Why do people still believe in freewill?

Question

You say you have a choice because of freewill, but choices are based off your conscious, and you did not pull your conscious out of a magic hat, it was forced on you. If you never had the ability to choose the ability to choose then that is not freewill. The only way to prove freewill exists is to get a gun and kill everyone you love, and it not be a result of a psychological breakdown.

I only asked this question because of my personality of which I had no say on since life forced a conscious on my body.

Answer 1

You're right, but some people _do_ get a gun and kill everyone they love and maybe a couple others at random.

Just because _you_ don't have free will, doesn't mean someone else doesn't.

Answer 2

Conscious, as you put it, is mainly a learned thing though. Do you think cannibals feel guilty when they kill and eat someone? No... because their culture allows such things without guilt. They don't feel bad when they are eating someone. But, someone from our culture would find it disgusting to even think of doing something like that, Unless they had a psychological problem (Dahmer being the best example here). So to say it is forced would mean that everyone in the world is getting a different "conscious" than the next person. Freewill is simply HAVING a Choice and being able to Choose. It doesn't mean you will act on every choice that comes your way... such as killing everyone you love. Your conscious is part of that decision making... would you feel guilty if you killed everyone you loved? Your conscious does not take away freewill.

Answer 3

You're looking at this from a difficult perspective.

Your consciousness is perfect and can have a perfect understanding of the world. This is the state of 'Clear Mind'.

Your bodily conscious, the ego and other parts of this conscious, are dependent on your body and must be cleared to allow for your perfect consciousness to act in the world.

Now, you *did* in a way choose this bodily conscious, but it by no means is your real conscious and in a way, this choice really does not matter. What matters is you clarifying your mind.

Try these 'simple' mind training techniques:

Remove anger from your life
Cultivate love
Stabilize your mind
Conceal your accomplishments
Praise others accomplishments
Reveal your own shortcomings
Do not reveal others shortcomings (unless with compassion)
Recognize all people as spiritual teachers
Take no pleasure in negative actions
Remove procrastination and laziness from your life
Speak peacefully and truthfully
Smile
Give freely
Abandon envy


These are very powerful, and will help you start to understand your mind better.

Answer 4

The problem with the idea of free will goes something like this:

If human beings have free will, then theoretically if we had two people who were absolutely identical, having the exact same life history, the exact same thoughts and feelings at all the exact same moments, then those two exactly the same people in exactly the same situation with exactly the same thoughts, feelings, history, and everything else, could both freely choose opposite things.

But if that is the case, then what accounts for why one chose one way, the other the other way? Suppose one way was the "good" choice, the other the "bad" choice. No additional thought or feeling occured for either one of them inspiring them to choose the way they did. They felt and thought exactly the same way up until the moment of choice in question. So only the free will itself could have been responsible for the difference of choice.

But if only the free will, and nothing else, were responsible, then that means that there was either no reason whatsoever for why one free will chose one way -- perhaps the good way, the other the other way, perhaps the bad way -- or that that reason was the free wills themselves, respectively. In otherwords, either there was no reason whatsoever for why one free will chose the way they did, in which case free will becomes random will (if both free wills could have just as easily chosen the good choice as opposed to the bad choice, such that it was a 50/50 chance with no reason for why they chose one way or the other, then they basically just got either lucky or unlucky in their choice, like flipping a coin, i.e., random) or that reason is within each individual free will itself.

But if the reason is within the individual free will itself, the reason one free will chose one way, the other the other way, would have to be different. So there would have to be something about the free will in the one individual who made the good choice as opposed to the free will in the individual who made the bad choice that provided the reason for why the free will in the individual who made the good choice made the good choice. Perhaps you could say that the one individual's free will or soul was good, the others bad. (Traditional catholicism would explain it by saying grace, according to my understanding. But that too is just admitting that there is no such thing as a truly free will, as God's Will ultimately determines the direction of the individuals will).

And because that something is the reason for why the free will in the individual made the good choice as opposed to the bad choice, then the free will is not free, but is bound by its own reason.

If the free will had the ability to freely choose whether its very own nature were good or bad, that is, the nature of the reason it chooses as it does, then we are stuck right back at square one, in which case the question can be asked, what caused that free will, as opposed to the other's, to choose to be a "good" free will as opposed to a "bad" free will. And again, the only answers would be the free will itself, in which case it would once again be bound by its nature and therefore not free, or that it chose randomly, in which case it also was not free (or God's grace, again in which case it would not be free).

In the old days, people used ideas of magic and mythical gods to explain away the causal gaps they had no other way of filling. If it were raining, for example, it was the rain god's will, and later it was God's will (with a capital 'G'). This sufficed as an explanation until science allowed us to understand the reasons for weather changes. In today's world free will is one way people fill the causal gaps with regard to human behavior, whether their own or others, that they don't understand the reasons for. Free will is a modern day magical idea.

Answer 5

Our consciouses were forced on us? Or free-will was forced on us? I guess that could be evidence for Creation... Evolution certainly wouldn't account for a conscious, would it? Just a thought...

Also, isn't a conscious & free-will what separates us from animals?

You act like these are bad things to have. Sociopaths have these ideas. Psychopaths too...

How would mass murder prove free-will? Because we would choose to kill? Or because we would choose to kill, in spite of the understood consequences?

BTW, many people murder loved ones without having experienced violent psychological breakdowns, or experiencing one afterwards. Some see it as mercy killing, ie. euthenasia, abortion, assisted suicide...

Answer 6

People believe in free will because they do not read their Bibles. Only half of Christians actually believe that people have a free will; the Calvinists do not believe that only the Arminian camp. What you say actually is logical and is fairly close to what the Bble teaches. Not the gun part though.

Answer 7

I think there may be some confusion...

God has a will that is specifically spelled out in the bible. He has given people free will to have them chose what he wants them to do. How it is described in the new testament it God's Will versus the Flesh.

Take divorce... GOD very specifically says in numerous places in the bible that he Hates divorce. God's will is that a marriage work and people to stay married. If both people give up thier desires for flesh (thier own will) and follow God, then they will remain married. God also gives very specific advice to husbands and to wives on how they are to treat each other.

HOWEVER, as we know, divorce does happen, and marriages do not always work.

Free will is when we go against what GOD would have us do if we were robots.

Our proof of our love for Him is when we submit our will to His.

Answer 8

Free will is a choice. YOu chose becasue of what you are, like that guy who shot the little Amish girls.

To say otherwise is to give him a defense when he kills YOUR mom, wife, child, girfriends and says "the devil made him do it." If he was forced, it ain't his fault and he should go free (and be relased on YOUR front door step).

Get the point.

Answer 9

How about the "uncertainty principle". The observer changes the observation, Schrodiger's cat.

Answer 10

what are you babbling about ? the only time you DON'T have free will is when YOU decide you don't as you already have. The doors of perceptions are open for business. Free your mind !