Is this possible? Could your choices feel real and yet really be only bound by predestination? How would that change your outlook on life? Does it have to change anything?
2007-07-27 08:38:59 · 7 answers · asked by Anonymous in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
Insolde, is it possible that even while you are in the boat, before you crash into your log, you are still in a predestined reality only in an illusion of choice making to avoid that log?
2007-07-27 09:11:48 · update #1
Agency is that I am in a boat with a paddle. I can paddle upstream or down stream or toward one bank or the other. It is predestined that there is a log floating at me. It goes where the current takes it. I can avoid the log or crash into it. When I crash, I no longer have choices.
Edit
Choice is limited; I can't choose to high jump 10 feet. The only bounds we are predestined are physics, heredity and ability. I can choose to jump up to my own mark. I am not predestined to jump at all.
2007-07-27 08:53:09 · answer #1 · answered by Isolde 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Then again, tho, this is one of those "unable to be answered" questions.
If things are predestined, then no matter what decision you make, that was the decision that was decided. So there is no free will, but from the point of view of the person involved, there would be no difference between a "Free Will" decision, and a predestined decision.
So, since there would be no perceived difference between the two, then from inside the system, there would be no way to be absolutely sure whether a decision made was one of Free Will, or one predestined to be made...
Only from a point of view outside the system, able to observe both the person involved, and the process by which the decision was performed, would the difference be able to be detected.
So, from in here, we can't tell, and it can only have an effect on a person as much as they allow it, or it was predestined for them to be concerned with it.
2007-07-27 15:53:02 · answer #2 · answered by Hatir Ba Loon 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Predestination is not a reality. Choice is not an illusion. Choices are available and consequences follow.
2007-07-27 15:43:03 · answer #3 · answered by Someone who cares 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Absolutely, and in fact it does exactly that. If one could know all of the influences that a person had been subject to during his entire lifetime, one could use logic and the laws of physics to determine what one would do in any given situation. But that is of course impossible, and a free will model conforms closely enough with reality to be useful.
2007-07-27 15:43:59 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
I guess so. People have long had superstitions as to the causes of things happening in their lives, and I suppose free will is no exception. And, no matter what kind of logic you present to them, they maintain that belief. As far as I'm concerned, free will belongs on the urban legends web sites.
2007-07-28 11:02:50 · answer #5 · answered by ccrider 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Think of it as a maze.
Ultimately, there is only one EXIT, but so many choices along the way...
2007-07-27 15:58:42 · answer #6 · answered by Hooded Voodoo 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
are people predestine to commit the wickedness they do?
2007-07-27 15:42:52 · answer #7 · answered by parkituse j 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