Free will

[Ryantology]

Free will is real.
People confuse this by thinking since humans are incapable of doing something out of their boundaries of possible set of actions, they have no free will.

This is the analogical equivalent of saying that a ball inside a fence have no freedom of movement.

When we bring the Christian god into the conversation, the boundaries of possible actions becomes a very important point. There are a lot of sins of a sexual nature which could have all been rendered impossible to commit had our biology been designed to prevent them.

My favorite example is the male hindquarters. It's allegedly a sin for a man to have anal sex with another man, but the only reason it happens is because the male body was designed not just to accommodate this activity, but to make it pleasurable thanks to stimulation of the prostate.

[ErGingerbreadMandude]

Free will is real.
People confuse this by thinking since humans are incapable of doing something out of their boundaries of possible set of actions, they have no free will.

This is the analogical equivalent of saying that a ball inside a fence have no freedom of movement.

No, you're confused, which is obvious by your statement, as to what some of the people here believe about free will.
It is within the boundaries of the possible set of actions that people still have no choice.
It is an illusion due to the complexity of choices within our range.
Even if time cannot be reversed, the idea still proves useful in the fact that there is no theory that seems to disprove that a person could change their mind about what to do next if they were rewound over and over.
A ball inside a fence doesn't disprove it.

Wait, I'm wrong because of the complexity of choices within our range?
What does that even mean

[Shadow_Man]

dyresand,

 
So get this god is all knowing he knew humanity would fall he knows what everyone at any given point and time would be doing something. so even if we wanted to live a "sinless" life it would be purely impossible. Since god would know our actions a head of time that being said free will is just a illusion and were all drones. Free will if a god existed the chirstian god it simply doesn't exist only the illusion of free will does.

All i am saying is if a god existed and knew everything we have no free will we just have the illusion of free will.

You need to do more than just make the assertion that foreknowledge contradicts free will. You need to justify the assertion.

I know that I will go to work tomorrow, but that foreknowledge does not constrain me. When I go to work I will do so of my own free will, enacted at the time. Why is God's foreknowledge any different?

I roll the dice. It could come up any number from 1 to 6, randomly. It comes up 6. Does the fact that it came up 6 make the roll any less random? Now that it came up 6 do we decide that was the only number that could have come up, with no other number possible? No. It was random. Why would God's foreknowledge of the roll make it any different?

Regards,
Shadow_Man

[The Grand Nudger]

Foreknowledge precludes freewill in that nothing else -can- happen, but that which said foreknowledge describes, or else it isn't foreknowledge at all.  No choice can be made, no diverging paths of decision. One stream, one outcome, one conclusion, no deviation.

You don't -know- that you will go to work tomorrow.  You have a reasonable expectation.  However, you may die in your sleep, you may wake up and say "fuck work".  If you -knew- you would go to work tomorrow, that would mean that nothing could happen to you tonight to prevent it, and you -could not- decide otherwise in the morning.

If you had foreknowledge of this, you would be incapable of choosing otherwise and nothing on this earth would be capable of stopping you from getting to work. Do you think that's the case, in your case, or the earth's?

[brewer]

You need to do more than just make the assertion that foreknowledge contradicts free will. You need to justify the assertion.

I know that I will go to work tomorrow, but that foreknowledge does not constrain me. When I go to work I will do so of my own free will, enacted at the time. Why is God's foreknowledge any different?

I roll the dice. It could come up any number from 1 to 6, randomly. It comes up 6. Does the fact that it came up 6 make the roll any less random? Now that it came up 6 do we decide that was the only number that could have come up, with no other number possible? No. It was random. Why would God's foreknowledge of the roll make it any different?

Regards,
Shadow_Man

bold mine

If god knew it would come up six prior to the roll, as it must if god is truly an all knowing god of past, present and future, then any randomness is simply an illusion. It only feels random to you. If it did not come up six then the omniscient god does not exist. You can have one or the other, you can't have both.

[dyresand]

You need to do more than just make the assertion that foreknowledge contradicts free will. You need to justify the assertion.

I know that I will go to work tomorrow, but that foreknowledge does not constrain me. When I go to work I will do so of my own free will, enacted at the time. Why is God's foreknowledge any different?

I roll the dice. It could come up any number from 1 to 6, randomly. It comes up 6. Does the fact that it came up 6 make the roll any less random? Now that it came up 6 do we decide that was the only number that could have come up, with no other number possible? No. It was random. Why would God's foreknowledge of the roll make it any different?

Regards,
Shadow_Man

bold mine

If god knew it would come up six prior to the roll, as it must if god is truly an all knowing god of past, present and future, then any randomness is simply an illusion. It only feels random to you. If it did not come up six then the omniscient god does not exist. You can have one or the other, you can't have both.

Well stated

[Little lunch]

Pool, I'm saying that you don't understand what the alternative idea of having no free will is all about.
You don't even bother to try because your so full of yourself.
Complexity of choices - when you wake up in the morning you seemingly have thousands of things you could do. Eat something, call someone on the phone, do a pee, go for a drive, scratch your bum, watch a movie, go back to sleep and so on. It seems like you have the freedom to make that choice.
But any choice you do make is based on something else. And that something else is based on something else and so on, like a chain reaction in reverse all the way back to your birth.
The complexity of choices gives you the illusion of free will.
Even if you try to do something random, that random choice is always the one you would have made at that time.
I don't know if any of that is true.
However, because you have made no attempt to disprove that theory, it seems evident that you do not understand it.
If you don't agree, give me a reason.
A laughing on the ground emoji is not an answer.

[ErGingerbreadMandude]

Pool, I'm saying that you don't understand what the alternative idea of having no free will is all about.
You don't even bother to try because your so full of yourself.
Complexity of choices - when you wake up in the morning you seemingly have thousands of things you could do. Eat something, call someone on the phone, do a pee, go for a drive, scratch your bum, watch a movie, go back to sleep and so on. It seems like you have the freedom to make that choice.
But any choice you do make is based on something else. And that something else is based on something else and so on, like a chain reaction in reverse all the way back to your birth.
The complexity of choices gives you the illusion of free will.
Even if you try to do something random, that random choice is always the one you would have made at that time.
I don't know if any of that is true.
However, because you have made no attempt to disprove that theory, it seems evident that you do not understand it.
If you don't agree, give me a reason.
A laughing on the ground emoji is not an answer.

I'm sorry but your assumption is wrong.
You think because I have a given set of actions that I could perform like play football, go for a bike ride, go to the beach etc and when I chose to perform any one of these actions it is dependent on my past experience then I have no free will?

How does my actions being dependent on my previous actions have any weight on my ability to choose from a set of actions that I could perform?

[The Grand Nudger]

If your actions are dependent upon something other than your "choosing"...in what way are they free? If you can only turn left, in what sense did you -choose- to turn left?

[JuliaL]

I'm compelled to say that I have free will.


People get upset with me when I claim this is the best of all possible worlds.
AFAIK this is the ONLY possible world at this moment emerging from either deterministic or non-deterministic worlds of the immediate past.
The jury's still out on how much is deterministic and how much non.
But at this moment, the world is pretty much fixed, no choices allowed.
Therefore it is both the best and worst of all possible worlds. Admitting of no others