Free Will No Longer

[Godobeyer]

Does God have free will?

Sure,He has.
we have too in limited level.
You don't have free will if you sick, to be unsick by your self. Or old to be young, or after die to back alive.

 

[Nakosis]

Sure,He has.
we have too in limited level.
You don't have free will if you sick, to be unsick by your self. Or old to be young, or after die to back alive.

Sure, you and I believe in free will.
I'm wonder what someone who doesn't thinks.
Also, though perhaps for another thread, does God have limited or unlimited free will?
For example can God do evil? If not, then does this mean God is limited to only doing good?

 

[wellwisher]

I believed in free will because I believed we had choices but there has always been something in the pit of me that didn’t think so and today I’ve come to accept it no longer. It was fear that kept me thinking it existed but now I’m ready to accept its absence. Not only fear but the way I interpreted past lives and future lives as not having any bearing on this life but I can no longer ignore the fact that past and future lives play a role in how I interpret free will. The way I see it, my God is in full control of everything and the best I can hope for is sound choices and a good life. I remember being a little boy sitting on the couch thinking that I could fool God with my next move. Would I turn my head left or right? Haha. I ended up concluding that no matter what I did God already saw it. I knew more as a little boy and wasn’t even afraid.

The human brain has two centers of consciousness; inner self and ego. The inner self is the original conscious center and is much older and is the center of consciousness that all animals and humans have. The inner self is connected animal DNA; genetic addendum, and defines the instincts and natural behavioral propensities for each species. For humans it defines our collective human propensities; human nature.

The ego is much newer in terms of evolution and appears to have consolidated with the rise of civilization 6-10K years ago. It is only common to humans. Animals do not have an ego. Free will is connected to the ego, due to the ego being somewhat separated and autonomous from the inner self, allowing the ego to depart from the natural instincts of the human inner self.

The natural animal has no choice in terms of being able to ignore or divert the natural nature of their species. When the call of the wild happens, they cannot resist. But human have more of a choice; delay or repress, because of the ego center. In a symbolic sense, the inner self, by being natural, is a product of nature and God. The ego can go along with this innate divine and natural plan, or it can become willful, synthetic and unnatural. This cross roads and these options is where will and choice come in; relative to the natural program.

If I was to ask you what are the natural instincts of the human animal, this is not easy to answer, since ego will and choice has departed from this for so long, it is no longer clear cut. The ego is more of a product of its environment; cultural knowledge of good and evil. The symbolism of Adam and Eve is really about the evolution of the ego, and how its first willful choices, led to a departure from instinct; tree of life, and the inner self. The inner self is that natural center that was repressed; inner self or tree of life is sealed. But in the background it still runs the logistics of being human. It is waiting to be rediscovered.

Great men of religion Like Buddha and Jesus both spoke of the inner man; inner self, and the outer man; ego.

Carl Jung and the Undiscovered Self

In this challenging and provocative work, Dr. Carl Jung—one of history’s greatest minds—argues that civilization’s future depends on our ability as individuals to resist the collective forces of society. Only by gaining an awareness and understanding of one’s unconscious mind and true, inner nature—“the undiscovered self”—can we as individuals acquire the self-knowledge that is antithetical to ideological fanaticism. But this requires that we face our fear of the duality of the human psyche—the existence of good and the capacity for evil in every individual.

 

[Godobeyer]

Sure, you and I believe in free will.
I'm wonder what someone who doesn't thinks.
Also, though perhaps for another thread, does God have limited or unlimited free will?
For example can God do evil? If not, then does this mean God is limited to only doing good?

I believe God is not evil, this life is just test"exam" for us.
Sometimes let bad happen to test our patient.
So let good happen to test our thankful.

I think, actually God doing evil or good, it's not our business.

 

[osgart]

It exists in some ways, not others.

 

[Jimmy]

So, do I understand correctly, you think free will means things will always go as you wish? If not, please explain what do you mean with free will?

I think it means that we can want whatever we want freely, but things don't necessary go as we want. I personally have the free will, but it may be that you don't.

It’s not always getting what you wish.

 

[Jimmy]

Free Willy I can understand (not that kind!), but it is preferable to believe one has free will rather than not, given one might be open to all sorts of irrational beliefs if one thought one had some kind of destiny and no autonomy so as to alter such. Points to examples throughout history.

It’s not about altering your future as one doesn’t know one’s future but a delusional person can set delusional goals and attain them.

 

[Jimmy]

Does God have free will?

The infinite material universe simply exists.

 

[Mock Turtle]

It’s not about altering your future as one doesn’t know one’s future but a delusional person can set delusional goals and attain them.

Some people seem to believe they have a destiny, and these often being those with religious beliefs. And yes, like Hitler and possibly Putin, many do have delusional beliefs and aims.

 

[Bear Wild]

I would like to say I am an advocate for Fate/Destiny as a thing that exists, whether we acknowledge it or not, with the caveat that Fate is not one rigid path. It's a rigid destination. We have the choice of how we get there, whether we like it or not.

I agree with you. We control very little according and most of our decisions are directly influenced by the wyrd. Yet their is a potentiality to make a change even if it is extremely small. Norse myths give a picture of the world where the Norns have woven the patterns and we have no control over the Norns or our fate except for the choice of how we die. Even Odin could not change what the Norns had woven. And yet Freya was a sidr/seer and thus had a way to see the patterns in the wyrd thus have a potentiality to make changes. The way I have come to understand this is while we have no direct control over what happens to us there is within the weaving of the wyrd a way to understand and connect with it. This gives us the potentiality to make a change "free will". But even small changes can potentially have large effects over time and interconnectivity. Thus in coming into resonance with nature rather than fighting against it gives us the small but real possibility to exert change.

