Free will

This is a two part thread.

First of all, do you believe there is even such a thing or are we destined to whatever we do?

Secondly, do you consider free will a bad thing? I have noticed in many other threads that many of you would take away everyones free will to do what they would like and replace it with your own. Do we have the right to make decisions for ourselves or must the "smarter" elite make all our decisions for us?

 

BIG question with a BIG examination, and if this thread takes off it will have a BIG following.

Lets see no matter how many laws you put on society and no matter how many morals and values you add in to fill in the gaps, you will always have the FREE WILL to ignore and break these rules and regulations.

That is fact. Now this is where it gets messy. After you use your free will which I would define as making a decision whether it being right or wrong according to the society you live in or not. How should society hold you responsible for your actions? Loss of freedom? Loss of life? Loss of money? I think the crime should fit the bill, and if people want to use their free will to ignore the laws that a particular society has layed down then if they are caught breaking those laws then judging by how much damage they have caused is appropriate.

However it's essential that penalties for breaking the rules be done, because it will deter some to use their free will against society, but it will not matter to others who must face those penalties when caught breaking the rules of society.

I don't like free will, but it exists, and the only way we can punish the stupid, idiotic people who use their free will for wrong and or evil must pay the price for breaking not God's law, but laws of humanity and if that means they lose their freedom, wealth or life then so be it.

 

I see it very differently. I see free will as the way God intended it to be. To me, it was Satan's plan to have all of us have no free will and be forced into not sinning. We must have a choice, and that is why I believe we are here.

However, this subject is not limited to religion, that is only one aspect of it.

 

So then by that logic God, the all powerful, does not know what sins we will committ. Could it be that God knows what we are going to do but simply doesn't care?

He hopes it serves us a lesson but if not oh well, we will become enlightened in Heaven or we will just die and not do anything.

Hell is a hard concept for me to grasp. It seems no sin on earth could balance eternal suffering.

--Joey

 

Just a quick side note in response to the last post: Hell is more of a seperation from God, not eternal suffering in the fires of the deep and whatnot.


As a response to the questions posed, I believe their is free will; we have the ability to choose what we are going to do. However, I also believe that God is sort of 4 dimensional. You know, "one second for us is a thousand years for God and vice versa." He knows what you are going to choose, but he does not impose that on you. Basically, you choose the choice God already knows you will choose because all time is the present to him.

I also consider free will to be a good thing for this simple reason: If there was no free will, there would be no good or bad and anything we do is neither right nor wrong. We would all be slaves to destiny.

 

in referance to the predestination i use the example of Oedipus Rex a greek tragedy.

After being told ones fate by an oracle one then tries to avoid it using his freewill. as a result he ended up running straigt into his fate but trying to avoid it.

(sorry if that is brief but i dont want to sumize all of the stroy here)

Basically what is said is that if a person has knowledge of his fate then he will strive to avoid it, inso actually creating it. it is an interesting concept.

i feel as long as we have no knowledge of our fate then our will is free. if we know of our intended future we will then use our free will to try and creat/avoid that future, inso creating it.

 

A song by Steve Gutenburg:

I asked God, "What is a million years to you?"
And God said, "Just a second."
So I asked God, "What is a million dollars to you?"
And God said ,"Just a penny."
So I asked God, "Will you please give me a 'penny'?"
And God said, "Yes I will.............


























...in a second."

 

I agree that God knows what you are going to do, but you don't know what you are going to do so you have free will. If you had no choice in what you were going to do, there would be no point, but God knows you better than you know yourself so he knows what you will do, but he doesn't tell you.

 

Free will is an illusion.

There is no god.

You are a product of your genes and your environment since the moment you are conceived, and there is nothing you can do to change that. Even your personality and your thoughts are a product of two things beyond your control.

Logically, there can be no such thing as free will. Even if there is a "god" watching over us, HE or SHE made us, and knows exactly what we are going to do with our lives, so it's kind of predestined already.

Just for the record, I believe in some sort of 'life' force, some spiritual energy, but not a concious plotting sitting up there in heaven ruling type God.

