Religion - I can understand someone believing in god/jesus, but why do they believe in the bible?

[Tetsujin]

However you'd still be doomed as then you have knowledge of gods existence not the belief/faith he requires.

Assuming the established theisms are correct in their "god is an insecure child who needs relatively ant-like creatures to believe without seeing in order to get his rocks off" dogmas, of course. They could be wrong and the *actual* guy could favour intellectual basis for things, or he could be lying in order to make the sorts who are inclined to such faith more readily identifiable, or something.

 

[BunnyKillBot]

If such a thing as Free Will even exists. You might have a time defining a test for the difference between Observer/Controller.

I find it easiest to relate to the concepts of free will and fate by imagining them as translations upon a scene node. This would probably make more sense graphically but ill try and explain it...

Imagine a graph containing a list of all possible outcomes from your current situation in space time. It is not possible to 'jump' from one outcome to the next but rather there are a sequence of steps in-between that must be traversed before a destination is reached. For instance, on a bearing of 024' at a distance of 1000000units is the destination goal that i could become an awesome footballer, so long as I follow a sequence of training steps. On a bearing of 123' there is an option i could get a salami and brie sandwidth for lunch at a distance of 4 units. Further down this line, i become an elephant sized morbidly obese circus attraction.

In this way, free will is your ability to alter your rotational alignment on a scene graph of possible outcomes, and fate is the likely series of outcomes determined by a linear translation of your current directional vector.

 

[Tetsujin]

I find it easiest to relate to the concepts of free will and fate by imagining them as translations upon a scene node. This would probably make more sense graphically but ill try and explain it...

Imagine a graph containing a list of all possible outcomes from your current situation in space time. It is not possible to 'jump' from one outcome to the next but rather there are a sequence of steps in-between that must be traversed before a destination is reached. For instance, on a bearing of 024' at a distance of 1000000units is the destination goal that i could become an awesome footballer, so long as I follow a sequence of training steps. On a bearing of 123' there is an option i could get a salami and brie sandwidth for lunch at a distance of 4 units. Further down this line, i become an elephant sized morbidly obese circus attraction.

In this way, free will is your ability to alter your rotational alignment on a scene graph of possible outcomes, and fate is the likely series of outcomes determined by a linear translation of your current directional vector.

That's very nice but it says nothing at all about whether *you* are making the choice or whether you're a deterministic entity who merely Observes the events taking place, with the illusion of causing them created as a side effect.

 

[Uriel]

However you'd still be doomed as then you have knowledge of gods existence not the belief/faith he requires.

Not really. Was St Thomas doomed? It just means the faith you're talking about is not without some evidence. How you interpret that evidence is another matter.

The word 'faith' in the New Testament is the Greek 'pistis'. This was usually in the context of faithful relationship rather than mere belief.

 

[Castiel]

That's very nice but it says nothing at all about whether *you* are making the choice or whether you're a deterministic entity who merely Observes the events taking place, with the illusion of causing them created as a side effect.

So you are saying that we are not in fact morally accountable for our own actions and that they are predetermined by either some omnipotent divine entity or environmental, cultural and/or genetic determination.

 

[Tetsujin]

So you are saying that we are not in fact morally accountable for our own actions and that they are predetermined by either some omnipotent divine entity or environmental, cultural and/or genetic determination.

I'm saying that I'm not aware of a method or means of determining a difference between the two (available to us at present, or theoretically by extrapolating current technological abilities). I'm agnostic about it (just as with creator entities) in an absolute sense. In a day-to-day sense, the understanding that I don't/can't know if I'm a robot or not doesn't trouble me much, so I guess I carry on as if I do possess free will (just as I carry on as if there's no creator god).

 

[Castiel]

I'm saying that I'm not aware of a method or means of determining a difference between the two (available to us at present, or theoretically by extrapolating current technological abilities). I'm agnostic about it (just as with creator entities) in an absolute sense. In a day-to-day sense, the understanding that I don't/can't know if I'm a robot or not doesn't trouble me much, so I guess I carry on as if I do possess free will (just as I carry on as if there's no creator god).

I agree. I think that is all we can really expect to do tbh.

 

[BunnyKillBot]

That's very nice but it says nothing at all about whether *you* are making the choice or whether you're a deterministic entity who merely Observes the events taking place, with the illusion of causing them created as a side effect.

