I'm a huge believer in predetermination to, but not in a spiritual sense. However spooky action at a distance throws me for a loop
How do you reconcile consciousness with determinism?
I'm not a determinist, but you could be a conscious observer that believes she's doing things, whereas in reality its just your "mechanical" brain doings stuff.
That's generally the only way I see it working as well but I am too not strictly a determinist, I'm undecided.
I am wondering how a Jewish person who also seems to accept Jewish ideals reconciles the two, though.
You absolutely can, there are many forms of judaism, in judaism we are not even entirely sure about our afterlife. Religion and science can fit together, you can have that as well as a god. I myself suspect god and energy to be one in the same.
These ideas you speak of (not including the afterlife) are derived from the 18th century materialist movement within Judism that was embraced over the 18th and 19th century but they seemingly fail at explain free will within the Laplacian context. How do you handle free will, which is generally accepted as Jewish doctrine, when fundamentally it seems incompatible with material determinism when not considered essentially illusionary?
It's really complicated. I have many theories. One theory is that I could be wrong, and things such as spooky action at a distance, could be the key to how the "soul" (I don't believe in souls in the same way as christianity) can influence reality thus influence our own cognitive consciousness. However, what I lean more towards is that we are being prepared for the world to come, and this life is an illusion we witness only for the purpose to learn, and that G-D needs different types of individuals in the world to come, thus why we all get different treatment or act differently, and rather than the molders of our own clay, we are perhaps the clay being molded, under the illusion we are changing ourselves, but that we may have free will in the world to come or maybe even sheol. Now you may say "well that is unfair, G-D treats everyone the same, if G-D gives different people different personalities and causes them to make different choices, then G-D treats us differently" but we see Hashem treating people differently all the time, and who knows, we could all be different but just as valuable in different ways, like cogs in a machine, or threads in an artistic tapestry. Jews and Gentiles are treated differently, yet are both important, so why would Hashem not do the same with individuals? And who knows, perhaps before the universe existed, we had free will, and sat with Hashem and talked out how things would play out, and who we wanted to be. (With naked singularities, alternate universes, theorized by stephen hawking's under supersymmetric string theory and so on, it is entirely plausible there could be somewhere that we have free will to do this) reincarnation is something both I, and judaism toy with as well, perhaps the playing field can also be evened out through reincarnation. Perhaps between each reincarnation, we could communicate with G-D. And even then, though I am a Jew, and a religious one at that, I am open to many possibilities, including that due to the law of infinity in which all things possible must occur within infinity itself, the universe must in fact occur in this law as well as residents within it that think there is some sort of lord on a collective scale due to an evolutionary tendancy of not being able to tell there own dreams from reality, combined with a social desire to control the masses for better or for worse. So in a way, I am also an agnostic atheist to some degree as well, with the admitence I can neither prove, nor disprove G-D, but rather lean in one direction or the other, or even be entirely in between. However part of why I do not lean towards this "no G-D but rather the law of infinity" idea as much in the moment, is because it is found that in the end of energy dispersing itself in a variety of ways, energy will be flattened out eventually throughout all space time, and nothing else different from the norm will be able to occur. (Unless there is the slightest intervention from another universe, and perhaps then it would all start over and eventually there could be another big bang, which in fact if that is possible, then within the timeframe of infinity everything would reset itself over and over again, and in a way all universes would serve as "gods" to eachother, needing no G-D, but rather co existing in such a manner, which in part is where some peoples theories of aliens making us plays in. Especially when you get aliens so advanced that they were able to have a civilization in a black hole and thus outlive even the end of there own universe, and harvest energy from the black hole using strange matter, as an advanced civilization like this would most definitely influence other universes and maybe even dimensions, being infinite and all, but the question wouldn't be did it happen, but rather is it possible, as if it is possible then in this theory it did happen, due to the law of infinity, and the infinate universes we see in supersymmetric string theory) though as I said, it is also life experiences that increases my bias that I admit is why I lean more so towards religion.. now there is of course, also simulation theory. But though simulation theory makes sense to some degree, the closer you look, the less it works, at least in my opinion, as these are my own thoughts. So the idea is (well then we would make a simulated universe, and then they would make a simulated universe, and so on and so on, (yes I know reality to some degree is a simulation but we are talking computer simulations here) which makes it more likely, the longer the chain gets, that at least one universe will end, which in turn destroys all universes after that, which is destined to eventually happen, which stops the universes from "infinately" expanding, and then the simulated universes are no longer infinite, and unless the simulated universe before that one creates a new simulated universe, the chain will never grow again, and if the first real universe ends, well then that also ands and destroys the entire chain of simulations, and then therefore destroys all simulations stemmed from it forever, therefore simulated universes are not actually infinate as claimed by simulation theory, and therefore we are not as likely to be a simulation as simulation theorists including neil degrasse tyson (yes the capitalization is off I don't care) says we are, though it is still possible.
Though there are some things that make me question everything, and doubt G-D himself, and whether he exists or is even benevolent, such as this-
The labrat devours the scientist, if given the chance. As the rat is nothing but a tool to the scientist, the rat may still consume his dead flesh.
