RE: A thing about religious (and other) people and the illusion of free will
November 19, 2023 at 12:22 pm
(November 19, 2023 at 12:06 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Well, in the hypothetical, it's not like people can choose whether or not to be satisfied or dissatisfied - and either state is not directly related to the competence or performance of the other party. The future fatalist government might be knocking it out of the park but that won't add or subtract to their support in and of itself. Meanwhile, people who currently believe in free will are already dissatisfied with the government about the things that are consequential to their lives in which they are demonstrably not free -or- in which they strongly believe (in error) they are not free.
IDK if I'd say our country is based on free will. I don't think that our domestic or foreign policies would support that idea...though I guess it is something we push internally.
On the bolded part, I guess I used the wrong word, again. I did think the country had something to do with free will, but supporting that idea, as you said, would be the more accurate term.
Otherwise, you do make some good points. I think it goes with some past things I have said about free will, especially what you said in the first paragraph of yours.
I do think what you said is interesting. Anyway, I forgot about the subconsciousness part, even though I said it in a recent post of mine, so I am surprised that I did not think of what you ended up saying before I posted the last post; the part about not choosing to be satisfied or dissatisfied about things like what I have said.
But as I may have said before, since the belief in a supreme deity like God is a psychological disposition and that the subconsciousness is what causally determines the "choices" we make; to talk about religion as this thread was initially talking about; I think the subconscious mind contributes to, or leads to us believing in a supreme deity that most likely does not exist through being deterministic about it, and there are plenty of people who believe in such supreme beings like God, I do think they may not initially be choosing to believe in supreme beings like god. There may be other factors, sure, but with such a psychological disposition being there in the human mind, I think that and a subconscious mind making "decisions" for us are factors for why people might believe in supreme beings.
Which MAY furthermore show that religion and religious people's claims about free will is BS further.
