Illusion of control and power

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Frankly you lost me there. I am willing to grant the theoretical possibility of indeterminacy since physics has indicated that there is no absolute predictability. But, attacking the problem from a different angle, and if we live in a four dimensional universe, then, from a five dimensional viewpoint the movement through time we experience is an illusion. Einstein said as much. So our ignorance is the problem, not the static structure of a four dimensional universe. It seems we should not confer absolute variability purely out of ignorance. And that demands very hard determinism indeed.

It's true that the choices we make we tend to always make. Who we are is a product of what we've been and we can't change that just by trying or deciding to.

Where choice comes into play though are the choices we make that force a change. We can't change the type of decisions that we tend to make just by thinking about it - but it is still possible to make a single choice that puts us in a new situation that forces new decisions.

You can put yourself into a situation that forces you to make different choices. Moving in with someone, having kids, joining the military, etc. And that shapes who you become.

Free will isn't a continual process. It is the ability, in a single moment, to do something that will reshape who you are.

Choice isn't a rainstorm. It's a butterfly.

Since you seem theologically disposed perhaps it might be amusing to adventure into the possibilities of a static four (or more) dimensional universe, everything firmly fixed and predetermined. How might this be significant to the nature of some sort of super being involved somehow? Think of that old poem by Omar Khayyam:

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it

Just suppose that fantastic multidimensional being was something accommodated to a super kind of Braille and the universe, as we know it, is some kind of super book or piece of sculpture. Each living sensitive thing is merely a kind of finger and time is the movement of those many, many, many fingers over the four dimensional texture of the universe the way a blind person would read a book or sense a marvelous piece of sculpture. The reader, or feeler, of course, is not the writer or the sculptor but speculation on that is a different matter altogether. And, as with a book, there is no movement of the words of a book. There is only movement of the huge mass of “fingers” feeling their way in and out and over the concavities and convexities of the surface exploring the radiation and the textures and the various kinds of matter and whatever may be of interest. There is no morality for nothing really changes, as with a book. Things are merely there and they kind of interact if that word is possible in a totally static state.

It’s a thought.

So, you are cloyed by the ancient oriental theories of fate?
My guess is that you would like to believe that you have control over your own life, and that everyone does.

But I'll tell you what kind of control we all have.
We do what we want, or what we need, or what we have to do.
What we want is uncontrollable, as is what we need, and what we have to do.
We have no choice but to like or hate something when we do like or hate something.

Perhaps you are a little biased with your cloy towards ancient orient theories.
I trust no religious texts or theories myself.
I am very put off by the idea of free will, it actually disgusts me to the point of anger.

For example, in the Christian Bible, there is the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil incident.
In this book, it is said that the two humans had a choice to eat the forbidden fruit, or not to, and claimed freewill.

Freewill is a lie. If said event really did happen, then I would say that Eve, being submissive due to God's programming of her, gave into what the snake said, just eat it, it won't hurt you, and she did.
And, Adam, being very influenced by Eve (men are hypnotized by women, duh) ate the apple too.
It's almost like the whole thing was planned by God himself.

Why would God put Adam and Eve and Satan in the same Garden of Eden unless he wanted these things to happen?
God controlled the entire thing, it was a setup, even though God said not to eat the apple, or they shall suffer, they did, just as God planned, I believe.
But, just to let you know, I am Agnostic, and do not believe these stories of God and Satan.

Maybe "free-will" and determinism aren't really contradictory? I think it's just one of those things the human mind is not equipped to comprehend. This goes back to not clearly knowing what heck anyone even means by "free-will". Seems like humans are genetically wired to assume mind-body dualism, that there is an absolute division between physical vs. mental causation and that our subjective perception of "making a choice" is related to this division. This connection really isn't on any firm logical or epistemological grounds.

I agree.

Can it be uncontrollable?

Why there is a God who can control and plan it?

The physical cosmos itself is not deterministic, so how could we be. We are made of stuhr stuff (to quote Carl Sagan). We are physical process bundles in the cosmos.

ruveyn

I agree that indeterminism could be a possibility. Though, I do not think this is actually as evident as people think it is. At the quantum level, I am yet to be convinced of indeterminism, in fact I think this is unlikely.

