<div class="IPBDescription">Im just SOOO BORED</div> I believe in choice because I dont think everything could be planned out. What would be the point if everything was planned out?
I believe in choice. If there was a god s/he would have a book with our lives written in to it. When we do something the book adapts to our needs like if we interact with someone in a certain way that wasn't ment to be it would change to suit our needs. Kind of like the cause and effect rule.
In this book of our lives it would be preplanned in the best way possible (getting good grades, dying old) but we would be able to choose what little details we could change (getting bad grades, dying young). If these little details were to change the book would change with us and it would try to fix itself through our mistakes.
I'm christian. I belive in choice. I belive that is the essence of why we were put on earth, to make a choice. I belive that at some point there is an uncalculatable factor that guides at least one aspect of human beheivior and the choice that results is the most powerful driving force in the universe.
MouseThe Lighter Side of PessimismJoin Date: 2002-03-02Member: 263Members, NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
A little bit of both. Allow me to quote an essay I wrote recently that touched on the subject. <!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->In short, neither. I do not believe that everything everyone does is and was, preordained. But I also don’t believe an individual has complete control over everything that happens in their life. This is because of the simple fact that for this to be true for the individual it has to be true for the collective; and for it to be true for the collective, each individual within it would have to be totally and utterly isolated. In short, no-one can control everything; some things will happen regardless of our intentions and efforts for them to not.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Free will, or "no fate," where my actions are not influenced by a higher power. This does not rule out the existence of a higher power, but this means that this higher power has not written a "script" for my life.
"Loose fate," where my life is fated to take a certain direction, but I'm free to choose how to go about it.
"Total fate," where my life is completely predetermined, down to every little detail. Nothing I do is really my own decision (although I may be fated to believe otherwise), I'm simply acting out my part in the cosmic play.
Out of these three, the second one is implausible and the third one is meaningless. If I was fated to do something, but it was up to me to actually do it (loose fate), then I would need to be aware of my fate. Also, some sort of repercussion would have to await me were I to fail at fulfilling my fate. Of course my fate may be hidden to me, but then it is less of a fate and more of a task. If everything I do is fate (total fate), even down to what I think, then it is of no consequence to me. I have no way to break free of this bond - indeed, I have no way of even becoming aware of this bond unless I am fated to do so. I am of course still responsible for the actions I am fated to do, because I am also fated to be responsible for them, unless I am fated to evade responsibility, and so on and so forth. In other words, I might as well live my life as if there was no fate, because it makes no difference.
In short, I believe in free will because that's the only thing that makes sense to me.
Come to think of it, I don't really understand what free will means.
Free will has good connotations. If free is to be interpreted as undeterministic, that's just random with probabillities for certain outcomes as the only thing you can know, it doesn't make me sleep better at night knowing that I'm determined by randomness than if I was to be entirely deterministic(fate) like some sort of machine totally uncapable of any 'real' creativity. What usefull distinction is there between choice made partly because of randomness and 'choice' made from fate?, since you will never notice the difference.
By undeterministic I mean this: let's say you have an ensemble of me's in the very same state, ask them all what 6*7 is in the exact same way and you would get a distribution of x % "42", y % "the meaning of life", z % "...". By deterministic I mean that if they are in the same state you get the same answer from everyone, no randomness. Quantum mechanics introduces randomness, but if we are like computers which deal with macroscopic, statistical phenomena we are quite deterministic in the short term.
I believe free will is an illusion. Here is an illustration - how many of you, given the opportunity, would have concequenceless sex with Carmen Electra? All of you, good. There is no freedom in that - you are all bound by your inability to choose otherwise.
I think fate and our illusion of free will are two sides of the same coin. I believe everything is "predestined" - but we all see it as "choice" - yet our choices are such that we can not "choose" other than that which we do.
We are all bound to something - be it our nature, our desires, or our God.
Just to clarify - I don't think that God is the author of our fate - though he is aware of it more so than we are.
In an astounding turn of events, I agree with Pepe.
The concept of free will is something that we use to maintain order. While I don't think that our lives are determined by a diety or anything supernatural, such as three women cutting strings, I do think that we are slaves to our experiences, which are imposed on us.
For example, I'll use my fondness of anime to illustrate.