 

Logically, there can be no such thing as free will. Even if there is a "god" watching over us, HE or SHE made us, and knows exactly what we are going to do with our lives, so it's kind of predestined already.

You know that if you heat water (H2O) to 212 degrees F (100 C, 373.15 K) at standard pressure it will begin to boil. You know that if I choose to release a heavy weight from a high window it will fall. Does that mean that those two actions are predestined?

Foreknowledge does not imply a causal relationship. A few more examples:

I knew from the moment I met my (now) brother-in-law that he would marry my sister, even though she was dating someone else at the time (and continued to do so for several months). Does that mean that I caused them to get married?

I work with digital circuits. I know that if I input a certain series of signals into an AND gate or an OR gate, I will get certain results. Does that mean that I make the AND gate give those results?

In any physics or chemistry lab in school, you are going to perform an experiment which already has a known answer. Does that mean that the previous known answer will determine you result and force you to get that answer?

I can predict exactly how a large group of randomly-moving free molecules will act. Does that mean I make them act that way?

If the foreknowledge in these is not the cause of the events occuring, why is God's foreknowledge of our actions suddenly causing us to do anything?

As shown in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, psychohistory (a ficticious science of statistically predicting the future) works only when the masses involved (the people) remain unaware of the results until afterwards. This is so they can still act freely and not be guided into a specific course by the predictions.

Again, foreknowledge does not create nor imply a causal relationship.

Kimball Kinnison

EDIT: I can't speel.

 

Free will, I think, is not totally an illusion. For example, you can choose to read a book on evolution. That is having minor control over your enviroment and the way you will turn out.

An example from my life, I chose to watch Star Wars, my parents couldn't have cared less about science fiction.

 

There is nothing new under the sun.

Everything that is, has always been here. We have only found the means to create out of our environment that which we seek. Computers have always been around in their raw state (i.e. sand, silicon). It only took someone to synthesize the components from the world around them to create it. "Your focus determines your reality." If we as humans will it to happen, then it can be done. Thus I believe in free will.

The real question is, what do we want our reality to be?

 

Free will is an illusion.

There is no god.

You are a product of your genes and your environment since the moment you are conceived, and there is nothing you can do to change that. Even your personality and your thoughts are a product of two things beyond your control.

So, you believe that your thoughts are the product of ONLY your genes and your environment?

What, then, makes your belief valid?

After all, your belief is the product of your genes and your environment. It's not like you made a logical conclusion based on any evidence.

If your belief that your thoughts are the product of only genetics and the environment is true, then ALL BELIEFS are invalid, including your belief.

 

?There is no such thing as free will. There is also no such thing as unfree will. There is only strong will, and weak will.?
-- Friedrich Neitzche

What is will? The mental faculty by which one deliberately chooses or decides upon a course of action. All will is "free will," as far as 99.9999999% of the population goes. I don't know quite how brainwashing works or what it does, so I won't even presume to talk about that. Everybody has the power to make his own decisions. Everybody. Even if you don't like your choices, you've got the power to choose. Some people might fold and choose to do something they don't want to, because they feel it's better than doing something else they don't want to, but it's still their choice, and no one else's.

 

The destination is set, it is our free will how we get there.

I always thought FREE WILL for human kind is Satan's wish, from what I have been told the BLACK bible tells people to do what they wish to do no matter how it affects others. Where as God allows FREE WILL with respect to him and other beings and that you should use your FREE WILL for the good of humanity and other beings unlike Satan's will that you use FREE WILL for both his and your self gratifacation.

 

I agree that God knows what you are going to do

There is no scientific proof of that. I need solid scientific evidence before I begin to fear some omnipotent being. I think people make decisions based on consequences. Now how people view consequences vary differently. Putting "GOD" in the equation, will instill fear in people. That will certainly determine how people make decisions. So there is nothing morally wrong by believing in a mythical being, whatever religion people follow. In some ways it might be beneficial to humanity. To keep some sense of moral order in society.
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Do we have the right to make decisions for ourselves or must the "smarter" elite make all our decisions for us?

Has that ever worked in the past? NO.

