A bit of a rant I just need to get off my chest before I give my position, so if you're NOT in the mood to hear a rant on just how frustrating a person's "logic" cna be, feel free to skip ahead...no one will blame you:

I honestly DO ONT think this guy should be teaching a Philosophy of Religion course, or a Philosophy class PERIOD for that matter. Don't get me wrong, he's a nice enough guy...he's oddly enough the most condenscending philosophy professor I've ever had (and I say "oddly enough" as HE preaches a view that to speak down to someone, ie, to be condescending would be ridiculous as we're all "just human beings" and in his own opinion under the Lord...so a bit odd HE'D then ridicule an opinion or jsut plain not even hear of it when half the class thinks that perhaps a question fo causality IS a reasonable one and should be heard...but I digress) but is a nice enough guy, and when it comes to BIBLICAL matters he's on the ball.

When it comes to anything BUT Biblical matters...it's like watching George Bush make up words ("recrutification" is my personal favorite) and hope they pass as the genuine article, ie, a nice guy and you know he's trying, but...oy:

-Apparently Oedipus DIDN'T solve the Sphinx Riddle to become king, he was made king because he..."looked fancy"...and didn't gouge out his eyes but instead was made to watch his DAUGHTERS DIE as a form of punishment, so I guess ANTIGONE never had a story...

-I DIDIN'T KNOW Columbus discovered the Earth was round, I'd always thought Greek and Arab mathematicians sort of figured that one out...huh...

-ALSO, did you know the Roman Empire extended all the way to India, had it's northern boundary in Russia, and so Constantine moved the capital of the Empire from the middle of the Mediterranean and Rome to Constantinople because the latter was in the middle of the whole Empire, the East--with Persia totally conquered and Russia already existing and conquered--AND the West--which DID include all of Germany, Teuterberg Forest I guess was just German propoganda...huh...

-FINALLY, and the one I LOVE the most--the Jews, apparently, were NEVER IN EUROPE UNTIL 1500!!! I KNOW! That's a HUGE revelation to me! No Jews ion Europe until then! Now, according to him Martin Luther was still and Anti-Semite (and also according to him utterly weird for "throwing chamber pot shit at supposed demons" because NO ONE in the Middle Ages EVER did anything so odd as to believe in witches or ghosts or demons and try and hunt them out, and a man claiming to have heard a burning bush ISN'T "weird" at all, nor are the claims one man made about walking on water and turning water into wine, huh...) so he hated Jews, but there weren't any around in Europe for him to hate, apparently, so I guess he just had long-distance hatred...and the Spanish Inquisition NEVER involved Jews! I NEVER expect the Spanish Inquisition...but I REALLY didn't expect or know THAT! And Yiddish is just a byproduct of Medevial German and Hebrew, but the Jews weren't in Germany in the Middle Ages, so they must've had the best damn hearing in the WORLD! WOW! But according to him they were "all walking to Europe over that period of time"...really, Europe, your Roman-built roads must SUCK! It took the Jews 1500 whole years to get to Europe AT ALL after they got kicked out of Jerusalem by the Romans, and after they arrived you IMMEDIATELY had some nations get VERY Anti-Semitic, so much so that they were hating Jews centuries before with Luther and the Inquisition, to start with! NOW THAT IS AMAZING! AND all of this can be proven in a book called "The 13th Tribe," which is so fool-proof in its logic and so obviously correct that it didn't NEED to be required reading so we could see the arguments for this ourselves, and the facts are so boviously true the professor will quite justifiably look down at contempt every time I made a foolish attempt to ask how this all worked and jsut said to read the book, thus proving the point and re-writing Jewish history as we all know it firmly, factually, and utterly flawlessly!




AHEM:

Thank you--we now return you to obiwanobiwan's Question of Causalitu aready in progress.

So it's a simple question, causality, or at least so in that it's relatively easy to fathom (for MOST PEOPLE...I digress, I already had my rant) at least the general idea of "Object A moved because of Object B, B because of C, C indirectly because of D and E, which were both themselves one of the results of E adn F, respectively" and so on and so forth until we hit that "Uncaused Cause" that those wanting to claim a First Mover will trump up and those who will argue that there is either no need or that such an idea is itself absurd will speak up on their behalf. As THAT argument has been covered so many times, I'll digress from that to come to the more fundamental question:

IF it IS true that A is caused by B, B by C, and so on and so forth back until either we have that Uncaused Cause or an Alternative Explanation, then it would seem that A's action was, fundamentally, CAUSED.

So how could A have had "the free will" to perform that action if it was a direct effect of B?

We could argue, I suppsoe, what a "direct effect" MEANS, that perhaps B's "causing" A to act was a a suggestion and not a command, that is, B gave A the opportunity to act, but didn't force A to do so, and A merely did so because it was logical.

If A and B were human beings we might except this.
And yet if A and B were a golf club and golf ball we wouldn't...hence our impasse.

I suppose it could be additionally argued that whatever B did could have caused an infinite amount of things to occur, and that the fact that A's action occured implies that all B did was necessitate that something HAD to occur, and the WHAT was filled in by A...but if this is the case, then, again, it seems that A is just following a logical movement, that it's just progressing with the influence of B.

Finally, I suppose that it could be said that B didn't HAVE to influence A to do anything...but if we look at C, we might find that C casued B to have to act, and the manner in which C influenced B would then seem to affect the way B affected A, ergo C in some manner is affecting A, and as A was not in contact with C, and yet is still being moved by him via the extension force known as B, we might then argue that A has no freedom of will, even if it thinks it's making a choice it's really just being moved by a power that its never seen before.



I don't know...ideas?