When asked why I like anime, I usually just say, "I dunno. I like the style." or "I like the story." That's a gross simplification of the situation that would be chalked up to free will. I like anime because I choose to like it.
A far more likely scenario is this:
I started to watch anime in my early teens. My parents had just gotten divorced and I generally disliked my life, so television was a form of escapism. Cartoons aren't bound by laws of physics or anything like that. However, anime plotlines are ususally more "adult" in nature and are usually more complex than your standard Bugs Bunny short, which appealed to my love of a good story (which was fostered by my parents reading to me a great deal). Ultimately, my love of anime isn't a choice at all, but the result of a string of events over which I had virtually no control.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Just to clarify - I don't think that God is the author of our fate - though he is aware of it more so than we are.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If God isn't the author of our fate, what does dictate it?
Well, in my life theory, choices come up first than fate. I believe that our mind secretly calculates everything. Your mind can even calculate another person to death with possibilities, it just affects him. You can change possibilities if you know them. Thats how the thelepathy works. Ofchourse, free energy from space what affects the earth and life on it, is part of it too, thats how astrology and numerology works. There are certain rules of possibilities in universe. Like the third wave is always bigger in the sea and like everybody has their lucky day and bad day. Our mind just calculates everything secretly. Just making the decision which way is shorter and which way you should pick, is calculating. You can think about your brain as a huge game engine what calculates ploys and moves.
If you ask me, this is a stupid debate. We're discussing about whether or not our lives are planned out or whether we have free choice, when people can't seem to contrive the fact that these things can coincide.
I mean, what if you decided to take your life's wealth and gamble it on one craps table. You decide you want to do it, but then you go to the future to check to see if you'll win. You take a time machine to the future to find out you lost horribly.
When you return, you do not gamble away everything you have as a consequence, and your future is changed as a result. The fact that you can go into the future and see what happens is a consequence of what actions a person in the present will make, and as those choices change, so will the future change.
Consequentially, I believe God knows what we will do, but it is still our decision to make. The future has been written, but it was written in a manner dictated by our choices, not by fate. Am I making any sense?
You guys are claiming that if you're "fated" to losing your money, then if you came back to present day with the knowledge that if you gambled your life's wealth, you'd lose and then when you decided not to gamble it, you'd still lose your money in another way.
I could go so far as to say you talked with yourself in the future and had him say that he lost his money gambling his money away. When you return, you decide not to do that, but *SOMEHOW* you wind up gambling your money away anyway, because it is fated. It just doesn't make sense to me.
<!--QuoteBegin-The Finch+Nov 15 2004, 10:10 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (The Finch @ Nov 15 2004, 10:10 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> In an astounding turn of events, I agree with Pepe.
The concept of free will is something that we use to maintain order. While I don't think that our lives are determined by a diety or anything supernatural, such as three women cutting strings, I do think that we are slaves to our experiences, which are imposed on us.
For example, I'll use my fondness of anime to illustrate.
When asked why I like anime, I usually just say, "I dunno. I like the style." or "I like the story." That's a gross simplification of the situation that would be chalked up to free will. I like anime because I choose to like it.
A far more likely scenario is this:
I started to watch anime in my early teens. My parents had just gotten divorced and I generally disliked my life, so television was a form of escapism. Cartoons aren't bound by laws of physics or anything like that. However, anime plotlines are ususally more "adult" in nature and are usually more complex than your standard Bugs Bunny short, which appealed to my love of a good story (which was fostered by my parents reading to me a great deal). Ultimately, my love of anime isn't a choice at all, but the result of a string of events over which I had virtually no control.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Just to clarify - I don't think that God is the author of our fate - though he is aware of it more so than we are.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If God isn't the author of our fate, what does dictate it? <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> *feels cosmic bond with The Finch* As a result of this post, I renounce my former beliefs, and everything is chance! /feeling
who dictates fate? Well, at the risk of getting flamed out of this thread, I'll go theological on you all.
I believe that God watches us and God predestines us to do certain things. However, he does it in such a way that we still "choose" and are still entirely "responsible" for our actions. This is Gods side of the coin - the inner workings of which we are not privy to.
