RE: Here's why Creatards might be right
October 30, 2015 at 11:52 pm
(This post was last modified: October 30, 2015 at 11:54 pm by Edwardo Piet.)
(October 30, 2015 at 11:33 pm)SteelCurtain Wrote: To be clear---I will never fault someone for being ignorant. There are many topics I am ignorant about.
One thing you'll never catch me doing, however, is proudly remaining willfully ignorant.
For that, a person can earn my deepest disdain.
I would feel that way if I believed in free will.
Sam Harris Wrote:Take a moment to think about the context in which your next decision will occur: You did not pick your parents or the time and place of your birth. You didn't choose your gender or most of your life experiences. You had no control whatsoever over your genome or the development of your brain. And now your brain is making choices on the basis of preferences and beliefs that have been hammered into it over a lifetime - by your genes, your physical development since the moment you were conceived, and the interactions you have had with other people, events, and ideas. Where is the freedom in this? Yes, you are free to do what you want even now. But where did your desires come from?”
Sam Harris Wrote:Losing a belief in free will has not made me fatalistic—in fact, it has increased my feelings of freedom. My hopes, fears, and neuroses seem less personal and indelible. There is no telling how much I might change in the future. Just as one wouldn’t draw a lasting conclusion about oneself on the basis of a brief experience of indigestion, one needn’t do so on the basis of how one has thought or behaved for vast stretches of time in the past. A creative change of inputs to the system—learning new skills, forming new relationships, adopting new habits of attention—may radically transform one’s life.
Both quotes from Sam Harris' book Free Will