Did god give us free will?
I can't will myself to fly through the cosmos at a trillion times the speed of light exploring other galaxies. I can't teleport to heaven and have a conversation with god. I can't even teleport to Tel Aviv. Surely god could do all of these things with no effort and he created us in his image. So why did he limit us so severely?
Why can't I will my hair to stop growing so I don't have to spend 40 bucks on a haircut every month?
Why can't I will my hearing to disable when a song I don't like is playing? Better yet, why can't I will it so that song is now my favorite song of all time and enjoy it?
Why can't I will myself to think 10x faster than I currently do? Why not 1000x or a googolx?
Or any number of countless things that I can't will to happen.
People use free will to explain bad things that happen to others. A man was killed because another man used his free will to do evil. But when a man has a heart attack and dies, nobody says he didn't use his free will to correct his heart problem and continue living.
God could alter the system right now so that those who would choose to do harm would instead immediately die from a heart attack. But he refuses to do this. Why? He allows the power of one's will to supersede the power of another's will.
It seems to me like what we have is, at best, incredibly limited will. The most egregious limitation though, if god exists, is that he didn't even give us the will to choose whether or not to be a part of his silly game.
If you accidentally chop off your finger can you persist against the failure of a severed limb to simply regrow that limb? Why not? You used your free will to grow it in the first place right? So grow another one. Be persistent.
If you’re not going to listen to constructive feedback where you are clearly making mistakes, then interacting with you will become pointless.
As it’s been previously pointed out, you are conflating unlimited freedom with any amount of freedom.
And who has made the claim that fingers grow via free will? That’s ridiculous.
If you’re not going to listen to constructive feedback where you are clearly making mistakes, then interacting with you will become pointless.
As it’s been previously pointed out, you are conflating unlimited freedom with any amount of freedom.
And who has made the claim that fingers grow via free will? That’s ridiculous.
What made them grow then? Deterministic factors obviously which is the same thing that makes any action you take occur. I'm not conflating the two. I'm arguing against the notion of free will and you simply don't understand what it truly means.
What made them grow then? Deterministic factors obviously which is the same thing that makes any action you take occur. I'm not conflating the two. I'm arguing against the notion of free will and you simply don't understand what it truly means.
The issue is that you are being unnecessarily close minded to the idea of freedom and determinism coexisting in this world.
You’ve decided in your mind it has to be all one or the other. Either we all have godlike freedom to instantly actualize whatever we desire or there is zero freedom at all. No in between for you.
Why limit yourself to such an extreme position?
The issue is that you are being unnecessarily close minded to the idea of freedom and determinism coexisting in this world.
You’ve decided in your mind it has to be all one or the other. Either we all have godlike freedom to instantly actualize whatever we desire or there is zero freedom at all. No in between for you.
Why limit yourself to such an extreme position?
We're going in circles here brother. I granted the idea of limited will earlier in this thread, but doing so raises the question of why an omnibenevolent god would limit different peoples will in different ways. You've failed to explain that.
You don't. It's a self-contained question. If what your omnibenevolent god gave human beings is limited will, why choose to limit the will of some to only being able to starve to death for the entirety of their existence(yes that's correct, some people were born, did nothing but starve and then die) while instead limiting the will of you and I to sit here in our cozy homes arguing about pointless **** all day?
I couldn't care less whether you continue to engage or not. Use your limited will to go do something positive in the world maybe.
We're going in circles here brother. I granted the idea of limited will earlier in this thread, but doing so raises the question of why an omnibenevolent god would limit different peoples will in different ways. You've failed to explain that.
I’m a subjectivist. Meaning, ultimately, God is only good if we all agree that he is.
I promote the idea of a benevolent God as an ultimate truth because I see it as a subjective good.
I also promote the idea of a fallen God for the same reason (serves the subjective good).
I firmly believe that people who argue against God’s existence are obstructing humanity from the good.
You accomplished nothing with this post. I can put two cups in front of me knowing beforehand that I'm going to choose arbitrarily and at the last second choose one or the other for no reason at all. It has nothing to do with neurons or the environment. It's simply a split second decision that goes either way because my nature as a human being simply willed that decision.
Again, you beg the question when you say you could choose “one or the other for no reason at all”. You are assuming that you can actually do so when that is the very essence of the debate - can you actually choose to do something for no reason at all or are your decisions constrained by other outside forces that you are not consciously aware of?
