(December 26, 2012 at 1:45 am)Jaxl Wrote: In the context of atheism, is there such a thing as free will? Or are all decisions made simply the result of neurons, dendrites, action potentials, and molecules bouncing around in my head?
If there is no free will, does this mean all actions committed are simply reactions to what has occurred around you rather than an actual conscious decision to do something?
No, there is no such thing as free will.
In science, and even many atheists have a hard time understanding the following.
Nature and the universe operate with BOTH order and random, they are not separate, but overlap.
Take a hurricane for example. The "order" part is the climate and conditions that we observe that determine that it will happen. The "random" part is the size of it, it's path, and the amount of rain.
A sperm and egg make a baby(order). Millions of sperm compete for one egg(random so we cant determine which one will).
This does not make humans godless robots as the believers would have you think. It merely means that there is nothing magic about life. There is both order and random in life so it depends what we are talking about.
So no, there is no such thing as "free will". There are merely things we do or don't do and our behaviors are based on both order and random based on multiple factors such as genes, upbringing, environment and conditions of the moment, and even unexpected sudden input.
"Free will" is the childish religious version of merely saying "we make choices", which is nothing close to the reality of evolution which operates on both order and random.
