What is free will.

my response to say i could ignore him was me executing my free will as to prove him wrong. Oh and you dont point out errors as such you mainly just impose an arrogant point of view that twists words and meanings. Also with the goal to have the last word. I have all the intention of learning and i know that i cant learn anything from you im sorry. I already know your arguments as i used to argue them. I also know that nothing i can say to you will allow you to believe, its up to you. Also you can find great truth in anything so thats not backing up a point. Besides every point you make to me will be both right and wrong. We are in a science forum but the topic is religon! Maybe you shouldnt be here.

In the rules:
"2. Personal comments

Posts which attack a person rather than his or her views will be edited to remove the unnecessary personal remarks.

Examples of acceptable posts include:

* You are wrong to say that Islam is a violent religion, because ...
* You obviously don't understand Christian beliefs, because ...
* Saying what you said clearly displays your ignorance of ...

Examples of unacceptable posts include:

* You are a stupid hater of Muslims, because you say Islam is violent.
* You're just another idiot who doesn't know anything about Christianity.
* Anybody who'd write what you wrote must have severe psychological problems.
"
Isnt that exactly what you are doing and have even lead me to do to stop harassing me? Dude ive posted 40 comments 30 of those have been replying to your insults.
 
I always could just ignore you.

If I'd kick you in the balls would you just ignore me? Even if you did you wouldn't be able to ignore the pain that I caused... you would have no choice but to experience it, think about it, you don't just decide not to experience it. Your 'willing' not to respond in any way to my kicking you in the balls is irrelevant because you will anyway.
 
And then the question becomes: how far (and how deeply) are the responses to those stimuli ingrained?
Societal, chemical, biological?
It could be (and has been here on SF) argued that EVERY response we make is a reaction to stimuli and that there is no choice whatsoever - we just react, and justify it to ourselves later.

Forced to react, you can choose how to react, or can just ignore.
There are choices in responding / reacting stimuli.

Will and reaction, one is no direct stimuli, the latter has choices on how.
 
If I'd kick you in the balls would you just ignore me? Even if you did you wouldn't be able to ignore the pain that I caused... you would have no choice but to feel it, you don't just decide not to feel it.

feelings dont come into free will.
 
feelings dont come into free will.

Uh yes they do because I made you feel (experience the pain) something you didn't want to feel. Not to mention that by doing it I would at least force you to think something predictable about me, no free will there too.
 
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myself said:
Not to mention that by doing it I would at least force you to think something predictable about me, no free will there too.
is not a feeling.
 
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my response to say i could ignore him was me executing my free will as to prove him wrong.
Nope you just reacted to the stimulus provided.

Oh and you dont point out errors as such you mainly just impose an arrogant point of view that twists words and meanings. Also with the goal to have the last word. I have all the intention of learning and i know that i cant learn anything from you im sorry.
You talk about arrogance and then say you can't learn anything from me?
Can't - you're incapable?

I already know your arguments as i used to argue them.
Arrogant much?
ALL my arguments?
(Ineffectually at a guess).

Besides every point you make to me will be both right and wrong.
Right and wrong?
2+2=5?

We are in a science forum but the topic is religon! Maybe you shouldnt be here.
To be discussed from a scientific viewpoint - it's not meant as a self-reinforcing system for religion.

In the rules:
"2. Personal comments
Posts which attack a person rather than his or her views will be edited to remove the unnecessary personal remarks.
Which includes calling me moron and satan's whore? :D

Examples of unacceptable posts include:

* You're just another idiot who doesn't know anything about Christianity.
* Anybody who'd write what you wrote must have severe psychological problems.
Which is more or less verbatim what you've said to me more than once.

Isnt that exactly what you are doing and have even lead me to do to stop harassing me?
Harassing you?
Learn to distinguish between attacks on you and attacks/ comments on your viewpoint.

Dude ive posted 40 comments 30 of those have been replying to your insults.
Pavlovian response?
So much for free will...:shrug:
 
I posted this some three years back, kind of says it all.

Free will.
Christians believe that people who do not accept Jesus as the son of God will go to Hell.?
Hell is a place defined in the New Testament of the bible which did not exist in the Old Testament.?
Christians believe that it is not wrong for their god to send his creations to Hell because their god gave mankind "free will". ?
Free will, according to Christians, is man's innate ability to know right from wrong and make his own choices freely without intervention from their god until they are judged by their god after death.?