On the other side of the coin we have us humans, who constantly choose to do things. A lot of choices have no right/wrong to them, but many do. Concerning those choices that have a "right" and a "wrong" - I believe we are slaves to choose wrong. Everyone is born sinful, and as such we can not do good. Your fate is dictated by your sinful nature.
Now here is the tricy part - those who are thus bound don't see it - hence the illusion of free will.
Now where does that leave someone who is a believer? - I no longer have a choice either. I am a slave to Christ - I am bound. When I do good, I am doing that which I am supposed to do. When I sin, I am prompted by my bindings (my concience) to not sin. Sinning become undesireable - the freedom to sin indiscriminately is removed - thus, I have no free will.
This brings me back to my premise - there is no free will - it is an illusion.
Your concept, Pepe, lies somewhere between my concepts of "loose fate" and "total fate". It resembles "total fate" mostly, in that it gives us the illusion of free will, and in that fate becomes meaningless in this way. When fate controls us to such a degree that we cannot change our fate, it loses any significance it may have had. When fate controls us to such a degree that we cannot tell the difference between fate and free will, where IS the difference?
Your previous example with Carmen Electra, on the other hand, is flawed in that it is based on an assumption that you not only have no way of proving, but which is indeed highly likely to be false.
To focus on what you attempted to illustrate, though, take this example:
You say that we "are all bound by [our] inability to choose otherwise." While this is indeed an argument against free will, this is not an argument FOR fate. Place me on a bomb and blow it sky-high and I have only one choice: To die. While I cannot assert my free will in this case, this is not fate, it is merely other people asserting THEIR free will over MINE. That is not fate, that is free will. Just not MY free will.
Using your scenerio, the fate aspect would be that the people who exploded the bomb/you had no other choice. They exploded it because they could not "choose" to not explode it.
In that sence, you were "fated" to be exploded - though it appeared as acts of free will, the choice was never really there.
<!--QuoteBegin-Pepe_Muffassa+Nov 15 2004, 06:34 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Pepe_Muffassa @ Nov 15 2004, 06:34 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Using your scenerio, the fate aspect would be that the people who exploded the bomb/you had no other choice. They exploded it because they could not "choose" to not explode it.
In that sence, you were "fated" to be exploded - though it appeared as acts of free will, the choice was never really there.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> Yes indeed, but the scenario proves nothing at all, which was the point I was trying to make. It CAN be seen as fate, but there's nothing there to prove it.
Indeed, ANY example that you or I can come up with can be explained both through fate as well as through free will. In the end, there is no proof for either case, nor any way to procure such proof. This brings the whole thing down to an issue of BELIEF, which, as the title says, is what this thread is about.
The reason why I took up discussion with you may have been wrong: It appeared as though you were trying to ARGUE for fate. However, you have absolutely no way of proving that our actions are determined by fate, just as I have no way of proving that they are not. Thus ARGUING for or against fate will not really work.
If the purpose of an argument is to sway the listener/reader to your side, then instead of attempting to argue the validity of our belief (which is fruitless, as I've described), we should rather attempt to argue the ATTRACTIVENESS of our beliefs.
Free will offers you control over your own life! Vote <span style='color:green'>free will!</span> If you vote <span style='color:red'>fate</span>, you vote <span style='color:red'>communism!</span>
<span style='font-size:7pt;line-height:100%'>Oh, and <a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=10&t=48132&hl=vote+lolfighter' target='_blank'>vote lolfighter for comm!</a></span>
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Free will offers you control over your own life! Vote free will! If you vote fate, you vote communism!<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I lol'd myself.
Arguing the attractiveness of a belief doesn't make it true. Heck, in the process you've managed to commit several several fallacies.
Since the thread is slow and I'm bored, I'll answer my own question.
Does parenting matter? Most people would say, "Of course it does, you retard. Now stop being stupid." However, the question is more complex than that. If we truly have free will, parenting wouldn't matter beyond providing nutrition and shelter until a kid could fend for themselves. People don't choose to be bad parents, but bad parents exist nonetheless.
