(December 27, 2012 at 8:16 am)Brian37 Wrote:(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.
Well, in addition to the "free will" necessary for the priests to say god is justified to condemn you to hell (#1 below), there is also the legal meaning(#2). The second sense of free will is indifferent to what processes lead to the choice you make, but only that the choice was the result of your process and not mine.
free will
n
1. (Philosophy)
a. the apparent human ability to make choices that are not externally determined
b. the doctrine that such human freedom of choice is not illusory Compare determinism
c. (as modifier) a free-will decision
2. the ability to make a choice without coercion he left of his own free will: I did not influence him
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003
(December 27, 2012 at 8:16 am)Brian37 Wrote: 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.
But are you content with the childish, religious alternative of saying "we don't make choices"? The actual state of affairs would seem to be more complex than either of those alternatives. I mean, some actions rather than their alternatives get made. Can we at least agree that the processes which lead to the alternatives which become actualized are on-board, or do determinists truly find puppet strings leading away from the individual to ... what? If we are not the choice makers, who or what is? It does no good to kick the problems of agenthood down the road. Or are we and every decision emanating from us simply a force of nature like those hurricanes, complex as hell but ultimately traceable to external conditions? (The ghost inside my machine says that doesn't fit.)
