Interesting theories and information (to the OP.) I'm pretty torn on the whole "Free Will" VS "Fate" deal. I think fate sounds so romantic sometimes, but it can also be so confining. Free Will means we have to take responsibility for ALL our actions, doesn't it?

Personally I think that the points againts free will are good but ultimatly I think free will does exist.

Its all well and good saying that our choices are consequences of previous events and experiences, but I dont thinkd thats a good arguement because its inevitible, it merely gives us more subject material to work with when we are making a choice.

However, I could be wearing rose tinted glasses and I know we are very open to suggestion(Derren Brown anyone?).But again just the fact we are making the choice, whether suggested or not is still free will.
God now Im confusedXDDD

This thread reminds me of a quote I love that sometimes I wish I adhered to more, Im just too darn inquisitive for my own good^____^

"Just as true love does not need and explanation, neither does the universe"

(not sure if I got that right)

Its a nice quote sometimes but, probably more ultimitly just a cop out for people like me who just like to keep asking questions.

Well, i still think free will does in fact exist. À person can choose to not be a victim of circumstance even if you get hopelessly pummeled by the world at large. The brain may begin to think of something rather random, like 'i would buy that cd!' but after the initial thought you are able to change your mind. If you get the thought of beating someone senseless because he took your parkingspace that thought can be swept aside by the follow-up thoughts thus giving the freewill not to act on the initial urges.

If there is no free will the whole second-thought process would not exist. And you can quiet your mind with enough training, like Jesterman can play any song in his head and stop it on command (while i am one that sporadically goes crazy because of a irritating song that keeps on repeating on and on and on and on etc.) Free will is to be found at every moment even if it lies in the sphere of accepting the inevitable or not. You can choose to follow your fear in inactivity or follow the urge of sexual intercourse or not. You can conquer your fear or decide to abstain in the whole sex thing.

Free will is not absent just because we get random seeds of ideas, it is our free will to water the seed with intention or keep it barren and let it die off.

"There are choices, just no one there who makes them."

Of all the statements made in this thread, this is the most relevant. Hint: acausal

I think that the reason people cling to the idea of free will is because they don't like the idea that their life is not really in their control. If there is one thing that humans hate it's the idea of being out of control.

Like I said, I don't know for a fact that the idea of "free will" is a fallacy, but the longer that I live, the more it seems to be to me.

I would phrase it this way (for myself): I am free to do anything that is acceptable within the context of my own values.

Am I free to go out an murder people? No, but not as a constraint imposed upon me by society or even the consequences of such an action, but a constraint I impose upon myself, as a segment of my own self-imposed values.

This is a good thread; you bring up points of view that are interesting, however I cannot see anything --within context of my own experience -- that I wish to do, or think, or believe, that I am not allowed.

I chose my experience. I chose the variables that make it mine. I am a very lucky man, I admit. I live on an island that me and m'Bride chose to move to, we live in the way we want, and do as we wish.

FREE WILL LIVES!

[edit to wax philosophically]

[edit on 12-8-2008 by argentus]

the answer is simple, it is the question which makes it complex

freedom to choose not controlled by obligation or the will of another

now you can take this concept, and apply it to various different contexts you will in turn get various answers, thus the disparity

it is the context that changes not the law

fear is the only enemy of free will, remove the fear of loss death hunger etc and you will find the liberation that is meant by free will

Choice can be made without compulsion unless you analyze it to death with what ifs

Originally posted by argentus
I would phrase it this way (for myself): I am free to do anything that is acceptable within the context of my own values.

That sort of gets to the heart of what I am saying. Typically, you won't do anything that you weren't programmed to do.

If you're brought up with strong moral fiber, chances are, you're going to retain it.

Originally posted by _Heretic

Choice can be made without compulsion unless you analyze it to death with what ifs

Well, I overly analyze everything. God only knows how many dates I missed due to over analyzing. It's kind of sad, really.

[edit on 12-8-2008 by SpeakerofTruth]

The choice to post this thread was you're choice. To suggest that your choice was an illusion is childish philospohy. It's the same logic of asking "Why?" for the answer to every question. "Yes, but WHY?"

That being said, ther are some aspects of will that most certainly not "free". For example, no matter how much I wish I could fly like a bird, without the help of a vehicle of some sort, I can't do it. My will his bounded by certain physical parameters, and such.

So, some things you can't do, no matter what, but other things you clearly have a choice.

---

Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

---

Great thread! So, I've wondered this myself and I've asked many philosopher types and here are the 4 best answers that ring truest for me.

1) A friend, who calls herself Moon Gal, has a lovely way of possibly explaining our existence. Let's say we're all a part of creating this amazing Life. Planets are alive but have such long life spans, are so big and so different from what we think of as life; it seems like they're just big spinning rocks. To them, we're about as important as the microscopic creatures that live on our eyelashes, are to us. But we're all energy in different amounts of concentration. And enlightenment or density seems to be altered by choices and proximity to our Source.

She believes that we all have the same source and we ray out from it and at the end of our rays we condense into individual physical beings. Therefore, we're all the creator continually creating, for all we know, in multiple universes along various timelines. And, any pre-destined possibilities aren't from some foreign ruling entity, it's coming from an extension of us. Then, either all choices stay possible till we use our free will and PICK then other options vanish. Or, the choices stay available in other universes.




