Being nothing more than a humble citizen of a great republic, I would not presume to instruct you in anything, especially in any matter of importance. But, can you explain a few issues to me? Not as a matter of argument, but simply as instruction.
Can you explain ‘randomness’ and, as a way of contrast, ‘chance’? I would like both to mean the same tomorrow as today, but I understand that the receipt of new information may cause either or both to mean something different at some future time.
Is ‘Free Will’ a fact or an illusion?
*Other than possibly in a contextual fashion, do you make any distinction between the human “mind” and the human “brain”?
*If the scientific mechanistic view of life (including, therefore, the human brain) is that of an array of unguided chemical reactions and random neuron discharges, then what sort of positive knowledge beyond the physical environment can be claimed, and by what rule of logic can such a life-sense declare that it is anything but helpless to believe other than what it does believe?
* Have ethics been disproved by Science, as some scientists (for example Harvard professor Steven Pinker in his book How the Mind Works), and other experts, argue?
* If not the case, then what are the ethics of Science, what is its ethical rationale, and whence come the values upon which its ethics are based?
And, finally, some rather fundamental issues:
* Can a causal chain be of infinite length?
* Can there be something that is the cause of itself?
* Can an infinite temporal regress of events exist (other than as a mathematical proposition)?
* Has mathematical deduction determined, with reasonable conclusiveness, that the premise of first cause arguments is valid?
* Before answering the above, will we find ourselves engaged in the tedious business of untangling the nuances of concepts such as being, existence, and essence, and therefore become so engrossed in consequent arguments that we never get back to the original propositions?
If “What you see is what you get” is all there is, then let’s keep dancing.
Thanks for the ping to your engaging challenge!