The Undecided
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If God is micro-managing everything then he controls our lives as well. If this is true then free will has to be an illusion. 
Is God micro-managing everything or do we have free will?
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shawn
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Who has been telling you that God is a micro-manager?If God is micro-managing everything then he controls our lives as well. If this is true then free will has to be an illusion.
citizenzen
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When you bake a cake, do you don't worry where the atoms are positioned, you just want it to taste good.If God is micro-managing everything then he controls our lives as well. If this is true then free will has to be an illusion.
The Undecided
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Who has been telling you that God is a micro-manager?
I listened to a teaching by a Buddhist Lama who said that there are three world views. The first is that everything happens at random, it is luck that dictates the way things are, which could not be correct because effect would not follow cause and cause would not precede effect. The second world view is that God is micro-managing everything, which means that there can be no free will. The third world view being that everything happens the ways it does because of karma and reincarnation. I understand that he was trying to verify his own belief in karma, but his explanation of the second world view got me thinking. I wasn't sure whether he had a valid point or he was overly biased. So I thought I would open up the discussion and see what other people had to say on the matter.
citizenzen
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Dauer, I think you make a logical mistake in this statement.
You suggest free will is an illusion that allows us to have the "illusion" of accountability, which in turn would give us the illusion of influence over our actions.
If the first two states are illusional, then it would follow that the result of them would be illusional as well.
CZ,
I don't think you quite follow my reasoning. Our beliefs lead us to act one way or another. If we believe that the experience of free will reflects what is then we will act in certain ways and not in other ways. If we had recourse to saying "I have no control over my actions" we wouldn't always behave the same way as if we knew it to be that "I am fully responsible for my actions." I don't think "our actions are illusory" follows from "our experience of free-will is illusory", nor do I think that our being conditioned by our experiences and beliefs is illusory. You're generalizing from maintaining pragmatic but unlikely beliefs (call is upaya if you prefer) to doubting that our actions in the external world happen at all.
I don't think you quite follow my reasoning. Our beliefs lead us to act one way or another. If we believe that the experience of free will reflects what is then we will act in certain ways and not in other ways. If we had recourse to saying "I have no control over my actions" we wouldn't always behave the same way as if we knew it to be that "I am fully responsible for my actions." I don't think "our actions are illusory" follows from "our experience of free-will is illusory", nor do I think that our being conditioned by our experiences and beliefs is illusory. You're generalizing from maintaining pragmatic but unlikely beliefs (call is upaya if you prefer) to doubting that our actions in the external world happen at all.
citizenzen
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Which sounds contradictory to your original assertion that "free will is an illusion".
If our beliefs lead us to act, and these beliefs are our beliefs, then we have free will.
Please pardon my confusion.
shawn
Well-Known Member
People are free to act and do as they will.... even within their illusion.
They may be hallucinating everything and living in a total fantasy, but they still decide (within their framework of rules) what they will and won't do.
People are free to change their beliefs and therefore their system of rules.
This proves free will to be a valid assumption.
Thought control and manufacturing of consent are other issues entirely.
They may be hallucinating everything and living in a total fantasy, but they still decide (within their framework of rules) what they will and won't do.
People are free to change their beliefs and therefore their system of rules.
This proves free will to be a valid assumption.
Thought control and manufacturing of consent are other issues entirely.
CZ
I appreciate that there has been some confusion in our interaction, wherever the gap may have been. It helps me to find clearer language for what I mean to say.
I'm drawing a distinction between beliefs leading or causing us to act and our making choices that would demonstrate free will. When I speak of beliefs as leading us to act, I mean that our beliefs effect our future decisions. It is not that we choose our beliefs, but that we come to hold certain beliefs due to the degree to which they are persuasive or convincing. Any number of factors can effect the convincingness of a belief including perceived self-evidence, general societal assumption or its logically following from accepted premises. If you and I have a conversation about something in which we are in disagreement and you or I change or adjust our beliefs, I don't believe that we have chosen to do so. I believe that, given the situation, our previous experiences and our genetic makeup that there could have been no other alternative. Given enough data (a probably impossible-to-gather-and-crunch quantity) I believe we could predict the outcome of any interaction between two people. To put it differently, I don't reject the experience of free will. It is my experience too. I reject that it accurately represents the mechanisms of the brain. At the same time, I think it's possible that we do have some amount of free will, but I find it doubtful that we have as much as society's general notions of choice and accountability presume.
I'm suggesting that our brains function in a much deterministic way than most people believe. I think that the experience of free will is a side effect, a way that we cope with the disparate impulses within our brain. We tell ourselves a story that makes all of the various processes seem like a singular narrative of decision-making. It provides comfort and a sense of control to our self-awareness and supports the functioning of society by making room for laws that mete out penalties for certain types of interaction (e.g. rape, murder) based on presumed free-will and the accountability for one's actions that goes with it, and for our own, maybe non-penalty-driven "decisions" for our own benefit based around and supported by this belief in free will. These decisions are of course, in this schema, not really decisions. They're the result of calculations that take into account our belief and experience that we are beings who can choose which paths to take.
