Do you believe in free will?

[Flobee]

That's great. Just keep and open mind and don't turn troll. Kthnx.

Ok, you too.

Let me tell you a little secret. Most of us aren't satanists. I think you must have read the Satanist Bible, and in the introduction it does say satanism is very involved with materialism, but atheism (what most of us are) isn't.

I don't mean materialism as in worldly possessions if that's what you mean, I mean materialism as in naturalism or as in the belief that matter is all that there is in the universe. In this case I doubt satanists would be materialists because they believe in the spirit of satin.

Well, that really depends on what type of free will we are talking about. Are you talking about my ability to choose with colour I like best or how I'm affected by gravity without choice?

I'm talking about free will as in our ability to freely make decisions. We don't have any free choice when it comes to gravity.

And that's the difference. If you jump, you will fall. If you don't want to post on here, you don't have to. We are governed by physical laws to an extent. It's the same if you believe in God. It's not going to change the fact that gravity keeps you on Earth.

I think you misunderstood a little bit sorry if I wrote in a confusing way. What I'm asking I guess is if you all as atheists believe in free will as in free choice like the freedom of choice to choose to post on these forums or the freedom to choose a favorite color or whatever choice you can think of. Then my next question is that if you as an atheist believe in free will how exactly do you explain it since according to atheism the universe is composed completely of matter and in this view the human person is nothing more then a combination of chemicals and particles. I'm saying if all we are is chemicals then it doesn't seem possible that we could have free will.

So essentially the question is do you believe that human beings have free will in their choices and if so how do you explain such a phenomenon from an atheistic standpoint?

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Free will? I don't know.I usually feel as if if I'm exercising free will in the choices I seem to make .

Looking back,I'm increasingly convinced that free will is almost if not entirely an illusion and that we virtually never make informed choices about anything.

Looking at the choices I've made over a lifetime, I'm convinced I was incapable of making any choices other than those I made.

How exactly can you say that you are incapable of making other choices then you made? So if you choose to have a Pepsi over a Coke your saying it would have been impossible for you to choose the Coke? You had to Chose the Pepsi for some reason, it could never be different? If you say for example murder someone, your saying it would have been impossible to have done anything different? How exactly is that?

They were almost invariably based on perceived self interest.

That doesn't change the fact that they were free choices. I can freely choose to take the last cookie or I can freely choose to let my mom have it, self interest really doesn't do anything to effect the fact that we are free to choose.

I refuse to see myself as victim,

hold myself responsible for my actions and others responsible for theirs.(including drunk/drugged-up drivers) If there is no free will,that is an invalid position.[/quote]
I agree with you and that view is in perfect alignment with the kind of universe we live in and our experience of free will. However it is not in alignment with the world view of naturalism. We wouldn't hold a coke machine responsible if it shorted out and shot out cokes all over the place because it is simply the particles in the machine reacting. Now if there is no God and no Soul then we are no different from a machine with particles and chemicals shooting around causing us to do what we do and therefore we can't hold anyone responsible for their actions because they didn't chose them their actions are only the result of the chemicals in their body jostling around. To quote popular atheist Francis Crick "You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules."

I also think any existence of an omniscient supreme being invalidates free will.

How so?

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So yes. "Free Will" exists

As I quoted above Francis Crick and a great many other leading atheists seem to disagree with you about the existence of free will because they realize that to admit that we truly have free will is to admit that we are actually a person with an immaterial soul and not just a collection of molecules.