I don't care for the word "fate" or "destiny." It adds an air of the supernatural which I don't think is necessary to explain things. Bad parents exist because they've been conditioned to be bad parents. The conditioning isn't the result of any one event, but a cumulation of events over their lifetime. However, we can't rely on "it's everybody else's fault" to control people. If I went on a shooting spree, would it be practical or at all feasible to arrest and prosecute anybody who might have had some impact on my life, however minimal? No, of course not. As a result, we chalk it up to free will. They're like that because they choose to be. But who here thinks, "When I grow up, I want to be a homicidal loon!"
Not only does it allow us to remove the undesirables, but it gives us piece of mind. If we're really shaped by society, than we could be anything others wanted. It could just as easily be us on that tri-state killing spree. We like to think that we're good people because we choose it, not because it's imposed on us.
<!--QuoteBegin-The Finch+Nov 16 2004, 03:24 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (The Finch @ Nov 16 2004, 03:24 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->[...]Arguing the attractiveness of a belief doesn't make it true. Heck, in the process you've managed to commit several several fallacies.[...]<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> Of course it doesn't make it true. I never said that. However, to prove your belief to be true, you'd have to do just that, offer proof. And I've already explained why you can't really prove anything regarding fate.
I repeat: <b>If the purpose of an argument is to sway the listener/reader to your side,</b> <u>then</u> instead of attempting to argue the validity of our belief (which is fruitless, as I've described), we should rather attempt to argue the ATTRACTIVENESS of our beliefs. If that is <b>not</b> the purpose of the argument, then there's not much to discuss, really. We might as well just post our own beliefs and leave it at that. That's not much of a discussion, however.
<!--QuoteBegin-The Finch+Nov 15 2004, 08:24 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (The Finch @ Nov 15 2004, 08:24 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> I don't care for the word "fate" or "destiny." It adds an air of the supernatural which I don't think is necessary to explain things. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> Considering the determinism in most theories of physics, one might be inclined to say the opposite of that.
<!--QuoteBegin-The Finch+Nov 15 2004, 11:59 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (The Finch @ Nov 15 2004, 11:59 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> To you free-willers out there, let me pose a question:
Does parenting matter? <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> If fate exists in the model you propose, why not just sit around and do nothing all the time? Stuff is already fated to happen, so it will weather you partake or not. It's your fate!
Parenting should matter weather you belive in fate or not.
<!--QuoteBegin-non.compos.mentis+Nov 16 2004, 01:25 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (non.compos.mentis @ Nov 16 2004, 01:25 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> <!--QuoteBegin-The Finch+Nov 15 2004, 08:24 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (The Finch @ Nov 15 2004, 08:24 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> I don't care for the word "fate" or "destiny." It adds an air of the supernatural which I don't think is necessary to explain things. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> Considering the determinism in most theories of physics, one might be inclined to say the opposite of that. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> Quantum mechanics would disagree with you. You can calculate the probability of any event occurring extreamly accurately, but the sums of multiple probability calculations manipulating an event have the potential to cause massive inaccuracy when attempting to predict an event as definate when you are calculating extreamly complicated happenings. Human decision for example.
It's like that guy who found out from a profit that he was destined to marry his mother, so he runs away and becomes a viking. The vikings one day plunder the very city his mother so happened to be in, and he falls in love with a her and marries her thinking she's miles away from there.
Sort of like if you hid yourself under a rock, somehow, someway, if you were destined to wind up doing something, you'd do it. There's a difference between fate and pre-destination. Pre-destination says everything is determined already.. everything you will do. Fate is the concept where you have control over decisions, but there are points which are unavoidable that you will do no matter which decisions you make.
<!--QuoteBegin-Hawkeye+Nov 16 2004, 03:25 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Hawkeye @ Nov 16 2004, 03:25 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> It's like that guy who found out from a profit that he was destined to marry his mother, so he runs away and becomes a viking. The vikings one day plunder the very city his mother so happened to be in, and he falls in love with a her and marries her thinking she's miles away from there.
Sort of like if you hid yourself under a rock, somehow, someway, if you were destined to wind up doing something, you'd do it. There's a difference between fate and pre-destination. Pre-destination says everything is determined already.. everything you will do. Fate is the concept where you have control over decisions, but there are points which are unavoidable that you will do no matter which decisions you make. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> Fate is apparently predictable, which is an ironic contridiction, since anything that you know will happen is possible to prevent happening. If fate acctually exists it isn't predictable.