 

There is no scientific proof of that. I need solid scientific evidence before I begin to fear some omnipotent being.

If you had solid scientific proof then you wouldn't have free will.

 

Kimball, all those things about the water boiling can be true and all, but if God supposedly made us all AND he was all-knowing AND he made EVERYTHING that we'll ever encounter and all the people we'll meet and he knows all there thoughts and in fact knows everything then isn't it sort of predestined, from at least a certain point of view?

Also, someone mentioned the free will to like Star Wars. Not really, whatever part of you that was drawn to STar Wars was created as a product of your genes and your environment. That's why I say you can't really pick your religion, your religion picks you. Even if you change your religion.

I don't believe in true free will. Except for sometimes when I do.

 

Kimball, all those things about the water boiling can be true and all, but if God supposedly made us all AND he was all-knowing AND he made EVERYTHING that we'll ever encounter and all the people we'll meet and he knows all there thoughts and in fact knows everything then isn't it sort of predestined, from at least a certain point of view?

You are correct only if you assume that knowledge implies cause. That is an invalid assumption. To illustrate, let's use one of the examples in my last post.

I work with digital circuits. At times, I need to test circuits. To do this, I make a truth table that shows what the output will be for each input (or series of inputs). Having this truth table (and assuming the circuit is correctly designed), I can accurately predict how it will respond in every circumstance. Does this mean that I cause it to respond in that way? Not at all.

In the same way, God knows us better than I know those circuits. He has a "truth table" for each of us. It allows him to know how we will react for every possible set of inputs (or situations). Does that mean that he causes us to react? No more than I cause a circuit to respond because I have a truth table for it.

Kimball Kinnison

 

I don't think the cause is the issue, Kinnison. If you're standing at a fork in the road, and God knows that you will go right, is there any chance at all of you going left?

 

Free will exists and it's a very good thing. I think people are created good by God and if everybody realizes it, the world is a safe place.

Everybody follows his/her free will. Thinking "I have no free will" is also an expression of the free will.

We are all free, this is the beautiful thing, and there is nothing we can do about it, there is no escape from freedom.

WE ARE FREEE!!!

 

You guys aren't getting my point about environment and genes, methinks.

Your very thoughts are predestined.

Darth G, that's sort of what I was trying to say myself, if there was "a god." Because if there is a god then supposedly with his infiniate magic he "gave" us free will, but in my opinion it would still be an illusion since everything is already set since God knows what we will do in the situation we are in, what's the whole point? How can we be said to have free will? Kimball, your analogies aren't really relevent, this isn't Minority Report, free will is far more difficult to break down. If god MADE us to be a certain way, we are going to act that way, and as such, our entire lives are predestined.

If there is no god, then again, our entire lives and thoughts and the choices we make and the person we are all starts with our environment and our genes, neither of which we can control, thus, we cannot have free will.

 

You would deny that you have any control over your own life as a means to evade responsibility. After all, if your actions are the results of your genes, or your parents, then it's not your fault is it?

Genes and enviorment cantend to push you in one direction, but they do not make the choice for you. If you want to blame them, then I see that as a character flaw, not a profound truth.

 

I find it humorous to see [ some Christians on this board] delcaring their Free Will even as they proclaim that [their] God knows everything they will do. How is this Free Will again?? If your God--who governs your idealogies, and thus, your actions--knows what you will do, and you trust in this, how can anything you do be considered NOT pre-ordained???

I am of the idea that the Universe is Chaos. Nothing is set, save the lessons to be learned. At every question in life, we have a choice, which may take us along any countless path.

In that regard, yes, I believe in what you refer to as "Free Will".

 

"You would deny that you have any control over your own life as a means to evade responsibility. After all, if your actions are the results of your genes, or your parents, then it's not your fault is it?"

Well, I guess in some sense we have a duty to contribute to society, and we lock up dangerous criminals to protect our environment. If you kill someone I do believe that your genes and your environment are ultimately responsible, but legally it is YOU who are responsible.

I know what it sounds like, but I am talking purely on grounds of free will in the cosmic sense.

In the end for practical reasons I do believe we are responsible for our own actions.