Problem 1. Judgment and punishment.
The holy bible describes God as omniscient, omnipotent and loving ?. Most Christians are very fond of saying how loving their god is?. If a god is all powerful, and all knowing, then he knows exactly what a person will do before he even creates them?. Before the Christian god creates a man with a soul, he knows whether or not that man will go to Hell. He is omniscient and He created Hell?. The Christian god then makes people anyway, even though he knows he will send most of them to Hell?. Free Will as defined by the Christians is therefore quite completely impossible by their definition of their god?. Why would a loving god make men and send them to hell for being exactly what he created them to be? He is perfect, so he certainly doesn't do it by accident. A god can not be loving, omniscient, omnipotent and send people to Hell. They are mutually exclusive.

Problem 2. Ethnic Upbringing.
How can Christians use free will as an excuse for their god sending people to Hell who do not believe in Jesus as the Christ? People born to Muslim parents in a Muslim country where belief in the Muslim faith is a law will almost certainly not grow up to be Christans. Why would this loving god of theirs create men and send them to Hell for growing up to be a good Muslim citizens? If the man is born in a Muslim country to Muslim parents, the chances of him changing his faith to Christianity is lower than his chances of winning the Lotto. Most people stay in the faith that they were raised in. Perhaps not the same sect, but still the same god. 99% of these "Good Christians" would be "Good Muslims" if they had been born in Iran/iraq etc Then they would be going to Hell, too. how fair is that coming from your loving god?.

Problem 3. Knowing right from wrong.
Through basic psychology we know that violence can be increased or lessened by stimulating different areas of the brain. We know that people's moods can be altered by introducing drugs, prescription or otherwise, to the brain. We know that children are extremely effected at a subconscious level by the interactions with their family and community at a very young age. How is it that the soul of a person, which is supposed to be innately aware of good and evil, so easily manipulated with material things such as Prozac?

In short, we know for a fact that each and every adult is a product of the sums of their genetic brain structure, their very early formative years, and random luck such as being born to extremely violent, crime ridden, poverty stricken neighborhoods, or to extremely affluent parents who are politically connected with the community.

Therefore, a person who is born into an underprivileged drug addicted, and abusive family will have an enormous chance of leading a life full of angry resentment and serious brushes with the law as well as violating the ten commandments with wild abandon. Such a person would be much more likely to go to Hell than a fortunate soul who is born to an extremely well adjusted suburban upper-middle class family which raises their children in the Christian church.

Go ask all the "evil monsters" who deserve the death penalty in America's prisons about their childhoods. While you're at it, check out their IQ's. IQ tests are not at all a test of education. They contain no vocabulary or math question, but simply are comprised of problem solving exercises. Low IQ's indicate an inability to think in a logical manner, and therefore to create rational thoughts and decisions. Have you ever met an atheist with a low IQ? Have you ever met a relgious Fundamentalist with a high IQ? Do retarded people go to hell for not being good Christians? If not, then at what particular IQ level does this god start issuing exemptions? Why is it that this Christian god who professes to love the poor drops the greatest statistical chances of being patently violent and "ungodly" upon the poor people He supposedly loves so much?

The religious say it all the time. "There, but for the grace of God, go I." If they consider it God's grace that they were not so afflicted, then how is it that they can forgive their god for so afflicting others? How can a man who's children survived a hurricane say that God was watching out for them and offer prayers of thanks when his neighbor's children are dead from the same storm? Did those other children not deserve God's love so much as his? It is not conceptually sound that children who endure hell on earth should be sent to hell after death by a god who professes to love them so.

A fine post.
I'm sure it wasn't answered three years ago
and it will not be answered satisfactorily today.
The answer given by QuisutDeus took care
to make a general reply and
addressed none of the problems you posited.
He just said what he thought himself and said the equivalent
"There, that's your questions answered"

He said he did not have the time.
If he ever does get the time I would like to see him address your argument point by point.
 
This question is open to atheists and theists alike.

A simple but probing conundrum.

It is interesting to see what people think free will is. In this instance we shall define the tern coming from what we think it means based on what christians believe god gave us.:D

IMO, free will is a label that describes the inability to predict the behavior of other humans without error.
 
funny-cartoon-god-playing-video-game-religious-driving-joke.jpg
 
This question is open to atheists and theists alike.

A simple but probing conundrum.

It is interesting to see what people think free will is. In this instance we shall define the tern coming from what we think it means based on what christians believe god gave us.:D

Free will is the ability to control things, change things using your own awareness or consciousness....this will is unbounded, and purely free, though influenced by impulses, the senses, and other factors...
 
Free will is fiction.

You are controlled by your genetics, environment and experiences. Everything you do isn't a 'choice', it's a response.

