Athiest, if you really really believe we don't have free will then who do u think makes ur decisions for you?
57 comments
Me.
The decision process is based on external factors (environment, circumstance), internal factors (genes, chemicals, food, hormones, etc) and experience (personal, observed, learned). In that sense, free will does not exist. Free will is not necessary for making decisions, neither is God.
Athiest, if you really really believe we don't have free will then who do u think makes ur decisions for you?
Um...shouldn't that be the other way around?
There are scientists who say we don't have free will. There are atheists who believe them. I'm one of them.
"Who makes my decisions for me" is a nonsense question, though, and he'd understand it had he bothered to do research instead of trolling Yahoo Answers.
Atheists don't have to be determinists, but it seems to fit my style of thinking well.
I'd have to say that my brain makes my decisions based on an immeasurable number of internal factors and what I'm sensing about the environment, but there is no free will that allows me to make arbitrary decisions, because every decision is rational given the information available.
So, I make decisions, but I have no free will. It's hard to explain.
Think of it this way: if someone is a grumpy person due to circumstances beyond their control. Genetics, childhood environment etc. Then they react to a situation in a grumpy way, is that because they chose to or because their personality is set to grumpy? Who knows? Free will vs. determinism is still one of the great questions.
I'm resigned to the fact that I must eat, breathe, etc.
The next level is social behavior. Play the public game.
Other than that, decisions are mine.
If you really, really believe you have free will, then you are saying that the passages in the Bible which speak of predestination are lies.
As an atheist, of course I believe we have free will, don't you pay attention?
Infact, if there was a God, you can assume he knows the future.
Therefore to know the future, it must be set in stone.
Therefore either God exists and there is no free will, or God doesn't exist and I'm going to choose to call you a twat.
Twat.
It's a committee of 5 people, comprised of two permnament members, one member which is different everytime and two members which are elected on a bi-annual basis.
It's a basic majority rules for most decisions, but the ones which affect how the decisions are made (such as changing the number of members on the committee) require the decision to be unaminious.
Free will in a traditional sense does not exist, since there is no mystical force inside one person to steer her (even less is this force magically at the same time the person herself). Free will exists if you define free will as the possibility for an entity to choose the action that its state at making the decision is most prone to execute. So, albeit not in the sense of most philosophies that cover free will - which, by the way, are less than one would imagine - free will exists.
Except for Old Viking. Or me, for the same reasons.
Oh, Oh, Oh! I know the answer! I know!
ME!
Ok, where's my gold star?
- TORM
I make my own decisions and let no collection of babylonian fantasia, mistranslations, misinterpretations, flights of fancy, and bare-faced lies (aka The Bible) sway me from making the right one.
I would tell you to go to (your) hell, but is appears you are already there.
"Best Answer - Chosen by Asker
And you ask why we think christains ask dumb questions. You have to be an atheist posing as a fundie to make fundies look like idiots. No one could possibly be that obtuse."
Asker's Reply:
"i am NOT an athiest and i'm NOT obese!! god bless you anyway."
------
... wow...
What a retard.
Well if we, including our bodies and our brains are constructed solely of atoms that are utterly bound by the laws of physics, it is indeed hard to see where Free Will comes in.
As for you people who claim free will because you can move your arm as you choose- lets see you spread your wings at will. You can't do it? But the presence of arms instead of wings is contingent on phenomena that happened millenia before you were conceived. So how are you free?
Nevertheless, disregarding all the above, your argument amounts to the old query- "If there is no God, then who makes the next kleenex pop up?"
Atheism has nothing to do with whether or not one believes in free will.
There's still a lot of debate in the philosophical and scientific communities about choice and whether free will exists or not. It depends on how you define "free will", partially.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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