Free Will vs. Determinism

Do you think we have Free Will? Or is everything in existence the effect of cause (e.g. Determinism)?

Why or why not?

I'd like to hear people's arguments for or against Free Will. Everyone is welcome to respond.

+Jammer

This is a question I'm still grappling with, and will be for a long time to come, I imagine. Right now, I see everything is determined in a causal sort of way. We are determined to act. Inaction is also an action. We are determined, and also determine others with our actions and inaction. Now there's the problem of the first cause.

I believe in free will. Bible buddies believe in determinism...whether they admit to it or not.

I think that if you take the bible as literally as some people tend to do, that you believe in determinism. If god was to know everything like it is accepted, past, present, and future, then he must know already what you are going to do in your life. I have been told this in those exact words before by christians. Guess that means....since he created us (creationalism), that he created us knowing what we were going to do ahead of time. So those of us in life who thought we made choices on our own...were already predetermined to make them.

That means they werent a choice.....and that our "all loving god" doomed us to eternal hell before we were born.

The free will versus predestination debate: Calvinsim
[Pro-free will site, though I disagree]

Predestination, baby. (Or no God at all).


[Edited on 6-1-2004 by RANT]

At the individual level, external versus internal locus of control. We each know where we stand on that.

well I as well cannot find a solid answer for myself, but what about in the bible God is the alpha and omega (begginning and end) so wouldn't God already know who's gonna make the cut and who isn't

The problem with free will is, why does it only extend to the human life? If we will return to a sinless state in Heaven, we will no longer have free will since we cannot choose to sin.

I believe "we" have free will and that the actions and decisions that we make when applying free will result from or in "cause and effect".



regards
seekerof

The way I see it, everything is predetermined. It has to be if God already knows everything thatw ill happen.

But since we don't know what will happen to us or what choices we will make in the future it's like having free will. If you don't know the ending, anyway.

We always have the choice, and so, we are always responsible for them.

It's all in the odds. Probability. What are the chances on you taking an action? What are the odds against you suceeding? Life is like a giant game of roulette. Chaos theory and whatnot own our lives to a degree.

DE

These are the kinds of topics I like the most.

Saying there is free will, we would have to say the physical attributes of something are random. Without randomness no free will, because otherwise the action before would make the action after happen 100% deterministic.

Electrons are thought of to have some randomness in them.
Now here is one of the thinkings which fits a deterministic world.
* The electron is bound between laws of physics which are action reaction.
* We would have a randomness which work together with those laws.
* Those laws make frames in which the random occurrences can happen.
* If there wouldn�t be frames, then the random occurrences could let everything happen, only that is not the case because they are bound within those laws.
* The actions-reactions are possible to know.
* That makes that the outcome of the movement of the electron minus the actions-reactions which we know the part which is random.
* This is already a method to know the effects in a certain moment in time which the randomness makes happen.
* However, because the electrons are bound between those actions-reactions, the randomness would have been different if the actions and reactions would have been different.
* This already implies that the actions of the so-called �randomness� is directly related to the other actions.

Some would say �but the randomness is apart from the actions-reactions and on a different area, so within those rules it works random, so the frames don�t make a difference�. The problem is the things which make the randomness happen, react to the laws of nature, so that reaction is also action-reaction and explainable.

Thanks for the comments everyone. Very interesting to hear different points of view on this one.

I have a link to a physicist who feels that the act of observing may be the contributing factor to the "randomness" of quanta. Perhaps conscious energy has an impact on energies at the quantum level via other dimensions and contributes to the "randomness" or "Free Will". I'm not sure what to think about this, but if any of you have the time and the smarts to understand this quantum mechanics fun stuff, take a look...

www.soulwise.net...

Peace be with you all,

+Jammer