u/Hashi856

Christians will often claim that non-believers cannot trust their reasoning, because in a non-theistic universe, brains are just meat that didn’t evolve for truth.

But even in a theistic worldview, don’t you have to rely on your senses and rational faculties to know that God exists? If God didn’t exist, the most bulletproof, irrefutable apologetic would be based on rational faculties that come from a brain that is just matter in motion. If you were wrong, you’d have no way of knowing it, just like non-believers.

I’m really interested in hearing a defense of those two ideas being simultaneously true.

My understanding is that compatibilists accept determinism as a fact, but will use “free will” to mean any decision that is a result of your desire. Basically, if you did something because you wanted to do it, that was a free will decision.

But, in their view, aren’t our desires determined? Do compatibilists believe that our desires are chosen or thrust upon us? If it’s the latter, does that mean that moral responsibility is more of a practicality than an actual reality?

How I’m defining free will: The ability to have made a different decision than the one you actually made, under identical circumstances

If your definition of free will is meaningfully different than the one above, it’s not the one I’m addressing.

Most versions of Abrahamic religions assume that, for any sin you commit, you could have not committed it. This is the justification for divine punishment. You could have made a different choice, so your punishment is deserved.

But consider the implications of that assertion. In order for it to be true that you could have made a different decision, it would have to be true that, if we turned back time to the exact moment you made the choice, the exact same circumstances would lead to a different outcome. But how would that work? Your brain would be in the exact same state, considering the exact factors, with the exact same desired outcome. If even the smallest detail is different, it’s not the same situation, and the claim falls apart.

If your claim is, “I could have changed my mind at the last second”, you’d have to explain why that didn’t happen when you actually made the choice in real life. The choice you made is literally the only choice we have evidence for. There is zero support for the claim that anyone could have made a different decision then the one they in-fact made. The fact that it feels like you could have chosen differently, because you were considering other options, is not evidence that it was actually possible. You’d have to explain why you would make a different decision under identical circumstances.

Humans make choices for reasons, and the choice you make is definitionally the one that made the most sense to you at that moment, given the circumstances and your goals and preferences. If any other choice had made more sense to you at that moment, you would have chosen that instead. So in order to posit an alternative possibility of choice, you’d have to explain why the option you chose in real life made the most sense to you at that moment, and why you would ever make a different choice that, by your own reckoning, didn’t make the most sense to you.

In case you want to invoke quantum randomness (or any kind of randomness), I’ll just point out that randomness does not get you free will. There’s no free will in a dice roll.

The fact is, the way things happened in real life is the only outcome we have any actual evidence for. The claim that you could have made a different decision is unfalsifiable and unsupported. The existence of multiple options does not imply your ability to freely choose any of them.

A clear thesis:
Divine hiddenness renders God inadequate as a universal moral standard

Some effort at demonstrating the truth of the thesis:
The main advantage of a universal moral standard is that everyone knows for certain what the rules are. But there’s an implicit assumption that everyone has equal access to knowledge of the standard. A standard can’t be correctly followed by everyone if everyone doesn’t agree on the particulars of the standard.

Christians will argue that everyone has access to the Bible. While this is obviously not true, the more relevant fact is that there are as many interpretations of the Bible as there are Christians. To pretend that the Bible is this universally agreed upon moral standard is nothing short of dishonest. The other common argument is that the disagreements are largely about unimportant aspects of faith. I’m not sure how one can come to the conclusion that the differences between Protestant and Catholic doctrine, for example, are minor and unimportant. A large portion of Protestants don’t think Catholics are even Christians (and think they are likely going to Hell), further demonstrating the lack of coherence in Christian interpretations of the Bible, to the point that they can’t even agree on what a Christian is. So to tout the Bible as an unchanging, universally agreed upon and understood moral code is, again, dishonest.

So even if we grant that God is a perfect, universal moral standard, he did not evenly dispense knowledge of the standard to everyone. Everyone is free to interpret the Bible any way they want, and God does not step in to correct them. At least not in a way that is unambiguous, which would be a trivial task for him.

Another common rebuttal is the existence of the human conscience. The conscience has the exact same problem as the Bible, plus the fact that it can’t be demonstrated to exist. People’s supposed consciences lead them to all kinds of different conclusions to moral questions. The human conscience is unique and particular to each human, and is anything but universal. You don’t need a conscience to explain why you feel bad when you do things that are considered bad by you or your peers. We are a social species, and we’ve adapted very sensitive emotional reactions to things in a way that benefits us in a group setting. it’s also a bit of a red flag that the human conscience works differently in different parts of the world. My conscience, to use the parlance, would tell me that it’s wrong to burn a widow alive. Yet that practice was considered honorable in India until very recently. Conscience is 100% vibes.

