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Free Will

Fool

ALL in all
Premium Member
Two equal forces pushing against each other don't move. That's called a 'deadlock.'

If there is nothing to break the deadlock, there is no decision made. You need something to break the deadlock, whether that be some factor that determines a greater force, or spontaneity.
in the absolute there is no deadlock. the absolute is service to self and all as self, there is no difference between the two. paradox. like yin and yang.


the negative, or service to self, can continually evolve and gain power up to and only to the 6th level. it can go no higher but it can regress and evolve again, infinitely back and forth. as long as it wants to maintain its individuality.
It's obvious shunyadragon has very little understanding of determinism, ("It is possible that different possible choices have equal deterministic value,") so I wouldn't expect he'll understand of your point. But I have to give you credit for tryin'.

.


free will is never determined by external causes. free will is determined by internal choices. sin, ignorance, is an excuse to act apart from love. love is a state of mind, as is fear and hate. how one decides/determines to respond to them are solely the choice of the respondents consciousness.
 

Sleeppy

Fatalist. Christian. Pacifist.
free will is never determined by external causes. free will is determined by internal choices. sin, ignorance, is an excuse to act apart from love. love is a state of mind, as is fear and hate. how one decides/determines to respond to them are solely the choice of the respondents consciousness.

Free will is an illusion.
 

Fool

ALL in all
Premium Member
Free will is an illusion.

everything changes, yes.

that is what an illusion is. it's something that doesn't have a definite form, or definite action, but it definitely exists.

because it changes doesn't mean it doesn't exist. it is a phenomena.
 
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Hawkins

Well-Known Member
Is free will basically the idea of an open mind, or free spirit?

Freewill is about the human ability to react to the environment along the time axis without being pre-programmed. Time itself may well be a delusion even in terms of science. Thus freewill may also considered a delusion in terms of how it can be accessed by someone who can live outside our time axis.
 

Sleeppy

Fatalist. Christian. Pacifist.
everything changes, yes.

that is what an illusion is. it's something that doesn't have a definite form, or definite action, but it definitely exists.

because it changes doesn't mean it doesn't exist. it is a phenomena.

Why did you associate 'non-existence' with 'illusion'?

It exists, but not as perceived by perspectives within time's constraints. It certainly serves its purpose.

The perception however exists only alongside ignorance; in the absence of ignorance there is only what was, what is, and what will be- and they are not separate. They appear separate, because you are a child of the Most High, being given an ever-increasing inheritance of knowledge. You are able to err, saying this is what should, what could, or what would have been.

The name 'I Am; I Will Be What I Will Be' is a sign you should be aware of incessantly.
 
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Kelly of the Phoenix

Well-Known Member
Is free will basically the idea of an open mind, or free spirit?
Doesn't sound accurate to me. Free will is more like stripping cause and effect out of your choices. We can do it, but it's not reality. We have will but it's never free.

Free will is an impossible objective unless one lives in the wild where there are no man-made laws and such places do not exist where one can do as one pleases.
Still a slave to laws of nature, though.

Yes there is most often a cultural standard for what is right, but most if not all are conditioned culturally to 'what is right,' even those who claim to be open minded or free spirits,or possibly claim to be 'enlightened.'
Exactly, like people who think kiddie concentration camps are perfectly moral. They will scream loudly about their piety despite them doing horrendous things.

the golden rule, or law of reciprocity, is found in many cultures.
And there are lots of sick people out there who SHOULDN'T be treating others like they want to be treated.

only when the idea is tested does it appear. so then all states are possible but not all states are being manifested until choice is made
But choice didn't keep the cat dead or alive. Presence or absence of air holes did. :p

If 'will' were not 'free,' no coercion or influence would be required.
It still would. Our nervous systems have thresholds where they don't fire until a threshold is reached. Some need more to reach the threshold than others.

that doesn't eliminate the banker's free will
His values regarding money and family and life in general will dictate his answer.

Not logically, though. Logically, we can only want what it is possible to want.
But if humans are ignorant of what is possible, impossible things can be wanted.

The question is unresolved.
The question will always be unresolved. We lack the free will to resolve it. :)

We lack knowledge, allowing us to think something isn't an effect when it really is. When Ian Malcolm is lecturing Ellie Sadler about Chaos Theory in Jurassic Park, the drop of water depends on many factors, only a few of which he actually mentions. Sure, her skin's texture counts, but also the properties of the fluid itself, how he applied the drop, etc.

I was watching this episode of the Good Place where the characters debate the idea of free will. No one discussed the irony of them being scripted characters in a tv show. They have NO CHOICE but to say what the characters are going to say. If actors ad lib, that's not choice either, because the option to ad lib has to be present.

Job does not seem to know why his tragedies are happening to him. He accepts it as a mystery and yet we the audience can read the prologue and the scenes of which he is unaware. WE know why it happened, but Job doesn't.

I'm playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey. There are choices all over the place and many affect the ending. No matter what choices I have, the characters have to be capable of making that choice and my choices are based on how I like to play games and if I got spoiled the endings, how to reach those endings.

Why, people can possibly reason through the possible choices allowable that have been limited by determinism.
Indiana Jones is faced with a swordsman. He is scripted to fight the guy. He ends up shooting the guy because Harrison Ford had diarrhea and needed to end the scene quickly. Ford made a choice, sorta, but really his intestines made his choice for him.
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
Doesn't sound accurate to me. Free will is more like stripping cause and effect out of your choices. We can do it, but it's not reality. We have will but it's never free.

