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Do You Believe in Free Will?
- Thread starter spiritually inclined
- Start date
idea
Question Everything
Well, I'm going to go fix the kids some lunch - I know exactly what is going to happen in the next half hour, the PBJ's don't exist yet, but they will. they will exist because I will cause them to exist. Yes, it is set in stone, but I set it in stone. No one is forcing me to make PBJ's as opposed to something else, there is no external influence that is forcing this little piece of the future except for me. It is still my choice, my creation, no one else's.
Cheers
idea
Question Everything
OK - I'm back, eating my PbJ. Perhaps there is someone who read my previous post. So you knew part of the future.
Did knowing the future make you the cause of it?
Knowing something is very different than controlling it.
Predestination link - God is responsible for setting everything in stone.
Foreordination link - God knows what will happen, has power to change it - but He respects our Free will, so He does not change it. He knows, but we are responsible for our own actions.
Did knowing the future make you the cause of it?
Knowing something is very different than controlling it.
Predestination link - God is responsible for setting everything in stone.
Foreordination link - God knows what will happen, has power to change it - but He respects our Free will, so He does not change it. He knows, but we are responsible for our own actions.
Magic Man
Reaper of Conversation
I didn't say that knowing the future makes me the cause of it. I said that my knowing it means that you don't control it. If I knew for a fact that you were going to make those sandwiches, then you would have had no choice. Do you feel you have any control over the past, or your past at least? If not, why not?
Technically that was not a "knowing" of the future that you gave us, but "prediction". Pre ("before") diction ("spelled out").
Kungfuzed
Student Nurse
Predestination- God knows exactly what will happen and it can't possibly happen any other way, the future is set in stone.
Foreordination - God only only knows what could possibly happen and leaves it up to us, God is not completely omniscient because the future is unknowable. You could make the argument that God knows us so well that He would know what we will choose, but then you're only supporting the argument that our choices are determined (either by God or by nature) rather than free (uncaused by anything divine or natural).
If our will is truly free, then what criteria does God use to base his prediction of the future?
Do you think there is any difference between free will and free agency?
SimonCross
Member
Hello
Free will is a gift that is infused into what it is like to be human, the gift that set us apart from all that exists on this Earth. Choices come from fee will to think and act and make those choices that determines the outcomes to the issues that we as human have to deal with so that we may walk a little more.
With Blessings
Simon Cross
Free will is a gift that is infused into what it is like to be human, the gift that set us apart from all that exists on this Earth. Choices come from fee will to think and act and make those choices that determines the outcomes to the issues that we as human have to deal with so that we may walk a little more.
With Blessings
Simon Cross
Dirty Penguin
Master Of Ceremony
No you don't. You could stub you pinky toe on your way into the kitchen and as you hop trying to fight off the pain you land on a toy one of your kids left out, you slip and fall trying to catch your balance, hit the floor and break your rist........Now you need to go to the ER at the hospital. You don't know what's going to happen. You "believe you do"
Remember, you're on your way to the hospital. NO PBJ's today......
You did no such thing. You god did. Your god knows the outcome before you do what you do. Where's the free will?
To me it sounds illogical. Your god wants you to be "good" and do what is "right" and if you disobey him you will be dealt with.....but if he already knows what all your decisions are then life is predestined...... How can you be punished for how you were created?
No one is forcing me to make PBJ's as opposed to something else, there is no external influence that is forcing this little piece of the future except for me. It is still my choice, my creation, no one else's.
Cheers
If your god is in control then it's already been predetermined what you will do. Your free will is an illusion.
But if the PBJs are set in stone, wont that make them really hard to eat?Im just askin
idea
Question Everything
No you don't. You could stub you pinky toe on your way into the kitchen and as you hop trying to fight off the pain you land on a toy one of your kids left out, you slip and fall trying to catch your balance, hit the floor and break your rist........Now you need to go to the ER at the hospital. You don't know what's going to happen. You "believe you do"
Remember, you're on your way to the hospital. NO PBJ's today......
LOL - you don't know how stubborn and strong willed I am though. I would have made the PBJ's before going to the ER just to prove the point to myself. :yes:
You are correct, whatever is 100% created has no free will.
I don't believe He created me - link
Doctrine and Covenants 93:
29 Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be.
30 All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence.
31 Behold, here is the agency of man, and here is the condemnation of man; because that which was from the beginning is plainly manifest unto them, and they receive not the light.
again - knowing it and causing it are two very different things.
Can God create a rock that is too large for Him to pick up?
Can He make a square circle?
Can He control a being with free agency?
God is all powerful in the realm of what is possible. "impossible" exists though.
McBell
Unbound
Then God is not, by the very definition of "all powerful", NOT all powerful.
idea
Question Everything
After it is all said and done, I think we will all be surprised at how much He is able to change us - as impossible as changing someone who has free will is (I have 3 kids, I know how hard it can be) as hard as that is - He is actually doing it.
