Do you believe in free will?

[black36]

to admit that we truly have free will is to admit that we are actually a person with an immaterial soul

That strikes me as a non sequitur.


In the news today a man was arrested after leading police on a chase while driving a dump truck. Was that little exercise of "free will" due to the fact of an "immaterial soul" or due to the fact that he's an idiot?


I've frequently seen outlandish assertions...usually disguised as "philosophy." Meaningless.

Idiot or not, he still chose to drive the dump truck.

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Yeah it's strange isn't it that computers were created by intelligent beings and according to you the human brain was created by pure intelligence and yet the brain far exceeds any technology or human invention ever intelligently designed.
But if the brain was not the act of intelligence what reason do we have for trusting it? And I mean if we don't really have free will and our brains were created by unintelligence and we are not really guided by intelligence we are simply being controlled by deterministic natural laws I just don't see why we should trust anything.

You must have missed my meaning. I didn't say the human brain was created by "pure intelligence," unless by that term you mean selective "intelligence" inherent in natural selection. Human brains came about — I wouldn't like to say "created" — by the same natural forces as every other brain in the animal kingdom. Some brains, indeed, can't be trusted (terrorists, extremists), while others, generally law-abiding citizens can, until they give us a reason not to trust them. Nonbelievers have free will to do whatever they want as long as they accept the positive or negative consequences. Indeed, it's in their best interests to act as polite and civil members of society, but they are free to carry on with any other behavior if they wish.

Believers, on the other hand, don't have free will because, at least from the Christian view, you either believe and have eternal life or don't believe and perish in eternal separation from God. There are no other options. You can't "opt out" as it were of the whole eternal life thing and simply choose to die a mortal death like dogs or cats, for even nonbelievers, according to doctrine, are eternal beings as well ... it's just that their eternity will be filled with weeping and gnashing of teeth. As the popular mural goes: "Heaven or Hell. It's your choice." While this presents the illusion of some kind of free will, it's not really free will because of the lack of a third or fourth or fifth option. God doesn't really let us choose, for the consequences and causes of each possible choice predate the choice itself. "Created sick, but commanded to be made well ..."

Actually, the Bible teaches that we ALL freely do and will reject God, if left to our own wills. The ones who choose God, God has intervened, so now they freely choose Him. In other words, no choice can be made without bias. Basically, we choose what we desire. We are slaves to our desires. God simply changes the desire in some.