Why did we get free will?

Blue inserts by Billy T
greenberg said:
Would you agree that what we believe that we are importantly influences the way we will act?

Sure, but if man is a biological machine only, then these physical processes which occur in the nerves, (which are governed by natural laws) also control his thoughts. If you say: "No, not true. The nerves only control his brain, but his soul and its thoughts are independent of his body." - Watchout! (You will understand why I warn you in the green text below.)

Sure. But how can a postulated chooser know -in advance- what options are physically possible for him?
Sure. But again, how do you know you have the ability to perform said action? You can only be really sure of that ability in hindsight, after you have already acted on your ability.

True. He cannot in many cases, just as one cannot be sure in advance of most things -rain tomorrow, price of GM shares next week, etc. -so what? However, some conceptual options are known to be imposible - hold your breath for an hour, walk on water, etc.


In short - the notion is that there are many planets on which living beings can be born.
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Your final "in short" answer is an interesting POV - an attempted answer to my suggestion that re-incarnation needs a "soul parking lot" but not very likely:

First, if true and Earth's total animate population with souls is now at all time high*, then some souls from other planets must be "imported" for each just born baby. Perhaps a soul whose prior life form lived under water like a fish, with 18 arms and no legs, ears or eyes (chemical senses only). Seems like quite an adaption problem to me and impossible, if the soul's thoughts are independent of the current body form.

Secondly, consider galaxy, dense with life forms on many different planets, when some central star makes a gamma ray burster and kills many zillions of bodies with souls in a few minutes. Were there an equal number of zillions of new bodies also just born to recieve those soul? What about velocity of light limitations? Do they apply to migrating souls search for a just born body? Do the zillions of souls from that Gamma ray burster galaxy all check in with God to get the coordinates of the just born body that will be theirs? Or can they simultaneously search the entire universe for the one their prior good life entitled them to? (The just dead saint of planet X-34a7, should not come back as an Earth worm, I might fish with, if God is just.)

Etc, on and on, but you see why I do not buy your answer with just these few questions.
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*This probably is true if mainly humans have souls. This because it is approximately true that on average the majority of humans have never died.** I.e. Earth's current live human population is about equal to all the humans that have ever died. IMHO, humans are a cancer, growing out of control, on the biosphere of Earth. It may sound insensitive and crude, but Earth needs a few more sexally transmitted diseases, like AIDs. (That should convence all those who think I am a "bleading heart liberal" of their serious miss-judgement of me. I hope the Baron Max is still around and reads this. Perhaps then he will believe I am for good urban schools, strongly pro same opportunity for all, etc. for economic, not Liberal, reasons.)
**Mathematically caused by fact that the average life span now significantly exceeds the population doubling time.
 
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lightgigantic said:
god is the reservoir of all good qualities, of which love is prime.
IOW a quality exists separate from a form only in a theoretical sense.
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Does god have any bad qualities in your opinion?

For example, I could love my wife, but that is not a sufficient indication to show any connection to god.
You could say that the ability we have to love is a tiny reflection of the ability god has to love, and being infinitesimal part and parcels of god we embody practically all of his qualities in a tiny proportion
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I agree, and well written.
 
Norsefire said:
You are asking why we got something we don't have. We don't have free will, whether or not there is a God is irrelevant. It's in our biology, our brain has a certain method of operation, so we do not have free will.
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What if advanced beings genetically designed the human race? In that case, free will IS given since you wouldn't exist at all without such a creation. That be the case, if it is.
 
Diode-Man said:
What if advanced beings genetically designed the human race? In that case, free will IS given since you wouldn't exist at all without such a creation. That be the case, if it is.
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Most people regard god as a very advanced being indeed and one who would have given us what is best for us.

Your hypothetical is irrelevant. We have no evidence that we were created by such beings any more than we were created by some god. In neither case could we be said to have been given free will because

a) we would not have been given the choice whether to exist in the world or not. Such a gift would be impossible before we existed.

b) the mere fact of our being created in a particular way from particular materials would constrain our actions to what was psooible for that combination.

