Free Will or Nay

Are you determined to be as you are or do you make the choices yourself?

I often side with the latter though there are major occurances in our lives we had no choice in. Where shall we draw the line of the story of our existence? We didn’t choose to be born yet choices we make, everyday, always.

 

You always have a choice, its called free will.

God gave it to you.

 

At which point in your life did you choose to be Christian?

 

When my wrists were slit and I had a shotgun to my temple and I asked God for help.

And he sent it.

 

Only in the depths of Hades can we find the light to the temple.

 

Sometimes.

Not everyone has to reach those depths.

But regardless, God will always catch you if you let Him.

Always.

 

This is what we call "Life" and occurs for everyone, regardless of which "God" happens to be in thought or if none are. I make these choices all day, every day and it has absolutely nothing to do with it. Perhaps this is because I have not considered suicide and it only pops in to stop a few from doing so and picks which ones based on Santas' list.

 

A naive perception of my proposition. Did you choose to be yourself or were you guided by elements of your life to come to be what you understand as yourself?

 

Depending on the philosophical depths of your question, my answer must vary. On a shallow level that which is ME is a conglomeration of parental/familial influence and accumulated experience, on a deeper level I am the result of my brain indulging in its evolved function and the imagined reality it creates. This would be where "God" would come in to play, but in my case did not.

 

I’d argue sort of both but that it doesn’t make any difference anyway.

I’m of the opinion that everything is technically predetermined in as much as every single factor involved in any decision we make is each just a consequence of one long chain of cause and effect. That includes the chemical and electrical processes in our brains which ultimately lead to our conscious thoughts, instinctive physical responses and voluntary physical acts. Of course, it’s impossible for anyone/anything to know all of those factors at once so though it’s effectively predetermined, nobody can know what that predetermined outcome is until it happens.

If it was in any way possible for literally everything to be set to precisely how it was when we made a given decision, I say we’d make exactly the same decision (with exactly the same consequences). I say it doesn’t matter because that “reset” isn’t possible. Every decision we make is only ever made once in that exact set of circumstances so there will only ever be one decision, even if it was possible for us to make different ones.

 

If you're determined to do something it seems to me you've made some choices??????????

 

I can make choices with the substances I possess, such as what to eat or when to shower. But I can't make choices about things I do not possess, such as what house I'm going to buy or in which city and state I'm going to live.

 

We are determined but we are determined by our natures or ourselves. So we are both determined and have free will because our fates are determined by us but we don't get to choose who we are outside of past determining factors.

 

My wife and I always chose the house we bought and, living in Michigan we decided we'd rather live in San Diego so we moved.

 

What free choice does the aborted fetus have?

 

In regards to what?

 

you said, "always"

can you provide proof?

 

You're actually wrong about that.........we did choose to be born.

 

The fetus doesn't have a soul yet so it doesn't have a choice.

 

Where do you live Russia, China? You can't choose where you will live. Are you in the prison system?

 

Interesting, elaborate

 

We reincarnate and we're given choices like sex and even which body and when to re-incarnate. We don't have to - free will.
Read Dr. Eric Weiss' 'Many Lives Many Masters'. And a few others I can recommend but his book is concise, and an easy read.

 

According to Genesis, at the very moment Adam was given life, he became a living "soul". Therefore, if biblical apologists are to be believed, at the moment of conception one has free will. By the same token if their illogic is to be believed, anyone on their death bed also has "free will".

 

I'm gonna go with nay. Our will isn't free, it's very much constrained.

Let's say someone who we loved told us to eat a bug and to enjoy it. We might eat the bug, but we would not enjoy it. We did not have the power over our will, it was constrained. That's not to say that our minds aren't malleable, or that the constrained reaction might be to even get oneself to enjoy eating the bug, but we would only do so it our minds were set up to do so and presented with the opportunity.

This question is the mind pondering the mind, and the mind has its own agenda when it assesses this question. When we try to figure out what a free mind might do, our brain often comes up with things that the brain wants, i.e. when we try to test the freedom of our will, we often end up trying something we want to do and pretend we did it without wanting to do it (including doing something to prove to ourselves that our will is free).

Some might say this leads to meaninglessness. I disagree, a hammer's meaning doesn't lie in its freedom, but in its usability. I don't mean to say that our will has to be useful, I'm just saying it doesn't have to be free to be meaningful.

 

What is a Biblical apologist? Think outside the box (Bible). The soul or spirit doesn't come in until just before or just after birth.
The Bible is not a history book. The spirit exists without religion of any kind.