If the future is predetermined, how could you make a choice in life?

Answer 1

Live the illusion. While the choices we make are in effect dictated to us, we are most often unaware of the "voice".

Answer 2

Just off the top of my head I'll say that your choices and your ability to choose could be just as predetermined as everything else. Just because it feels like you have a magic little self/soul making uncaused decisions doesn't mean it's true. A more interesting question is, does it make sense to say that the future is predetermined? And predetermined by who or what? And why bother going through this almost infinite number of steps to get to a predetermined outcome? Why wouldn't this predeterminer(is that a word?...lol) just go ahead and skip the preface?

P.S. I like Ellen's answer.

Answer 3

Predeterminism assumes that there are unchanging laws from the very beginning of time to very the end of time. But it is possible that the constants of physics and therefore the laws of physics can change slightly over billions or millions of years. Hence the slight almost imperceptible changes, would allow for a small amount of indeterminism to exist.

Temporal fluctuatons at the extremely small distance scales below 10^(-33) cm entails the counterintuitive prospects of effects that precede causes. Also, effects and causes arising simultaneously. DXDP >= h

Where h is Planck's constant.

The future would then not be predetermined..

Answer 4

The future is predetermined and destiny as a concept exists only to the weak hearted.For those who are free from the conditionings of the mind, making choices comes naturally but for those who are caught up in the mind....they are governed by the natural forces.

Answer 5

I dont believe there is predetermined future, its what you make of it. Sure there are some who have planned their life out so well that it appears to be predetermined, but in a democratic society there is always choice

Answer 6

If future is predetermined even then you have no way to know the future for sure until it happens.

So you always have a choice to make before something happens, always.

If the future is not predetermined then you have choices to select from anyway.

Answer 7

When you have to make a decision do you feel that someone is telling you what to choose? Of course not. Therefore your choice is your own whether every experience is predetermined or not.
In other words you would make the same decision whether God had predetermined your fate or not, or whether He exists or not. So, therefore, you are responsible for your decisions and the consequences of them regardless or any predetermination or lack of it.

Answer 8

I think the future is predetermined by the choices we make, simple action reaction really, but on a much larger scale

Answer 9

Future is not predetermined - on the contrary it is totally uncertain. In fact the uncertainty is further accentuated by the fact that each of us has so many options and choices and the future depends on each such discreet choices made by various and different individuals, millions of them every second, so to say!!

Answer 10

There is no predetermined future, because i am currently making a decision in answering your question. And am continously making my own decision as i go on living in this future......

Answer 11

Free will and predestination are mutually exclusive concepts.

One could argue that all is fated in a purely mechanical sense, that natural laws dictate every event and that we simply assume things as random because we can't divine (yuk yuk) all the factors involved, but that is something that can never be truly known.

Take a coin toss. NEVER truly random. Its a function of the way it's held, the force and manor of the toss, how its lands and on what. However the coin lands, it HAD to given the variables involved, you just have no way of knowing in advance so it SEEMS random.