Free Will and Religion - Page 17

On March 06 2012 07:59 liberal wrote:

I feel like you have a very muddled idea what what people mean when they say free will. It has nothing to do with debate, or communication, or learning about the outside world... I could program a computer to do all of those things, and it wouldn't require volition.

Our emotions are untrustworthy, but that doesn't mean that we can disregard all thought that humans experience. I often feel like I'm "choosing" my actions, but if I stop and think about it, I realize there are things in my past and things in my biology and things in my environment which actually determined what decision I was going to make. You can't draw some arbitrary line and say "well we have free will until we are insane, or until we suffer a head injury, or until we are conditioned by society, or until we discover a brain tumor, or until we ingest a drug..." Doing so is just avoiding the undeniable truth, that human behavior is DETERMINED by processes outside of our control, and therefore the illusion of control over our own behavior is false.

The ONLY thing preventing absolutely everyone from rejecting the notion of free will is ignorance. We are ignorant of what is causing our own or others behavior, and so because we can't explain it we jump into simplistic metaphysical notions. In the past, our ignorance caused us to believe that mental illness was caused by demon possession, and that lightning was caused by a man in the sky throwing down bolts, and that the sun revolved around the earth. It is only a matter of time before neuroscience advances enough to reveal how absurd and childish our belief in free choice actually is.

And honestly, I don't think it even requires scientific advancement. All it requires is a common sense understanding of the fact that there is no alternative to something being caused or uncaused in the universe. That's all it takes. Just try and imagine an alternative, it's not possible for the human mind to fathom such a thing. To the degree something is caused, it is determined, and therefore not choice. To the degree something is uncaused, it is arbitrary, and therefore not choice. People are going through all sorts of psychological tricks in order to ignore this fact which I consider undeniable.

On March 06 2012 08:18 Falling wrote:

Like right now. You chose to respond to me. You chose to type certain words. Even if you were reacting to stimuli, there was nothing compelling you to 1) read 2) respond 3) respond coherently. And furthermore respond to an argument about how the nature of the universe works.

It's not a freedom from physical laws so much as there is a conscious will that is able to make decisions- and we can learn a lot about the brain from brain activity. We can tell that you are dreaming based on brain activity, we can tell that you are thinking. But we actually have to talk to you to find out what the dream was or what you were specifically thinking about. We react to stimuli, our body operates within physical laws, we have fight or flight responses. All true. But we also discover, create, theorize, choose to play a video game, choose to create a video game, choose to hack a video game, choose create art, choose to appreciate art, choose to critique art, or choose to vandalize art.

If we have a concept of free will despite there being no free will than it is a very powerful delusion. It's impossible to even got to work without operating under the assumption of free will. When the alarm goes, will you hit snooze? When you get up what will you wear, what will you eat? Will you eat? Will you go to work at all? Will pick the shortest route, will you speed? Will you run a red light or stop? Will you drive in the opposite lane? Will you drive on the sidewalk? Will you drive off the bridge? Hundreds of decisions, some of them rote, some based on the past, some of them more urgent. And if any point you stop to try and explain how this is all deterministic/ random/ instinctual then you have made the choice to stop and think about how it is all deterministic/ random/ instinctual. And then you can choose to think about how you are thinking about your thinking...

The concept of free will so dominates the way we live our lives that it would be impossible to function without it. And if it is a delusion then it is such a great delusion, that we have no reason to trust any other of observations of sight, smell, etc because it is all filtered through this entirely deluded brain of ours. So we have no way knowing whether our universe is deterministic because our means of knowing is faulty. And certainly something like emotions can be faulty. But my argument that this is SUCH a great delusion that it throws our entire thought process into question.

On March 05 2012 22:12 knatt wrote:
Are you telling me that I don't have control over my own actions? If what you say is true, then I would define it as "fate". I don't believe in fate, though I can't prove that it doesn't exist. But I'd rather think that the world is unpredictable because it's more fun that way.

On March 06 2012 08:32 Kickboxer wrote:
There is no definitive answer but there are three very clearly conditioned paths.

