Philosophy: Do you believe in free will?

[Honoko]

@Honoko: I can't really see why or what your interjecting against. Are you saying that "god" gave us free will?

I wasn't for or against any of your arguments. Merely making a statement of my point of view. And yes, I do believe that God gave us free will.

And just to be clear, it's definitely not my intention to use this thread as a platform to evangelize =P You asked a philosophical question on free will and I'm just contributing according to how I think about it. That being said, any further discussion revolving around God and free will would be just my take on what I think it is. If you disagree, that's fine.

Anyways, for or what it is, I'm enjoying this thread so far ^^v

[el_boss]

And just to be clear, it's definitely not my intention to use this thread as a platform to evangelize =P You asked a philosophical question on free will and I'm just contributing according to how I think about it. That being said, any further discussion revolving around God and free will would be just my take on what I think it is. If you disagree, that's fine.

I just wanted to be sure on where your standing. You are more than welcome to talk about the religious aspect of this. I have no intention to argue against your beliefs but I might say why I don't believe in them.

I don't believe in a god because I feel that it's just an excuse to bring attention away from humans. When something good happens it's like, "oh praise the lord" when something bad happens it's "god works in mysterious ways" or "it was gods will". It's just a way for people not to take responsibility for what happens. I'm often thinking, "when is this religioun business going to fade away". I know it's a little weird, but religion feels like such an ancient idea.

The reason I'm saying this is that this sort of thinking comes up alot within philosophy. People come up with advanced moral and ethical systems instead of just taking responsibility.

[Yukimura]

@ Hisenburg: I totally forgot about that, with that then I guess I don't think anyone could know what's going to happen because they can't obtain a full picture of the state of the universe. However, I still thik the Universe is deterministic, Hisenburg just guarentees that a perfect illusion of free will exists because it can neither be proven or disproven. Thus all you can do is believe in it's existance or not.

But you do have to give God credit for ALWAYS getting involved in philisophical debates.

What's the belief that there is a God but that said God doesn't matter to you at all, I have that one. It stems from the fact that I can only justify my belief in God through the fear and ritualism instilled into me by being dragged to church every week as a child. I'm so far gone that I can't dismiss the possibility and thus I believe in God. However I don't really have much faith, which is what I tried to tell my parents when I realized what forced belief does to an idea.

Anyway, God said X, is just as valid of an armchair philosophy as most other ideas on free will, however some armchair philosophies do have so actual relevace to the observable universe, and I tihnk that's why the God solution is falling out of favor in the world/America (Damned international students shattering my misconceptions)

[Terracosmo]

What's the belief that there is a God but that said God doesn't matter to you at all, I have that one. It stems from the fact that I can only justify my belief in God through the fear and ritualism instilled into me by being dragged to church every week as a child. I'm so far gone that I can't dismiss the possibility and thus I believe in God. However I don't really have much faith, which is what I tried to tell my parents when I realized what forced belief does to an idea.

I can SO relate to this!
I'm not religious at all, I never pray, in fact I often claim that God doesn't exist. Nontheless there is a part of me which doesn't "dare" to go against "God's will" too much. An example of this would be that I could never write heretic lyrics, something that I have been asked to do since I'm part of a black metal band. There is just a part of me which refuses, even though I don't necessarily believe in the first place!

It's weird, really.

[complich8]

I'm gonna go back to a tweaked version of Leibniz's explanation on the whole God thing.

Every contingent thing has to have a cause. The cause has to be either another contengent thing, or a noncontingent thing. Matter, itself, seems to me to be a contingent thing -- it doesn't _have_ to be there in any capacity to cause something.

If a contingent thing caused something, then the contingent thing itself had to have a cause. So there's two possible chains of events. (arrows represent "caused by")

...<-contingent thing<-contingent thing<-contingent thing<-contingent thing

(an infinite chain of contingent things, or "turtles all the way down")

noncontingent thing<-contingent things<-...<-contingent thing

(an arbitrarily long chain of contingent things caused by a noncontingent thing).

The question, then, is "is it the case that the universe has simply always existed, or did it come into existence at some point". Thermodynamics seems to empirically point to the idea that the universe was created at some point, which means that at some point no noncontingent things existed. It's the question of a first cause.

If you can find a loophole and reverse the second law of thermodynamics (causing entropy to decrease), then it's possible for the universe's existence to be that noncontingent thing, and simply have always been.

As for what theists think about God and Free Will, there's so many possible explanations that make the concepts compatible. Like I said, you can just be a nondeterminist like Berkeley, or you can wave your hands about the Compatibilism doctrine of Leibniz and other determinists or employ another soft determinist technique.

The thing about free will is, if you view the mind as a pure machine, then there's no possible such thing. If you view the mind as something beyond machinery, and equate what thinks in us with a soul (removing it from the realm of determinism), you can still have it even in a deterministic universe with an omniscient god.

But if we're nothing but very complex deterministic machines, and that includes the mind, then the whole concept of free will is completely pointless.

[masamuneehs]

i need to do a more thorough read through, but I'm liking this discussion quite a bit.

Free will? Free in what sense? Free to do whatever you please? I doubt that. Every person imposes limits and inhibitions on themselves, in sense restricting their own free will. Some restrictions are physical and others are mental/emotional
(Ex. Physical limit on free will: I could choose right now to drink 40 beers, but I wouldn't get past 20.)
(Ex. Mental limit on free will: I could choose to go out into the street and cat-call all the fine ass women I see walking past. But something inside of me just can't whistle when it comes down to it. I CAN physically whistle, but some part of me just won't allow me to.)

Do those restrictions/limits that you put on yourself count as against free will?

I like to think that free will is the idea that you can do whatever you actually can bring yourself to do in situations where you have the chance to do said 'thing'. (Yeah that sounds repetitive, but all 3 must be met, at least in my mind, to constitue an action done under free will.)