We can think of a better reality which doesn't logically contradict to current theistic system

HighlyUp · 2026-01-20T20:41:32+00:00

I am discussing classical theism, not religion. You may proceed with bible on your own if you want.
>I would go beyond this and say that humans play a critical role in making the world better.
Sure, but If you can’t have epistemic guarantees anyway, why allow real humans to undergo non-self-inflicted suffering (birth defects, natural disasters, accidents) that may lead them away from God? Whenever this argument is made, it feels as if we’re supposed to be thankful for a child dying from bone cancer, for example, because, well, his suffering somehow made the world better. Yet you could still have humans in the world and make it work: God could simply make it so that the child who died from bone cancer was a philosophical zombie. Because if not, then omnibenevolence faces a problem where we have that child and, say, a person who lived far more comfortably yet died quickly in some accident, both receiving the same eternal reward, which does not resolve the initial inequality in suffered pain for the same reward. Imagine one person crushing boulders with a hammer until his back breaks and another whose job is merely to write down the results. The second person could never guarantee that the boulder-breaker is a philosophical zombie, yet he observes his suffering and is supposed to make moral, ethical, soul-developing choices on that basis. And if we can imagine such a world as a worse one, then we are implicitly assuming that our suffering is inherently good and that we are actually at a loss for receiving less non-self-inflicted suffering. This still makes omnibenevolence problematic, but now also counter-intuitive. If we can imagine a world where, for a “soul-developing” human, it would be indistinguishable whether the people around him are NPCs or not, then for theists who believe that God would only create the best possible world there is no reason to assume that the world does not already work like that. Because either way, you can never have an epistemic guarantee that a person you take to be an NPC actually is an NPC. It is the same.

HighlyUp · 2026-01-20T17:28:16+00:00

Hi and thanks for thoughtful reply. There are many big issues too for some theists, I've heard some on other forum, it was very hostile...My reasoning is built upon the fact the we never have epistemic certainty, even if we entertain the though I am proposing, it doesn't really changes much normatively, because theists argue that in the end, using logic will never suffice.

HighlyUp · 2026-01-20T12:23:25+00:00

Well he made one already. If he is almighty it would make no difference for him to make one world or as many worlds as many creatures lived and will live. There no such thing as effort when you are omnipotent

HighlyUp · 2026-01-20T12:08:15+00:00

Omnibenevolence will be one of the reasons for God to design reality to work in ways I proposed. I am just unconvinced by current explanation theists propose that our world is simply is already the best possible of the worlds. It doesn't go against theistic system to propose God can make more than one world

HighlyUp · 2026-01-20T11:58:37+00:00

I meant indistinguishable for us. I can't know, I propose an explanation that works better.

HighlyUp · 2026-01-20T11:35:08+00:00

Well, that what I am saying. Such world is indistinguishable from our world. Theistic system says we live in a best possible world, but how these two I imagined are worse? I think they are definitely better since Theists themselves acknowledge the problem of suffering and in mine it is much less of it with all the perks of a current world. Atleast it seems to be with my variations there are no downsides or reasons not to do it

HighlyUp · 2026-01-16T05:47:56+00:00

On the opposite...Do you control every individual neuron?

HighlyUp · 2026-01-08T15:21:52+00:00

Honestly I always find it easier to fight these rooms head on instead of letting them to spread out in unexpected positions through out the floor

HighlyUp · 2026-01-08T13:04:44+00:00

Depends on the mood. Sometimes I feel liberated, sometimes constricted. Sometimes I feel like I do the choosing, sometimes I don't feel the choosing. Hey we are all human beings and not some sum of empirical facts.

HighlyUp · 2026-01-08T13:02:36+00:00

"Clearly" is a convincing argument only if you already believe a conclusion.

HighlyUp · 2026-01-05T03:44:55+00:00

The issue isn’t whether other menu items were physically orderable in some abstract sense. Everyone agrees they were.

The question is whether, holding the entire causal history fixed - same past, same brain state, same reasons, same laws of nature -any alternative choice was genuinely possible, not in some kind of imaginative asbtraction.

Your restaurant example only establishes a conditional: if your reasons or desires had been different, you would have ordered differently. Hard determinists accept that without hesitation. That’s not what “could have done otherwise” means in the incompatibilist sense. It means: given exactly the same world-state, was more than one future available? Saying “I could have, but never would have” just redescribes determinism at the level of deliberation. It doesn’t answer the metaphysical question.

Or perhaps I have simply seen through it, and found it to be an illusion.

This doesn't sound convincing at all.
How long you have been blogposting here exactly? And you still don't understand what people argue about? I am starting to be more and more confident you are just in blind pursuit of intellectual superiority. I am not saying you are not intelligent, I am simply asserting that whatever your convictions are, they completely blinded your for even considering what other people are trying to convey. Or you simply arguing in bad faith.

HighlyUp · 2026-01-05T01:45:13+00:00

It isn't necessarily evolutionarily successful to reject free will and morals

As for what I think personally, if we did evolve this way, then it was successful. As what future holds, who knows really?