If you believe in the divine nature of the universe, but do not believe in a "humanoid" god, free will is self-evident.

If you do not believe in the divine nature of the universe, you "god" is the known laws of the universe. From what I can infer from this thread they do not confirm free will, which according to "logic" makes it, at this time, successfully refuted.

If you do believe in the divine nature of the universe governed by a "humanoid" god, there is no free will because the godhead knows what you are doing beforehand so you can't change it no matter how much you will.

Due to insurmountable differences between the basic postulates of these three deeply ingrained views productive discussion on the subject is next to impossible.

On March 06 2012 07:11 titanicnewbie wrote:


I hope I'm not disappointing you, but I have short answers to both of your questions.

1) Natural disasters occur as the result of completely intentional (by the creator) physical processes. There are some really excellent reasons that planets have tectonic plates, ask a geologist. And if you have tectonic plates, you're going to get earthquakes. I think that natural disasters aren't comparable to human-induced suffering like genocide. Frankly, I think that even a world without suffering would still have tragedies like this. It's not fair to expect God to make sure we're all safe and warm at night, else we accuse him of cruelty. God's kind of above that, and I think he's much more interested in allowing us to take care of one another than in doing it all himself.

2) God knows man. I couldn't say. I think that God gave us free will so that we could share in the drama of life. Yeah it's a sad story, but I'd say that God's not ready to end the story quite yet because he wants to see where the story goes.

On March 06 2012 08:47 mcc wrote:

That just leaves you open to a question : Why should we worship such a god that clearly does not share human moral values with us ? He is an evil entity from the point of view of our own values and saying that he is above that does not solve it as his moral values are of no concern to us. Our moral values are what matters to us. Of course you can always proclaim he is not able to prevent the disasters, but then it seems he is just a powerful, but not too much, entity.

My point is that preventing earthquakes and tsunamis is easily in his power and allowing them to happen he is violating human moral code on incredible scale, thus being evil. Whatever reasons he has for allowing them to happen (so we can help ourselves, so we can suffer, because he enjoys it) are not important, he is evil from a point of view of our morality and that is what is important for us humans.

There are ways you can argue out of it in some way, but free will argument is not an excuse. Free will is clearly compatible with the world without massive natural disasters.

On March 05 2012 22:10 paralleluniverse wrote:

Your decision to move is caused by electrical signals between synapses in your brain, these electrical signals are caused by biochemical reactions, these biochemical reactions are caused by the motion of particles, the motion of these particles are dictated by the laws of physics.

At no point in the chain of actions is your will exerted.

Every action in this chain has a prior cause, and if we trace this back, we end up at the motion of particles, of which you have no conscious control over.

On March 06 2012 08:56 iLose4u wrote:
"i suppose we could then argue that He should have made the world in such a way that some things didn't have to die for some things to live, but i think that is too complicated an argument to get into here. "

It really isn't too complicated. Natural disasters cause great pain to humans and animals and should not exist in a world where an omnipotent good god exists.

On March 06 2012 08:56 iLose4u wrote:
"i suppose we could then argue that He should have made the world in such a way that some things didn't have to die for some things to live, but i think that is too complicated an argument to get into here. "

It really isn't too complicated. Natural disasters cause great pain to humans and animals and should not exist in a world where an omnipotent good god exists.

On March 06 2012 08:59 Falling wrote:
@liberal

I didn't mean to say there are no influencing factors. I kinda skimmed through it with my bipolar example, but humans don't exist in vacuum. We are influenced by a variety of things, genetics, automatic biological responses, medical condition, personal history, family history etc. Some of them can limit your range of choice, sometimes severely so. But despite all that we still have choice.

The artist has a very wide selection of media to use, a wide range of subjects to depict, and multiple choices to abandon the project or to cover over it. It becomes quite nonsensical to think that the forces of nature conspired to create the Mona Lisa or that the random firings of neurons with causation going back since... time immemorial ? Certainly there are outside influences- what if da Vinci's parents had been killed prior to his birth? Or even the artistic style of artists is often influenced by that of the past or their contemporaries. But at some point da Vinci had to sit down and create something and maybe even push the art into new territory.

