The way I see it, we can have two schools of thoughts:
1- God-believing: If we believe in God, then that God has to be omnipotent. Hence there is always a preplanned destiny. Because what use is a God who does not have control over time !! I read somewhere in a book by some physicist from UK: our condition is like a fly crawling upon a dusty picture. As its treading ahead, its deciphering a part of the picture. For it, its all new, its all his choice and all that. But for someone who can see the 'big picture' (pun intended), its all obvious!
2- Atheistic view: If our knowledge till the date is fine, then there was a big bang and the creation (including time) started from there. After that things started spreading out. But the origin is one. And we also know that there can be no effect without a cause. Hence with the cause being the same, the effects are all deterministic. Rather its calculable (but may not be predictable).
Hence, free-will is but an illusion! We just feel that we are taking a free-willed decision! But actually we are not... or may be I am wrong somewhere...
9 comments:
I partly agree with you. If God doesn't exist science tells us that what you can find in the universe is just determinism (macroscopically) and randomness (at quantum size). But if this is the case no person can be considered responsible for anything: it is stupid to consider a machine, even if very complex, responsible for its actions. In a material world free will does not exist. But in the world of christianity, where beside the material world there is a spiritual one, our responsibility (and I am sure that we are responsible of our deeds) is a gift of God, that leaves man free to negate Him (and as you know this is rather popular) and to do evil (popular as well). In this world free will exisys along with responsibility.
** Things are the same, be it macro level or micro level. Just because we cant comprehend things well at sub-atomic level, we use quantum mechanics "models". Its just a model, not the fact! Hence, logically speaking all follows cause-effect relationship, and hence there is no free will!
** Spiritual world exists in all religions. Here in India, even the Gods have to follow the rule of karma (i.e. cause-n-effect). So again its all predetermined. Of course this issue will vary from oriental to occidental religions. Hence we cant exactly make a point....
what abt the free will of schrodinger's cat, chaos theory, and heisenerg?
things r the same, be it micro or macro and they all follow uncertainty as much as general theory of relativity. and there is some black hole somewhere probably which just now gave up an Albert Einstein in Hawking radiation.
chaos is exactly what I meant here; chaos means something which theoritically we can calculate but in fact we cant, because of limitations of our measuremnt devices, which in turn give initial phase error. Now thats why we cant predict future; that in turn is not negating the fact that future is prefixed :-)
but uncertainty would say that the minute you r taking future to be prefixed,you are fixing one of its measurable and hence again changing the rest of its measurable => the moment you take future as fixed, you r yourself making it random.
on predetermination:
the concept of a predetermined universe very much suits the human desire/ego to prove to themselves that they are the ultimate result of creation. everything that has happened since the big bang, all the lucky breaks,near misses has taken place so that human beings can inhabit this third planet from sun. while wildly wonderful, it does ascribe too much importance to human life and sees it as a culmination instead as just a temporary phase. for all our advancement, we have been around for much lesser time than than neanderthals. dinosaurs would not like to be told that their extinction was predetermined - even if you told it to a brachiosaur and it did not eat you up instantly like a tyrannosaur would have, the brachiosaur would find this argument and hypothesis hardly satisfying.
Predestined or not. microsopy or macro. pretending to have a free will has its own charm.
Sometimes I think a tiger is more happy in the jungle mostly because he doesn't care if the resident of a temple or mosque is his creator and also he doesn't have to sit infront of a computer. :)
nice post and nice discussion though.
cause-effect relationship is, in fact, an important part of Hindu philosophy. I do not know what are you talking about but atheism is rejection of existence of any conscious entity or soul.
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