Either god doesnt exist or we dont have free will.

I think causes (as in nurture, culture, etc.) dictate personality, demeanour, etc., but not behaviour itself. They might increase the odds of being in a certain situation or having to make a certain decision, but I still feel that the decision is either a) ours to make, or b) a coin flip weighted by our previous experience.

 

Ughh this question.

I rewrote this post 3x trying to think of a way to tackle this issue in a single post. So in short....

Abrahamic God + Bible = Lol....

Some people say we don't have free will because we're forced to eat, forced to sleep, forced to do live. Yet life is a moving process, never stopping. If it wasn't like that we could not change, and we could not have choice. We would simply BE, because there would be no pressure pushing life in any direction. Hence we would have no free will, since there would be no obstacles forcing us to act in one way or another.

But we can choose to eat, or choose to starve. Just because we may feel like dying from hunger pangs, we still have free will. Will is the thought which is created when considering the experience which we want to experience NOW in relation to our leading idea of who we truly are (which directs what we want to experience NOW).

There is no such thing as absolute freedom in our realm because then we wouldn't be able to exist as we do.

 

I think we're far to involved to examine ourselves and make conclusions about free will. What I think we should do is look at much simplier systems...with the idea that what god is to us, we are to it. Now that is a finite idea...the distance between us and this simple system is infinitly smaller than that between us and god....but then again we don't know what the distance between god and us is...

as a contrast to what i just said..
If you prescribe to a gaia theory...earth is alive..we are its cells, then the better we co-operate the 'better' gaia will function and maybe even think 'better'. What I wonder here in terms of free will is this

Did we co-operate with free will, or did the will of gaia lead us to co-operate?

 

Who said this? ^^^ You're assuming things. There's your first mistake. Step back, rethink, and don't assume things. 'God' is a different source of power for everybody. For some he is a man in the clouds with a beard, for me;

I believe in a lot of things and a lot of them contradict one another but here's my belief of god in a nut shell. And I'll try to do it chronologically. The bible and people throughtout the eons have simply misinterpreted the information that was passed along to them. I have NO idea what created something in the beginning but I'll start at Jesus. Jesus was simply a man who was at peace with the universe and understood it. A John Lennon type of that time if you will. He explained god as 'he' and 'father' when really god is simply an electrical current that runs throughout the entire universe. It is the spark inside every living thing that causes a reaction between synapses and causes life. It can flash into lightning and cause fire. It can spark into the earth and create plants. This 'current' is god. It is also 'heaven'. If Jesus showed up back then and explained it this way NOT ONE PERSON would have listened to him cause they would think he's the devil. That'd be like when michael j. fox went back in time with the electric guitar in back to the future. They'd never understand considering they didn't even have clocks yet. When a living organism dies and the organic matter has finished decomposing, the electrical energy that was causing it's brain to function it's whole life goes back into the current of the universe, or 'heaven'. It can then travel randomly throughout this current, throughout the universe until it randomly sparks off into, maybe the ground where it becomes a tree, or maybe into the body of a human where it somehow becomes a sperm and in turn becomes a human again. Or maybe it's in a whole new galaxy somewhere else. The universe wastes NOTHING. Period. Therefore god to me is this current that runs throughout the universe. It does create everything, but it does so by chemical reaction to it's surroundings. This explains what jesus and religion is trying to say by god creates all, except they took it too literally for jesus could explain it no other way. Quantum physics and quantum mechanics proves my way of seeing it to a good extent, and it also explains it in a logical, scientific manner. Both ways of thinking are explained well. In conclusion god is not an entity so to speak therefore I do not worship him. Therefore I am not religios but I am spiritual because when I mediate I try to tap into the collective unconscious and I try to tap into this current which is god to help me find answers to my life and problems. Thank you for listening. Peace.

 

Just because the Christian god is a fake doesn't mean there cant be another higher power. But i already know that that i am god. We are all god. There is only one thing that exists and that is the universe, we are all different aspects of the universe. Different, unique branches of the same tree.

 

god does exist , ill take u on

 

you're lucky you know that at 16. I didn't discover that shit till I was 20, and it took some help from drugs to help me realize it.

 

How does the fact that the Being that created everything knows how it will all go equate into us not having free will?

We always have a choice.

(The old "There's a 50% chance of ANYTHING ~ either it DOES,

or it DOESN't happen.)

It's funny to me, 'cuz what you're asking is a question i asked many years ago, while i was forehead deep into Tarot.

