God does not interfere in the lives of man, he judges you upon your entrance into the afterlife.

You're just not understanding what I'm saying at all..

You have no idea how things present themselves in reality. We are making great strides in psychology and neurology and it's looking like our thoughts are more and more predictable and mechanical every day, even if we don't experience it as such.

Well, if they're red-headed step-children, they probably deserved it.

Choice…?

The people that followed Adolf Hitler had choices; some of which could have resulted in death, and the death of their families and friends. People in North Korea can make choices, and sometimes making a choice means being imprisoned in detention centers.

You might be fortune to be in a country where there are many privileges. But there is always a power relation between people, and between people and their respective society. You can be influenced on numerous levels, and you might not even be consciously aware of it. The “choices” you make are always influenced by something, and that influence can dominate how you behave and respond.

This is sort of it, but the idea of a choice is just an illusion still.

Determinism is so fucking stupid. Most likely our brains run off of some sort of fuzzy logic or even less determinate than that. There are so many neurons and connections constantly disconnecting and connecting and firing as well as receiving different chemicals, all the while evolving for maximum efficiency and accuracy, or devolving,that I can't possibly see how you think it's all just 'elementary chemistry'; did you also forget that the brain is affected by electromagnetism and generates its own fields, not to mention the heart which generates a field that allows it to give the brain a rhythm apart from the signals themselves coming from the heart? There are so many goddamned variables and yet you morons claim that 'hurr durr look at my 19th century view of the world, it's all mechanistic!" Figure out how the brain processes choices and how free will, or the illusion thereof, is generated apart from all of the other goings-on in the brain.

Seriously, did you guys forget that there is a mind that you use? That can affect your brain in ways that we would have to spend billions of dollars on chemicals and pharmaceuticals just to mimic meditation sessions?

This post was edited by AEtheric on May 6 2013 08:30pm

Funny how your argument from lack of knowledge contradicts your own argument against determinism. Free-will-of-the-gaps?

Ummm I'm pretty sure there is no evidence for determinism, and plenty of evidence of people using their fucking minds to alter their brain. More like determinism-of-the-gaps. It's just as stupid as solipsism because it denies something so visceral and undeniable and when you say that we can use our minds to change our brains you're just like NO NO NO, YOU SEE, YOUR BRAIN WAS MAKING YOU DO THAT.

Free will is falsifiable, determinism is not.

This post was edited by AEtheric on May 6 2013 08:33pm

I'll do some linking when I get back from work but there's a decent amount of evidence going as far back as the 70's showing we make decisions several seconds before we are aware of it and that we can predict the decisions from basic choices before any subject even thinks they have their mind made up. There is evidence for determinism and for free will, and we can't draw a conclusion at this point. You are being just as "hurr durr" as the ones you are criticizing and being pretty childish about it.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on May 6 2013 08:38pm