To get someone to change without forcing them to change is possible.
d3vaLL
Member
Free will is an illusion. If you believe in a soul, then yours was created by something else with preset instincts and interests that YOU did NOT choose. If you don't believe in one, then I have a hard time seeing how you still believe in it.
I mean in this example:
You're ignoring the higher functions of the brain, which have the potential to outweigh basic neurological instincts like: food, sleep, and sex.
For example, when I count to 10, my synapses fire the order that have been so organized and used that it becomes nearly instinctual. How many times have you blurted out a number like 234 between '6' or '7'? The real trick is, the chemicals in my brain to disprove free will are stronger than the chemicals in my brain to do my homework. The chemicals in your brain that want to disagree with me are sorting out faults in my argument because those chemicals outweigh those that make you want to go pee! But now I just showed you a REAL TIME example of the illusion "free will"! And now you your brain is weighing ways in which to counter me again as the chemicals associated with being fooled (which are the same ones outweighing the chemical patterns that are making you count out loud and yelling out "5,6, 234!" instead of "6, 7") are stronger motivators than those of chemicals that make you want to prove your point. Oh NO! You just peed your pants!
I just don't see why there is a big deal with having it, oh you want to feel responsible or guilty about something? Too bad!
I mean in this example:
You're ignoring the higher functions of the brain, which have the potential to outweigh basic neurological instincts like: food, sleep, and sex.
For example, when I count to 10, my synapses fire the order that have been so organized and used that it becomes nearly instinctual. How many times have you blurted out a number like 234 between '6' or '7'? The real trick is, the chemicals in my brain to disprove free will are stronger than the chemicals in my brain to do my homework. The chemicals in your brain that want to disagree with me are sorting out faults in my argument because those chemicals outweigh those that make you want to go pee! But now I just showed you a REAL TIME example of the illusion "free will"! And now you your brain is weighing ways in which to counter me again as the chemicals associated with being fooled (which are the same ones outweighing the chemical patterns that are making you count out loud and yelling out "5,6, 234!" instead of "6, 7") are stronger motivators than those of chemicals that make you want to prove your point. Oh NO! You just peed your pants!
I just don't see why there is a big deal with having it, oh you want to feel responsible or guilty about something? Too bad!
The Voice of Reason
Doctor of Thinkology
I don't believe in the idea of souls. Help me to understand why that would inhibit my belief in Free Will. I see no limit.
BucephalusBB
ABACABB
In evolution "we" started as organic soup. It is to say that that organic soup did not have free will, neither did onecelled creatures. It could be hard to understand when that free will was implanted. Possible would be the option that free will evolved with us though, but then what is half a free will or will we have more free will further in evolution?
Free will could also have been part of the organic soup ofcourse. Personally I find that hard to explain to myself though..
Kungfuzed
Student Nurse
Without a soul, we are completely physical. Everything that we are is determined by nature, not our will. Where and when we are born, genetics and enviornment decide who we will be. Our brain and our mind are one and the same, our brain being a physical object, and our mind being the physiology of the brain. Physical object obey physical laws and can't deviate from that. Our mind is entirely constrained by the physical processes of the brain and can't deviate from that. Everything that happens in our brain can only happen one way without breaking the laws of physics. There is no room to think or feel or choose anything different. For us to be truly free, our mind would have to be separate from our body and even from the physical universe we live in, free from all laws and causality.
The physical nature is not the only alternative to a "soul" that guides things --ideas I've heard include other natures, including the mental, emotive and 'cosmic consciousness'.
From "objective reality", right, in the case of people who argue that.
idea
Question Everything
I agree - Free will does not exist IF you were created.
free will also does not exist if you do not have a spirit.
Free will only exists if we have no origin - no origin from God or nature - no origin period. Self-existent like God with no beginning is the only way to escape causality and determinism. ... link
Magic Man
Reaper of Conversation
Even if one of those toys had speared you through the stomach and left you unconscious? It's extreme, but the point of that was to show that you might will it to happen, but that doesn't mean it's going to. You're "knowing" it was not the same as God knowing the future.
That's true, but irrelevant.
OK. the first two are completely irrelevant. The third is relevant, but missing the point. It's not that we're saying that God controls us. It's that He knows what's going to happen. He decided that we could make our own decisions from the start, but, if he can see the end result, then it doesn't matter much. For instance, if He already knew for a fact, not your version of "knowing", that you would make those PBJs and you and the kids would eat them, then you effectively had no choice. You had to make the PBJs. You couldn't chane your mind and make grilled cheese, or go out to lunch or something because that's not part of the future God knows. If you did change things like that, then God didn't know the future in the first place, because the future couldn't be known in advance.
tomspug
Absorbant
Woah. Why do you believe this?
Why, then, do we toy with the notion of creating robots and giving them "free will"? Yes, if you CREATED a complex AI, and you had the mental capacity to keep up with that complexity... yes, you could probably SEE everything that AI will do before it happens.
HOWEVER, you are not the AI. It is making decisions FOR ITSELF. There is free will, and yet, I have the ability to predict what will happen.
Why is it so hard for people to see that these two concepts are not contradictory?