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  #11  
Old 05-06-2008, 06:49 PM
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Originally Posted by ericoh2 View Post
Under the Christian belief system total free will is not possible. Free will states that an individual has the ability to make a decision without being controlled or programmed in any way. First of all we have to identify what the term "self" or "individual" is referring to. For the most part in the Christian faith the indivual is thought to be a combination of the soul, genetics and enviromental influence. They believe the soul is given to you after conception by God and you receive your DNA layout from your parents. If this were true than these two factors are completly out of your hands and are decided by factors that you could not control. Even the experiences that you have are decided by these factors. If you were born 500 years ago you would probably be a completly different person simply because of your enviroment.
This means that in the traditional Christian faith there is no real purpose for existence. If you are "good" you were made to be "good", if your are not then you were not made to be. Either way their wouldn't be a point for existence. The only way true free will is possible is if you are one with the eternal. Simply a point of consciousness within the infinite ocean of existence.

I hope to get some good replies, have a great day.
I have personally been debating free will without mixxing chistianity or indoctrination in at all. All social behavior can be modeled as an emergent process, and the perception of free will external to causality is essentially a gift of ignorance. You percieve that everything your doing is because you are choosing to do it and hold the illusion that at any moment you could just change anything you wanted about yourself. Free will is an illusion and we are all essentially robots following predetermined code based on our current environment with our current upbringing code. Don't generalize too much, two brothers can be raised in the same household and go to the same schools yet have completely different experiences and radically different equipment.

Our brains are constructed of synapses that process our input signals and then trigger a reaction and work much like a modern computer. We have desires because those desires were imprinted from some external source. For example you may want to go to Chili's more often then other restaurants and would still believe you chose to go there while denying their monthly blitz ad campaign had anything to do with influencing you to go there.

Here's a quote from Spinoza on the subject:
“The mind is determined to this or that choice by a cause which is also determined by another cause, and this again by another, and so on ad infinitum,” Spinoza wrote. “This doctrine teaches us to hate no one, to despise no one, to mock no one, to be angry with no one, and to envy no one.”
So you may not currently be able to predict what will happened at any given moment but I do not want to mistake programming and randomness for free will.

I am truly personally debating this with myself and when the mood strikes me I research it and take notes and try to come to some conclusions... but I am just debating it.

It is a very interesting subject. I know there are some transhumanists here so one of their trademarks if you take a person and switch one neuron with a machine that performs the same function and that person acted and reacted and even felt exactly the same is that person still human?

So take it farther, replace another and another until they are all replaced. Essentially you have a very, very complex machine but essentially it is a machine and it is running its code. To say it has free will one way or the other may just be a fundamental disconnect when it comes to explaining or understanding free will.
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  #12  
Old 05-06-2008, 09:43 PM
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Originally Posted by BalanceFx View Post
Essentially you have a very, very complex machine but essentially it is a machine and it is running its code.
Science has yet to figure out what consciousness is. Until it does, it's rather presumptious to make such a conclusion. But assuming it's right, the Chili's ads and the impressions it made are all predetermined. You post was predetermined. This response was inevitable. War is inevitable and opinions about it are meaningless. You are not you and I am not me: we are mechanisms. Nothing more.
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  #13  
Old 05-06-2008, 10:49 PM
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"free will" is just an excuse, "when you say to a religious person "oh my how can there be a god if things like this happens" they say its not gods doing we have "free will" its a kind of cure all answer to the death of millions from starvation, famine or war.
and jews and muslims dont have such "free" will they have Laws from their gods that make them not so free
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  #14  
Old 05-07-2008, 04:44 AM
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Originally Posted by Rolling_Stone View Post
Science has yet to figure out what consciousness is. Until it does, it's rather presumptious to make such a conclusion. But assuming it's right, the Chili's ads and the impressions it made are all predetermined. You post was predetermined. This response was inevitable. War is inevitable and opinions about it are meaningless. You are not you and I am not me: we are mechanisms. Nothing more.
Not neccesarily. I don't think that was what Spinoza was driving at. All social behavior can be modeled as an emergent process. External influences can greatly change that process but still don't seem to qualify as proof of free will. I debate whether I have free will all the time. Put in X situation at X time in relation to how I feel and my past experiences and taking some type of action... is that action a free will or simply me following some predefined actions of which I could take no other and then seeing my actions as that of free will? So its not so much that everything is preordained or inevitable but something else.
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  #15  
Old 05-07-2008, 06:22 AM
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Originally Posted by BalanceFx View Post
Not neccesarily. I don't think that was what Spinoza was driving at. All social behavior can be modeled as an emergent process. External influences can greatly change that process but still don't seem to qualify as proof of free will. I debate whether I have free will all the time. Put in X situation at X time in relation to how I feel and my past experiences and taking some type of action... is that action a free will or simply me following some predefined actions of which I could take no other and then seeing my actions as that of free will? So its not so much that everything is preordained or inevitable but something else.

do you ever think some of you guys make too much out of it,
does it really matter?

