The categorizations of "Good" and "bad" are illusions and nothing more. (and so is morality)..part 3

"You seem to believe that the creation of the universe was an accident. No more than quantum mechanics. Tell me this; if we exist by mere chance, who's rolling the die?" You have misunderstood. This is not how determinism works. IT works on the concept that nothing is random. By saying the above statement, you are making the assumption that no event can ever occur, unless an entity with free will (scientifically impossible) decides for the moment to occur. Determinism can be summed up by the concept of fate. One event causes another event…there are no "accidents" there is no "chance" we are just bugs, frozen in the amber of the moment. The moment is structured this way, and could not be any other way, because a multitude of factors and can only add up to ONE answer…this is an elementary mathematical concept. This moment could not hav4e been any other way. And, just my luck, I can use your own metaphor against you. A die is not random. It is predicted. Every single little factor contributes to what number is rolled: How it is rolled, the wind speed, the amount of dust in the air, the springiness of the surface it is boucung on. It is in no way random. "Of course we are ignorant in nature. We understand so infinitesimally little about God, the best we can do is to study his creation. ‘We see now as through a glass darkly.' It is the best any man can do to draw what conclusions he can from what little he can see." Yes, but this is incredibly a separate issue than PROVING his existence. Yes, you can base whether you believe in god on a…feeling you have…, but this is in no way PROVING his existence. This is no basis for science pr anything else. "To relate a human sinning to a river sinning is also counterproductive. We are capable of thought. Of weighing options. Of getting hurt, and not choosing that option again. I agree with you that many of our choices are predetermined by our experiences, triggering a specific reaction in our brain. But man cannot be allowed to believe this." I agree, whole-heartedly, that we should not pursue trying to act based on a utter lack of morals. This debate, however, is not about the consequences of following this belief, it is about whether it is TRUE. So it does not help your argument to, once more, cram this fundamental, celestial topic into a tiny human society. "If he did, he would cease taking responsibility for his actions. He could murder someone and say "Well, it's not my fault. The chemicals in my brain just reacted that way." Belief in choice grants us choices. Disbelief chains you to the current of the choices of others." It doesn't exactly work that way. There's a catch, lack of free-will itself is what blocks us from fully embracing, as you describe, the lack of freewill. Of course, there are no laws of psychology, there will always be exceptions when some poor soul has completely lost their mind, but, for the most part, this is true. Also, at the same time as admitting that there is no free-will, you state that it is bad to think that because things could happen such as murdering someone. Do you realize the circular logic of this…? If you admit that there is no free-will, than you admit that there is no good or bad, because we are forces of nature. But at the same time as giving the implications that there is no good or bad, you dismiss the belief on the ground that it could lead to something "bad". Does this make sense? Even while saying that, we can see instincts and conditioning acting on you. SO, if it were possible, it would actually be quite liberating to achieve this embracement of determinism, and embracement of a lack of morality, because the realization itself, would imply that the "negative" consequences of it would not matter, yet when we suggest how liberating it would be, we always talk about the "negative" consequences, while contradicting the thing itself in the process, and proving: It would be impossible, because we do not have free-will. I hope that made sense. And also, on the subject, what would it really matter if "he would cease taking responsibility for his actions"? "It matters because you know what it feels like to be burned. You know it is painful. Why would you inflict that same pain on another? Because you wish it to feel pain as you felt pain. And that is where we differ from other organisms. Other organisms are incapable of wishing pain on another." You misunderstood the question, it was not: "why would it appear to matter to the human?" it was "what does it matter?" Why would it matter if you wished it to feel pain, what would it matter if you were full of hate and wished them to die a horrible death? It is all illusions. There is no universal cause, therefore it is infinitely irrelevant whether anything happens, hence nothing is good or bad. (On a side note, other organisms are "capable" of wishing pain on one another; there are no fundamental psychological laws) "When I stated that humans are not driven by instincts, I did not mean we did not obey our instincts. I meant that they do not rule us. A surgeon operating on someone does not leave to get food in the middle of an operation because he is hungry." Once more, there are NO psychological laws. Any law of psychology will have exceptions, as I have stated earlier in this round. Of course we can not make a law that would state: You will always eat when you're hungry" because it is not as straightforward as that, just as you cannot say "A tree will always fall over if it is windy". The brain is extremely complex, and literally billions of factors are involved with it's processing. Due to the chaos theory, it can not be predicted on such simple rules as eating when you're hungry, because there are millions of other factors influencing him to do other things. He has been conditioned in society to not want to leave a patient there for hours with there gut cut open. Instinct, in the simplest definition of the word, is obviously NOT the only form of compulsion for our brain to act.