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“The very fact that we believe ourselves free, means, by the strict application of Occam’s Razor, that we are free. To argue otherwise is to make the insane claim that the real world, for no conceivable reason or purpose, invents illusions. If that were true, we could never know anything at all because absolutely everything could be an illusion. We would be living in the fantasy world created by Descartes’ malevolent demon. In rather similar terms, fundamentalist materialists propose that a more rational alternative to the concept of “God”, which they say explains nothing, is scientific randomness. However, randomness also explains nothing since it operates via miracles happening for no reason, and is even more of a mystery than God!” — Mike Hockney

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The very fact that we believe ourselves free, means, by the strict application of Occam’s Razor, that we are free. To argue otherwise is to make the insane claim that the real world, for no conceivable reason or purpose, invents illusions. If that were true, we could never know anything at all because absolutely everything could be an illusion. We would be living in the fantasy world created by Descartes’ malevolent demon. In rather similar terms, fundamentalist materialists propose that a more rational alternative to the concept of “God”, which they say explains nothing, is scientific randomness. However, randomness also explains nothing since it operates via miracles happening for no reason, and is even more of a mystery than God!
— Mike Hockney