I have absolutely zero responsibility or accountability for my actions if determinism is true. There's literally no reason to punish anyone for anything and determinism automatically negates the need for morals or ethics. It's such simple logic. You have to write a 12 page dissertation that eventually says nothing to defend determinism. The mental gymnastics determinists have to do to try to explain free will away is mind boggling.
The poker analogies destroy you. I don't know how a determinist c
Suppose determinism is true. Someone like, say Ted Bundy had no real choice but to do what he did. Bundy was executed for his actions. You are trying to say that he shouldn’t have been (and maybe you are even right). But the reality is that the actions of the police who investigated his crimes, the actions of the prosecutor who sought the death penalty, the jurors who returned the death sentence and the person who actually carried out the execution weee all equally constrained - those people could not have done otherwise. To say that we hold someone accountable for their actions inevitably requires actions on the part of other humans. These actions are no more free than the actions of the wrongdoer. The argument against determinism based on moral accountability is unconvincing as a result.
Stremba, do you believe that you have no freedom from deterministic forces, whether biological or social / environmental? The framework would be: you’re on a ride which you have no agency to direct so valuing freedom is nonsensical since it isn’t real.
I was going to make a longer response, but before that, I want to be clear on what you believe. We need to be clear whether the belief is limitation on freedom or no freedom at all.
I certainly lean toward determinism, but I am certainly agnostic on the subject. I’m not sure that it ultimately makes any practical difference anyway. We perceive that we are free. Even if ultimate reality is otherwise, so what? We also perceive love, beauty, happiness, etc., but the ultimate reality is that these likely are just physical brain states. If my happiness is really just the result of release of certain chemicals in my brain and firing of certain neurons, am I any less happy? If my freedom is really just the confluence of outside factors of which I am unaware and unable to control, should that have any affect on how I proceed with my life? Indeed if that is really true, then, by definition, such knowledge CANNOT have any affect - my actions already are constrained.
Consciousness is partially volitional. We have will, not free will. Quantum realities seem to obliterate determinism. Some things are temporarily seemingly deterministic, some aren't.
In my opinion, the "no free will" belief is just a psychological symptom of people who feel helpless and depressed. Nowadays lots of people are feeling a loss of control over there own lives. Some feel a loss of purpose or meaning. They have a feeling that they are pre-destined to follow in some life path that they can't avoid. They feel in a rut. That is a harmful illusion.
This is not entirely true... while hopelessness is indicative of a lack of freewill, it is not the cause of it and the truth is FAR WORSE than most think.
your body knows it and your Brain knows it... but you dont know why.
The truth is, individuals no longer possess freewill when they are being told what to think, how to act and what values to have.
this isn't by accident... Social programming on a global scale is being done at an alarming rate thru various media sources and viewable programming.
Agentic AI is being used to mold and determine the future thru Human social PROGRAMMING... I am afraid the Globalist 1000 year reign is upon us as we're being lead into the future by the anti-christ.
that old chestnut.
Again, you beg the question when you say you could choose “one or the other for no reason at all”. You are assuming that you can actually do so when that is the very essence of the debate - can you actually choose to do something for no reason at all or are your decisions constrained by other outside forces that you are not consciously aware of?
Moving the goal posts. It's MUCH MUCH harder for someone to prove determinism. Of course every decision I make has other influences around it but you're changing the meaning of "will" to suit your needs.
Moving the goal posts. It's MUCH MUCH harder for someone to prove determinism. Of course every decision I make has other influences around it but you're changing the meaning of "will" to suit your needs.
Of course I can’t prove determinism, but your mere assertions don’t prove free will either. If it were easy to prove either one, this would not be a 500 or so year old philosophical debate. But you aren’t debating; you’re just asserting without any real argument that you have free will. You assert without any evidence that when you make a particular arbitrary choice, there is no outside factor at play determining that choice. You assert this because you are unaware of any such factors. But that is the crux of the debate — are there outside factors that we are not consciously aware of that determine the choices we make that seem to us to be arbitrary and that we chalk up to free will? You are using the lack of awareness of such factors to assert that such factors do not exist, but that is no argument. It is merely assuming the answer.
Moving the goal posts. It's MUCH MUCH harder for someone to prove determinism. Of course every decision I make has other influences around it but you're changing the meaning of "will" to suit your needs.
Determinism means I can't prove to you free will doesn't exist . But if you actually had free will you should be able to prove free will to me. Just use your free will to come up with a convincing argument.
"Hell is empty and all the devils are here." -- Shakespeare
