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The question I pose to you is:

Do we have free will, or is everything predestined?

I have to go with predestination purely out of science, because what are our thoughts other than electric signals in our brains? All particles, of both matter and electricity, can only take one possible path through space, since there is no randomness. Thusly, all of your thoughts were pre-ordained at the beginning of the universe. That's just my thought, and I have no way of proving or backing them up, but there it is.

Well, I always thought that certain, important things were allready set, like birth and death dates, weddings, and the like. But the others things are free will.

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We Lutherans believe that we have free will in things like, what I have for breakfast, or whether I post on this forum, but not in the matter of faith. God alone has the power to redeem us. However, once we are redeemed, we can turn away from it. That's almost the exact opposite of what most modern evangelicals believe: that you choose to be redeemed, but you can't lose it once you get it.

In other words, we Lutherans believe that the human will can lead us away from God, but only God's will can lead us to him. In this, his will is primarily manifest in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the hearing of his Word, and the administration of his Sacraments (Baptism and Holy Communion in particular).

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everything isnt planned, its all free will, just as said in the book of gennasis says, (its not to exact quoting, but all that i can remember) that god called down to noah and said he will bring a massive flood that will destroy the population of earth. why? because when a few angels saw the beautiful women that were living on earth, this was about 600 years after adam, the first man on earth, died. so the angels left the sanctum of heaven to live and marry women on earth. as the angels/men married, they began to forget about god and started to be over concerned with life, that they ignored the will of god. they drank, and married, and commited many sin's and eventually to violence, no one was safe, innocent people were killed, or beaten up by the stronger, meaner men. eventually, everyone forgot about god will, except one man and his family, noah.

yeah, thats all i can remember, free will caused everyone to be violent and got the population to die by a massive godsend flood that covered the world, and only seven,(or eight, maybee, i forgot...), survived with the ark. now a days, people have free will, if god had made a path that everyone followed, there wouldnt be violence or war, but no, were on a free will.........yeah..

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Not preordained, necessarily, but it is my belief that there is only one path. If thinking about it in terms of experiments, two experiments with the exact same circumstances will give the exact same results. I believe it works the same way with thoughts: thoughts are caused by external stimuli. Given stimuli will produce the same reaction in the same mind every time. Think about it: if you were to say something to someone, then go back in time and exactly replicate your actions and words, they'd react the same, would they not? Seeing as the same stimuli are present, the electrical impulses would have the same reaction. There's no randomness involved.

While to us, there's a chance of it raining and a chance of it not, the particles moving in the sky are moving on whatever path they're moving, so to us, there's a chance, but that's only because we can't plot the movement of those particles. If we could, we'd know. But regardless of whether we can plot their movement or not, they're taking the same path, and will cause rain at whatever time they're going to. Therefore, it's only reasonable to deduce that there is no such thing as chance.



If there is a God, he's set the particles in place, but he doesn't steer them, so while he hasn't set a path, there's nothing to cause any changes in their current path (that path includes changes in the linear path due to interference of other forces and particles). That's why I say it's not pre-ordained, but there's still only one path.

Yay! Suicune agrees with me!

Free will can't exist without randomness. And randomness doesn't exist, chaos is just the inability of humans to measure the millions of factors that come in to play on everything.

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle calls this into question. Even more so with thoughts, since thoughts work on a micro-quantum level that we are as yet unable to measure. Conditions that lead to those thoughts, or the context in which those thoughts occur, can change the result.


Except that God does intervene in history. We call these interventions "miracles." I'm pretty sure that turning water into wine does work on the particulate level.

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Even with the uncertainty principle though, that's just our inability to measure it those particles. That doesn't mean that they go willy-nilly and random when we're not looking.

But the conditions or contexts are going to be the same, as the particles creating them will not change their path due to the aforementioned lack of randomness. If we could take into account each particle and its interference with other particles, we'd know what the conditions and contexts would be, right? And although we don't know what they are, the particles are still on their same paths, correct? Just because we don't know what they are doesn't mean they'll change.

The only things capable of causing change are those forces which are already in motion. Those forces are governed by the same rules, are they not? Thus, everything acts on everything in a certain manner, depending on the circumstances, which are only changed by each other. And those changes are already in place.

There's no such thing as randomness. A coin has a 50% chance of landing with heads up, right? No! It depends on what side is up when you flip it, and how much force you apply. I know I'm repeating myself, but the coin is equivalent to a given particle, and the other two circumstances are those acting on it. If nothing changes them, they go on their current path. If something does change them, that something was already in motion before it affected them.