"put in x situation at X time in relation to how i feel etc etc etc,

i am not having a go i am just thinking its all bollocks!
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  #16  
Old 05-07-2008, 07:31 AM
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Originally Posted by ericoh2 View Post
Under the Christian belief system total free will is not possible. Free will states that an individual has the ability to make a decision without being controlled or programmed in any way. First of all we have to identify what the term "self" or "individual" is referring to. For the most part in the Christian faith the indivual is thought to be a combination of the soul, genetics and enviromental influence. They believe the soul is given to you after conception by God and you receive your DNA layout from your parents. If this were true than these two factors are completly out of your hands and are decided by factors that you could not control. Even the experiences that you have are decided by these factors. If you were born 500 years ago you would probably be a completly different person simply because of your enviroment.
This means that in the traditional Christian faith there is no real purpose for existence. If you are "good" you were made to be "good", if your are not then you were not made to be. Either way their wouldn't be a point for existence. The only way true free will is possible is if you are one with the eternal. Simply a point of consciousness within the infinite ocean of existence.

I hope to get some good replies, have a great day.
In Christian thinking free will is making a decision against God's will ie sin. In the Christian belief system the believer makes Jesus Lord and His will is not to sin. However the possibility to sin is still there because the believer can take back control at any time.

There is no way that kind of free will could exist because it would have to exist outside of God's influence and nothing is outside of God's influence.

This does not fit my idea of a Christian view of self. My self is made in God's image and therefore is a spirit which can inhabit a body or not. The spirit is breathed into the body and it becomes a living soul. The self is within the soul but it is not the soul.

It depends on the definition of person. According to the first definition of a living soul you would be correct but according to the definition of an entity having personality you would not be right except for the fact that a person can grow in his understanding of things over time.

This conclusion doesn't follow from your premise. There can be at lest two purposes for my existence (carnal life): 1. What I feel I need to learn and accomplish; 2. What God intends for me to learn and accomplish.

The Apostle Paul does give some credence to this view but I take exception to it. It proposes that God acts against Himself and that is absurd.

This is definitely not a Christian view. We do agree that the way to be free from sin is to be in perfect harmony with God but that does remove the freedom to sin.
There is a great deal more to life than questions of right or wrong. I can choose to wear black shirts or white shirts and not have it be a question of right or wrong (although my wife sometimes might object to my color combinations).
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  #17  
Old 05-07-2008, 10:20 AM
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Originally Posted by Muffled View Post
In Christian thinking free will is making a decision against God's will ie sin. In the Christian belief system the believer makes Jesus Lord and His will is not to sin. However the possibility to sin is still there because the believer can take back control at any time.

There is no way that kind of free will could exist because it would have to exist outside of God's influence and nothing is outside of God's influence.

This does not fit my idea of a Christian view of self. My self is made in God's image and therefore is a spirit which can inhabit a body or not. The spirit is breathed into the body and it becomes a living soul. The self is within the soul but it is not the soul.

It depends on the definition of person. According to the first definition of a living soul you would be correct but according to the definition of an entity having personality you would not be right except for the fact that a person can grow in his understanding of things over time.

This conclusion doesn't follow from your premise. There can be at lest two purposes for my existence (carnal life): 1. What I feel I need to learn and accomplish; 2. What God intends for me to learn and accomplish.

The Apostle Paul does give some credence to this view but I take exception to it. It proposes that God acts against Himself and that is absurd.

This is definitely not a Christian view. We do agree that the way to be free from sin is to be in perfect harmony with God but that does remove the freedom to sin.
There is a great deal more to life than questions of right or wrong. I can choose to wear black shirts or white shirts and not have it be a question of right or wrong (although my wife sometimes might object to my color combinations).

The last quote that you addressed does not belong to any Christian view that I am aware of. I was simply stating that if you hold this belief then free will can be possible.
You probably didn't see this response that I gave to someone earlier. Here it is, Hopefully this will give you a better understanding to what I was trying to get at. Thanks for your response though.

The Point that I was trying to get across has nothing to do with the actions of a person. My attempt here was to identify "who you are." If your name is Mike, just exactly who do you think Mike is? In Christianity Mike would be a being that consisted of his God given soul at birth, his genetics given to him at birth and the environmental factors that shaped him. When you analyze this scenario you realize in the Christian faith Mike, as a being, would consist of three factors that he had no control over. Yes you are correct that the actions that this individual take are of his own choosing but who is making these decisions? In Christianity the answer is a being that was programmed to make them. To them God gave this particular body, a particular soul, that existed in a particular environment none of which Mike had any control over.
My main message here is that there must be a defined being in order for free will to truly exist. Not a being that was made and programmed to be a certain way, that is not free will. Free will in its truest sens must ultimately come from an eternal existence.
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Old 05-07-2008, 01:34 PM
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I believe in free will. If there wasn't any free will, in my opinion, everyone would believe in God.
I have a hard time believing that God would have some people saved and separate from others for no good reason. I believe that we unite or separate from God and that God gives us that choice.
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Mat 5:45 so that you may become sons of your Father in Heaven. For He makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

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Old 05-07-2008, 07:37 PM
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Originally Posted by kai View Post
do you ever think some of you guys make too much out of it,
does it really matter?
Yes or no, depending on whether free will exists. If "no," then it doesn't matter because the idea and its fallout are mechanistic and inevitable. If the answer is "yes" and people are taught to believe the answer is "no," the repercussions could be catastrophic for society and civilization.