CatholicVoice
New Member
Personally, I'm for free will. What about you? Do you think we have free will, or is there a Greater Power who foreordained all history?
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Free will vs. predestination: Which are you?
- Thread starter CatholicVoice
- Start date
I'm in the "neither" category.
I believe free will is an illusion created by our limited perceptions and understanding. We just don't know why we do what we do.
But neither do I think our lives are preordained. I look around at creation and see no reason to believe that this is the product of design. I think we, our lives and purpose, only matter to us.
Tom
I believe free will is an illusion created by our limited perceptions and understanding. We just don't know why we do what we do.
But neither do I think our lives are preordained. I look around at creation and see no reason to believe that this is the product of design. I think we, our lives and purpose, only matter to us.
Tom
Neither.
As always, things are way more complicated than either-or thinking would have us believe.
I believe that free will isn't something that's either there or not; it exists in scales. I define it as the ability to go against our instinctive behaviors. That is, to resist doing something that we're instinctively drawn to do, or to do something despite all our instincts holding us back. Some people can do it better than others, and it can be cultivated as a skill.
In this sense, the idea of divine predestination isn't even terribly relevant, but is rather a completely different topic. And something I don't really believe in, not exactly, anyway. I believe in Wyrd, which is conceptually a web of all interconnected existence, woven by the Weaver (not a God; I don't worship her in any way). Whether she has a plan or not is anybody's guess, but don't let her catch you messing with her web.
As always, things are way more complicated than either-or thinking would have us believe.
I believe that free will isn't something that's either there or not; it exists in scales. I define it as the ability to go against our instinctive behaviors. That is, to resist doing something that we're instinctively drawn to do, or to do something despite all our instincts holding us back. Some people can do it better than others, and it can be cultivated as a skill.
In this sense, the idea of divine predestination isn't even terribly relevant, but is rather a completely different topic. And something I don't really believe in, not exactly, anyway. I believe in Wyrd, which is conceptually a web of all interconnected existence, woven by the Weaver (not a God; I don't worship her in any way). Whether she has a plan or not is anybody's guess, but don't let her catch you messing with her web.
Aupmanyav
Be your own guru
None of these (most people have used 'neither'). We are stones on a slope. We keep tumbling down, force of gravity or situations.
For all practical considerations, we have free will.
Rick O'Shez
Irishman bouncing off walls
I'm pretty sure God doesn't care what I decide to have for breakfast.
Augustus
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I believe free will exists to some extent. For example, I believe I could have coloured this sentence green.
To suggest otherwise would be an extraordinary claim and would require extraordinary evidence. Of this there is none, just some ambiguous results from tests on the brain. Until such extraordinary evidence exists, I will continue to believe I have some degree of choice.
The extent to which we have free will, I do not know, but I think it is enough to make a difference.
To suggest otherwise would be an extraordinary claim and would require extraordinary evidence. Of this there is none, just some ambiguous results from tests on the brain. Until such extraordinary evidence exists, I will continue to believe I have some degree of choice.
The extent to which we have free will, I do not know, but I think it is enough to make a difference.
I believe God gives us free will. He gave this to all his intelligent creatures. (Joshua 24:15) The true God also foreordains what He will do to accomplish his will and purposes. (1 Corinthians 2:7) We are free to align ourselves with God's will or not. (Revelation 22:17) What we do will not change the outcome, only whether we will be around to enjoy it. (Psalm 37:10,11)
Actually, it is the existence of free will the extraordinary claim. At least, if we identify it as incompatible with determinism or the conservation of information in the Universe.
Ciao
- viole
But you didn't. The reason you chose a different color is very subtle. I don't claim to know what it was for sure, but I suspect that it was because you wanted to prove a point.
That's why I don't believe free will exists. People are only free to choose what they think is in their own best interests at the time the choice is made. Why they think that choice is best is out of their control.
Often it is dreadful ignorance and lack of discipline, resulting in horribly immoral choices made.
Tom
Augustus
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Why would that be? Everyone intrinsically believes they have choice, to believe that you have none has to be taught. To believe something that goes against all of your sense experience, to me, is the extraordinary claim.
Or something that is based on the cumulation of countless previous choices as well as external factors.
I don't believe free will is absolute, far from it, but I believe we have the ability to make choices, and our choices are not predetermined.
What I learned from modern physics is the fact that our senses and experiences are utterly unreliable. Which is not surprising considering that our brains are not evolved with a natural predisposition or intuition for truth oriented beliefs. It takes decades of study to understand how a simple photon interacts with an electron, and when you think you understood it, you did not really.
If they are not determined, then we have something that begins to exist (our decision to do this or that) without a cause. So, either it materializes out of nothing or it is causally determined. I do not see a third alternative. And to be honest with you, I am not sure how any of these two alternatives supports freedom from anything.
Ciao
- viole
I think you are looking at it from a wrong perspective. We only live in the past (even our future is predicated upon the past). If God can see the future then he knows what will happen. When written down language suggests that he ordained it to happen thus.
Have you ever seen the future? Say, in a dream you saw something and then in real life it happened just as you saw it. At what point did you recognize that what was happening was exactly how you saw it in your dream? If you realized it before it actually finished happening - then you had a choice; if you recognized it after it happened, then you had no choice and it was pre-ordained.
Trust me, it sucks to know the future and also know that there is nothing you can do to change it - just ask any husband who knows that his marriage is going down the tubes and he will be divorced in a year or two. Do people who die in air plane accidents have a foreshadowing of their imminent death? Some did, some do, and they were able to change their destinies. Others were oblivious. But I say that there were some who knew and who also knew that they were powerless to do anything about it.
Robert.Evans
You will be assimilated; it is His Will.
What about both/neither. What if we are following what we already are, and though having freewill, don't use it as such. It explains evolution better for one.