<!--QuoteBegin-wizard@psu+Nov 16 2004, 03:45 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (wizard@psu @ Nov 16 2004, 03:45 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Here is an interesting twist:
Let's say that God came down and said that you were fated to die on December 3rd 2014.
Would this knowledge alter your decisions? Would you be able to influence such a fate because you know about it in advance?
What if you drank a gallon of antifreeze in 2007? <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> No I would have thought I was hallucinating (since I am technically agnostic according to the census), although I have no idea why, and would have continued with my normal life.
I don't believe in fate, nothing is <b>meant</b> to happen. I also don't think that the choices I make in my life will <b>all</b> revolve around my city/state/country/etc and eventually get back to me, although those thigns do happen sometimes. I believe that the world is a messed up place and I can only choose how I react to situations. Nothing was meant to be and everything that seems so is coincidental.
<!--QuoteBegin-wizard@psu+Nov 16 2004, 03:45 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (wizard@psu @ Nov 16 2004, 03:45 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Here is an interesting twist:
Let's say that God came down and said that you were fated to die on December 3rd 2014.
Would this knowledge alter your decisions? Would you be able to influence such a fate because you know about it in advance?
What if you drank a gallon of antifreeze in 2007? <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> I think it would be more ironic to outlive the prediction of fate then to prove it wrong by killing yourself. Although it does raise the issue, if God is telling people the date of thier death, then wouldn't they be pretty much invincible until that date?
Yes, which is exactly why God doesn't go around telling people when they're going to die. Plus, he wouldn't give a date in which you would die and not anytime before. If you wanted to kill yourself by drinking antifreeze in 2007, then God would have told you you were fated to die in 2007 and not 2014. So I guess it boils down to the fact that if you were determined to prove fate wrong by killing yourself, well the time at which you would die would be as soon as it is possible for you to kill yourself. If you had decided to try to outlive the time, well you'd die all the same.
Though I think that sounds silly, which is why I don't believe in that fate crap. What you do is already known by God, though it is still you making the choices. It's as if God were looking through a scope where it had already happened, and the choices you make are like the choices you had made in the past. Am I making any sense?
Free will does not dictate necessarily that your future isn't written.
Comments
Paradox'd <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/biggrin-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Silly topic.
It is pretty silly in that it's unanswerable.
For myself, I fall on the free will side of things.
I believe in choice. If there was a god s/he would have a book with our lives written in to it. When we do something the book adapts to our needs like if we interact with someone in a certain way that wasn't ment to be it would change to suit our needs. Kind of like the cause and effect rule.
In this book of our lives it would be preplanned in the best way possible (getting good grades, dying old) but we would be able to choose what little details we could change (getting bad grades, dying young). If these little details were to change the book would change with us and it would try to fix itself through our mistakes.
I think that is all i have to say here for now.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->In short, neither. I do not believe that everything everyone does is and was, preordained. But I also don’t believe an individual has complete control over everything that happens in their life. This is because of the simple fact that for this to be true for the individual it has to be true for the collective; and for it to be true for the collective, each individual within it would have to be totally and utterly isolated. In short, no-one can control everything; some things will happen regardless of our intentions and efforts for them to not.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Free will, or "no fate," where my actions are not influenced by a higher power. This does not rule out the existence of a higher power, but this means that this higher power has not written a "script" for my life.
"Loose fate," where my life is fated to take a certain direction, but I'm free to choose how to go about it.
"Total fate," where my life is completely predetermined, down to every little detail. Nothing I do is really my own decision (although I may be fated to believe otherwise), I'm simply acting out my part in the cosmic play.
Out of these three, the second one is implausible and the third one is meaningless.
If I was fated to do something, but it was up to me to actually do it (loose fate), then I would need to be aware of my fate. Also, some sort of repercussion would have to await me were I to fail at fulfilling my fate. Of course my fate may be hidden to me, but then it is less of a fate and more of a task.
If everything I do is fate (total fate), even down to what I think, then it is of no consequence to me. I have no way to break free of this bond - indeed, I have no way of even becoming aware of this bond unless I am fated to do so. I am of course still responsible for the actions I am fated to do, because I am also fated to be responsible for them, unless I am fated to evade responsibility, and so on and so forth. In other words, I might as well live my life as if there was no fate, because it makes no difference.