But even if we put aside all of the vagueness and ambiguity, most of the world is not convinced that the Christian God is real. Just like everyone needs to agree on the particulars of a moral standard for it to be useful as such, the effectiveness of a moral standard is directly correlated with how many people believe it’s a legitimate standard. Over half the human population not believing in this "universal" standard is a huge problem. The fact that they may go to hell for not following the standard is of no use to people who have to live with them on Earth while they’re alive. Moral standards are of no use to anyone if they can’t be reliably demonstrated to exist.

Finally, someone will probably claim that God is the one applying the standard and, since he IS the standard, obviously has full knowledge of it. But we’re not talking about the application of the standard. We’re talking about our ability to follow it. The problem with this argument is that we are expected by God to obey this standard while on Earth, where he has chosen to not definitively clear up thousands of years of misunderstandings.

P.S.

Everyone knows murder is wrong, even if no one explicitly tells them

This is unfalsifiable, and we have no reason to believe it’s true.

Half the recipes I see use it, and the other half don’t. I know it’s optional in the sense that you can make it without yeast, but does that affect the quality of the naan? Is yeast traditional?

My understanding is that Christians believe that our will comes from our soul. But that doesn’t really answer anything. How does my soul make decisions? Is my soul even the one making decisions? What is the difference between the soul deciding something and the brain deciding something? What was responsible for your decision to accept Jesus?

A clear thesis:

All volitional action is in fulfillment of our strongest desire at the moment the choice to act is made. We do not control what these desires are, when they occur, or how strong they are. Since we do not have direct control over these desires, we are not morally responsible for the actions that result from them.

Some effort at demonstrating the truth of the thesis:

A lot of people don’t like the word desire for some reason. Feel free to substitute “will”, “value”, or whatever you think drives decision making.

>all volitional action is in fulfillment of our strongest desire at the moment the choice to act is made.

Volitional action is the result of some conscious or subconscious decision-making process. That decision-making process is always in service of some end-goal. E.g. we drink to stop being thirsty. That goal is a result of our desires and beliefs. Since there are frequently competing desires, our actions align with the strongest desire at the moment the choice is made. E.g. you may want a donut, but if you’re desire to lose weight is stronger than your desire to eat the donut, you won’t eat it. Which desire is strongest can change from moment to moment, which explains why we can resist the donut all day, but then eat a bunch of cookies that same night.

>we don’t control what these desires are, when they occur, or how strong they are.

Anyone who has ever tried to kick a bad habit can tell you that we cannot directly control what we desire at any given moment. If we could, there would be no addicts in the world. Any addiction could be overcome by sheer force of will. Even lesser desires that don’t rise to the level of addiction are not under our direct control. I don’t decide when to get a craving for a particular food or a compulsion to bite my nails. I also don’t control how strong these desires are. Again, if we could control the strength of our desires, we could simply turn them off by dialing the strength down to zero.

People will claim that we can control desire through life style changes, mindfulness practice, prayer, etc. but that is not control; that is influence. You don’t get to decide whether your efforts are successful. If you could, no one would struggle with desire or bad habits.

>Since we do not have direct control over these desires, we are not morally responsible for the actions that result from them

Given that volitional actions are the result of decisions that are themselves the result of our desires and beliefs, and given that we do not have direct control over those desires and beliefs, humans cannot be held morally responsible for those actions. If you think our decisions are based on something other than desires and beliefs, please let me know what that is.

A common response is to simply assert that, while we may not be able to control when a desire occurs, we do control whether we act on it. But this begs the question by assuming the very free will that is under debate. If you claim that our actions (whether we act in a desire) are governed by something else, what is it?

An easy way to prove me wrong:

provide an example of a volitional action that was not the result of your strongest desire at the moment the action was chosen, or provide an alternative explanation of human decision making.

Common responses:

>It sounds like you just want to evade responsibility for your decisions

You would first have to demonstrate that responsibility before I would need to evade it

>“desire“ is not the same thing as higher values, which is what important, meaningful decisions are based on.

Higher values, spiritual values, or whatever you want to call them clearly don’t govern many of our important, life-altering decisions. That’s why people so frequently regret who they married or which job they took. Higher values are obviously different than base desires, but that doesn’t matter, because base desire frequently wins out over higher values. It all depends on which one was stronger when you made the decision.

>I can just do something random. Then it’s not based on desire, and I’ve proven you wrong by counter example.

Except the choice to do something random would either be based on a desire to prove me wrong, or it would be truly based on nothing, in which case you didn’t choose it and it wasn't volitional.

>You’re just making bald assertions. Where is your evidence?

My assertions are based on everyday human experience, just like assertions that we have free will. We know for a fact that people make decisions based on desired outcomes. We don’t decided what those desired outcomes are. I want my kids to lead happy, healthy lives, and I make decisions based on that desire. I cannot choose to not want my kids to have happy lives. Decisions, big and small, are made based on what you like and what you want. That includes your desire to obey God and your desire to go to Heaven. When you choose obedience over sin, you're demonstrating that your desire to obey God is stronger than your desire to sin. If not, what was your decision based on?

