understanding what i'm about to discuss here is one of the single biggest concepts that has impacted my life. if you were to study and understand this as i do, it may very well change your life in many ways too. and i'll tell you now, few human beings on earth right now have this understanding.. and societies are not yet operating according to it. much of politics are people's opinions of how they would LIKE things to be. they think the world SHOULD operate a certain way and our government, etc. should be run in a way that is ideal to them, BUT IT'S NOT BASED ON WHAT'S ACTUALLY HAPPENING IN REALITY. my current opinion of politics is that societies, governments, etc. should be run according to how the real world is ACTUALLY OPERATING. sometimes this isn't pretty and it may not be how you want things to be, but too bad. i'm not going to get into this deeply here. i will just point people in the direction that i went. if interested enough, you'll figure it out on your own. i first recommend you watch the movie, "the butterfly effect" to get a clear understanding of cause and effect. EVERYTHING IS CAUSE AND EFFECT. there can be no free will if every effect is impacted by previous causes. basically this is also understanding what chaos is. pretty much, there is no randomness. if you think something is random, you really just don't have enough information to calculate the chaos. read books by VS Ramachandran. he has a show on Nova called "the secrets of the mind" there are also some free lectures from him here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2003/lecture1.shtml http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/mind/ this video is crucial in understanding how the brain works. this will also get you wondering what consciousness is and why we have it. you will then become familar with an experiment done by Benjamin Libet. basically the experiment shows that about a half second before a person believes he is willing something, THE PART OF THE BRAIN RESPONSIBLE FOR THAT ACT ALREADY STARTED THE PROCESS. so about a half second before i feel like i click submit when i'm done this post, my brain will already be getting ready to send the signals for me to click my mouse. free will is fake. we only THINK we have it because it SEEMS like we do. if i go around telling people there's no free will, of course everyone says i'm wrong because clearly it seems like we do have it. however, if you do some research you will see that those believing in free will are lacking knowledge. i then would suggest you read the book "the user illusion" by Tor Norretranders. a lot of the book is complicated but it's still worth reading for some KEY INFORMATION. before the very first chapter of the book, the author has the following quote which is currently my EXACT UNDERSTANDING OF LIFE. it is: "what is done by what is called myself is, i believe, done by something greater than myself within me." who is this quote by? james clerk maxwell on his deathbed in 1879!!!! that guy was WAY ahead of his time to have that understanding. and who is james maxwell clerk? a genius that did a lot of work with electricity and magnetism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clerk_Maxwell when you completely understand what maxwell means in the quote, you are on the right track and how you live life will start changing. who else has this advanced understanding? ALBERT EINSTEIN. You can do what you will, but in any given moment of your life you can will only one definite thing and absolutely nothing other than that one thing. â Schopenhauer, On the Freedom of the Will, Ch. II Schopenhauer's saying, that a human can very well do what he wants, but can not will what he wants, accompanies me in all of life's circumstances and reconciles me with the actions of humans, even when they are truly distressing. â Albert Einstein, Address to the German League for Human Rights, November 1928. Credo who else has the understanding? stephen hawking.. Hawking admits that even the uncertainty principle does not absolutely rule-out a kind of determinism "in principle", and says that quantum mechanics may very well allow the universe to be deterministic. He wrote: "These quantum theories are deterministic in the sense that they give laws for the evolution of the wave with time. Thus if one knows the wave at one time, one can calculate it at any other time. The unpredictable, random element comes in only when we try to interpret the wave in terms of the positions and velocities of particles. But maybe this is our mistake: maybe there are no positions and velocities, but only waves. It is just that we try to fit the waves to our preconceived ideas of positions and velocities. The resulting mismatch is the cause of the apparent unpredictability." (conclusions section of A Brief History Of Time) and also... Baruch Spinoza compared man's belief in free will to a stone thinking it chose the path it traveled through the air and the spot it landed. In Ethics he wrote, "The decisions of the mind are nothing save desires, which vary according to various dispositions." "There is in the mind no absolute or free will, but the mind is determined in willing this or that by a cause which is determined in its turn by another cause, and this by another and so on to infinity." "Men think themselves free because they are conscious of their volitions and desires, but are ignorant of the causes by which they are led to wish and desire." [4] [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will when you understand there is no free will, it changes your life and how you view people..and pretty much everything. for example, there should be no punishment no matter how much someone pisses you off. trying to change their behavior is fine though. people just are the way they are. people are going to do "good" and "bad" things. you should not hate anyone. currently the world is not really operating to this understanding, but i predict in the future it will increasingly. i will address the god aspect. many times you hear a religion saying "god gave us free will." this is false. however, religion of course has both sides covered because it will also say we are "living god's plan." both can not be true, but of course religion covers both bases because it has adapted that way through social evolution. anyway, "living god's plan" is essentially fate/determinism, which is actually what IS going on in the universe, IMO. finally, just to sum it all up, you can't be too knowledgable on this issue if you agree with free will. to have free will would be to say the things we do ARE NOT BASED ON PREVIOUS CAUSES!!! bull-fucking-shit they are not. when do the causes you do start then?? out of thin air???
