Free will and Fate (theist, verse, philosophy, science, Articles)

[IndigoChild]

This is part of a discussion a friend and I were having:

Kat: There are no coincidences, no accidents. But there's no Fate, either. Wrap your brain around that one!

Torp: I had already come to that conclusion. I'm of the opinion that the Universe acts in a mostly deterministic manner, even among sentient rational beings. Saying that "free will" is the ability to "freely choose" one's actions makes no sense by definition, if it is thought to contradict determinism. Unless the human mind can act truly randomly -- which would entail it having a cache of radioactive particles and making decisions based on their decay, which according to neuroscience, probably is not true -- then every decision we make is deterministic, happening according to a structured (if complex) pattern of factors. Rather than defining free will as the ability to be truly random (which typical definitions of free will ultimately come down to), I see it as simply constituting the ability to understand one's own decisions and actions, before, during, and after the process of committing them. (This was the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, an early pantheist.) We're not robots or automatons, because this understanding can influence future actions.

(Still Torp) So there's no fate, because by this definition, there is free will. And there are no coincidences, because all is deterministic. Ok, I wrapped my brain around it

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Kat

[The Black Whirlwind]

you are right about there being no coincidences, and no accidents. but there is fate. we have to make it ourselves.