If You Didn't Design Yourself, You Don't Have Free Will

[Willamena]

I love the car analogy.

 

[CarlinKnew]

I'd like to hear your definition of the word "will".

The ability to choose.

The car I drive has been designed for me... but I decide where I want to go. Nobody else, including the car manufacturer, can tell me, when I get in my car for a two hour road trip, to drive to Albany, or to New York City.

You can't be serious. Yes, of course the design of the car doesn't have an impact on your decision-making process. But I'm not talking about the design of your car. I'm talking about the design of your brain, or your soul, or whatever you think is the origin of your decisions. The structure of that has been designed, not by you, and that structure dictates the way in which you make choices. You cannot make a choice free from the design of that structure, so your will is not free.

 

[sojourner]

If a separate entity, such as the abrahamic god, designed which actions you are able to perform, then your "free will" is limited, and thus, not free.

Your argument is totally hyperbole.

 

[Poisonshady313]

The ability to choose.

You can't be serious. Yes, of course the design of the car doesn't have an impact on your decision-making process. But I'm not talking about the design of your car. I'm talking about the design of your brain, or your soul, or whatever you think is the origin of your decisions. The structure of that has been designed, not by you, and that structure dictates the way in which you make choices. You cannot make a choice free from the design of that structure, so your will is not free.

Your argument is that the existence of the decision making process is the very thing that makes decision making not free?

I don't buy it.

The way you make choices is separate from the fact that you CAN make choices. And that those choices are yours.