(June 25, 2015 at 6:02 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote:(June 25, 2015 at 3:40 pm)Tonus Wrote: It seems as if you are saying that free will is our ability to make decisions and think for ourselves. It's what drives one person to decide he will be a journalist, and another to decide that she will learn to play the guitar. It's what makes chocolate chip ice cream your favorite dessert, but strawberry cheesecake your husband's preference. It's why you love to wear blue jeans instead of a skirt, or a big floppy hat instead of a baseball cap. Does that sound right? Those are the things that differentiate us from one another. Is that what free will does for us?I'd say it's part of it, yes. Is there something else you had in mind?
I wanted to be sure I understood how you define it. My own view of free will is a bit more nuanced, but it's not fair or useful to ask you to defend your beliefs using my definitions. One more question, if I may: if, at the end of your earthly life, god grants you the gift of life in heaven, what happens to your free will? Do you keep it? If you do, does it work the way it did on earth, or does it change in any way?
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
