communist

This is literally the opposite of true, it's true of highly heirarchical systems, not true of communism.

Socialist systems actually seek to decentralize power, meaning you need to be less reliant on people being saints... not more.

I don't see why you believe that at all.

their influence on your decision making process does not imply free will

This means that nothing about free will is important in any decision making process, and thus free will is just a garbage concept that has no bearing or meaning in reality.

Even if there was such a thing as free will, it would be completely unimportant in decision making.

it is hard to imagine free will has nothing to do with why you don’t hold the tree morally responsible.

It doesn't, let's imagine free will separate from knowledge, reasoning, experience, etc. No amount of knowledge, reasoning, experience would prevent the tree from falling according to the laws of physics, that's why I don't hold the tree accountable. The tree has no knowledge, no reasoning, no experience, no morals, so, even if it could freely make the choice not to do it, because it doesn't have those things, it doesn't matter at all.

I agree that it is necessary in the current world, just making it clear that this isn't a fundamental issue with being a communist, it's a matter of policy.

Whether or not that policy makes sense right now is different, and I agree that it absolutely does in the current climate, but once there are more socialist countries, I think it'll become a non-issue. Like I said, only authoritarian methods like controlling speech can allow socialists/communists to hold onto power in the world right now.

No, all capitalist countries that are nice places to live are guilty of imperialism, colonialism, genocide, or some combination of the three. No exceptions. All you're noticing is that they have successfully exported their suffering at best.

Communist countries have a massive uphill battle, they have to gain wealth without imperialist exploitation AND fend off the US, who has the same military budget as the rest of the world COMBINED, this combined with the fact they usually started poor makes this a wildly unfair comparison. Only authoritarians can hold onto power when faced with all of these things.

the mere fact that in 75 years china has gotten where it has and the only issues you can really point to are matters of policy rather than fundamental failures of communism tells most of the story, communism can be essentially identical to what china does with freedom of speech, no censorship, and no genocide very easily, as none of those things have anything to do with whether a country is communist or not, with all of the benefits.

in other words capitalists can't find flaws with communism that don't apply to capitalism, only issues with particular implementations, the issues communists talk about are mostly fundamental to capitalism.

Do you think knowledge, reasoning, experience, and risks do not play any role in our decisions?

Sure, it is inevitable that we will make the decision we make, but it's not that the marble will fall down every time that makes our choices significant, it's the fact that we don't arbitrarily make decisions.

If, because you know about determinism, you stop bothering to learn about the world, there will be a different outcome, even if that was inevitable, that's how you influence the world. Free will doesn't mean anything and isn't important.

Even if there was free will, those things would be vastly more important than it. Free will is totally unimportant.

if god exists, he defines what evil is.

There's no way to make babies having cancer moral. There's no version of that god that is any good. If this isn't a test, why give babies cancer?

what is the difference in the case of the agent vs. the marble?

The agent made its decision based on knowledge, reasoning, experience, the risks, the morals. A marble doesn't have knowledge, humans do, even if we're deterministic, we can make decisions, it's just that the decision will be made no matter what. That doesn't free us from the responsibility of our decisions.

Just because the agent would've never made a different choice, doesn't mean these things don't matter anymore, it's wholly irrelevant to whether or not we should punish them.

in your view, what is the difference between having a forced decision and not having a choice? and why exactly would this forced choice be punishable in the same way a free one would be?

In determinism, you still have free choices, it's just you would've made that choice if time was reversed and played again, nothing changed so why would the result be different? You compared all the options, and decided to make that choice, and if we reversed time, and played it back, you'd still make that decision... but it's not like the universe compelled you to make that decision, nobody FORCED you to make that choice, you still made a decision all on your own, even if we reversed time and you would've made the same one, that changes precisely nothing of importance.

in brief, god makes decisions about who is saved and who isn’t not based on conditions they follow in their life, but based on his own purposes and goals.

then he's just a dickbag putting us all in a world to suffer for fun, when he could just make us all in heaven.

again, a calvinist would probably say that he created evil people for his glory and grace. notably, jesus dying on the cross for humanity’s sins as a display of god’s grace does not make sense without the existence of evil.

yeah it doesn't make any sense. that doesn't actually make it make sense, that's just a vague set of words. So god is a dickbag that needs worship why? Quite frankly like, any decent human being is better than this god, he's just evil.

traditionally, determinism is not compatible with moral responsibility since all actions are predetermined and it is not obvious that one can be held morally responsible for them.

this is nonsense. You're still making choices, just because you would've made those choices no matter what doesn't mean your choices aren't punishable or your fault. It's not that you didn't have a choice, it's that you would've made that decision no matter what based on the laws of physics. These are not incompatible ideas, and I don't get why people struggle with this. It's very straightforward.

to the problem of the theist test, standard christian doctrine is that your fate in heaven is predetermined and individuals have been pre-chosen by god (theological term is ‘the elect’). in that sense, your worldly life is not a ‘test’, but the idea is that the holy spirit reveals god to those who have been selected.

this is also nonsense, the point was that it was a test, god should already know who's going to be selected, if there's no free will, this is still all pointless. Why does god need the holy spirit to do all that nonsense if it isn't a test?

yeah in the same way that there's guns and shootings all over the world but they're almost all concentrated in one place... american schools.

either way, communists are vastly more prepared to deal with propaganda because in capitalist societies critical thinking is destroyed by nearly every institution that can teach it.

if you go by this thread one side has nothing but propaganda. There was not one valid argument made on the capitalist side when I read this thread, I could've better argued for capitalism, it's pathetic.

closest they got was china is mean to uyghurs, but capitalists do genocide every 5 seconds so that's hardly a pro capitalist argument. At least the chinese, if they are covering it up, have the decency to cover it up, capitalists brazenly and openly happily do it, and support it!

You can use the modlog, lemmy's web interface lets you see it

This isn't a problem for athiests, I am a determinist athiest, we have no free will and the idea is silly in a place governed by physical laws. It honestly doesn't matter at all to me and I don't see any reason to care.

it's a problem for theists because this is supposed to be a big test, god is checking if we belong in heaven. If we have no free will the test makes no sense at all.