Before you answer, I do not have the power to just switch to account numbers. Every process we have is based on the use of account names, and I don’t get to just decide to switch to numbers.

I am the current NetSuite admin at my company. I inherited the job from our previous admin that was let go. For reasons I’m not privy to, my company decided to use account names, rather than account numbers during our original implementation in 2020. My question is, what are the practical consequences of using names instead of numbers? Does NetSuite work any differently? Under what circumstances would you choose to use names instead of numbers? What are the pros and cons?

Sorry for all the preamble, but the last time I asked this question, everyone just said that we need to “grow up and just use account numbers”, which was supremely unhelpful.

I need a community that can help me identify something I ate in a pastry.

If you don't believe that these concepts are defined by God's nature, or if you believe that there are standards that exist external to God, then this argument isn't directed at you, and you don't need to tell me that's not what you believe.

A Clear Thesis: The concepts of love, goodness, and morality are indistinguishable from each other and are therefore functionally meaningless if they are not based on some standard that is external to God.

Some effort at demonstrating the truth of the thesis: In order for a concept to have meaning, it must be unique in some way that distinguishes it from other concepts. A dog is different than a cat because dogs have properties that cat's don't have. But when Christians claim that God "is love" or God "is justice" and that human definitions are subordinated to God's nature, they strip the words of their meaning. If love is synonymous with God's nature, then love can literally be anything, rendering it meaningless. Giving to the poor is love if God commands it. Killing babies is love if God commands it. If there is no external standard to which God is being held, then literally anything can be loving, making the concept meaningless.

Christians will often claim that love, justice, mercy, etc. are separate aspects of God's nature. God isn't only love, he's also justice. But what do love and justice mean in that case? You can't distinguish them from each other without providing some definition that is external to God and his nature. But as soon as you distinguish them from each other, you've provided a definition against which we can measure God's actions and commands, disproving the idea that there is no moral standard outside of God.

This idea also results in contradictions like justice and mercy being synonymous, despite the fact that they are opposites. Mercy is literally the negation or circumvention of justice. The degree to which you act mercifully is the degree to which you are acting unjustly. If I steal money from you, justice demands that I return the money. But you can show mercy by forgiving or lessening the debt or simply not pressing charges. If you choose to show mercy, you have circumvented justice. But if mercy and justice are both synonymous with God's nature, you've now made them the same thing, even though they're opposites. If I go to Hell, that's justice. If God forgives my sins and I go to heaven, that's also justice, even though it's actually mercy by the normal definition of the word. You may say that it's not mercy because the debt actually was paid, just by someone else (Jesus in this case), but you still have the same problem of it also being merciful. God cannot be perfectly just and perfectly merciful because that is a contradiction.

The Holy Spirit is supposed to guide believers to the truth and enhance their communication with God. How is it possible for Catholics and Protestants to both be led by the spirit and come to such different conclusions on critical matters? Why is the Holy spirit leading Christians in different directions?

Edit: since people are claiming that different denomination don’t necessarily differ on “major” issues, I’ll limit the scope to denominations that do differ on major, salvation-level issues. Although I think it’s a bit disingenuous to claim that a difference in doctrine can be major enough to start your own sect about, but not major enough to be considered a “critical” difference. If the differences aren’t that big a deal, why aren’t you a different denomination?

This query works on Tim's query tool, but not over ODBC.

select * from

(
SELECT
    trx.id,
    trx.custbody_prop_mgmt_software,
    COUNT(*) OVER (
        PARTITION BY trx.custbody_prop_mgmt_software
    ) AS duplicate_count

FROM transactionline AS tl

LEFT OUTER JOIN transaction AS trx ON tl.transaction = trx.id
LEFT OUTER JOIN transactionAccountingLine AS tal ON tl.id = tal.transactionline
     AND tl.transaction = tal.transaction
LEFT OUTER JOIN accountingperiod AS period ON trx.postingperiod = period.id


WHERE
    tl.id = 0
    AND trx.type = 'CustPymt'
    AND trx.createddate > TO_DATE('2025-01-01', 'YYYY-MM-DD')
    AND (
        trx.custbody_exclude_from_search NOT LIKE '%Duplicate Entrata Payment ID%'
        OR trx.custbody_exclude_from_search IS NULL
    )
    AND period.enddate BETWEEN CURRENT_DATE - 90 AND CURRENT_DATE + 31
     AND trx.custbody_prop_mgmt_software is not null
)

where duplicate_count > 1

Every day, at least one person asks if something trivial or mundane is a sin. Stuff like, “Is it a sin to watch anime”. Lots of people get annoyed by these questions because either the answer sounds obvious to them, or they think it’s a dumb question. But Christians are called to lead as sinless a life as they can, and there is no universally agreed-upon list of what is and isn’t a sin. How are they supposed to know whether something is a sin if the Bible doesn’t directly address it, and they get different answers from different people?