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Free Will Except...Well, Except When it's not.

Tigger said:
I believe that both Fate and Free Will exist together. It is my belief that the track of our lives is laid out and Fated for us at the moment of our birth, sort of like the gates on a croquet field. We are destined to pass through all of those wickets before the end of our lives. However, we have the Free Will to choose the patern we take through those gates, and to attempt to avoid them (though that is a fruitless task). It is the path we choose to take to complete the course and our reaction to each of those meaningful moments that determines how well or poorly we are seen to have lived our lives.
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So, according to this, if someone dies at 23, he/she was slated to go at 23? Death was unavoidable. It makes no difference. If he does everything right, he gets hit by a beer truck while working on a road crew. Or, if he is an unemployed louse, he buys it while drinking beer and smashing his car into a wall. Really?

The person getting cancer and dying at 55 from smoking 3 packs of cigarettes a day would have died at 55 even if he never smoked and had instead partaken in running marathons? In short, this theory implies that Russians are fated to die young, so they may as well not bother cutting back on the Vodka.

I'm not sure I buy that one.
 
shlunka said:
Free will cannot exist with an all-knowing omniscient being. If we cannot change what God knows, we have no free will, and since God is often put forth to be all knowing, we therefore cannot change our lives.
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metaphyically speaking...an "all knowing omniscient being" would be aware of all the possible time lines generated by each and every possible act of free will on the part of each and every individual.

just because I know that if I turn left I am going to wal-mart and if I turn right I am going to home depot, doesn't mean I don't have free will to control my destiny. and there are infinite "multiverses" where each and every choice I could make is played out.
 
Religion, for some, provides an ethical guideline that can exceed instinctive morality. In such cases, I can support the result.

While I don't believe in an "active, present god", I try to conduct myself as if there was one. That way, I've covered all my bets except for the prayer and ceremony aspects.







calamity said:
I always saw that as a huge reason not to believe in any one of them.
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calamity said:
So, according to this, if someone dies at 23, he/she was slated to go at 23? Death was unavoidable. It makes no difference. If he does everything right, he gets hit by a beer truck while working on a road crew. Or, if he is an unemployed louse, he buys it while drinking beer and smashing his car into a wall. Really?

The person getting cancer and dying at 55 from smoking 3 packs of cigarettes a day would have died at 55 even if he never smoked and had instead partaken in running marathons? In short, this theory implies that Russians are fated to die young, so they may as well not bother cutting back on the Vodka.

I'm not sure I buy that one.
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You don't have to buy that. It's MY view of the world, not yours.

Though you are slightly missing the point or what I said..... The 23 year old, the 55 year old, the 99 year old laying in his bed willing himself to die because he doesn't want to be here anymore.... They all have a course to run. Once that course is run, their time is up. The 23 and 55 year old's races weren't as long as the 99 year olds. He has no idea why it is that he doesn't die, but Fate still has something it needs him here for. Whether it's seeing someone, being seen by someone, a conversation, or something else.... Fate isn't done with him yet in one way or another.
 
Tigger said:
He has no idea why it is that he doesn't die, but Fate still has something it needs him here for. Whether it's seeing someone, being seen by someone, a conversation, or something else.... Fate isn't done with him yet in one way or another.
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In other words he doesn't have free will, at least at this hypothetical point in time he doesn't.
 
afr0byte said:
In other words he doesn't have free will, at least at this hypothetical point in time he doesn't.
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In terms of his moment of death, no he does not. In terms of how he reacts to that situation, he has total free will.

It was, is, and always will be my belief that this world is a testing/proving ground for the soul. A place for the soul to prove to The Diety that it is worthy of moving on to a better place in the cosmos.
 
calamity said:
The "God gave us Free will" argument goes like this. Whenever something bad happens, like when a mean man murders a child or some idiot texting-driver slams into a row of cyclists, and one of us skeptics points out that a truly just god would never allow such a thing to happen, the true believers say, "God gave us free will." Of course, in their justifications, they totally ignore the will of that molested child who was murdered or those cyclists minding their own business who were slammed in the rear as they pedaled along. Often, the true believer will say what happened to them was "God's Will."

What on Earth?



