Do you believe in free will?

[Flobee]

Mate, I don't have to prove anything. I make no claims. I assert only "I don't believe". You're the one making the claims. The burden of proof is 100% yours.

Well were talking about free will here and I began the post by asking do you believe in it and if so how do you account for it as an atheist. So far you haven't been able to give any reasons to support any of your beliefs and you've dodged all my questions to you. Instead of giving me answers you simply say I don't have to give answers. Well ok then don't give them but to me it sounds like your the one not willing to use reason here.

I'm also perfectly comfy saying 'I don't know" when I don't know. I have no need to appeal to the God of gaps,aka argument from incredulity. IE "I'm too ignorant,too stupid or too unimaginative to think of anything else, therefore God did it"

If you are saying "I don't know" then you are in a position similar to religious people. We are saying we don't know for absolutely certain but we believe, we have "faith" that God exists, and this faith is reasonable and based on what I believe is good evidence. To debate the existence of God would be a topic for another post but my point is that we are in similar situations however you simply say that since you can't see God under a micro scope then he doesn't exist where as a believer says science is good but it can't tell us everything and we need to have access to another realm of knowledge, faith and revelation, if we want to get answers for things such as "why do I exist," rather then just getting a physical explanation of our molecules and particles which science gives us.

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I have no way to distinguish between "free will" and the "illusion of free will", so I live my life assuming there is "free will". Unless you have a way to demonstrate that actual "free will" does or does not exists, I can't really rule out either way. For my daily life however it makes no difference if there is an actual free will or not.

I don't really understand this idea of the "illusion of free will."
Now I very much appreciate the last few posts where people have actually stayed on topic and given some good arguments and admitted the logical consequences of their beliefs which are that free will is incompatible with naturalism.
But don't you think that if you are willing to say that we have the illusion of free will then we can just as easily say that anything is an illusion? You could say I don't have a mind I have the illusion of a mind, I don't have sight I have the illusion of sight? Do you believe atheism is true, maybe it just has the illusion of being true?

It's true as leading atheists and the last few posters have agreed free will can't exist in a naturalistic world view but I just don't see how you honestly can't believe in free will? But the simple fact is that it does exist, we do choose.

Do you really think we were all really pre-programmed and determined by physical forces to come and post on these forums? Are you pre-programmed to be an atheist and I'm pre-programed to be a Catholic? If this is true then what exactly would be the physical force that necessarily forces me to come and post on these forums? And if this is true why even bother having these discussions because all the results are just predetermined, but then again I guess as you say we don't have the choice, we are just predetermined to have discussions that don't really matter because our opinions and ideas are all predetermined and uncontrollable so whether I'm right or wrong it doesn't matter because I'm predetermined to be and there's nothing any one can do about it. What a bummer.

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"[...]If determinism is true, we are predictable and not free. If indeterminism is true, our actions are random and our will lacks the control to be held solely morally responsible."

Thanks for finally understanding what your world view means, the other posters before you don't seem to understand this argument. I agree with the argument that if we are nothing more then matter then we are simply guided by physical forces and there is no "soul" that is distinguished from the brain to freely choose things, therefore we couldn't have free will. However free will seems absolutely obvious to me and I don't see how we can explain it away therefore I conclude that the naturalistic world view is incorrect because it fails to properly explain the data of our existence and can't account for free will which seems quite undeniable. I don't think the arguments provided really do anything to do away with free will.

: "[...]You do what you do, in any given situation, because of the way you are.
So in order to be ultimately responsible for what you do, you have to be ultimately responsible for the way you are — at least in certain crucial mental respects.
But you cannot be ultimately responsible for the way you are in any respect at all.
So you cannot be ultimately responsible for what you do."

Isn't this like saying well you were beat by your parents therefore you beat your kids and there's nothing you can do about it because that is the way you are. Yet some abused people go on to abuse there kids and some do not it still very much seems to be a matter of choice.
And even if say I like chocolate more then vanilla because that is simply how my genes are I still have the free choice to choose vanilla over chocolate, I'm not forced to obey my preferences or emotions or anything at all I can always choose.
Look at it in this light according to atheists natural selection is what it's all about, survival of the species, passing on our genes. Yet many (not all) atheists are greatly in support of contraception and abortion, two things for the most part directly opposed to natural selection which prevent the passing on of genes, yet these people freely make these choices on their own even though they conflict with the world view of natural selection.
You can't tell me that the terrorists that flew plains into the trade center weren't responsible for what they did or that Stalin just had to kill millions of people because it is the way he is. I'd like to see a defense lawyer try using that argument and see how far it gets him in court.

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Boy you sound just like another prepositional naturalist who argues from the belief that only the natural world exists and your not willing to consider the possibility of anything more even though there has yet to be a naturalistic explanation for the big bang, fine tuning, the origins of life, consciousness, the moral law, rationality, or free will.

One thing to point out here... we have evidence of nature.

Oh And the whole "we have no naturalistic explanation for..." yadayada is one big argument from incredulity, a logical fallacy.

BTW, we do in fact have naturalist explanations for The origins of life (Abiogenesis), Fine tuning (Multi-verse, Mathematical Necessity) consciousness (monist theory, Metzinger, Spinoza etc.) Morality (Desirism, Moral naturalism, Moral theory of evolution etc) Rationality (Reliablism etc.) and i reject "true free will" as it has not been demonstrated or made logically necessary.

Yes you do have theories about these things but unfortunately none of them work. You say life arouse naturally by pure matter with no intelligent guidance and yet you cannot recreate an intelligent experiment to create life. Multi-verse is a nice theory except it has absolutely no evidence to support it because it's nothing more then speculation. These are topics for another discussion but the point is you don't have a naturalistic explanation you have nothing more then wishful theories that have not proven conclusive in any of those cases.

Even if none of these presented philosophical and scientific theories come to nothing, i'll be resting fucking easy knowing that unlike you I have enough balls to reject the invocation of Magic Man (Aka God) in the face of ambiguity or inability to reach a complete conclusion.

Aren't you doing the same thing by saying free will is an illusion and trying to explain away the perfect fine tuning of the universe by saying well there's an infinity of universes out there that we just can't see. God as well as multiple universes would both be beyond our universe and beyond our ability to study scientifically so your using pure faith on that one.

That's the thing I find most bizarre about theists, you always seems so completely reliant on certainty, to the point where you reject naturalistic explanations that are consistent with reality and entirely sufficient to explain these myriad observations in favor of this invocation of Magic Man or which you have no valid argument in favor of nor evidence indicative of, all in the name of being conclusive - Your illusion that you are able to rationally obtain such certainty makes you foolish, and rather stupid.

Again I think your backwards, you are the one trying to force the evidence into a naturalistic conclusion when it simply can't be done because you are certain that matter is all there is. Yet when matter can't explain phenomenons such as love, beauty, truth, free will, morality etc. you simply say these things aren't real. I guess it makes sense that you don't believe in a God that you can't see or hear since you don't even believe in common sense realities such as free will.