Quote:So, essentially, your question is basically "Do you believe in Destiny, that your life and actions have been pre-planned and pre-ordained?"

 

To simply answer this question. In short, No. No, I do not believe in Destiny and I do not believe that some God or Cosmic Force of Nature pre-planned my entire deck of cards and knew how the game would be played out until the day of my own death.

 

It's ridiculous to throw this on the table as an excuse for horrific acts against humanity throughout the centuries of mankind. To say that because of this I am not responsible for my stupidity or crimes. I absolutely refuse to believe in this theory or concept. We were born with free will to an extent. Depending on where you're born or from. You may or may not have free will. But free will exists in nature. We choose to make the right decisions or wrong decisions. We choose to help or hinder ourselves or others that we come across in life.

 

I don't see "Free Will" being an illusion. I'll say that, in some parts of the world that you may have a very corrupt and greedy force of people striving to take that away from us though. And you can take that seriously or with a grain of salt. I won't put my tinfoil hat on or anything. But the waters run deep when you look at a few key families throughout the history books and the roles they've played in helping or hindering this world in general. They may want to pre-plan our future and pre-ordain our future generations. But I won't chalk that up to any unseen force outside of our universe. Atleast not yet.

 

No, I'm not talking about God.   I'm leaving that concept out of it.  

 

My question was, if you believe in the laws of nature, for example, that every action produces an equal and opposite reaction, that energy is  neither created nor destroyed, and so forth, then can you believe that anything that happens is truly spontaneous?   Does everything have a cause or a set of causes?  

 

You can think you are exercising free will, but in reality, aren't your choices completely influenced by your genetics, your environment, your experiences?   If you come to a fork in the road, and you choose to go left instead of right, it may seem like you are exercising free will, but in reality there is a reason for why you chose left instead of right.  In that way, free will is an illusion.   You were always going to choose left over right, and that was determined at the time of the big bang. 

 

Can we explain even a whim (I think I'll go get a beer)?  It may seem like a whim to you, but can't even a whim be explained by causes that had causes that had causes?   If choices are inevitable, if every choice has a cause, which had a cause, which had a cause, then are those choices really made freely?  Or were they pre-determined a long time ago?

 

It seems like the goal of science is to explain things.  Theoretically, if we were smart enough, could everything that happened after the creation of the laws of science (the big bang) be explained?  

 

If we were omniscient, and we knew that current state of everything, and we knew all the laws of science, could we predict the future perfectly?   And if that is true, then our lives were set at the time of the big bang, when everything was set in motion and all the laws of science were created.  

 

In that way, what we think of as free will is an illusion. 

 

And by the way, I am not certain about all this.   It's just an interesting thought.  

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