The Laws of nature, chain of outcomes of cause and effect, evolution has conditioned humans like all life,which limits possible choices,culture constrains choices. All these factors remain regardless of whether free will exists or not and not stripped away. In compatiblism and other views that allow the compatibility of determinism and free will consider the possible freewill choices constrained by deterministic factors, Dennett proposes very little room for free will he calls wiggle room.
 

Willamena

Just me
Premium Member
Doesn't sound accurate to me. Free will is more like stripping cause and effect out of your choices. We can do it, but it's not reality. We have will but it's never free.
Free will is more commonly self-determination, which means that there is a clear cause of your choices. Yourself.
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
Free will is more commonly self-determination, which means that there is a clear cause of your choices. Yourself.

Actually, what we call self-determination may be more attributes of human survival in group determinism, though I believe there is an element in self-determination that may be attributes of our intellectual rational ability to possibly make free will decisions. I believe this ability is a potential and by and large not remotely exercised by most humans.

I want to emphasize that I only consider free will a possibility in terms of human potential.
 
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shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
Freewill is about the human ability to react to the environment along the time axis without being pre-programmed. Time itself may well be a delusion even in terms of science. Thus freewill may also considered a delusion in terms of how it can be accessed by someone who can live outside our time axis.

Your conclusions represent the fallacy 'non sequitor,' Whether there is or is not 'real' time has no relationship to whether there is free will or not.
 

Vaderecta

Active Member
Is free will basically the idea of an open mind, or free spirit?

Some people might have free will... But would you want anyone to have free will? Think about what you are asking... Someone wants something so they should be free to do it... whatever it takes to get it. They have free will right?
 
The concept of free will in my opinion is larger than your OP and the replies I have seen so far. Free will supposes that the universe is not pre-determined.

There is a basic premise, which is that free will cannot coexist with an omniscient being. If something out there (let’s call it “God”) knows what you’re going to do or think next, or even what your great-grand-child will think or do next one century from now, then everything that we think we are doing is simply predetermined fate. If it can be read ahead of time, then you were not actually making any spontaneous decisions that were not predictable.
Conversely, if you have an idea pop into your head, and some “God” says, “Wow! I didn’t know he was going to think that!”, then that entity is NOT an all knowing entity, and while it may be a god-like being, it is definitively NOT The God.

Additionally, while obliterating the possibility of a universal God, free will would also eliminate the possibility of a purely physical universe. If the motion of every atom and electron and quark is already set up throughout the universe, and all particles are subject to laws of physics, then where they go and how they interact (including with the sodium and potassium channels in the neurons of your brain) are all knowable (even though we currently couldn’t begin to fathom how). What you choose to eat for lunch today could have been influence by how a photon bounced off a hydrogen atom in the vicinity of venus yesterday.
True free will suggests (demands) the presence of some sort of undefinable “spirit” outside of your body/brain which is able to influence your brain, and yet is not influenced by physical matter and energy within this universe.

giphy.gif

;)

God has control at all times and knows cycles of eventualitites. For instance, he knows that you're stuck in a loop and you'll fall from heaven, as a group of sub-processes you'll work to figure out the cause and its remedy. Then heaven will be re-established and the fall will occur again. SO, he knows whats gonna happen.

He knows in the linear "resume", there are two eventualities, continuation or collapse. SO before y'all wreck ****, he loops time to prevent it then resumes it when yall are done ****ing up.

SO, you have free will until he has to take it away to keep you from collapsing his creation.

predetermination and free will coexist.
 

Fool

ALL in all
Premium Member
Some people might have free will... But would you want anyone to have free will? Think about what you are asking... Someone wants something so they should be free to do it... whatever it takes to get it. They have free will right?
free will doesn't have to conflict with the free will of all, it's like the golden rule that self chooses to follow.
 

Nakosis

Non-Binary Physicalist
Premium Member
Is free will basically the idea of an open mind, or free spirit?

In the sense I think you are using the words "free" and "will" I would say it is a product of an unattached mind.

Basically free will to to desire/wish without restrictions.

Would you consider an open mind or free spirit equivalent to an unattached mind? Maybe.

A lot of restrictions we put on ourselves. Because of whatever we think we ought to desire, ought not to desire.
Attachment causes desire. Desire controls our will. The less desire the more conscious control we have over our will.

I doubt any can have a completely open mind/free spirit but one can have a more open mind, a freer spirit.
 

Daemon Sophic

Avatar in flux
God has control at all times and knows cycles of eventualitites. For instance, he knows that you're stuck in a loop and you'll fall from heaven, as a group of sub-processes you'll work to figure out the cause and its remedy. Then heaven will be re-established and the fall will occur again. SO, he knows whats gonna happen.

He knows in the linear "resume", there are two eventualities, continuation or collapse. SO before y'all wreck ****, he loops time to prevent it then resumes it when yall are done ****ing up.

SO, you have free will until he has to take it away to keep you from collapsing his creation.

predetermination and free will coexist.
There is no way to disguise that you have, with that post, stated that you believe that god is finite.
And yes, I wrote god with a lower-case ‘g’ because the entity that you are describing is not infinite.
god the pretty darn awesome. god the almost perfect. For his is most of the kingdom, a lot of the power, and much of the glory, for a real good stretch of time. :p
 
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