The alternative of this is a destructive mentality that our actions are not our own and it doesn't matter what I do because I am never responsible for what I do. This may be a rational conclusion but it is not and experiential reality.

 

[Bear Wild]

I believed in free will because I believed we had choices but there has always been something in the pit of me that didn’t think so and today I’ve come to accept it no longer. It was fear that kept me thinking it existed but now I’m ready to accept its absence. Not only fear but the way I interpreted past lives and future lives as not having any bearing on this life but I can no longer ignore the fact that past and future lives play a role in how I interpret free will. The way I see it, my God is in full control of everything and the best I can hope for is sound choices and a good life. I remember being a little boy sitting on the couch thinking that I could fool God with my next move. Would I turn my head left or right? Haha. I ended up concluding that no matter what I did God already saw it. I knew more as a little boy and wasn’t even afraid.

Without any form of free will a monotheistic god would then planned for not only every good thing but also every bad thing to happen. Thus all the innocents murdered was planned and orchestrated by that god.

 

[Jimmy]

Without any form of free will a monotheistic god would then planned for not only every good thing but also every bad thing to happen. Thus all the innocents murdered was planned and orchestrated by that god.

The infinite material universe (God) simply exists and within that universe there are living beings that make mistakes and natural disasters unfortunately. There is nothing deeper beyond this statement.

Without skinned knees there would be no knees.

 

[Bear Wild]

The infinite material universe (God) simply exists and within that universe there are living beings that make mistakes and natural disasters unfortunately. There is nothing deeper beyond this statement.

Without skinned knees there would be no knees.

So for you are you saying god is the universe itself as in pantheism?

 

[Jimmy]

So for you are you saying god is the universe itself as in pantheism?

No. My god has power, isn’t expanding and the earth isn’t the most sacred.

 

[Nakosis]

The infinite material universe simply exists.

I take that as a no?
Then what purpose does a God serve. They could simply exist as the fundamental forces of the universe.
You are free to call this collection of forces "God" but to me there is nothing godlike about them.
They are natural physical processes which we mostly understand.

 

[Nakosis]

I believe God is not evil, this life is just test"exam" for us.
Sometimes let bad happen to test our patient.
So let good happen to test our thankful.

I think, actually God doing evil or good, it's not our business.

I'd think biblical free will would simply be ability to do evil.
The fact that mankind can do evil fits this definition of free will.

 

[Godobeyer]

I'd think biblical free will would simply be ability to do evil.
The fact that mankind can do evil fits this definition of free will.

In Islam doing evil to people is forbidden. Especially parents and family and neighbors.
Doing good is awarded in judgment day.
It's all about test in this life. Later the result. Hell or heaven.
Depend on our faith and deeds too.

 

[JustGeorge]

Does God have free will?

I don't think so.

I can't know for sure, but I am doubtful.

 

[Jimmy]

I take that as a no?
Then what purpose does a God serve. They could simply exist as the fundamental forces of the universe.
You are free to call this collection of forces "God" but to me there is nothing godlike about them.
They are natural physical processes which we mostly understand.

Many purposes like our galaxy, solar system and earthly home where we can experience love. Yeah God is easily understood. Nothing really lurking in the shadows.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

The question of whether we enjoy autonomous, libertarian free will or only experience the illusion of same is unanswerable. The universes that contain one would be indistinguishable to us from those containing the other.

Libertarian free will is the idea that the will is not the result of anything other than the conscious self itself, which is its author unaffected by external reality including the brain. That is, in libertarian free will, the will originates in the conscious mind, whereas with the illusion of free will, the self receives instruction from the brain to the mind, and wills what it does passively while mistaking itself as the origin of that will rather than a passive conduit for it. It implies that in the exact same circumstances, one could will either of two (or more) things - an undecidable question. You can't reproduce those exact circumstances ever again to test it, and even if you could go back in time to the moment when you chose A and make a choice again, even if you chose B, you still wouldn't have an answer, because you wouldn't know that you had been in that moment before - if you did, then it's not the exact same reality - or that you were doing a test, or how it turned out before.

Furthermore, the answer would be useless even if we had it. What would you do differently if you knew one were the case rather than the other? Some say that punishing immoral behavior is itself immoral if there is no libertarian free will, but humanists hold that view in both cases. Punishment is not a part that thinking. That's a religious idea and central to Christianity, for example, since punishment is the reason given in biblical myths for why bad things to happen to humanity under the rule of a tri-omni deity. Humanism rejects punishment - inflicting gratuitous suffering - as is described in hell. It rejects the idea of prisons inflicting suffering beyond what confinement necessarily entails. Confinement is not to punish, but to serve as a disincentive to lawbreaking by the convict and others who see what becomes of scofflaws, and to remove a danger from the streets.

Some say that believing that will is not free is permission to or cause to behave differently. That wasn't the case for me. I suspect that free will is illusion, but I haven't always. Between then and now, when I went from assuming that I had libertarian free will to a place where I seriously question that, I had a period of cognitive dissonance as I assimilated that, but in the end, nothing changed. I still behave as if my will originated with the subject of consciousness even though I know that that is likely to be incorrect, because it doesn't matter either way.

I don't see where anything useful can be added to any of that. We don't know, we can't know, and knowing wouldn't be helpful even if we did know.