Determinism and fatalism are concepts that I am not willing to accept for two reasons; a support of human free will and a more meta issue with the arguments themselves.
In support of free will, given the massive amounts of freedom of choice we have (now more than ever, it seems), the different choices made by identically determined individuals, the actual rational contemplation of which we are possessed and so on, I find determinism and fatalism at once unpalatable and in need of much greater consideration before it becomes anything near acceptable.
Secondly, the argument for determinism is piss-weak, we act differently to natural phenomena and we are by no means set into a series of unchangable events. The dialectic issue that I take with this is that the fundamental and quintessential defence of it is 'but you're determined to say that' and no argument to the contrary seems to penetrate the infernally thick skull of a determinist, especially *shudders* a Nietzschean. Just as a christian and marxist won't concede their fundamental assertion, it is simply bad disputational etiquette.
In support of free will, given the massive amounts of freedom of choice we have (now more than ever, it seems), the different choices made by identically determined individuals, the actual rational contemplation of which we are possessed and so on, I find determinism and fatalism at once unpalatable and in need of much greater consideration before it becomes anything near acceptable.
Secondly, the argument for determinism is piss-weak, we act differently to natural phenomena and we are by no means set into a series of unchangable events. The dialectic issue that I take with this is that the fundamental and quintessential defence of it is 'but you're determined to say that' and no argument to the contrary seems to penetrate the infernally thick skull of a determinist, especially *shudders* a Nietzschean. Just as a christian and marxist won't concede their fundamental assertion, it is simply bad disputational etiquette.
Religion is an attempt to answer the philosophical questions of the unphilosophical man.
