How can we possibly have free will?

[Compassionist]

How can we possibly have free will? Without omnipotence, it is impossible to have free will. We, biological organisms, are all prisoners of causality. We are all doomed to be conceived without our consent, doomed to do the inevitable, doomed to suffer and doomed to die. If I were truly free, I would have already gone back in time and prevented all suffering and injustice by making everyone equally omnibenevolent, omniscient, omnipotent and omniculpable. Please see: and and https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg ... p-in-brain Thank you.

[Donray]

[Replying to post 49 by Aetixintro]

Memory is not a scientific mystery.
https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/ ... memory.htm
Look it up and you will find thousands of papers on how the brain works.

What is a mystery to both science and religious people is the soul. Thus far no one has been able to prove that there is a soul.

You have absolutely no proof that a soul exists. I have asked you what the soul is made of. It is either nothing (and it does not exist) or something (at which point you should be able to tell what it is). If the soul stores all your memories why do we suffer memory loss? Does the soul degrade from disease?

You say the soul exists so where is your proof? And then we can debate your proof.

Has the soul shown up on a CAT scan? What about an Xray? What about you tell me how much it weighs? Surly someone weighed the soul.

Like I said there is no proof that your god exists and no proof that a so called soul exists. I will ask again, describe how the soul contaoins all memories of a person outside of the brain?

[TSGracchus]

[Replying to post 48 by Aetixintro]

Aetixintro: "Leo Tolstoy is an author, not a forensics- or crime-expert."

He was, however, probably smarter than anyone you ever met, and he did think a long time about free will and history. I would suggest that you read carefully the second epilogue to War and Peace before you dismiss his thinking.

Aetixintro: "Even enemies can't be tortured or sadistically sodomised for good reasons."

There are always those who are convinced that they do have good and sufficient reasons. They would suggest that you are not living in a real world. I would certainly disagree with their actions, and find them deplorable, but then I am only a "bleeding heart liberal". Others have different opinions.

Here's an expert opinion: “War is cruelty. There's no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.�
― William T. Sherman

Aetixintro: "The rules of war are different from severe, perverse crime!"

And yet in war, we see every human "evil" on a vast scale. War is socially approved murder. That is all.

Aetixintro: "So no, it isn't true that "if the same things happen to our enemies, we call them heroes"!

Of course! It is much more civilized to drop bombs from 50000 ft, indiscriminately killing and maiming.

Aetixintro: "You are too simplistic. Even for crimes, we "revenge" by a limited set of reactions."

Right! We throw mentally defective people in jail where they are victimized and brutalized by guards and other inmates and think ourselves morally superior.

Aetixintro: "The (legal) reaction is not the same as the criminal action committed. Of course, you should know this no matter how much you like Leo Tolstoy!"

I don't always agree with Tolstoy. But he does present well reasoned arguments for his position.

Aetixintro: "Clearly, civilised society is different from barbaric crimes and that this society comes with democratic laws and regulations, not with headless evil."

"The Trail of Tears", "Wounded Knee", "The Moro Crater", "My Lai", "Guantanamo", "Rendition", "Enhanced Interrogation"... Wake up and smell the horse manure!

"Among the calamities of war may be jointly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages." -- Samuel Johnson

[Aetixintro]

Memory is not so much a mystery as it once was to people who study how the brain works and those who keep informed about their research.

Given that memory can be a mystery, consider this: A person with memory ABC has one's body shredded to bits and then reincarnates with memory ABC. Now, how is this not a mystery? Or even "worse", a person with memory ABC who is blown to bits in an explosion reincarnates with memory ABC and D with D being memories outside the body, from Out-of-body experience and still you say there's no mystery?

Note on Bubble-Brain from Mythbusters... Still with the memory intact? Not checked?

[Donray]

[Replying to post 53 by Aetixintro]

Could you offer some proof that a shedded body can be reconstyrcted? Pleqase supply some referenve to the experiment that proves this.

Do you belive what you write? Most religious people are very under educated and that is why they belive in religious myths that an educated person requies some proof. Where as the religious fanatic takes the word of his religious leaders without question. This is why the most religious are the most undereducated.

Now, can you start offering some proof to your unintellagable statements?

[ttruscott]

If we aren't, life is no more than a sadistic joke, perpetrated by God, and the establishment 'great and good', on the rest of us, for their own benefit. And I, for one, cannot comfortably contemplate such a travesty of virtue.

Would you feel the same way if we had a free will but then lost it by choosing sin since one of the consequences of becoming evil is to become enslaved by it?

If we are created with no free will, I agree but I think our lack of a free will here on earth is due to our own sinfulness.

This life is to bring everyone who asked for help from GOD to regain their a free will by saving them from their addiction to sin but those who repudiated GOD are out of luck and cannot get this blessing.

[ttruscott]

Free will feels like a chicken/egg debate.

Either the way our neurons fire and dictate our thoughts and choices. Or our thoughts and choices dictate the way our neurons fire.

Since we are said to be born as sinners it is more important than that...

If our conception, birth, are our creation then we are created addicted to evil with no free will so how does our evil make us guilty when it is not our fault?

Only if our sin arrises from a free will decision to rebel against GOD BEFORE we are born as sinners, can we be guilty of sin and GOD is not guilty for making evil.

[ttruscott]

As WE Henley puts it:

As Paul puts it:
Rom 7:18 I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh; for I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do. Instead, I keep on doing the evil I do not want to do. 20 And if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.…

[ttruscott]

[Replying to post 44 by Donray]

I do believe, sir, that you are replying to the wrong person. I was responding to Aetixintro, not to you. I had not paid particular attention to your existence.
You might not have noticed that I had very carefully quoted him and responded point by point, to his argument in post 43.
And the "Evil Atheist Conspiracy" is a reference to that secret society behind the nefarious plan to hide all the proof of Biblical creation. (Hint: It's sarcasm!)

I think the forum protocols allow anyone to reply to any post...

[TSGracchus]

[Replying to post 44 by Donray]

I do believe, sir, that you are replying to the wrong person. I was responding to Aetixintro, not to you. I had not paid particular attention to your existence.
You might not have noticed that I had very carefully quoted him and responded point by point, to his argument in post 43.
And the "Evil Atheist Conspiracy" is a reference to that secret society behind the nefarious plan to hide all the proof of Biblical creation. (Hint: It's sarcasm!)

I think the forum protocols allow anyone to reply to any post...

Of course, but he wasn't addressing the content of my post. He did not seem to comprehend my post. Look at my post. Look at his reply.

[DPMartin]

[Replying to post 1 by Compassionist]

the free will to adopt any nature or behavior observed of the flesh is human nature, but no one has the choice the be in the Kingdom of God, that is God's choice.

in the Christianity context many try to mince the two.


and in the context of what life, you didn't chose the be born into the world, that was given you. in the context of Kingdom of God it is also given you by the will of the Spirit just as this life in the flesh is given by will of the flesh.


otherwise what's within your reach and what ability to do with it as you please isn't a subject of deep thought. more a set of circumstances or opportunity combined with the desired fulfillment.