So, given the systems of either:

Observer - You are a character, as in a book, or play, unfolding according to a script. Choice is an illusion caused by the passage of events that occur in sequential order.

or

Controller - You are a character in a sandbox game. There is no linear progression and you are free to do as you wish in any order.

I lean towards neither, or rather a composite of both.

Have you ever noticed how we desire both of these oxymorons? Take driving for example. The thrill of driving a car is exhilarating. Being in control of something that could easily kill you, or somebody else with one single mistake, one moment of recklessness. And yet, the self-driving computer controlled car that takes you to your destination at a wave of the hand is the stuff of scientific legend, edging ever closer to reality. We desire both to have the freedom to drive a car, and the freedom for a car to drive us, according to our whim.

Ever heard how people are fearful of change? We crave familiarly which in terms of my scene graph explanation means staying on the current path you are on, in essence, not exercising free will. Many of the choices we make are of course heavily determined by previous decisions, and determinism will undoubtedly guide many of our actions just as a chain reaction causes a series of events to unfold. If this were not so, the composite sum of our lives would always be zero. If we constantly exercised free will, we would constantly pull our lives in different directions and yield no progress.

Therefore, life is more like an audience participation movie or non-linear game progression. There exists a script, and we are destined to follow portions of it, however at any time we have the ability to exercise a deviation from the next logical step. Think an options window popping up with 4 possible choices and selecting the desired outcome. We may deviate, we don't have to, but we can alter our path by exercising free will. You can sit back, and let the car drive you, or you can take the wheel, and drive it yourself.

 

[Tetsujin]

So, given the systems of either:

Observer - You are a character, as in a book, or play, unfolding according to a script. Choice is an illusion caused by the passage of events that occur in sequential order.

or

Controller - You are a character in a sandbox game. There is no linear progression and you are free to do as you wish in any order.

I lean towards neither, or rather a composite of both.

Have you ever noticed how we desire both of these oxymorons? Take driving for example. The thrill of driving a car is exhilarating. Being in control of something that could easily kill you, or somebody else with one single mistake, one moment of recklessness. And yet, the self-driving computer controlled car that takes you to your destination at a wave of the hand is the stuff of scientific legend, edging ever closer to reality. We desire both to have the freedom to drive a car, and the freedom for a car to drive us, according to our whim.

Ever heard how people are fearful of change? We crave familiarly which in terms of my scene graph explanation means staying on the current path you are on, in essence, not exercising free will. Many of the choices we make are of course heavily determined by previous decisions, and determinism will undoubtedly guide many of our actions just as a chain reaction causes a series of events to unfold. If this were not so, the composite sum of our lives would always be zero. If we constantly exercised free will, we would constantly pull our lives in different directions and yield no progress.

Therefore, life is more like an audience participation movie or non-linear game progression. There exists a script, and we are destined to follow portions of it, however at any time we have the ability to exercise a deviation from the next logical step. Think an options window popping up with 4 possible choices and selecting the desired outcome. We may deviate, we don't have to, but we can alter our path by exercising free will. You can sit back, and let the car drive you, or you can take the wheel, and drive it yourself.

Not wanting to sound like a broken record but... that's very nice but it says nothing at all about free will. Well ok that's a little harsh, it says a bit about it, but you're vastly missing the point with all that waffle.

Ever heard how people are fearful of change? We crave familiarly which in terms of my scene graph explanation means staying on the current path you are on, in essence, not exercising free will. }{ If we constantly exercised free will, we would constantly pull our lives in different directions and yield no progress.

"Free will" has nothing at all to do with being random, or doing unexpected things, or "changing the course" of your life. At all. At all.

If I have free will then I am doing my 9-5 because I choose to do it every day, not because I followed an "if you want a job go to page 45" in a Choose Your Own Adventure and am now reading the script until the next story choice turns up.

If I don't then I'm doing it because all the myriad factors involved have lead my brain to decide it's right, for whatever unfathomable reason.

Free will is about whether you can make any choices at all. Do I watch the Mock The Week repeat on Dave for the 73rd time or do I go to bed? Every "choice" you have, no matter the size. It's not about scale.

It's whether there's an "independent" entity in there, or not. If there's ever the ability for free choice (as in your "a choice every so often but mostly it's a script" example) then, yes, we have free will. As an absolute - we have it. Being on autopilot for most of our lives doesn't mean we don't have it - if it's there it's there. If it isn't, it isn't.