if we have free will why do we do things we know we/l regret later?

Answer 1

Maybe we dont have free will!

Answer 2

Because we all have this insurmountable tendency to push our luck. This means although we all know that we have the free will, we still take things for granted. Free will allows us to question our motives before we take any action that is contrary to Free will. Even though the answer to this question that we put to our motive may be negative we will still do what we feel like.

In some case this may be justified. For example a very poor man who has not eaten for days will most times steal food, if he thinks that no one will notice. This can be justified by the fact that it was his intense hunger that made him do what he did. Maybe he can be forgiven for this. But it gets to be an over-riding of free will when this poor hungry man decides to steal more than what is needed to end his hunger for that particular time. It becomes wrong when he decides that he should grab more so as to have something for tomorrow.

Free will has this inherent issue of being , totally completely utmostly free. Once a person realizes this outside of the boundries of ideas in the Bible and other Religious books, then there is essentially nothing to govern his actions. One should not covet thy Neighbour's stuff, true but did we all not hear of ' keeping up with the Joneses ' well why do we need to keep up with the Joneses ‘? In doing so we are actually coveting more than our neighbor’s stuff, we are going a step further.

Do we really need a Ferrari to go from point A to point B? A Bullock Cart will do the needful but surely a car is better but does it need to be a Ferrari?Especially with the Gas costs and everything. :D

Free Will allows us the leeway to be stupid and so we do things for which we will regret later. God has allowed us Free will to have us decide what is good and what is bad for us. He does not interfere in the process of our selection. When we do bad (using our free will) we suffer the consequences for it. When we do good (using our free will) we do just fine.

Answer 3

We feel regret only because we know that we could done things differently. Nobody regrets things they can't change. Are you sorry that the sky is blue or that the winter comes after all?

Answer 4

Because it is our free willed choice to do those things. If we had out choice taken away, then we possibly would never do anything we regretted. But if that happened we would never learn our lessons to do things better for our future.

Answer 5

If you didn't have free will you wouldn't have recognized the choice--just done it. The birds in the tree outside my bedroom window don't try to outdo each other in singing like Elvis in the morning--even though they are mocking birds. They have behavior that is hardwired and bugs are delicious. My cat has behavior that is hardwired, if it flies it is delicious. Roasting birds or cooking cats is a choice--my DNA isn't defining my life beyond my basic physical makeup, I choose. If I choose, then I can choose wrong or I can choose differently than you (and you can choose whether the one is automatically the other, that isn't hardwired either).

Answer 6

Free will and good judgment are two different things. In fact, if humanity only acted on good judgment and prescribed morals, free will would go out the window.

Answer 7

Because we usually don't think about things like that before we go ahead and do something. We only think about that moment. I try to teach my kids to think ahead about stuff though. Like if they know they are going to get into trouble for something then just don't do it. It doesn't do much good though, but I thought it might help them out later in life when they're out in this crazy world without us.

Answer 8

we have the free will to do it, not the foresight to see we might regret it.

and its a very human thing to get caught up in the moment and forget about consequences, and afterall if hindsight were foresight the world be so boring.

Answer 9

The times we use will is to hijack the pathways which we know will provide the best results and be peaceful to our inner selves, that is why we regret later because we choose not to have happiness. without freewill we will have no wars because everyone will choose not to shoot and listen to themselves

Answer 10

because that's one of the purposes of life. we learn things as we go along and as we get older. we experience the good and bad, and the bad and the things we regret doing, we learn from those past mistakes and remind ourselves not to make that same mistake ever again.

Answer 11

Heinsight