You must be a real jerk!

If you were God and made something and it disobeyed your direct order, I bet YOU would get rid of it and start over!

WARNING: I'm not going to bother prefixing every sentance with "I believe" because I am tired.

Anyways, I hate to resort to the "God's ways are beyond our understanding" because I feel some of you will just insist that it's a cover for "I don't really know what I'm talking about". But anyways. God knows everything. Way more than we do. We can't expect to be able to explain everything he does, simply because he sees a picture we can never see in our lifetime.

Also, the diagram that has God only see what's up to the present assumes God is a slave to time. He is not. He CREATED time, and is independant of it.

My two cents.

The idea of free will that so many Evangelists love to spam is pretty illogical. You're not totally free to make any decision you want about yourself. Humans always choose the choice they like best. Always. Outside factors influence that choice.

We cannot change the future any more than we can change the past. Possibility and chance are words we use to describe results that we cannot predict. That does not mean they can happen in any way other than they will happen. The universe in one instance of time is a 3-Dimensional object. A three year chunk of the universe is a 4-Dimensional object. I am a demented object because I should have gone to bed a 30min. ago so I can get up in time for school. Oh, and I can't get back on the forums until the weekend or until I raise my math grade.

Just remember.. Pi is exactly three. If professor Frink said it, it must be true.

This debate is literally never going to end is it?

[QUOTE=Raoul Duke]This debate is literally never going to end is it?[/QUOTE]

There is no free will anyway, I don't know what all the talk is about.

Humans are their nature (genetic programming) and their external environment combined; neither of which they control. Since these things are all of what influence decisions, and humans have no control over them, free will does not exist and is just a figment of the imagination.

Heh, I hope someone tries to refute this...

[QUOTE=Lord Kuat]There is no free will anyway, I don't know what all the talk is about.

Humans are their nature (genetic programming) and their external environment combined; neither of which they control. Since these things are all of what influence decisions, and humans have no control over them, free will does not exist and is just a figment of the imagination.

Heh, I hope someone tries to refute this...[/QUOTE]

The Quantum Mechanics / General Relativity debate contains within it several fundemental questions about the nature of reality - one of which is Probabilistic / Deterministic. 'Free will' isn't even in the debate at all.

[QUOTE=Lord Kuat]Humans are their nature (genetic programming) and their external environment combined; neither of which they control. Since these things are all of what influence decisions, and humans have no control over them, free will does not exist and is just a figment of the imagination.[/QUOTE]
So we're not thinking, reasoning beings? Well, I'm glad we have you around to refute all those silly claims made by thousands of biologists over the past two hundred years.

Thank you for the straight up dismissal, that really works. Then again no, you fail.

No, biologists have never said we have a free will. They do however say the mind = the brain. The brain is (obviously) developed through genes and environment. We "think" and "reason" based on previous learnings and ingraned dispositions. Please, refute the claim instead of being a jerk.

/me stabz thread

Why won't it die?!

Sorry, I have no idea what you are trying to even say. How does this relate exactly? (Question, I'm sure you have a good point, can you explain in clearer terms?)

*stab*

[QUOTE=Lord Kuat]Sorry, I have no idea what you are trying to even say. How does this relate exactly? (Question, I'm sure you have a good point, can you explain in clearer terms?)[/QUOTE]

Just agreeing with your point on an even more fundemental level - the movements of subatomic particles.

[QUOTE=Lord Kuat]No, biologists have never said we have a free will. They do however say the mind = the brain. The brain is (obviously) developed through genes and environment. We "think" and "reason" based on previous learnings and ingraned dispositions. Please, refute the claim instead of being a jerk.[/QUOTE]
Free will is just the ability to freely make decisions without fate, that is our futures are not predetermined. Are you saying that we don't make our own decisions? That our genetic code and environment make our decisions for us or something? Because that's sure what it sounds like, and it sounds rather ridiculous.

It isn't if you think about it. What else goes into making a decision then?

The fact that we can willfully choose what we perceive to be the worse of two decisions proves that we make our decisions, not our environment.

For example, I'm on the high dive at a swimming pool, and I have a decision to make: I could dive with water in the pool, or I could go drain it and dive. The fact that I can jump off a platform headfirst onto solid concrete 12 feet below proves that *I* made that decision, not the environment (which would have chosen the water thing).

Hooray for ignoring the last 4 or 5 pages of this thread.

I would say free will is the ability to make conscious decisions based on one's own cognitive processes. (This is just one possible definition.)
The only thing that would contradict fate is randomness. A random occurrence is something without cause, thus it can't be free will as described above. If you say that free will is the ability to make decisions without fate, then you are saying that free will is the ability to make decisions randomly, without cause or cognitive processes.

Also, as mentioned above, your cognitive processes are influenced by your environment. Whether someone has indoctrinated you with religious ideas since you were a child, or the government is using a mind-control ray on your brain, these external stimuli are as much to blame for your decisions as your self.

The timeline thing doesn't just apply to what you will do, it also applies to what you will think.

That isn't a good example at all. There would be a reason you would do so. No one just jumps into a pool of concrete without a reason; a reason of course precipitated by their environment or the fact that you were born with that tendency. It just doesn't happen spontaneously. It's like starting a hypothetical that started "well, if light was actually made of bread..."

I don't understand how that decision isn't influenced by genes or evenronment (previous experiences/learning, whatever). There is no such thing as truly "free" will. All of our decisions are made by who we were born as (genes) and what we have experienced. We cannot go against this. Do you have a refutation to this?

Yeah. Like I said, the fact that, given two decisions, I can choose either one, willfully.

Yeah, I know. We've already established that God can know the future and you can still have free will.

Isn't the illusion of free will all that matters?

[QUOTE=IRG SithLord]Yeah, I know. We've already established that God can know the future and you can still have free will.[/QUOTE]

hehe.

Yeah...

[QUOTE=IRG SithLord]Yeah, I know. We've already established that God can know the future and you can still have free will.[/QUOTE]

Yeah...

[QUOTE=The Mega-ZZTer]If you were God and made something and it disobeyed your direct order, I bet YOU would get rid of it and start over![/QUOTE]

Yeah, scripting sucks.

Yay I can get on the computer, I just can't game! And um, un-yay.

*deftly hijacks thread to discussion on my computer privileges and my freewill pertaining there-to"