Do we have freewill ? is it biblical ?

Discussion in 'Religion & Philosophy' started by zacariah88, Feb 22, 2023.

  1. Maquiscat

    Maquiscat Well-Known Member

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    What are you talking about? Don't you know it's mandatory now? You get fined if you don't have insurance. After that yeah it's a choice

    Example?

    Examples?

    Examples?
     
  2. Maquiscat

    Maquiscat Well-Known Member

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    Here's the example and question I like to use to explain that point.

    Does time travel (assumption) eliminate free will? If I stand there and watch you make a decision, then jump into my time machine and stand across the street from where I first watched you, and observe you making the same decision, did you have free will in making that decision or was it predestined?
     
  3. Maquiscat

    Maquiscat Well-Known Member

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    Keep in mind that this also means not telling a child their religion is wrong or fake.
     
  4. Nwolfe35

    Nwolfe35 Well-Known Member

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    If someone knows what choice you are going to make then you really aren't making a choice. You're just playing out what has already been determined.
    It may feel like you are making a choice but you are not.
     
  5. Dirty Rotten Imbecile

    Dirty Rotten Imbecile Well-Known Member

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    I think people are less likely to teach that a religion is wrong or fake than they are to teach skepticism. By skepticism I mean teaching people to use their faculty of reason to evaluate the likely validity of an idea or system of ideas. Unfortunately some religions will teach the opposite, that anything less than slack jawed credulity is a sin.
     
  6. Nwolfe35

    Nwolfe35 Well-Known Member

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    Science does not seek to disprove religion. Science seeks the truth. Religion is just collateral damage.
     
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  7. DentalFloss

    DentalFloss Well-Known Member

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    Children don't generally get religion if they don't have one foisted upon them by their parents. And it is quite rare for someone to have a different one than what they had beat (figuratively, hopefully) into their heads since the time they learned to speak. I'm one of the few people to have seen the great beyond and returned, although 'few' is a relative term and there are many, many, many stories like mine.

    But had my mother and grandmother been correct in their beliefs, instead of finding myself on some kind of beach (not dissimilar from where Jody Foster found herself in Contact, if you've seen that, except it was daylight), I would have been burning in hell, because not only do I not believe the things I was told I would be sent to hell for not believing, I am also a man slut who, before becoming disabled, attended sex parties with my lovely bride (who kept me alive during a time when I should have been dead permanently) virtually every weekend. I was also taught about reincarnation, first that it exists, which is completely contrary to the religion of my ancestors, and some details about why.

    But most people are so deeply ingrained in their personal belief system that nothing I could say, even if by chance they don't think I'm an outright liar (which I've heard many times), they write it off as some illusion or a lack of oxygen to my brain. I've passed out from that before, it was a stupid thing we did in my high school on purpose.. It's not the same!
     
  8. DentalFloss

    DentalFloss Well-Known Member

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    At first I was not going to respond to this, but something clicked in my noggin. Most religions say that if you do this or that thing that you're not supposed to (labeling certain actions as 'sin'), then you will be punished in the afterlife, usually with eternal torture. But if we do not have free will, we're just actors in a play, reciting lines that we don't even remember memorizing, and to punish someone for doing that would be like putting someone in prison because a character they played on a TV show killed someone.

    Of course, I do believe we have free will, which is the entire point of our consciousness (soul, higher self, there are many terms) came from the non-physical plane of existence (heaven, the afterlife, the great beyond, again, many terms) to live a life here. Many, actually, but we don't know that while we're here, as the whole point of this is like a school. And like a school where you go from Grade 1-12, then maybe college, then maybe post-grad, we progress (or that is the hope, at least) over the course of countless lifetimes, and the point is a very Buddhist kind of enlightenment, though I use that term, as I do so many others when speaking of this, in a metaphorical sense.

    Hell, for that matter, I think quantum physics, and things like the double slit experiment, quantum tunneling, and so forth demonstrate fairly conclusively that our physical reality is actually not. It's some kind of simulation that we experience as if it were real.

    But that is a whole other topic, in fact it's one I've written an entire whitepaper about.
     