So which is it. Do we have free will or are we all stuck on an endless treadmill doing God's will?
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Which god ? god is not a name just a title . There is a religon in which Your life could change paths , if you go one direction in your life that is differnt with another making your life span longer or shorter
 
Fletch said:
Not true. Because a thing knows what actions a person will take does not mean that the thing is the author of those actions. For an eternal being there is no present, no past and no future. Everthing is an instantaneous whole. Think of it as a movie you have already seen. You know how the movie ends, but you are not the cause of that ending. Your actions are known from an eternal perspective simply because to the eternal being, they have already happened. So there is no clash between God and human free will.
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Then "free will" is nothing more than an illusion. What you will decide to do tomorrow, or next week, or next year has already happened - you have no choice, or rather, you must make those choices.

A river flowing through a canyon may not know where it's going but it certainly has no say about it. It's fate is already written in stone.
 
MaggieD said:
I agree with the points you've made here. Your second one is a little complicated. It's been my experience that some of the most religious people I've known have been the most afraid of death.
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I find this terribly disturbing. Any idea why they have been afraid?
 
I'll take a complete guess and say that religious people know perfectly well that they have sinned and thus will be facing Hell which is as hot as NV in the summer! S, of course they are afraid.

nota bene said:
I find this terribly disturbing. Any idea why they have been afraid?
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Fletch said:
Not true. Because a thing knows what actions a person will take does not mean that the thing is the author of those actions. For an eternal being there is no present, no past and no future. Everthing is an instantaneous whole. Think of it as a movie you have already seen. You know how the movie ends, but you are not the cause of that ending. Your actions are known from an eternal perspective simply because to the eternal being, they have already happened. So there is no clash between God and human free will.
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If my actions are known, my actions are predetermined, if my actions are predetermined I have no influence upon them, if I have no influence upon my actions, I have no free will.
 
MoSurveyor said:
Then "free will" is nothing more than an illusion. What you will decide to do tomorrow, or next week, or next year has already happened - you have no choice, or rather, you must make those choices.

A river flowing through a canyon may not know where it's going but it certainly has no say about it. It's fate is already written in stone.
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No what you did yesterday is known. But that doesn't mean it was predetermined or that you lacked choice in your actions. The existence of an eternal being that can see the whole of time has no impact on what you decide or how you act.
 
shlunka said:
If my actions are known, my actions are predetermined, if my actions are predetermined I have no influence upon them, if I have no influence upon my actions, I have no free will.
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Knowing how a person will act is not the same as determining that act. A passive eternal observer does not determine anything. You determine your actions. A creatures eternal perspective simply grants it the ability to know what choices you will make
 
Fletch said:
No what you did yesterday is known. But that doesn't mean it was predetermined or that you lacked choice in your actions. The existence of an eternal being that can see the whole of time has no impact on what you decide or how you act.
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If you assume time travel (which is essentially what we're talking about when we say God - or anyone/anything for that matter - knows) then, yes, it does mean exactly that: I have no free will. The decisions I made yesterday I must have made yesterday at those exact times and I couldn't have made any other decisions at those times. I must flow downward through the canyon because there is no other place to go. Whether I have personally been there before or not doesn't matter. Just because I haven't been there before it may appear to be free will to me but it really isn't because there were no other choices for me to make. He had already seen them, had He not?
 
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Fletch said:
Knowing how a person will act is not the same as determining that act. A passive eternal observer does not determine anything. You determine your actions. A creatures eternal perspective simply grants it the ability to know what choices you will make
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Knowing without a doubt how a person will act means there are other facts available to you that show how the other person will act. Whether you are responsible for those other facts or not doesn't matter. (Though that begs another question about God and His limits, doesn't it?) The point is, those facts exist and pre-determine how the person will act.


Using your logic you could say I can predict the future. I can look at a train running down a rail and predict the train will not leave the track. I didn't lay the track myself - nor did I build the engine - but that doesn't mean the train has free will and can jump the track, proceeding to Hawaii or Europe instead of Chicago where the track leads. The track constrains the actions of the train whether they are visible to the train or not.
 
MoSurveyor said:
If you assume time travel (which is essentially what we're talking about when we say God - or anyone/anything for that matter - knows) then, yes, it does mean exactly that: I have no free will. The decisions I made yesterday I must have made yesterday at those exact times and I couldn't have made any other decisions at those times.
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No, yesterday the choices you made were your own. If you look back at yesterday from the vantage point of today, or travel back in time to yesterday, you know what choices the you of yesterday will make, but the you of yesterday still acts according to his will. Just as you did. Yesterday.