EDIT: And, in the way of theology, this is not to say that God doesn't exist, but his existence means that he is present in some form. And that form is governed by the same rules I've mentioned above.

derr, uhh,suicune64, yer veiw on all dis Political Crud id ,uhhhh, to dern much within the learning of yer math and science. i dernt need no edumacation, and ,uhhh, neither ders dis post. so orf of you, lets Git-R-Done.

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45 F
MHGy,
You can do better than this. See me after class.

Even though I know what your words are supposed to be, I still don't completely know what you're saying. XD

EDIT: *Suicune. Unfortunately, when getting to the point of theology, there's little we can do to prove our disprove our cases (God being governed by physics/God being governed by his own laws), but I'll just say that I can hardly see how God can escape those laws, unless we get into the concept of different existential planes, and I'm pretty sure there's no definitive information on those. I certainly don't know any. XD

Suicide:

I would agree that there are no random events. And there is a path which the world is sort of on that will lead to a certain conclusion. However, I'm not convinced that God's presence is necessarily governed by any rules but his own.

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This is a complicated, confusing matter. Depends on how define predestiny really. If you say that it's what you're going to do, then no matter what it's inevitable. Because that simply means that anything you do was your destiny. Destiny = actions. Now if it's about conditions and events and yada yada, I guess that's different. If you're told what's going to happen in the future, I bleieve it's up to a person's free will to alter that.

You stand next to a window. Someone throws a baseball towards the window and you're facing away unaware. Baseball is goign to hit the window. Now if you'd been told that it was going to happen somehow, you could just as easily catch the ball. Conditions were set for it to happen but it's up to your choices to alter the circumstances.
Not only that but you can avoid getting yelled at by your parents and dishing out $450 and you get to beat up this jerk.

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"No, no, no. You gotta get those rings... INSIDE the bottle!"
I'm just an old timer who lurks on occasion. Even in 2020, at least.

The thing is, Everettimmy, it would depend on whether or not the conditions leading up to that made it so that you would be informed. While there are two possible outcomes, the electrical impulses (thoughts) and particles (physical objects) are already on the path leading to one.

Okay, let's say in the scenario in which you are informed, it's because he's told one of his friends and they, due to their ethical side winning over, tell you. Behaviour is based on experience and learning. If the circumstances of such made him an overconfident guy, he'd tell the friend, and if the circumstances of his upbringing motivated him to tell you, he would. But the problem is, we don't know the effect their upbringings had on them, as we can't gauge exactly how stimuli over a long period of time affect a single decision, in terms of the interaction of electrical impulses. That's all thoughts are, right? But the circumstances either permit you being told, or they don't. We don't know if they do, so it seems random. But as I said, if we were able to determine whether the electrical impulses would be trained to form what was recognizable as overconfidence in the thrower's mind, then we would know that there was no randomness.

"If you're told what's going to happen in the future,"

But, as I said, the circumstances are either in place or not in place for you to be told in the future.

"I bleieve it's up to a person's free will to alter that."

But there is no true free will, only what we perceive as such. If all external stimuli (i.e. upbringing and life past that) lead up to making a certain decision, then we make that decision, and if the external stimuli affecting our thoughts lead to the other, then that other is made.

With the luck, or fate or whatever, I've had throughout my life, I'd like to say it really doesn't matter. If you are predestined to be hit by a car, you'll be hit by a car. If it it is bad luck, then you'll get hit by the car. If you choose to cross the road with nothing controlling you other than your free will and you get hit by the car, you'll get hit by the car.

In the end, you'll get hit by the car. So I say, pshaw to theories and beliefs...look both ways, just in case.

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listen, you guys, everything in science is wrong! there is no set path, everything is free will. its free will that bug flew into my mouth. its free will that TBC made homestarrunner. its free will that made me me!

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Except that your so-called "free will" is bound by circumstance. All it would take would be for one single event in your life to have been different, and you might have made entirely different choices afterwards. So here's how it goes:

Genetics + Family Background + Education + Life Experience + Divine Intervention = The Choices You Make.

As you can see from the above equation, change any single one of these aspects, and your choices are changed.

Now you could argue that some part of the human psyche does contribute to the selection of certain choices, but it cannot do so without being informed by all the other aspects of the equation. (For example, if presented with a choice between a pizza and a bag of tacos, your family background will influence your decision, even if you don't realize it).