In short, I believe in free will because that's the only thing that makes sense to me.
Free will has good connotations. If free is to be interpreted as undeterministic, that's just random with probabillities for certain outcomes as the only thing you can know, it doesn't make me sleep better at night knowing that I'm determined by randomness than if I was to be entirely deterministic(fate) like some sort of machine totally uncapable of any 'real' creativity. What usefull distinction is there between choice made partly because of randomness and 'choice' made from fate?, since you will never notice the difference.
By undeterministic I mean this: let's say you have an ensemble of me's in the very same state, ask them all what 6*7 is in the exact same way and you would get a distribution of x % "42", y % "the meaning of life", z % "...". By deterministic I mean that if they are in the same state you get the same answer from everyone, no randomness. Quantum mechanics introduces randomness, but if we are like computers which deal with macroscopic, statistical phenomena we are quite deterministic in the short term.
I think fate and our illusion of free will are two sides of the same coin. I believe everything is "predestined" - but we all see it as "choice" - yet our choices are such that we can not "choose" other than that which we do.
We are all bound to something - be it our nature, our desires, or our God.
Just to clarify - I don't think that God is the author of our fate - though he is aware of it more so than we are.
The concept of free will is something that we use to maintain order. While I don't think that our lives are determined by a diety or anything supernatural, such as three women cutting strings, I do think that we are slaves to our experiences, which are imposed on us.
For example, I'll use my fondness of anime to illustrate.
When asked why I like anime, I usually just say, "I dunno. I like the style." or "I like the story." That's a gross simplification of the situation that would be chalked up to free will. I like anime because I choose to like it.
A far more likely scenario is this:
I started to watch anime in my early teens. My parents had just gotten divorced and I generally disliked my life, so television was a form of escapism. Cartoons aren't bound by laws of physics or anything like that. However, anime plotlines are ususally more "adult" in nature and are usually more complex than your standard Bugs Bunny short, which appealed to my love of a good story (which was fostered by my parents reading to me a great deal). Ultimately, my love of anime isn't a choice at all, but the result of a string of events over which I had virtually no control.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Just to clarify - I don't think that God is the author of our fate - though he is aware of it more so than we are.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If God isn't the author of our fate, what does dictate it?
There are certain rules of possibilities in universe. Like the third wave is always bigger in the sea and like everybody has their lucky day and bad day. Our mind just calculates everything secretly. Just making the decision which way is shorter and which way you should pick, is calculating. You can think about your brain as a huge game engine what calculates ploys and moves.
I mean, what if you decided to take your life's wealth and gamble it on one craps table. You decide you want to do it, but then you go to the future to check to see if you'll win. You take a time machine to the future to find out you lost horribly.
When you return, you do not gamble away everything you have as a consequence, and your future is changed as a result. The fact that you can go into the future and see what happens is a consequence of what actions a person in the present will make, and as those choices change, so will the future change.
Consequentially, I believe God knows what we will do, but it is still our decision to make. The future has been written, but it was written in a manner dictated by our choices, not by fate. Am I making any sense?
You guys are claiming that if you're "fated" to losing your money, then if you came back to present day with the knowledge that if you gambled your life's wealth, you'd lose and then when you decided not to gamble it, you'd still lose your money in another way.
I could go so far as to say you talked with yourself in the future and had him say that he lost his money gambling his money away. When you return, you decide not to do that, but *SOMEHOW* you wind up gambling your money away anyway, because it is fated. It just doesn't make sense to me.
vote_for_choices_and_fate++;
The concept of free will is something that we use to maintain order. While I don't think that our lives are determined by a diety or anything supernatural, such as three women cutting strings, I do think that we are slaves to our experiences, which are imposed on us.
For example, I'll use my fondness of anime to illustrate.
When asked why I like anime, I usually just say, "I dunno. I like the style." or "I like the story." That's a gross simplification of the situation that would be chalked up to free will. I like anime because I choose to like it.
