Quote: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. 

 

I've had similiar thoughts like this. I've often compared it to the "double mirror" effect. Where if you place two mirrors together it seems to give off the same reflection in a neverending cascade type effect it just goes further away and on in continium.

 

This is the kind of question that used to get me kicked out of Sunday school in Church. I would often ask the questions nobody could answer and then I'd follow it up with the same question.

 

"If God created us, then who created God?". And then from there, the "Mirror Effect" type questions start coming up. Almost as any child would ask the same annoying questions because to them at that age it must make sense. Whereas, when you're an adult and raised into a belief system very systematically you're taught NOT to question it. To accept it.

 

So, it would go on and on and on. If A. created B. Then who Created A? And who created the thing that created A and so forth and so forth and so forth. Even with the the Big Bang theory, right? What caused it to occur? And what created the two primary elements needed to create the Big Bang? And what created those elements, etc?

 

That question can and will drive you up a wall and into madness if you allow it to. It's a tough question. At the end of the day, everyone has proposed theories. I often laugh at Science AND Religion with their claims and beliefs sometimes. For example, when some Scientists announced that Space does run out of room, that thier literally is an edge you can fall off and out of in Space. How can you be sure of this? Have we explored deep space? No. Have we been able to cultivate and terraform other planets to jump from one galaxy to another? No. So why make such a foolish assumption when you can't prove it? How can you be so certain? It's impossible.

 

That's the long, aching question that many of us want to know. What truly started this all. We want the how, why, and who of it all. I hope when I do die that in theory my physical form is of no use but I often dream of death, and being left as a pure energy source, almost like Dr. Manhattan, if you know who I am referring to. A sense of energy with thoughts and feelings but no longer confounded by having to depend on food and water to exist. No longer needing oxygen. Just a force able to do virtually anything at my will. To explore worry free. That's my hope.

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