My conclusion: Free Will = Very No. (or at the very least, human will is never ENTIRELY free).

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dude, ya gotta remember, its all free will, if there wasnt free will, then how could u be judged by god to get into heaven or hell??? and if there is no heaven nor hell, then what happens to the life force receided inside of ur body?

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^He said all but that is predestined.

It's predestination because salvation is God's doing to start with. Humans do not have it in them to save themselves. Only God can do that for them. Humans have only the ability to resist. As has been pointed out, apart from the saving work of God, human beings are dead in their sins, enemies of God, blind to their wretched condition, and sick in their souls. I.e., they are in no position to make free choices to start with. Every single time a person becomes a Christian, that is God's doing.

But as far as ordinary choices we all make on a daily basis, even then, your choices are far more influenced by other factors than you realize.

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^^ Didymus just made a very good point. Even if you don't realize what all goes into the choices you make, the factors are still there. I believe that, when making decisions, there is a hierarchy of factors that you take into consideration:

1. Major Pros/Cons
2. Major Past Experiences
3. General Preference
4. Minor Pros/Cons
5. Minor Past Experiences
6. Presentation (voice inflection, expression, etc.)
7. Minute preference (favorite color, number, etc.)

We have to be able to make some choices. You can't let a murderer go free because "the electrical impulses made him do it"

No one has said that because of the lack of true free will, that everyone is innocent. The electrical impulses aren't like some slave-driver, but rather, your psyche.

What you suggest is something along the lines of "I didn't strangle him, my hands did."

Well, it sounds like you are saying that we don't choose to do anthing. Our thoughts are merely electrical impulses that we have no control over.

Well, just as his murder is a natural consequence of electrical impulses in his brain, so to his being removed from society is a natural consequence of him committing murder. It's cause and effect.

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I don't think that you quite understand. The way you put things it's as though your thoughts are some separate entity from yourself, forcing you to do things as you merely watch.

What are you if not your thoughts?

What we 'choose' to do is based on the electrical impulses are your thoughts, and as Simon said (no pun intended), you are your thoughts.

And we do perceive control of our actions, anyways, despite our lack of free will. That person made a choice to murder someone, it was not against their will. What was against their will was having the circumstances and paths set in place to make the choice of yes, but no one can perceive that, nor is such necessary, because decisions are made by what is deemed rational by that mind. And even though that yes consisted of electrical pulses, it's still the thought of yes. They had the choice, in a sense, making them at fault, and the choice they made was not forced upon them: that choice was the result of the path on which the electrical pulses were going.

I know this topic is dead, but I'd like to share some basic opinions on my side ...

Science and religion both seem pretty divided on the issue. I've seen stances that claim we have free will from various religious sects and scientists, others who claim we're bound by fate, be it God's will or physics.

I'm more of a proponent of limited will. We both have and don't have free will.

Essentially, yes, in our world, most things are predictable by physics. Our bodies are constrained to this.

OUr minds and souls (well, as a Christian I believe in souls, but for everyone else you can just keep it to minds) aren't quite so much. I've heard a lot of theories and evidence that suggest the mind works on a quantum level--I forget who proposed this, but a theologist suggested one's conciousness and soul may also be tied to quantum physics.

Quantum physics itself often breaks a lot of fundamental things associated with, uh, "normal" physics. It's an entirely different thing, and is goverened by probabilities.

To put it another way ... From experience I've come across times in my life where I could have gone one way or another--where the balance of circumstance could have caused me to choose another way if I did it over again. It's true that we decide things based on what we've experienced or are experiencing, and in that sense we're constrained by the choices we make, aside from the general physical world. Yet we still have a measure of control over what we decide to do.

This is probably why even though video game AI is so simplistic and no better than the intelligence of bacteria, in a video game they're a formidable challenge for a human player--our decisions in a video game are pretty limited on what we can do. We're brought down to their level. (Especially true of games like, say, Pac-man)

In a world with no limits, it would be total nothingness. We would have no form, no essence.

Either way, I strongly oppose the idea of no will at all (which has gotten me cheap-shotted by advocates of predeterminism who go "That's because you have a burning belief!"), but I also don't think we have absolute free will.

Really, I think this sort of thing is more of a philosophical debate.

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I pretty much agree with you.

Everything is predestined. We just don't know what will happen until it does. Or does that violate causality? *Sighs* Topics like this make my head a splode.