You have it backwards, you're the one asserting that there is a total causal chain in effect that eliminates real choice.
No. I'm the one asserting that there is a total causal chain in effect, that eliminates the notion that anything (except first cause) can happen uncaused. I have specifically, consistently and repeatedly said that real choice is still active. I have not said that anything eliminates real choice. It is you who have been saying that what I claim, eliminates real choice. Your support only comes from your unproven assertion that all options before a chooser must be possible.
My position isn't based on an assertion, it's based on taking my experiences of making choices at face value.
Thus, unproven. 'Face value' proves nothing, and often demonstrates ignorance, or even purposeful blindness.
You tell me there's these mysterious causes that are really at the heart of my choices, so you need to give an account of how such a thing works.
Unknown by the chooser/observer does not translate to "mysterious". There is no need here to bias the reader. The simple logic of causation is not mysterious. Your hyperbole is unneeded.
You don't seem to understand what an "assertion" is..what I am stating there is simply logical entailments. If there are no genuine options, there is no genuine choice. Just an illusion of choice.
Repeated assertion. No proof.
I have not said there are no genuine options. I said there is only one genuine option, and, amazingly, even unbelievably (apparently) to you, it is the very option chosen, in every case. It is the unchosen options, not the choice, that is illusion.
Let's suppose a scene, a stage, on some show similar to Let's Make a Deal. The contestant is placed before what appears to be a wall with several doors, from which to choose. The contestant chooses the real door. Not because the contestant recognizes the other doors to be fake, but because (s)he likes that door better than the others. I don't need to know WHY (s)he liked that door better than the others, but God knows.
Obviously the parallel is not entirely applicable, but it should be obvious that a choice was made between many apparent options, of which only one was real. It is not convoluted nor complicated.
To enforce the simple logic of it, I'm going to make a statement, seemingly even axiomatic, that you will reject, because to you it complicates the matter, since it logically opposes your self-contradictory notion of uncaused choice: "All history shows that there have never been options chosen, except for the one(s) chosen. Why then, should one suppose that any options can ever be chosen, but the one(s) that are/will be chosen?" The statement is silly, even, because it is so obvious. But it also serves as empirical proof, on a par with scientific investigation, that my POV is supported.
It's quite clear as "determinists" seem to fall all over themselves creating convoluted situations to defend their indefensible theory rather than providing a substantive rebuttal to the charges laid against them.
If the charges laid against them were substantive, this conversation would not continue in other threads and forums as it has for probably just about as long as CF has been in operation, and that participants will predictably choose to continue to engage in for some time to come.
If you truly believed that every decision was pre-determined before you made the decision you would admit that you have no choice to make, and just wait until whatever choices are made for you are made.
Mere assertion. And continued repeatedly redundantly.
Don't just assert it. PROVE IT!
You claim to believe in determinism, which entails a denial of free choice.
You say it entails a denial of free choice. I say, define "free" there. I deny "uncaused" choice. I do not deny choice freely made according to one's preferences.
But then you try to rectify it by kicking the can down the road and saying people choose what they "prefer". Which doesn't get rid of the problem of free will and determinism, it just kicks up dust about the issue. After all, where do these "preferences" come from?
As you are forcing me to repeat, or to ignore your repeated assertions, these preferences come from causes. Hello. The thoughts, the reasoning, the likes and dislikes within a person's mind, the will of the person to do what one wills to do, are all caused by what came before them.
For you and me, not for the atheists here, we should recognize that this ALL, even your construction, and all thought and obedience and rebellion and every choice, descends logically from the fact that GOD CREATED. Logically, if he had not, none of this would be possible. Therefore, CAUSED.
You're looking at the issue too deeply.
You sure you're not looking at it too shallowly?
Free will is nothing more than ownership of our choices. We need not get into metaphysical speculation about causes or antecedents, because those things just lead to unnecessary confusion and convoluted theories. We have free will, and there is a seemingly deterministic structure to the universe. The issue is, how do we explain both things being true? We can become fatalist and insist that God micromanages and is really the sole cause of every decision, or we can accept that it is a mystery that only an omniscient being could hope to solve. You're inventing an argument that need not happen, and painting yourself into a corner based on nothing but your own limited understanding.
Responsibility for our choices was not the subject of the OP. But since the writer engaged in the matter in that light, I'll go with it. But you (and maybe a couple other "free-willers", by bringing it up, are complicating the simple logic of causation, not just by introducing new material into the mechanical fact of causation, but by insisting that metaphysics transcend the mechanical facts of causation. Nothing but God himself transcends 'mechanical' causation.
I think it is rather curious you would use the vague term, '"ownership" of choices'. But it is in keeping with the vagueness of the thought of free-willers that you do so. You no doubt mean something forceful, and that is to your credit. But the notion that universal causation denies ownership of choices is only a result of a self-deterministic mindset. It is complicated for you because your self-deterministic mindset does not work well when it tries to admit to the logic of causation. For me it is not complicated, though admittedly I must engage in many different ways of looking at the thing, when trying to get the self-determinist to see the truth of it. Perhaps I should engage as you do, by multiple repetitions of my scientific, philosophical and logical assertion --"All things are caused, but first cause"-- and let you handle the details.
I don't believe a model of mechanical causation is a true model of reality. It's useful, but I don't think it's truth.
Reality is indeed that simple. God (or "turtles all the way down" (or what have you)) causes all things subsequent. If God (or whatever) did not cause, there would be nothing to discuss and nobody to discuss it. God caused all this.
