Either god doesnt exist or we dont have free will.

Mckenna says that humans purpose is to further the...evolution...of the universe. It's a very complex theory to be put in to a nut shell, so my explanation is not a full one.
I believe life has a purpose (meaning we have a purpose). This does not mean I believe we have roles given to us, such as someone's purpose being to become president, but rather we have a purpose in the same way that our brain cells have a purpose.

 

Terence McKenna says a lot of things.

 

The free-will vs determinism doesn't even need God to be a niggler.

But like the God debate - it's ultimately useless but occasionally fun 3am drunken firepit talk.

 

This is the problem. There's no evidence either way. There's not even, as far as I can see, any reason to be asking the question. Or rather, I think the reason the question was originally asked is a long way from what's being commonly debated in the 21st century. Old questions of destiny and fate referred to people's lives, and we have whole sciences dedicated to understanding and even predicting the paths that people's lives will take. When people conflate that with questions of physics and such, it's like trying to use a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

 

I don't think there is reason to believe we do have free will, I do think we experience existence on a higher planes than just reactionary/deterministic...but the higher planes is a super position of what came before and is subject to determinism, and again there is a super position to have consciousness on a plane higher than that, and again that plane is subject to determinism, as above, so below.

 

Hoatzin, you made a comment that was very pacifying...it invoked a higher order of thought in my response. Maybe you in this circumstance had the free will, and i was being deterministic. It really seems to depend on your frame of reference rather than an absolute.

The act of observing is perhaps something unique, but then again maybe its fundemental

 

Point being???
I'm sorry, but your comment seems to lack any real purpose.

 

"Simplicity without a name
Is born of all external aim
With no desire, at rest and still
All things go right as of their will."

Lao Tzu - Tao Te Ching

 

As implied in an earlier post god exists. Even as an idea of something. More or less, it exists. And those who give it a positive outlook give it comforting characteristics, while those who disagree with its existance give it very silly characteristics.

Basically there is no such thing as free will. Its a fairy tale, as some say god is. Free will is the idea that what a person would do can be completely without influence of the environment aound it, and this is just not true.

Cause and effect. It is all that is true, It is necessarily god.

 

couldn't god be complex and intelligent enough to be able to predict every last move every last creature would make?

 

concept of free will = lol

 

No. Free will doesn't exist if you DON'T beleive in god. Where would free will come from? If you beleive that there is something within us that neither influenced by nature or culture (free will) then you beleive that it comes from some supernatural cause... or God.
Personnaly I think that God is an illusion and free will as well.

 

I'd say no.

 

That's kind of a weird definition of free will. Nature allows for a certain amount of uncertainty, as does culture. It's not like one's decisions and actions have to be totally arbitrary in order for us to say that they were free to make them. Freedom is the name of a human concept, after all. If a definition of "true freedom" is something that we cannot possibly experience or imagine, then it's unlikely we'd have a name for it.

 

Read Paradise Lost, it explains a christian defense of both free will and god's foreknowledge existing simultaneously.

 

It's a poem though. Theology is basically Bible fan-fiction.

 

While I personally do not believe in the existence of an Abrahamic God, it is not impossible for a God to be omnipotent and for humans to have free will. Even if this "God" knows what one will do the individual still has free will, as they can choose to do "it," however God simply knows what they will choose to do before they do so.

Than again, why would a magnanimous and omnipotent being create a thing such as an infinite punishment for a finite crime to begin with, knowing that free will would lead millions, if not billions of his beloved creation there (hell).

Hence the real "God Paradox" (so long as we're addressing an Abrahamic notion of God) if you ask me is as such:

If god is benevolent (all loving), than he would want to stop evil no? So, is he willing but not able? If this is so, then he is not omnipotent (all powerful). If he is able but not willing, than he would clearly be malevolent (he can help to prevent evil, but does nothing). If he can both prevent evil and wants to prevent evil (benevolent) than why does evil exist? Perhaps he is neither able, nor willing to prevent it? However if so, than why would anyone refer to this being as "God" in the first place.

 

I may be horribly wrong, but I understand that this is how Sartre defined freedom... Man is free from determinism. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I beleive that our actions have an incredible amount of causes aside from what comes from inside us. The definitions of freedom vary alot, it would be interesting to know WHY.

Haven't we put names on several unexperienced concepts? (God for example) Words are an attempt to understand reality. Sometimes it is a flawed understanding, yet for practical reasons we continue to use these words.

 

I'm not sure I understand the concept of "free will". It's usually equated with indeterminacy in human behavior. Indeterminacy at the quatum level is well established (as in the Heisenberg uncertainty principle), and the distinguished mathematical physicist, Sir Roger Penrose,together with Stuart Hameroff,M.D., have developed a controversial theory linking quantum phenomena to the human brain and consciousness. If they are right (a big "if"), maybe there is free will. Since they don't bring God into the picture, free will could exist without a deity. Could a deity exist in a world of free will? I think so, but we'd have to be careful with the powers we ascribe to the deity. As others have pointed out, the ancient dieties had superhuman powers but were not omnipotent. Theologians early on recognized that God's omnipotence doesn't mean He can do things that are logically inconsistent, like make something all black and all white at the same time, and they recognized that God could limit His own power--e.g., by giving humans free will. In his book Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes, process theologian Charles Hartshorne carried this futher, arguing that God has given the universe free will down to the quantum level. God would remain the most potent force in the universe, and would be "omnipotent" in the sense of being able to do anything within the (admittedly narrow) parameters in which He did not self-limit His powers.

 

It does kind of amuse me that people will make these extraordinary leaps to incorporate a specific description of God into science, rather than defer to Occam's razor and work to the assumption that he either a) isn't exactly like that specific description, or b) doesn't exist at all.