Both god and free wil are illusions.
 
Betrayer0fHope said:
The question is fairly simple, maybe I am missing something incredibly obvious, and I probably am, but, why did God give us free will?


EDIT: Shoot sorry guys, I don't believe in God at all, this was directed at theists who believe that free will was "given" to us. My bad.
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By religious theory, it is said that we lost free-will when we where cast out of Eden... and even some say that free-will was lost when Eve fell in the Garden.

My theory says we have free-will because we are not entirely made up of energy alone. A longer lived fluctuation of matter composes our bodies, and we are at least 12% rest mass. The remaining 88% is pure gluon and light energy, defined singularily as luxon energy.

These slow masses move through my body, much like how a code on a product is scanned in a supermarket, these particles will oscillate throughout my body, and scan in a suitable temple for a complicated spirit and consciousness.
 
Billy T said:
Sure, but if man is a biological machine only
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Is man "a biological machine only"?
Do you believe about yourself that you are "a biological machine only"?


Sure. But how can a postulated chooser know -in advance- what options are physically possible for him?
Sure. But again, how do you know you have the ability to perform said action? You can only be really sure of that ability in hindsight, after you have already acted on your ability.
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True. He cannot in many cases, just as one cannot be sure in advance of most things -rain tomorrow, price of GM shares next week, etc. -so what?
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So what? Given that we normally do not know with certainty in advance what will happen or what we will be able to do - this raises for me the question of how and why humans act. Given the aforementioned uncertainty, it appears that we often act on preferences, desires, hopes - and not on evidence.


However, some conceptual options are known to be imposible - hold your breath for an hour, walk on water, etc.
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These "conceptual options" are not considered impossible to all.
In the so-called Eastern world, there are stories about yogis who have stopped breathing and done other things that would by us commonly be considered "impossible".


Etc, on and on, but you see why I do not buy your answer with just these few questions.
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There is a lot more to be said on the topic of reincarnation/rebirth, the existence of a soul, and living beings being born on many planets. If you are really interested in this, then I suggest you start the according inquiry threads in the Eastern Philosophy forum, as I do not wish to stray too far off topic here in this thread.
 
greenberg said:
Is man "a biological machine only"? Do you believe about yourself that you are "a biological machine only"?...
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I do not know. It seems I have free will and am not, but how things seem is not necessarily true. (The sun seems to rise each AM, etc.) Certainly it is possible tha I am a biological machine only. Some lesser life forms with more than hundred nerves for thier brain (each well know) are exactly that and do considerable interaction with their environment.
 
lightgigantic said:
not at all

Trying to establish morality as something beyond god bascially boils down to establishing some other person (and their values) as beyond god
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Do you think a human being is capable of doing something that your god is not capable of?

Is this god of yours a creator god? Did it create this universe?
 
Look at it this way. Somehow, everything we come and do must be written into spacetime itself, according to modern physics, because even memory is stored in the vacuum by action theory, and can be applied to the Generalized Absorber Theory. So everything is relative, and yet, this is what Einstein knew when he developed his theory of relativity, because it said there was no real thing as the past and the future. It was just an illusion.
 
The phone call I made 10 minutes ago couldn't have been an illusion, because I just got a call back confirming that it must have happened.
 
Reiku said:
Look at it this way. Somehow, everything we come and do must be written into spacetime itself, according to modern physics, because even memory is stored in the vacuum by action theory, and can be applied to the Generalized Absorber Theory. So everything is relative, and yet, this is what Einstein knew when he developed his theory of relativity, because it said there was no real thing as the past and the future. It was just an illusion.
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Everything is not written into spacetime; it is tied up in neat bundles with superstring.
 
Que sera, sera! - Isaac Newton.

You cannot (compatibly) believe both in free will and in cause and effect.
Biology and psychology are just specialisms of physics.
 
lightgigantic said:
fall into illusion
make mistakes
have imperfect senses
etc



sure that and everything else that comes under the banner of cause of all causes
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So you have identified a first cause. Well done ! Would you care to tell us how you came by this knowledge ?
 
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