Free Will, Decision making and religion

[Ignorant]

Are you done with the argument from incredulity now?

I didn't even realize I was making an argument. Can you point to where I did?

I was merely trying to put the implications of the idea into my own words. Trying to step into someone else's worldview is a mental exercise that I find fruitful.

Or, in short, "I think, therefore I am" regardless of what kind of "I" I am

Right, but then that is the fundamental principle from which Descartes demonstrates (or at least thinks he demonstrates) the existence of a unifying/identifying principle of "action" in human beings, a thing that changes under one aspect but remains the same under another, viz. Descartes's "I" which he called a soul. That is the antithesis of the behaviorist position which questions the reality of free human agency.

In other words, if everything moves constantly in a determined series of cause and effect, then even the phrase "I think" is not a single moment in the series, but rather itself is a long line of cause and effect. The "I" which pronounces the "I" and the "I" which pronounces the "think" are not the same, nor are either the same as the "I" which preceded the uttering. Sure, some "thing" exists in each instance, but it is not the same thing in each of them. In which case "I think" is also an illusory phrase.

There is no "I" that thinks. Thought itself is merely a causally predetermined "behavior" or natural effect of the universe; not very much different than photosynthesis or getting a Royal Flush. That is not to say it isn't true (which would require an argument). These are merely the implications which I find to be the case if it were true.

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We may feel like we have free will. This isn't justification for saying we do, especially when we can't even define it or test whether a person has it or not.

Sure. All I said was that, if this is true, then that "feeling" of freely directing our own actions, and even the "feeling" of having an identity, is an enormous illusion (I said delusion but people don't like that my use of that word). That is an incredible thing if it is true, isn't it?