It is funny to me that you posted this when you did, because I had a conversation about this with a friend of mine tonight. Before I go into our conversation, I just want to let you know that I do believe in God. According to my friend, he is an agnostic. To me, this is another way of saying he is an atheist. I don't believe someone can be agnostic. You either believe in God or you don't. Anyways, I digress. I was telling him about a discussion I had with some Christians who were out on a street corner one night in Huntington Beach "preaching" about the word of God. This type of thing infuriates me because I really do not believe that people should be forcing there religious beliefs on others in the fashion they were. They approached me because they wanted to know if I would like to attend their church to learn about Jesus Christ and the word of God. I told them I wasn't interested, and they persisted in giving me their reasons why I should attend their church. This is when I had to ask them a couple of questions. As many who attend church know, God knows everything that we are going to do before we do it (much like what you mentioned about God's plan). I confirmed that they believed this. Once this was done, I asked them if God knows everything that I am going to do before I do it, then why would I ever have to change anything that I am doing in my life in order to secure my salvation. God already knows what the end has in store for me, so how can I possibly change that outcome? If God already knows I am going to heaven, and I murder someone tomorrow, how does that change what God already knows? I may turn a new leaf over and realize the mistakes of my way. Maybe I'm going to hell, and how does living a life of morality help me in this situation? These examples are a little extreme, but the fact remains that we truly do not have free will. We have choice, but we really do not have free will. That choice is even superficial because what we decide to do is already predetermined. Your explanation sounds more like an atheist's version of the same thing, but the point remains.
Galatians--Whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap. Genesis--- Everything produces after it's own kind. You think some "deep thinker" thought this stuff up a couple hundred years ago?
Uhhhh, if there is no free will, then societies and goverments (which are a product of man's mind and the decisions that follow) are being run exactly according to the real world. Doh! If there is no free will, the concept of "should" has no real meaning.... Should exists only when there is a choice of "should" or "should not" and a lack of free will would mean there is never a choice of what "should" or "should not" be done. Think of it like a computer program...the "decisions" a computer makes are pre-programmed. They are not decisions at all... Please, don't do hallucinogenic drugs and post Gordo....
Maybe theres some good material contained in those posts, but their so damn long......... Not sure what to say on the matter, but i can assert the exercise of "free will" and "right action" is constrained on a lot of levels, not just the perceived physical barriers one might encounter.
yea i agree with a lot of what you say. imo, the religious people you spoke to just weren't deep enough thinkers to understand their own beliefs. lol it's like a 5 year old christian kid. he may say he's a christian but he just doesn't have the critical thinking to really say so. that's why it's SO WRONG, imo to bring kids to church. religion purposely does this to get into the kid's head before he can actually understand what is going on. any 5 year old today that says he is a christian is just shit nonsense. he has no clue what it means. as far as atheist/agnostic, i many times say i'm an atheist, but more accurate for me is agnostic. i don't mind being called either, but i guess i should start using agnostic more. an atheist says, "there is no god/i don't believe in god." it's kind of like saying he knows there isn't one. to me the universe is way too "beyond me" to say something like that. an agnostic doesn't believe in god, but it's because he does not feel there is proof to believe that. i'm extremely antireligious but i'd worship jesus tomorrow if he appeared and did some amazing things.
what happens in our society is "the real world," but the majority of humans are living without an understanding of how the universe is really operating. example.. real world: we punish people in prison how the universe is operating: if no free will, then punishment is wrong so i'm saying, if there really is no free will but our society goes about like there is, it's a flaw in our society and it should be changed. imo, things like this will change in the future. i'm just ahead of my time. i agree there is no "should" from the individual's perspective because the person is going to do whatever it is he is going to do. however, another person (maybe with more knowledge) can help influence the other person. example.. person A says to punish people. i come along and say if there is no free will we SHOULD NOT punish people.
What happens in our society, apart from human beings, is real. What happens as a product of man is also real, including imagination. All imaginations are real imaginations. No such thing as a "fake" imagination. So if man has no free will, as you are imagining it to be the case, if he is just responding to programming, then everything is as it is by a plan, and cannot be changed by free will....as there is no free will. Flaws are not flaws, because they are programmed, they are by design, as there is no free will to deviate from the plan. Therefore, all your bitching and whining about religion is a waste of time, because what people believe was never a free choice...it was predetermined.
i have discussed this stuff a lot with other people and here is one of the more interesting points that i have made: Person A believes if he is fat then it's what god wanted. Person B believes he is fat but BELIEVES he can change this. IN BOTH CASES, THERE IS NO FREE WILL. Person A believes if he was meant to be skinny he would be. however Person B may try losing weight because he has the belief that he can. it SEEMS like Person B is making a choice to lose weight, but really he's not.