  9. Nwolfe35

    Nwolfe35 Well-Known Member

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    I believe in free will also. Because of my belief in free will I have rejected belief in most religions because the idea of all knowing God is contradictory to a free will.
    Furthermore, the point you made about being punished for choices that we really have no choice on is spot on. Such a system would be the most immoral system ever conceived. Just another reason to reject the idea of reward and punishment after death.
    Quantum Mechanics does not demonstrate that our physical reality is actually not. It points to things that we don't understand about reality. Not knowing is where any statement about the world around us should end.
    I don't know is a powerful statement.
    I don't know therefore I believe X is a weak statement.
     
  10. DentalFloss

    DentalFloss Well-Known Member

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    Well...

    It clearly demonstrates that subatomic particles do not exist as a real, physical thing unless and until we 'measure' them by some sort of observation. Ergo, if an electron is not real until observed, is anything? That's fundamentally what physics is at it's core, reverse engineering the math behind how the universe works. Those little subatomic particles only 'exist' as a p-wave (probability wave, that describes only where it might be. But until it's measured, it can and is in more than one place at a time.

    Einstein didn't like it either, but he sort of came around before his death. Or so it's been said, as he died way before I ever drew breath, at least in this life, I didn't know him.
     
  11. Nwolfe35

    Nwolfe35 Well-Known Member

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    Yes, that is our current understanding of physics.
    We observe something that we don't understand. That doesn't "prove" anything other than there is gaps in our knowledge on how the universe works.
     
  12. DentalFloss

    DentalFloss Well-Known Member

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    Except what I explained to you is a simplistic way of telling you how the universe works! It's not a guess, it's not an unknown, it's a fact, it's repeatable, and most of it is well known. I have spoken with multiple physicists about the concept, and the general reaction is something like, "No, duh!"
     
  13. Nwolfe35

    Nwolfe35 Well-Known Member

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    The OBSERVATION is well known. The WHY is not. There is no reason to try and say "WHY" right now. It is making assumptions for which we have no facts.
    To say that the KNOWN observation is caused by the fact that we are in a simulation or that it shows there is a spiritual realm or somehow is shows that God exists is a leap too far.
     
  14. mswan

    mswan Well-Known Member

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    What do you consider facts? If the only knowledge you accept as fact is that attainable by scientific methods you're rejecting at least half of reality
     
  15. Nwolfe35

    Nwolfe35 Well-Known Member

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    Scientific methods are the ONLY way of describing reality.

    If you're accepting some sort of reality that was not reached by scientific methods then you are accepting stuff with no basis.
     
  16. Overitall

    Overitall Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Good analogy. Would the outcome be different if the "still small voice of God" was influencing your decision? As far as the decision maker is concerned it's only his thoughts inside his head.
     
  17. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    Doctors do not say that sex change is necessary.

    What I'm referring to is cases where doctors say that an abortion is needed as part of life saving treatment.
    The Supreme Court has ruled that state schools must allow a specific religion to be presented as being true by instructors who want to do so.
     
  18. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    There is no federal penalty for not having insurance.
     
  19. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    The problem with that is that to the best of our knowledge today there aren't and won't be any time machines.

    But, there ARE similar scenarios when one believes in an omnipresent timeless god.

    Some do believe that the character of god leads to their being no free will.
     
  20. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    Yes, photons can behave as waves or as particles.

    The problem of knowing where a photon is doesn't lead to the view that the particle is actually in more than one place at a time. It means that it could be manifested as a particle in any of a range of places.

    This is real physics, solidly verified. This doesn't lead to the conclusion that we live in a simulation.
     
  21. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    Facts are observed and recorded phenomena - such as a temperature taken with a specific apparatus and method at a specific time and location, that is then well documented.

    Yes, that leaves out heaven, hell, along with whatever ones brain might dream.

    It is very different from what the religions of humans over the time of our species have considered to be true.
     
  22. mswan

    mswan Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, no surprise there. That says a lot about man's hubris.
     
  23. mswan

    mswan Well-Known Member

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    Facts observed by man's limited senses and what very limited brainpower the human race has.
     
  24. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    The problem that religion faces is that those methods of exploration of this universe have no means for excluding false ideas.

    One can't reach for the truth while failing to address this central problem.

    So, we have thousands upon thousands of religious views, each claiming contrary notions of truth and no method of addressing that problem.

    Surely the first step here is to address this problem.
     
  25. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    That's not improved by saying that there are vast new powers if only humans would ignore their limited brainpower.

    You can't have it both ways.
     

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