(August 10, 2009 at 1:57 am)Kyuuketsuki Wrote: Welcome to the forums ... why not introduce yourself?
I'm a mid-thirties (that's 35 years old, not born in the 1930s) Astrophysics grad and would be sci-fi novelist with one unpublished book to my name so far. Personality type INTJ, for what it's worth, and have a keen interest in human psychology and all aspects of human behaviour on an individual genetic level and a Global Community way.
Free Will is one of those ideas that has always got me thinking, inspired in the 80s by those pictures of Ethiopia to wonder why it was that if we all had true freedom of choice, we didn't just 'choose' to eradicate global poverty. In a sixth-form General Studies lesson I asked my Church of England Reverend Headmaster if he thought he'd be a Christian if he had been brought up in a different country by different religion followers. To his credit he said he didn't think he would be a Christian.
The conclusion I came to in my late teens was that we either have a reason for our decisions, or our decisions are random. The reasons must come either from our instincts our our rational mind; if the former, then we don't have control of ourselves. If the latter, then it is the nature of reality that determines our decisions, and as this is fixed, our behaviour is pre-determined.
Over the years, this has developed into the idea that whilst we have no Free Will, we do have a genuine feeling of both being in control of our own destiny and being at the mercy of our instincts and most basic desires. The sense of Free Will is not to be rejected as it provides us with so much of what is good about humanity, and so it is up to us to develop our minds in such a was as to remove as much biased and subconcious behaviour as possible (much as the Buddhists do). However, unlike the Buddhists I have no belief in Enlightenment, only a desire for a greater ability to control our negative aspects and promote our positive aspects.
Freedom from our limitations can be helped by proper training and education, but we're at the mercy of society, which often teaches us to accept as truth many ideas which exist only because they exploit our human weaknesses (e.g. religion, political ideology). To get as close as we can to Free Will it is important that we teach kids why religion is a false belief and why (and how) politics preys on our insecurities, greed and prejudices. We need to be armed against our subconciouses and armed against those who exploit our subconcious.
This is what makes me an Empiricist and lover of the Philosophy of Science. Empiricism is important because it's the best method we have of checking which of our biased beliefs are reasonable and which ones aren't. Whilst we can't acheive Free Will, science helps us overcome the parts of ourselves that stand in the way of objective, rational thought. It makes us freer than we othewise would be.
In this way, I can't accept the existence of God without evidence. As there isn't any, I don't believe. However, I wouldn't reject the posibility of a creator or God of some kind - after all, vastly superior, life-creating alien beings are stock-in-trade for sci-fi writers. So, really I'm Agnostic, but for all practical purposes I'm an Atheist.
