(February 28, 2012 at 5:28 am)picto90 Wrote: Personally I do not believe in free will. I believe we make decisions, but that's not the same as free will. The decision you just made to post on this forum did not come from you, it came from everything that happened to you up to the point where you decided to post on this forum. Yes we make decisions, but it was a process that lead us to those decisions.
To put it another way, you make a decision, for example, to bake a cake, eat only one slice, and put the rest in the fridge. YOU decided to do that, that was YOUR choice. Imagine now that you travelled back in time to just before you baked the cake, and you memory reset to that point in time. What would happen? Well, I'm willing to bet you would bake a cake, eat only one slice, and put the rest in the fridge. What if you did it again? Travelled back in time and reset your memory. Once again, I'm willing to bet you would bake a cake, eat only one slice, and put the rest in the fridge. You could repeat this forever. It wasn't "free will" that made you bake the cake, it was your knowledge or love of baking, your boredom or you desire for cake not free will.
That circumstance has nothing to do with freewill, that is, as far as life changing decisions go, I think that's what this is about.
A soldier who jumps on an explosive device to save his friends would be an act of freewill, I can not imagine any circumstances that would lead one to sacrifice his life (which by the way goes against self preservation which is the strongest instinct man has) except for freewill, to choose to do what is noble and right.
God loves those who believe and those who do not and the same goes for me, you have no choice in this matter. That puts the matter of total free will to rest.
