-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
Does the non-existence of free will change your beliefs?
- Thread starter 1137
- Start date
Storm
ThrUU the Looking Glass
If free will doesn't exist, it really doesn't matter.
That works both ways. If it's in your nature to believe in determinism, and if you are free to do that, you will do no diferent.
No, if it is in my nature to believe in determinism I will (andd do). However, to add in "if you are free to do that" is neither necessary nor does it work. If it is in my nature to believe in determinism, and I have free will, what is in my nature is irrelevant, rather what I choose to believe is what I will believe.
It's not superfluous. It's the ontological component.
Why is it irrelevant? Having free will doesn't rob you of a nature. I get that you feel having a nature equates to deterministic nature, but having free will also doesn't necessarily belie determinism. Various compatibilisms do work.
How about self determinism?
Gjallarhorn
N'yog-Sothep
Ever seen a drawing of a hand draw itself?
Yes: it has greater significance than self-determinism.
Self-determinism requires a 'self,' and it woud be foolish to deny that for zillions of people the 'self' is real and effective.
Skwim
Veteran Member
Never heard of self determinism. You mean self determination?
Pozessed
Todd
Very good point. This also leads me to think like this. If God is all powerful and everything is programmed with God inside it, aside from losing faith did they really lose God?
I like to believe that Gods energy flows thru our body like our blood does. No matter how little faith we have in him he is always there, And just because we lost touch with him does not mean we weren't doing our part that he programmed for us in his universe.
I feel like she meant it as a self fulfilling prophesy of determinism, though there is no way you could make such a concept make any reasonable sense.
Self-determinism - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary
: a doctrine that the actions of a self are determined by itself
I'm trying to get around what I think is a bad definition of free-will that some hold to.
Storm
ThrUU the Looking Glass
Ah. What would that be?
For one, that free will is an uncaused event in an otherwise deterministic chain of events.
Hard determinism is incompatible with free-will, saying that free-will does not exist. The OP is about how this would affect your belief system, if hard determinism was true.
My belief system is such that if free-will didn't exist, I would have to make it exist.
My tactic to do so would be by removing hindrances. Running that simulation now.
Skwim
Veteran Member
A strange doctrine, which I can readily see as being false.
Falling of the ledge of a cliff, which suddenly gave way, is an action of the self, but not one determined by the self. Or dying, an action of a self, when struck by lightening wouldn't be self-determined.