RE: Do you believe in free will?
September 7, 2010 at 1:10 am
(This post was last modified: September 7, 2010 at 1:18 am by everythingafter.)
(September 6, 2010 at 3:08 pm)Flobee Wrote: I'm just looking to get some insights as to how most of you feel about free will and how exactly it fits into the materialist world view.
We have free will to believe or not, but that free will is our own and not handed down by a god.
(September 6, 2010 at 3:08 pm)Flobee Wrote: If we are composed of nothing other than matter then doesn't that mean all that we are as humans is a bunch of chemicals and particles being governed by physical laws?
That's about right.
(September 6, 2010 at 3:08 pm)Flobee Wrote: Do we have no more control over ourselves then a rock does when falling down a hill, or a computer governed completely by our programming?
Well, you have your mind, of course. I would hope that means something to you. Rocks and computers aren't quite analogous to the human mind, or for that matter, any other intelligent species in the animal kingdom.
(September 6, 2010 at 11:11 pm)Flobee Wrote: As I quoted above Francis Crick and a great many other leading atheists seem to disagree with you about the existence of free will because they realize that to admit that we truly have free will is to admit that we are actually a person with an immaterial soul and not just a collection of molecules.
Free will is not predicated on an immaterial soul, for to assume such would be a fallacy on your part. Extinguish the gods, and we have free will to act as we choose, as a thinking species: we can act within the framework of established law or we can act outside of established law. We can choose to do either as long as we don't care what the consequences may be. Each choice will have its consequences. Actually, if you follow Christian doctrine, free will is elusive and nonexistent altogether (I've made this point elsewhere on these forums, so just do a search).
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We have lingered in the chambers of the sea | By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown | Till human voices wake us, and we drown. — T.S. Eliot
"... man always has to decide for himself in the darkness, that he must want beyond what he knows. ..." — Simone de Beauvoir
"As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again." — Albert Camus, "The Stranger"
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We have lingered in the chambers of the sea | By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown | Till human voices wake us, and we drown. — T.S. Eliot
"... man always has to decide for himself in the darkness, that he must want beyond what he knows. ..." — Simone de Beauvoir
"As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again." — Albert Camus, "The Stranger"
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