I appreciate that there has been some confusion in our interaction, wherever the gap may have been. It helps me to find clearer language for what I mean to say.
I'm drawing a distinction between beliefs leading or causing us to act and our making choices that would demonstrate free will. When I speak of beliefs as leading us to act, I mean that our beliefs effect our future decisions. It is not that we choose our beliefs, but that we come to hold certain beliefs due to the degree to which they are persuasive or convincing. Any number of factors can effect the convincingness of a belief including perceived self-evidence, general societal assumption or its logically following from accepted premises. If you and I have a conversation about something in which we are in disagreement and you or I change or adjust our beliefs, I don't believe that we have chosen to do so. I believe that, given the situation, our previous experiences and our genetic makeup that there could have been no other alternative. Given enough data (a probably impossible-to-gather-and-crunch quantity) I believe we could predict the outcome of any interaction between two people. To put it differently, I don't reject the experience of free will. It is my experience too. I reject that it accurately represents the mechanisms of the brain. At the same time, I think it's possible that we do have some amount of free will, but I find it doubtful that we have as much as society's general notions of choice and accountability presume.
I'm suggesting that our brains function in a much deterministic way than most people believe. I think that the experience of free will is a side effect, a way that we cope with the disparate impulses within our brain. We tell ourselves a story that makes all of the various processes seem like a singular narrative of decision-making. It provides comfort and a sense of control to our self-awareness and supports the functioning of society by making room for laws that mete out penalties for certain types of interaction (e.g. rape, murder) based on presumed free-will and the accountability for one's actions that goes with it, and for our own, maybe non-penalty-driven "decisions" for our own benefit based around and supported by this belief in free will. These decisions are of course, in this schema, not really decisions. They're the result of calculations that take into account our belief and experience that we are beings who can choose which paths to take.
Dream
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To me you're asking whether we have any divinity of our own.
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The Undecided
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This reminds me of the Buddhist explanation of Karma, were our present is the product of our past actions, decisions and experience, and therefore we have no control over it. We do, however have control over our future. If we focus on our present and past then we can make different choices for our future (Having someone irritate me in my present is an effect of me irritating someone else in the past, so I could decide not to irritate other people in my future). In this respect then we would have free will only for our future, and, as you said, "our brains function in a much more deterministic way than most people believe."
The Undecided.
undecided said:
I mean it more psychologically: we're a product of our environment and our genes, nature and nurture. We're complex organic machines who act according to our programming and collected data. Rather than making choices, we compute the data that we have available.
That's circular reasoning. It's only true if we have free will. If we don't have free will then it's not true. Since the question at hand is whether or not free will, it might be clearer just to assert that you think we have free will in which case it's not an actual argument against my assertion that we don't, just a contradictory assertion.
I don't think that's necessarily true.
U
Urantia
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If God is micro-managing everything then he controls our lives as well. If this is true then free will has to be an illusion.
God does not mirco manage our lives. He allows us the freedom to chose the way we want to live. Can you imagine forcing someone to love you? I would not be real and this is why God allows us to choose to serve Him.
Paladin
Purchased Bewilderment
It is always possible that the OP contains a flaw, a false dichotomy, but I'll leave that for later.
I tend to side with Dauer's reasoning on this.
YouTube - Free Will & Neurology: brain activity to conscious decision
I tend to side with Dauer's reasoning on this.
YouTube - Free Will & Neurology: brain activity to conscious decision
Paladin
Purchased Bewilderment
Please forgive the intrusion CZ, but perhaps the confusion is based in a faulty view of "YOU",and "OUR". If the software in this mind/body thing prompts behaviors consistent with the conditioning is that "free?" The belief/value system subscribed to isn't created by each supposed individual but merely adhered to due to conditioning, the "me" in question could very well be another illusion.
Remember the quote from Wei Wu Wei?
Paladin, guess you could say in keeping with that Taoist principle that, as long as there is a "self," we alternate between attempting to micromanage from the position of a self and perhaps believing there is a micromanaging "God." When we have moved beyond "self," there is no micromanager at any level; the "whole" just is and does at all levels.
earl
Paladin
Purchased Bewilderment
Paladin, guess you could say in keeping with that Taoist principle that, as long as there is a "self," we alternate between attempting to micromanage from the position of a self and perhaps believing there is a micromanaging "God." When we have moved beyond "self," there is no micromanager at any level; the "whole" just is and does at all levels.
Okay, let's go with that
I was thinking about a quote from Terrence (Wei Wu Wei) Grey:
Why are you unhappy?
Because 99.9% of everything you think,
And everything you do,
Is for your self,
And there isn't one
R
Radical_Reformer
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If God is micro-managing everything then he controls our lives as well. If this is true then free will has to be an illusion.
I will admit that reality has some very strange features to it. But, nonetheless, one cannot rationally believe that we are being micromanaged or have no free will. Assumption of this inverse problem leads to obvious contradictions and is therefore rejected.