And while there seems to be a compelling drive in humans to create- why that painting, why that woman, why those colours, why that texture, why that detailed, why that style, why that long (or short). I don't see how you're going to find all the hidden causes and effects that eradicates the volition of da Vinci the painter. It starts sounding like Freud's unconscious mind. If everything is the effect of hidden processes and cause and effects (hidden by the facade of free will) then how does anyone break from of the deterministic processes in order to discover them? We* are still relying upon the deterministic processes to make our* discoveries. How do we get the view from the 'outside' as it were?

*Although more accurately there would be no collective we- just atoms and cells working together to from the so-called 'I" amongst the 'others'

On March 06 2012 07:36 Falling wrote:
I don't understand how people can say there is no free will and then proceed to argue about it. The very act of debating arguing requires free agency.

I strongly believe than any philosophical system needs to somehow account for consciousness and free will. Simply because we operate so extensively under the assumption of both of these (even the act of typing out these words) that to not have either would be such a strong delusion that one would have to entirely discount our very thoughts as being untrustworthy.

If our thoughts are so untrustworthy how can we trust how our thought processes that lead us to conclude that the universe is deterministic? We used free agency to even consider that the universe is deterministic. We used free agency to discover the laws that govern our universe and to discover how the neurons in our brain fire. Eliminating free will (and by extension consciousness) in its entirety undermines the very premise.

Certainly there are outside, external factors that our beyond our control and that to an extent limit our free will as it were. Depression, for instance, is not simply a matter of willing oneself to snap out of it. Bipolar II can be inherited and triggered. But to engage in any meaningful discussion with any person, we take for granted that we are not pre-determined firings of neurons and chemicals and being nothing more than a process of cause and effect started however many years ago.

Somehow the sum of our cells is more than simply the physical cause and effect, somehow there is a sort of free agency that can choose one choice or another. Whatever one might say as to the source (or lack thereof) of morality, we certainly have the capability of choosing from a variety of possible actions.

Else even participating in this debate is the very height of foolishness. An assortment of cells operating in such a way so as to create the illusion of debate.

On March 06 2012 08:45 Housemd wrote:
I never believed in free will.

Let us take a coin for example. If we flip the coin, it is a 50/50 guess on which side it would land. However, a person can accurately figure this out through careful calculations about the speed of the flip, position from which it was flipped, crosswind, etc.

That can also apply to humans. The coin's fate is predetermined and so is the fate of humans.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predeterminism

On March 06 2012 08:54 Njbrownie wrote:


If what you say is true, then people would not have any control over a single thing they did in life ever. Except people do have choices in life. They are faced with millions of choices and these choices are subject to reason.
Reasonably, your "decision to move" is your will, you have it right at the front of this chain of command. How do you describe a contradictory post and all together moot your own point?
The mind is a complex feature that noone knows enough about to adiquitely describe a scenerio such as ones life being pre-determined. People have been debating this forever and both sides agree that there are some form of indeterminism is true!
According to logic, then if experts in the area all agree that indeterminism exists how in the hell can you turn around and say it doesn't? Whereas, determinism has little to no factual backing and tons of theories floating with open ends left unproven.

On March 06 2012 07:44 Oshuy wrote:


True, the consequences of a choice are a macroscopic event, but each macroscopic event is made of a large number of unitary quantum events (unless you are in a macroscopic quantum state, like a black hole or a superfluid, in which case I don't really know how you type your answers).

"shielding", you are thinking of decorrelation, but it is not the sole event type that creates different states in a multiple universe.

Universe still diverges in the absence of choice, but it also does when people make choices. Only requirement is that at least 1 physically coherent path allows each choice.
(if I make a choice between posting this reply and turning into a jet to crash into the sun, there is probably no universe where I actually get to dance with the sunny chicks on the crash site, although ... <concentrates>)