The latest experiments in physics trash both determinism and locality.

The only way to get out of that is to assume something about us or in us is not physical and material.

ruveyn

Quantum entanglement alone indicates conventional concepts of time and space are very uncomfortable with observed events. An article in the current Scientific American featuring a leading physicist, Leonard Susskind, indicates that the nature of reality and the inter-relationships in the dynamics of the universe may be intellectually permanently impenetrable.

Your just born into someone else's illusion of power. Whats already spread out into the minds of other people is what you get when your born into this world. It's just a thought process that someone chose to spread out into the world.

If our actions are pre-determined, then we can not be held guilty for even the most heinous of crimes.

If our actions are made of our own free will, then there can be no inintentional accidents.

I think the whole argument is pointless.

The presumption that we each have an internal social morality that conforms to conventional norms and that we commit acts against this morality of our free and unrestrained wills is the foundation upon which legal punishment and religious castigation is justified. Since this assumption is totally false to question it is normally rejected by theology and government since humanity has neither the sophisticated understandings nor the pragmatic tools to really readjust violators of social norms to make them suitable social creatures. Both the religious consignment to hell and the legal consignment to prison is overwhelmingly a form of social revenge rather than a sincere attempt to reform a miscreant.

Last edited by Sand on 28 Jun 2011, 11:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I agree with Sand.

There is no real system of Justice, only systems of punishment that are administered by local legal consensus.

There are wolves in this world that eat rabbits, and rabbits that eat plants.
The wolves prevent the rabbits from eating all the plants.
Rabbits are cute and cuddly.

There are people out there that are programmed to want to do and will do horrible things to other people.
The good people punish the bad people.
The bad people are there for a reason, I think maybe for population reduction due to humans being overpopulated.
Just as wolves come around when the rabbits are eating all the plants away.

Everything is under some kind of control of some sort with laws and reasoning.
There is never a mistake in this universe.
Every fault is supposed to happen, as these faults deplete, an illusion of growth and advancement is perceived by anyone who lives, giving a purpose to live, to fight and deplete evil, for example.

Let's pretend that this story of Adam and Eve is true when they bit the forbidden fruit and supposedly screwed us all.
If it were true, then from my Deterministic point of view, would it not come to light that God wanted Adam and Eve to bite the apple?
God didn't kill Adam or Eve, and did not prevent them from reproducing and causing the mayhem we have today.
Many times I thought he should have killed them, to reduce the horrible fates many of us had to endure.

But, if this story were real, I believe it was God's plan all along, and maybe he is under control of everyone.
Maybe God wanted things to happen that way for some unknown reason hidden from humans?
Much like a movie, or a book, or a video game, maybe he didn't want to spoil the hidden plot?
If all is well and known, life would be boring, and even hellish perhaps, things might go out of balance, like watching the same episode of a favorite TV show over and over again until you're bored to death, but can't stop, and your eyes fall out from the repetitive boredom that used to be great fun long ago.

I read somewhere that Satan is not against God, but works with him, as an adversary to humans, but not to God, but does not work in the same way as God, but as a building tool to make humans progress away from evil, much like Mario versus Bowser. (How lame would video games be if there were no adversary in most of them? Remember that video games are a type of imitation of life in certain aspects)
And what about when Lucifer rebelled in Heaven? I saw this as programmed and symbolic. Why would God design the best angel to become so selfish that he wanted to be God and kill his creator? What was going on in his mind? Chemicals of reasoning perhaps?

Again though, I don't trust story books from thousands of years ago, just a point of reference.
I'm not sure what to believe about life and about God, because there is no way to know if there was ever a start to the universe, or if there is ever going to be an end to the universe, only theories and stories.
And, I do not trust stories or theories, only what I can perceive.

From your amusing expressed point of view there are no faults in the universe because everything that happens that we humans categorize into good and bad is actually merely process. We live on this place and we might as well swallow it. I agree.