A far more likely scenario is this:
I started to watch anime in my early teens. My parents had just gotten divorced and I generally disliked my life, so television was a form of escapism. Cartoons aren't bound by laws of physics or anything like that. However, anime plotlines are ususally more "adult" in nature and are usually more complex than your standard Bugs Bunny short, which appealed to my love of a good story (which was fostered by my parents reading to me a great deal). Ultimately, my love of anime isn't a choice at all, but the result of a string of events over which I had virtually no control.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Just to clarify - I don't think that God is the author of our fate - though he is aware of it more so than we are.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If God isn't the author of our fate, what does dictate it? <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
*feels cosmic bond with The Finch*
As a result of this post, I renounce my former beliefs, and everything is chance!
/feeling
who dictates fate? Well, at the risk of getting flamed out of this thread, I'll go theological on you all.
I believe that God watches us and God predestines us to do certain things. However, he does it in such a way that we still "choose" and are still entirely "responsible" for our actions. This is Gods side of the coin - the inner workings of which we are not privy to.
On the other side of the coin we have us humans, who constantly choose to do things. A lot of choices have no right/wrong to them, but many do. Concerning those choices that have a "right" and a "wrong" - I believe we are slaves to choose wrong. Everyone is born sinful, and as such we can not do good. Your fate is dictated by your sinful nature.
Now here is the tricy part - those who are thus bound don't see it - hence the illusion of free will.
Now where does that leave someone who is a believer? - I no longer have a choice either. I am a slave to Christ - I am bound. When I do good, I am doing that which I am supposed to do. When I sin, I am prompted by my bindings (my concience) to not sin. Sinning become undesireable - the freedom to sin indiscriminately is removed - thus, I have no free will.
This brings me back to my premise - there is no free will - it is an illusion.
Your previous example with Carmen Electra, on the other hand, is flawed in that it is based on an assumption that you not only have no way of proving, but which is indeed highly likely to be false.
To focus on what you attempted to illustrate, though, take this example:
You say that we "are all bound by [our] inability to choose otherwise." While this is indeed an argument against free will, this is not an argument FOR fate.
Place me on a bomb and blow it sky-high and I have only one choice: To die. While I cannot assert my free will in this case, this is not fate, it is merely other people asserting THEIR free will over MINE. That is not fate, that is free will. Just not MY free will.
In that sence, you were "fated" to be exploded - though it appeared as acts of free will, the choice was never really there.
Does parenting matter?
In that sence, you were "fated" to be exploded - though it appeared as acts of free will, the choice was never really there.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yes indeed, but the scenario proves nothing at all, which was the point I was trying to make. It CAN be seen as fate, but there's nothing there to prove it.
Indeed, ANY example that you or I can come up with can be explained both through fate as well as through free will. In the end, there is no proof for either case, nor any way to procure such proof. This brings the whole thing down to an issue of BELIEF, which, as the title says, is what this thread is about.
The reason why I took up discussion with you may have been wrong: It appeared as though you were trying to ARGUE for fate. However, you have absolutely no way of proving that our actions are determined by fate, just as I have no way of proving that they are not. Thus ARGUING for or against fate will not really work.
If the purpose of an argument is to sway the listener/reader to your side, then instead of attempting to argue the validity of our belief (which is fruitless, as I've described), we should rather attempt to argue the ATTRACTIVENESS of our beliefs.
Free will offers you control over your own life! Vote <span style='color:green'>free will!</span> If you vote <span style='color:red'>fate</span>, you vote <span style='color:red'>communism!</span>
<span style='font-size:7pt;line-height:100%'>Oh, and <a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=10&t=48132&hl=vote+lolfighter' target='_blank'>vote lolfighter for comm!</a></span>
I lol'd myself.
Arguing the attractiveness of a belief doesn't make it true. Heck, in the process you've managed to commit several several fallacies.
Since the thread is slow and I'm bored, I'll answer my own question.
Does parenting matter? Most people would say, "Of course it does, you retard. Now stop being stupid." However, the question is more complex than that. If we truly have free will, parenting wouldn't matter beyond providing nutrition and shelter until a kid could fend for themselves. People don't choose to be bad parents, but bad parents exist nonetheless.
