does this imply about the existence of a god? you want to credit consciousness to a god? go ahead. then what? who bloody well cares? what does it tell you about your god except that they created consciousness?

we have moral values. are these universal? no. but it's ridiculous to suggest that they are thus arbitrary. the moral codes of humans societies can and need be only that: it is not in the nature of morality that it needs a justification external to the participants. whether innate or cultural, or a mixture of both, it is simply absurd to suggest moral values are arbitrary, just because an old guy with a grey beard isn't around to keep score.

you god guys keep saying the same things, and they keep amounting to nothing. we can't give a sufficient physical explanation to "I", therefore god exists? it's absurd. please, give it a rest.