You know ~ If Someone/Something KNOWS what's going to happen,

and can tell me, exactly, precisely, no dorking around,

how could any of it be random?

It isn't.

That coincidence? Not.

But just like a person that can tell you your future, the Someone/Something already knows.

It doesn't live in our 4 dimensions.

It doesn't think in our 4 dimensions.

There IS more than just this.

i couldn't imagine living a life with any meaning if this wasn't just a step on the ladder ~ this life doesn't make sense,

unless...



Yeah, it's like that.

 

Lol thnx, luna. I wish everyone knew that. It would make the world a funner place to live in. I use to be a christian and then became an atheist and i got super depressed/stressed/freaked out that i was gonna die and become nothing. I then started looking for another answer, and low and behold i found the most valuable book i have ever read: "The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are" by Alan Watts. Took me a few reads to get what it was teaching since it was written for College leveled people. Once you read about those things a light clicks on in your brain and you realize that it IS true.

 

I think it wouldn't make a difference, we all undeniably know that humans are the same..more or less..that we're effectively equal. BUT, it doesn't stop discrimination. People can choose not to acknowledge things...like if you have a group of x,y,z and you decide z doesn't belong in that group...well maybe it doesnt. Now you just have x and y with z by itself. That maybe a horrible thing when it comes to people...but often z might be a fox and x,y are chickens...you don't keep those things together. I'm not saying people are foxes but people need the right to exclude (im sure u can think of people you'd not have live in your house), its a safety thing. and that will get abused.

You can think, we can all get along, but there are people who do not want to get along, and you cannot take that away from them

 

God doesn't exist. People need to take responsibility for their own actions and not fall back on some omnipotent power created their own imagination who can "forgive their sins"

 

it's not falling back on anything or using it as a crutch. Thats such an old, unintelligent way of thinking, so move on. It's simply understanding that there is something (anything) that is higher than you and bigger than you. Something that causes all chemical and natural reactions that in turn create life and things.

 

But that is falling back on an old understanding....its the hope that there is some plan, some logic, some kind of meaning behind this crazy world.

What causes all the reactions we see and can make and are made of are caused by something, its known as entropy and its the gradual increase in disorder that we all experience.

We consume for a time, creating chaos to improve our order, we hold that order but eventually it fails and we cannot recover. we die

 

Nothing is capable of creating our earth and all that is on it, let alone every other planet, star and anomaly. And if a being was capable of creating earth, are we to suggest there are many gods, and all were individually responsible for creating just one?

It is more logical to accept science and nature as the great creator, even when the science is not fully understood and likely will never be, then to create fictional entity whome without any evidence, it can all be credited to.

 

How do you know that?

Possibly, but it would be a non sequitor.

This statement begs the question. You assume someone has created a fictional entity and that there is no evidence for crediting the creation of the universe to it. I'll concede there's no proof, but there is substantial evidence (as opposed to probable cause or a preponderance of the evidence) for belief in a creator--i.e.,enough evidence to support a reasonable person's decision to believe in one. The success of science is itself circumstantial evidence supporting the rationality of nature, and there does seem to be a remarkably long list of "lucky accidents" and "coincidences" leading to our own existence. Of course, we could offer other explanations: many universes, etc. But I don't think these are more compelling than a belief in some kind of creator or creative force. Of course, what kind of creator (Theistic, Deistic, Pantheistic, Panentheistic,etc.be) is a whole other can of worms,and as you've noted, there's also the question of whether it's one or many. Step back a minute and think of what you said. You're providing a rather self-confident answer to a question that some of the greatest human minds have debated since humans have been capable of debating anything, and the debate is still going on in these Forums and outside of them. How likely do you think it is that your assertions are going to settle the issue? A little humility might be in order.

 

I dont aim to settle this debate for anyone, but my personal debate has long been settled, i am simply asserting my own results.

 

It's called determinism, all the factors and inputs of your life determine what you're going to do whether you realise it or not. God isn't part of that theory. The question gets a bit deeper then, because if determinism is true, then what makes us any more free/different than a computer AI programmed to play chess.

 

well, we are the ones experiencing...not the computer.

while we may not be in control of anything, its hard to deny we are experiencing it. And the richness of experience had through a human body maybe more or less than that of a computer AI...which only thinks about a 2D plane....a computer AI can be god, it can know everything that can happen...we are no where near knowing what can happen, get stumble upon and see!