I don't care for the word "fate" or "destiny." It adds an air of the supernatural which I don't think is necessary to explain things. Bad parents exist because they've been conditioned to be bad parents. The conditioning isn't the result of any one event, but a cumulation of events over their lifetime. However, we can't rely on "it's everybody else's fault" to control people. If I went on a shooting spree, would it be practical or at all feasible to arrest and prosecute anybody who might have had some impact on my life, however minimal? No, of course not. As a result, we chalk it up to free will. They're like that because they choose to be. But who here thinks, "When I grow up, I want to be a homicidal loon!"
Not only does it allow us to remove the undesirables, but it gives us piece of mind. If we're really shaped by society, than we could be anything others wanted. It could just as easily be us on that tri-state killing spree. We like to think that we're good people because we choose it, not because it's imposed on us.
Of course it doesn't make it true. I never said that. However, to prove your belief to be true, you'd have to do just that, offer proof. And I've already explained why you can't really prove anything regarding fate.
I repeat: <b>If the purpose of an argument is to sway the listener/reader to your side,</b> <u>then</u> instead of attempting to argue the validity of our belief (which is fruitless, as I've described), we should rather attempt to argue the ATTRACTIVENESS of our beliefs.
If that is <b>not</b> the purpose of the argument, then there's not much to discuss, really. We might as well just post our own beliefs and leave it at that. That's not much of a discussion, however.
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Considering the determinism in most theories of physics, one might be inclined to say the opposite of that.
Does parenting matter? <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
If fate exists in the model you propose, why not just sit around and do nothing all the time? Stuff is already fated to happen, so it will weather you partake or not. It's your fate!
Parenting should matter weather you belive in fate or not.
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Considering the determinism in most theories of physics, one might be inclined to say the opposite of that. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Quantum mechanics would disagree with you. You can calculate the probability of any event occurring extreamly accurately, but the sums of multiple probability calculations manipulating an event have the potential to cause massive inaccuracy when attempting to predict an event as definate when you are calculating extreamly complicated happenings. Human decision for example.
Sort of like if you hid yourself under a rock, somehow, someway, if you were destined to wind up doing something, you'd do it. There's a difference between fate and pre-destination. Pre-destination says everything is determined already.. everything you will do. Fate is the concept where you have control over decisions, but there are points which are unavoidable that you will do no matter which decisions you make.
Sort of like if you hid yourself under a rock, somehow, someway, if you were destined to wind up doing something, you'd do it. There's a difference between fate and pre-destination. Pre-destination says everything is determined already.. everything you will do. Fate is the concept where you have control over decisions, but there are points which are unavoidable that you will do no matter which decisions you make. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Fate is apparently predictable, which is an ironic contridiction, since anything that you know will happen is possible to prevent happening. If fate acctually exists it isn't predictable.
Let's say that God came down and said that you were fated to die on December 3rd 2014.
Would this knowledge alter your decisions? Would you be able to influence such a fate because you know about it in advance?
What if you drank a gallon of antifreeze in 2007?
Let's say that God came down and said that you were fated to die on December 3rd 2014.
Would this knowledge alter your decisions? Would you be able to influence such a fate because you know about it in advance?
What if you drank a gallon of antifreeze in 2007? <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
No I would have thought I was hallucinating (since I am technically agnostic according to the census), although I have no idea why, and would have continued with my normal life.
I don't believe in fate, nothing is <b>meant</b> to happen. I also don't think that the choices I make in my life will <b>all</b> revolve around my city/state/country/etc and eventually get back to me, although those thigns do happen sometimes. I believe that the world is a messed up place and I can only choose how I react to situations. Nothing was meant to be and everything that seems so is coincidental.
Let's say that God came down and said that you were fated to die on December 3rd 2014.
Would this knowledge alter your decisions? Would you be able to influence such a fate because you know about it in advance?
What if you drank a gallon of antifreeze in 2007? <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think it would be more ironic to outlive the prediction of fate then to prove it wrong by killing yourself. Although it does raise the issue, if God is telling people the date of thier death, then wouldn't they be pretty much invincible until that date?
Though I think that sounds silly, which is why I don't believe in that fate crap. What you do is already known by God, though it is still you making the choices. It's as if God were looking through a scope where it had already happened, and the choices you make are like the choices you had made in the past. Am I making any sense?
Free will does not dictate necessarily that your future isn't written.