As you read this, you are faced with a decision--you can respond or you can not respond. That choice will be entirely yours. That some eternal being can stand at the very end of time and see how everything has unfolded will know what you will choose, does not mean you lack free will to make the choice.
 
MoSurveyor said:
Knowing without a doubt how a person will act means there are other facts available to you that show how the other person will act. Whether you are responsible for those other facts or not doesn't matter. (Though that begs another question about God and His limits, doesn't it?) The point is, those facts exist and pre-determine how the person will act.


Using your logic you could say I can predict the future. I can look at a train running down a rail and predict the train will not leave the track. I didn't lay the track myself - nor did I build the engine - but that doesn't mean the train has free will and can jump the track, proceeding to Hawaii or Europe instead of Chicago where the track leads. The track constrains the actions of the train whether they are visible to the train or not.
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Look at it this way, I know how WWII ends. Does my knowledge mean that the actors lacked free will? No. It simply means that I have a knowledge of that particular part of history. What makes God all-knowing is his eternal perspective. For Him, all of time has happened. So he knows your actions because from his perspective you have already acted millions, perhaps billions of years ago. But he no more influences or determines those actions any more than my knowledge determined the actions of WWII.
 
Fletch said:
No, yesterday the choices you made were your own. If you look back at yesterday from the vantage point of today, or travel back in time to yesterday, you know what choices the you of yesterday will make, but the you of yesterday still acts according to his will. Just as you did. Yesterday.

As you read this, you are faced with a decision--you can respond or you can not respond. That choice will be entirely yours. That some eternal being can stand at the very end of time and see how everything has unfolded will know what you will choose, does not mean you lack free will to make the choice.
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Of course it does. You're talking about destiny, fate, whatever you want to call it - and it all boils down to the same thing. The choice I made was going to happen, it wasn't a choice at all.
 
Fletch said:
Look at it this way, I know how WWII ends. Does my knowledge mean that the actors lacked free will? No. It simply means that I have a knowledge of that particular part of history. What makes God all-knowing is his eternal perspective. For Him, all of time has happened. So he knows your actions because from his perspective you have already acted millions, perhaps billions of years ago. But he no more influences or determines those actions any more than my knowledge determined the actions of WWII.
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And what happened in WWII will happen that way and has always happened that way. There is nothing and no way to change what happened - before, during, or after.
 
Free will cannot exist with or without a God. Given that all decisions we make are based on physical processes in the brain, and those processes are determined by the laws of nature the causality, even if you say the world is indeterministic like in quantum physics, that onyl makes decisions random, not chosen.

Every decision is a brain state, every brain state is caused by the privious brain state plus physical stimuli, (i.e. molecules intereacting with one another), all those create the brain state necessarily on the laws of nature. Thus when you make a decision you COULD NOT have made any decision otherwise, since it's determined by the laws of nature and causality in the brain.

With or without a God ... I find it sad that this is called "philosophical discussions," yet no one actually deals with philosophy, just religion bashing.
 
RGacky3 said:
Free will cannot exist with or without a God. Given that all decisions we make are based on physical processes in the brain, and those processes are determined by the laws of nature the causality, even if you say the world is indeterministic like in quantum physics, that onyl makes decisions random, not chosen.

Every decision is a brain state, every brain state is caused by the privious brain state plus physical stimuli, (i.e. molecules intereacting with one another), all those create the brain state necessarily on the laws of nature. Thus when you make a decision you COULD NOT have made any decision otherwise, since it's determined by the laws of nature and causality in the brain.

With or without a God ... I find it sad that this is called "philosophical discussions," yet no one actually deals with philosophy, just religion bashing.
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I told you our discussion would never work here. ;)

Would you like to take up the "no conscience free will" topic, now? I think I can remember the gist of Harris's argument, though this post makes it appear you agree with that statement.
 
MoSurveyor said:
I told you our discussion would never work here. ;)

Would you like to take up the "no conscience free will" topic, now? I think I can remember the gist of Harris's argument, though this post makes it appear you agree with that statement.
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Sure wanna make a new thread?
 
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