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Free Will

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  • #51
    I agree. Your negative interjections are not only pointless but distracting. If you have nothing to add, then just stay out.

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    • #52
      Originally posted by Anonymouse You know, in all the time that you've been here, I've yet to see anything intelligent that you've contributed to any discussion aside from one-liners.
      These pointless discussions have been done, redone, and overdone. My outburtsts are much like your "this thread sucks" posts.
      If I've contributed nothing why did you vote me best all around forumer. Hmmmm

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      • #53
        Originally posted by patlajan These pointless discussions have been done, redone, and overdone. My outburtsts are much like your "this thread sucks" posts.
        If I've contributed nothing why did you vote me best all around forumer. Hmmmm
        Irony.
        Achkerov kute.

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        • #54
          All right. You said God's existence preceded all, which negates your previous postulation of the eternality of the soul. So that takes us back to the original question - what determines the character of the soul? You seem to have already answered that it is God, that he determines all. He gives us the ability to choose between whatever options we may have, but it is he that creates us with a certain predisposition to make decisions that follow a certain pattern that we refer to as "character." While this doesn't completely negate free will, it does pretty seriously undermine it as well as making God largely responsible for a great deal of evil. Furthermore, it makes him awfully petty to lay the blame entirely on us when it should so obviously be on him.

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          • #55
            Originally posted by loseyourname All right. You said God's existence preceded all, which negates your previous postulation of the eternality of the soul. So that takes us back to the original question - what determines the character of the soul? You seem to have already answered that it is God, that he determines all. He gives us the ability to choose between whatever options we may have, but it is he that creates us with a certain predisposition to make decisions that follow a certain pattern that we refer to as "character." While this doesn't completely negate free will, it does pretty seriously undermine it as well as making God largely responsible for a great deal of evil. Furthermore, it makes him awfully petty to lay the blame entirely on us when it should so obviously be on him.
            If God has ordained us with free will, like I've said for a thousand times, and in order for man to be free to do good, he must be free to do evil. If you want to argue that somehow this makes God indirectly responsible, go for it.
            Achkerov kute.

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            • #56
              You're not listening to me. I'm not arguing that if God allows evil, he is responsible for it. I'm arguing that if His existence preceded that of our souls, then it is he that created those souls. It is He that created evil souls that perpetrate evil acts. That being the case, then yes, He is responsible for evil. The only way to get around this is to say that he created souls that were blank slates, completely devoid of character. But if this is the case, then what is it that determines the character of the soul? Nobody is going to deny the existence of character. Regardless of the existence of free will, there are some people who are predisposed to committing evil acts and others who are not. Why is this, and what is responsible? If not God, then I want to know what.

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              • #57
                I am exercising my free will and reviving this thread. Suffer the wrath.

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                • #58
                  I've been noticing lately that in some situations I dont really have free will......as athletes we have to do "study hall" and I really don't need to do it and I dont wanna do it, but it's mandatory, and it's out of my hands...I hate it....another thing, my freakin coach made me move out and live by the university, and I didn't wanna move out, but she like totally forced me to, I had no choice. After living out for about 2 weeks I hated it, and now secretly I'm living at my house........basically if she finds out i might get kicked out of the team.....I mean where is my free will? I wanna freakin live wherever I would like to live and do whatever i want..screw the mandatory rules that she comes up with!lol.....(i know my examples are all tennis related, but it's a big part of my life, sorry)lol.......

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                  • #59
                    Nan, your arguments cut right to the heart of what I initially wanted to get at with this thread. As I mentioned at the beginning, I don't subscribe to contracausal freedom. The very idea is ridiculous. Basically, modes of action are separated into two distinct categories: one is caused, and therefore determined and unfree, the other is uncaused and therefore free. First off, if strict determinism is correct, then all determined events are unfree; that is, they are traceable all the way back through a series of causes and could have been predicted. However, I see no reason to view an uncaused event as free. That which is uncaused is completely random. Free will must involve some form of conscious decision-making process; that is, a free agent may not know ahead of time what he will do, but he must be able to cause a certain mental event to occur. With this argument in hand, I turn to a compatibilist form of freedom. W.T Stace begins his argument with an assessment of decisions that we would commonly agree are free and are those that are not free.

                    Unfree decisions include those that fstkhnan speaks of: being forced to live somewhere that she does not want to live and to do things that she does not want to do. Free decisions include her decision to live where she wants to anyway. Stace then analyzes what it is that makes these decisions different from one another. The conclusion is that the unfree decisions have a cause originating outside of the free agent's own psyche. Nan here is being forced to do something. The cause of her decision is directly traceable to her tennis coach. Her decision to live in her house, however, is traceable only to her. Nothing external to her psyche coerced her into making this decision; it is hers and hers alone.

                    So, in conclusion, that is what separates a free decision from an unfree decision. The free decision is simply that which originates in the psyche, or the self, of the agent making the decision. Whether or not this act is truly free is another story, although it would fit the common definition. Whether or not it is truly free depends largely on the nature of consciousness itself. If consciousness is entirely a biochemical process that strictly follows the laws of physics and can be traced to a series of causes that existed prior to the arising of the consciousness itself, then the decision is not technically free. However, I'm not sure that this is even relevant, as again, the common defitition and understanding of freedom does not seem to take such things into consideration.

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                    • #60
                      yeah I see ur point there, and I pretty much understand what u mean and agree as well....it's well written and explained.....

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