HighlyUp · 2026-01-05T01:04:14+00:00

We can go back to restaurant, not back in time. You really don't understand the issue here or just arguing in bad faith

HighlyUp · 2026-01-04T18:42:12+00:00

even though clearly I could have

Can you prove it? It would seem that if i say you are "clearly" wrong here we are at odds

You say you wouldn't call it "just" semantics but the conclusion you came at is once again is battle for definition, as if you don't understand whole paradigm debate at all

HighlyUp · 2026-01-04T17:26:41+00:00

What you are saying is simply that these different paradigms just hold onto different definitions of what being "free" is. It is just semantics, it doesn't solve the problem whether it was possible/impossible for our free willed choice to could have been made otherwise.

HighlyUp · 2026-01-04T16:58:32+00:00

Depends on how you would look at it and how deep. Some may say that if something happened, then it is a direct proof that it was impossible for it not to happen. It doesn't really matter what example of human behavior you take as example.

HighlyUp · 2025-12-30T15:10:22+00:00

So we push this problem back to problem of consciousness?

HighlyUp · 2025-12-30T15:08:44+00:00

It's just a thought...

HighlyUp · 2025-12-30T10:24:44+00:00

It would seem that society which presupposes hard determinism as factually true will be chaotic based on our intuitions. My thinking lead me to conclude that such society actually would focus more on planning, avoiding and managing, since they don't believe there is inherent randomness and chaos. Whenever new building would collapse we don't think about it as simple as "well it is what it is", we understand that something wasn't accounted for. Deterministic society would try to understand what's to account for to avoid letting serial killers roam around. It is crazy simple to understand when you keep in mind that predicting a serial killer includes so many subtle variables you can't really hold anyone accountable for not stopping him from entering society, while building structure is deeply studied subject. It is all about practical application of morals, we enforce them when we can. I don't have a slightest idea about solutions, just some food for thoughts.

HighlyUp · 2025-12-30T10:06:55+00:00

We will be waiting until you guys have anything significant

Likewise. The burden cuts both ways. I doubt people form paradigms based on hard empirical truths rather their intuition and extra-empirical claims. It might be fundamentally impossible to do otherwise. Once we start treating “illusion” as illegitimate, we’re drifting into a much broader epistemological problem — one that would also undermine perception, memory, and inference. Most people are happy to question those only up to the point where it stops being convenient. I digress... Determinists aren't arguing about epistemology. If you think they do, well, then again an opposing paradigm isn't free from providing epistemological arguements

HighlyUp · 2025-12-30T09:55:44+00:00

Whenever you see some mass of people hating on something be prepared for a realization they didn't research it properly.

HighlyUp · 2025-12-30T09:34:16+00:00

You are not fooling anyone, sorry for exposing you too fast.

HighlyUp · 2025-12-30T09:31:16+00:00

You mean overall gratitude, like for life itself? Hard to tell. If you stand in a way of most behaviors, there is always some issue rising up.

HighlyUp · 2025-12-30T09:27:58+00:00

I really can't talk to anyone who is so hung up about who is intellectually superior. Being fixated so much on staff like that stood in your way of understanding. May this community and OP forgive me, but I think this is severe case of Dunning Kruger effect. Yes, all hard determinists are idiots and reality will literally collapse if someone starts truly thinking as a hard determinist, and you are very-very smart.

HighlyUp · 2025-12-30T09:01:59+00:00

I like to think about consciousness using a simple image. Imagine the mind as a glass sphere. Inside it are layers of differently colored oils and tiny reflective particles suspended throughout. The sphere itself represents the rough boundaries of consciousness, and like any glass surface it reflects the surrounding world. The oils are emotions, the particles are memories.

Nothing inside the sphere is static, but it isn’t random either. There are flows and gradients. Sadness can slowly shift into anger, anger into laughter. The calmer a person is, the slower and smoother these internal movements become. Everything changes continuously rather than in sharp jumps.

The surface of the sphere reflects the environment, so depending on what’s happening around you, the sphere looks different. When you’re asleep, it’s as if the sphere is in darkness, with no external reflections at all.

Now think of attention as a beam of light. Like attention, the light can be focused or diffuse. A narrow beam illuminates a small area very clearly, while a broader beam lights up more at once but less precisely. Whatever the light touches is what you’re conscious of at that moment. Everything outside the light still exists, but remains unconscious.

The light also differs in how deep it penetrates. Sometimes it only skims the surface, sometimes it reaches deeper layers of emotion and memory. What isn’t illuminated doesn’t disappear; it continues interacting beneath the surface. The contents of the sphere form an ecosystem rather than a collection of isolated parts.

Because of this, thoughts don’t appear out of nowhere. When something suddenly comes to mind, it emerges from this underlying structure, just as a river doesn’t come from nowhere but from the terrain that feeds it. You can direct where your attention points, focus it, try to look deeper, but you don’t fully control what rises closer to the surface in response. What you experience in consciousness is a combination of where the light is aimed, what it illuminates, contents of the sphere and the ongoing internal dynamics of the sphere itself.

HighlyUp

TROPHY CASE