You can't even 'choose' to shut your own brain up when it's humming a song 'you' don't even like. You can't even choose to shut your brain up when you really want to sleep - it wont let you, no, it'll just continue on with it's own nonsense and 300mph regardless to your needs.

You don't choose what music your ears like, what food your mouth likes, what girl or guy you find attractive, etc etc and so on.

But then some argue that if, for instance, I put 5 pens on a table, (blue, white, yellow, pink and black), that you then make a choice of which pen to use. But then you must look at why you made the 'choice'. Your eyes find the colour blue appealing for example or another pertinent example is that the colour you took was 'chosen' purely because it was reflective of your current mood.

Purely for fun, let's try a quick experiment - I want to see if anyone here can do it:

Choose, (just for a mere 1 minute), to believe in leprechauns. I'll give you a million quid and a doughnut if you can manage it.
 
Free will is fiction.
that has dire legal consequences

You are controlled by your genetics, environment and experiences. Everything you do isn't a 'choice', it's a response.
so if I was to burn your house and murder your family, technically I am not culpable?
You can't even 'choose' to shut your own brain up when it's humming a song 'you' don't even like.


You can't even choose to shut your brain up when you really want to sleep - it wont let you, no, it'll just continue on with it's own nonsense and 300mph regardless to your needs.

You don't choose what music your ears like, what food your mouth likes, what girl or guy you find attractive, etc etc and so on.

how about if one's brain is telling one to fly a passenger jet into a building?


To quote Roger Penrose

The issue of "responsibility" raises deep philosophical questions concerning the ultimate causes of our behaviour ... is the matter of "responsibility" merely one of convenience of terminology, or is there actually something else - a "self" lying beyond all such influences - which exerts a control over our actions? The legal issue of "responsibility" seems to imply that there is indeed, within each of us, some kind of independent "self" with its own responsibilities - and, by implications, rights - whose actions are not attributable to inheritance, environment, or chance. If it is other than a mere convenience of language that we speak as though there were such an independant "self", then there must be an ingredient missing from our present day physical understandings. The discovery of such an ingredient would surely profoundly alter our scientific outlook"
 
that has dire legal consequences

Not really, one has no choice but to lock up those that cause harm etc. It's a survival thing.

so if I was to burn your house and murder your family, technically I am not culpable?

Technically, no. One would need to look at why the action was done - mental illness, fragile nature that led to serious offence at my statement that caused your outburst etc etc.

how about if one's brain is telling one to fly a passenger jet into a building?

One does it.

To quote Roger Penrose

The issue of "responsibility" raises

Ooh, the quoting game..

Here's one from Swami Vivekananda, (one of the most famous and influential spiritual leaders of the philosophies of Vedanta and Yoga.):

'Therefore we see at once that there cannot be any such thing as free-will; the very words are a contradiction, because will is what we know, and everything that we know is within our universe, and everything within our universe is moulded by conditions of time, space and causality. ... To acquire freedom we have to get beyond the limitations of this universe; it cannot be found here'
 
I don't think that free will exists. For example I could make you experience certain emotions/state of mind/feelings by saying/doing something that would make you so. Thus you don't have free will because I just made you feel that, I controlled your will.

You just responded to stimuli, that's all. There's no free will, but reacting to external stimuli. Human behavior is largely predictable (because we know how the person is going to respond to a certain stimuli), just like the behavior of other animals.
Absurd. You can not control my will. You can do things that may or may not provoke a reaction from me. But you can not determine in advance exactly what that reaction would be.

For instance, you might say that by making your post, you caused me to make this post. But that's not true. I am responding to this post, many others I do not respond to. Could you predict in advance who would or would not respond to your post? Of course not.

When your alarm goes off in the morning, you have the choice to get up, hit the snooze button, or just turn the damned thing off and stay in bed. It's free will. The alarm is the stimuli, you decide how to react.

When walking down the street, you see a hot chick. You can choose to rape her right then, to gawk at her, to pretend to ignore her while secretly checking her out, to "accidently" bump into her in an attempt to start up a conversation....the choices are almost infinite. This in response to one of the most basic of stimuli that provokes an involuntary urge to procreate.

Free will is simply the ability to choose what to do, how to react in a given situation. It is a hallmark of a sentient species.
 
Absurd. You can not control my will. You can do things that may or may not provoke a reaction from me. But you can not determine in advance exactly what that reaction would be.

Might as well point out modus operandi. This helps police catch criminals because they can determine in advance what the criminal is going to do based upon observation of past activities.

This applies to everyone, and I'm sure you'd have to agree upon some reflection. You will know the ways to talk to your mother or wife, how they will react to certain things you do etc.
 
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