[edit on 8/12/2008 by trusername]

2) Separately yet similarly... An elderly lady named Mary Christ (I kid you not) once told me her beliefs - the best reasoning I've ever heard for pain and suffering in this world. She said that in the Tibetan book of the Dead after your journey passed the benevolent spirits and malevolent spirits and the judgment with the mountains of white stones (your good deeds) and black stones (your bad deeds) which determine whether you get to come back as a flea or Paris Hilton (and I'm simplifying these scriptures scandalously - no need to tell me You walk down this tunnel of copulating couples about to conceive babies and you PICK your parents - go behind them and enter a white tunnel where you forget this life and start a new.

Now, if that isn't interesting enough, in this tunnel she believed you got to PICK your challenges and PACK your bag of tools / support (that you've gathered through out your lifetimes) for your Earthlab 101 / Life game this time around. Some people pack accordingly, others don't. Some people pick out too many challenges and not the right tools or enough support. And they end up mumbling to themselves on street corners till they can check out and try again. Other old souls pack very well, and come in briefly to help. Sacrificing themselves to "awaken" us younger souls. She believed this of children with cancer. Go to a ward sometime and look in their eyes - Those are some old souls! There are many old souls out there, helping us out of our comfort zones towards collective creation and enlightenment.

3) Years ago, a man named Chetan explained to me that, as he sees it, we have our Default and our Extraordinary this-lifetime-specific, personal consciousness [head] and experiences / emotions [heart]. And, for the "ideal path" to meeting the challenges we pre-selected and PACKED for, there is our hotline connection to our source, our eternal guides / spirits / universal conscious... whatever, it's instinct [gut] (I feel it more in my diaphragm). Our gut has a vocab of only 2 words. For every choice, all it ever grunts is "yep" or "nope." BUT, our head and our heart can choose to ignore our gut (instinct). And they often do.

4) The most unusual and magical little store I've ever seen is called the Sword and Rose in San Francisco (straight out of Diagon Alley - I swear.) One afternoon I went by and there were 2 men in their 50s who were buying "powders" and wearing clothes that were ... distinctive. The owner told me they were warlocks - and since I have no reason to doubt or believe, I'll make no judgements either way.

Anyway, we were all talking and their immediate response to "Do you think we have free will?" was "OH YES, Far too much!" I thought that was interesting. In hospitals when someone can't breath well - they are put on a respirator. If you watch the monitor you'll see a little rhythm. That's called riding the respirator, because it's easier than breathing on our own. I believe we have all the free will we need, but creating and choosing is exhausting and a lot of us occasionally or frequently ride the Great Respirator!

BTW - Better use your free will while you can... I hear THEY are going to start charging for it



[edit on 8/12/2008 by trusername]

my contention is that if we understood free will enough, we would be free

are we?

who do YOU have to answer to?

why does it cost money to live on our own planet?

Originally posted by _Heretic
my contention is that if we understood free will enough, we would be free

are we?

who do YOU have to answer to?

why does it cost money to live on our own planet?

Well, there are millions of people, not to mention all plants and animals, living on earth without money.



[edit on 8/12/2008 by trusername]

Many people think that this world is nothing but a stage. Its possibly nothing more than a training ground of some sorts for the soul, whatever that may be. When I ponder along those lines I also come up with the possibility that this "training ground" is illusion. It may be illusion in so far as a movie is an illusion. We watch movies, but do not know where the show will go. We can guess, but ultimately it takes us where the director/writer wanted it to go. I feel that it is possibly that life is a simple movie of sorts. We may just be souls trapped/forced to watch this movie unfold before us until we learn the moral of the story.

Where does a thought start? Trace it back through the steps: a thought, neurons firing, receptors activated/deactivated, neurotransmitters released, some reaction, then what? Why did the reaction happen in the first place? What makes a spontaneous reaction into a thought? How can a system of spontaneous reactions produce free thought? Are we really in control?

Everything is about control. How can we actually have control? Is that possibly why we create so many of systems of control? Maybe deep down we all know we are helpless and the control systems we supposedly created are a reflection of our underlying chaos. Then again, maybe the systems are there to keep us from getting up and leaving the theater.

I look at it this way. Most of us can accept precognition as a possible ability for some if not most all of us. To be able to glimpse either by some sort of unexplained temporal transendance or by accute observation of current events drawning the accurate and logical conclusion to an uncanny degree of foreknowledge then it would appear that all things are predestined and all events contribute to the whole (think of the butterfly effect, but not as part of chaos theory, just the analogy).

If this is indeed true that precog visions are real then only by foreknowledge could a person avoid the event. By say never walking down Elm St. if you foresaw yourself being struck by a blue car on the sidewalk. By removing the event from the continum all resulting events would be adjusted to compensate, thus reality (although altered from the original) still exists.

That would be the only way "free will" could exist. Unless the vision was given so you would "avoid" the event to cause a "change" that was really what was to happen anyways.

But because I have had visions in which a series of unrelated events had to occur in order for the vision to be true, like one as a freshman in highschool that I would become good friends with girl I hardly knew and that would suddenly go blind my senior year and saw myself walking down the hall, blind. As it was, she and I became great friends out of the blue when she wanted to talk to me about losing her boyfriend and later in the year I tore the cornea of my left eye on a pine needle. The right eye snapped shut out of fatigue and for a week I was temporarily blind. Oddly enough I ws walking down the same section of hallway when the right eye snapped shut.