I don't state that there is such a thing as free will. Quite the opposite. Free will is an illusion. Free agency, which is what is commonly meant by free will, is not illusionary. It's real. You are free, given natural and lawful constraints, to act as you are programmed.

From early consciousness you are trapped in a linear sequence of events and choices that you had to make. You cannot choose to do any other. Even an anti choice would be predictable.

Quote:So let's assume this hypothetical person is you. Do you have a choice to reply to this post or not? Or... Does the fact that God already knows what you're going to do alter the fact that you have complete full choice in it, you predictable sod?

God created everything in his own design. Even that nifty taste of Carlsberg is his design (at least he got something right), and he knows how everything will end. He knows who will go to heaven and who will got to that wicked rock and roll party in hell.

Now, if God already know how my entire lifespan will turn out, and if he originally designed me, how can I proclaim free will? As an individual, I will see every choice I make as my own, but God will know every answer before I do. Than what is the purpose of free will, when it’s all part of a design?

On a second note, I believe it was Augustine and Thomas Aquinas that debated this subject on the extent of God’s will and original sin. (Though Thomas Aquinas did all the talking since Augustine was long dead.)

Cheers

(February 4, 2013 at 8:54 pm)fr0d0 Wrote: I don't state that there is such a thing as free will. Quite the opposite. Free will is an illusion. Free agency, which is what is commonly meant by free will, is not illusionary. It's real. You are free, given natural and lawful constraints, to act as you are programmed.

From early consciousness you are trapped in a linear sequence of events and choices that you had to make. You cannot choose to do any other. Even an anti choice would be predictable.

Then there is no good or evil, no right or wrong.

There is only the script that god has written for us and that we have no choice but to act out.

So when god sends us to hell he is punishing us eternally for being exactly the way he intended us to be.

Nice god you have there.

(February 5, 2013 at 4:29 am)Zen Badger Wrote: Then there is no good or evil, no right or wrong.

There is only the script that god has written for us and that we have no choice but to act out.

So when god sends us to hell he is punishing us eternally for being exactly the way he intended us to be.

Nice god you have there.

You are a free agent to do what you want. This is a matter of science not religion. Religion happens to agree.

(February 5, 2013 at 6:06 am)fr0d0 Wrote:

(February 5, 2013 at 4:29 am)Zen Badger Wrote: Then there is no good or evil, no right or wrong.

There is only the script that god has written for us and that we have no choice but to act out.

So when god sends us to hell he is punishing us eternally for being exactly the way he intended us to be.

Nice god you have there.

You are a free agent to do what you want. This is a matter of science not religion. Religion happens to agree.

If that is so then your statement here

Quote: From early consciousness you are trapped in a linear sequence of events and choices that you had to make. You cannot choose to do any other. Even an anti choice would be predictable.

is completely contradictory.

You are a free agrent to do what you must do... which is follow your programming and influences. No contradiction

(February 5, 2013 at 8:41 am)fr0d0 Wrote: You are a free agrent to do what you must do... which is follow your programming and influences. No contradiction

No.... of course not. No contradiction at allllllll.

If you weren't a free agent, you wouldn't be able to act freely.

You might choose to go swimming, because that was your programming for that moment, but some force would stop you doing it. Nothing you chose you could actually do: you would not be a free agent.

This is not free will. I've already said that free will is impossible.

(February 4, 2013 at 6:31 am)apophenia Wrote:

Wikipedia Wrote:Future contingent propositions (or simply, future contingents) are statements about states of affairs in the future that are neither necessarily true nor necessarily false.

The problem of future contingents seems to have been first discussed by Aristotle in chapter 9 of his On Interpretation (De Interpretatione), using the famous sea-battle example. Roughly a generation later, Diodorus Cronus from the Megarian school of philosophy stated a version of the problem in his notorious Master Argument. The problem was later discussed by Leibniz. Deleuze used it to oppose a "logic of the event" to a "logic of signification".

The problem can be expressed as follows. Suppose that a sea-battle will not be fought tomorrow. Then it was also true yesterday (and the week before, and last year) that it will not be fought, since any true statement about what will be the case was also true in the past. But all past truths are necessary truths, therefore it was necessarily true in the past that the battle will not be fought, and thus that the statement that it will be fought is necessarily false. Therefore it is not possible that the battle will be fought. In general, if something will not be the case, it is not possible for it to be the case. This conflicts with the idea of our own free will: that we have the power to determine the course of events in the future, which seems impossible if what happens, or does not happen, was necessarily going to happen, or not happen.

— Wikipedia:

Doesn't this say more about the nature of 'truth' than the nature of free will, which is a retroaction and therefore unaffected by future contingent propositions?

If god knows what choices we make before we make them, and he can't just not create those who will end up in hell because those people are pertinent for the others to choose heaven--then FUCK HIM.