Free Will vs Gods plan, or not

so one of the reasons atheists say god doesn't exist is that he has no referance to time. so he is both in the past and in the future (with no beginning :p )

so that means he knows the future

so that means he knows what we will do

so he gave us free will

and then he will punish us if we do something wrong

but he already knows if we would do something wrong

so thats the paradox right?

now

i beleive we don't have a free will

i think our brain is like a very complex computer, it calculates everything we do, before we do it.

that means we don't have free will, only the illusion of it

now why would evolution put an illusion of free will in our heads

well because we feel responsable for our own actions

so we won't do anything that is bad for society, as in killing people or hurting people

cause that causes fights and fights cause deaths and deaths are bad for the survival of the race

now you could wonder: how do you live whith yourself Bert, when you know you don't have a free will.

well i feel forced to write this article, lol, joking

i just ignore the fact and try to go trough life more optimistic, cause if someone hurts me i can just think about the fact that they didn't have an other option then to hurt me...

except if they would see there own future of course :)

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Permalink Reply by Berty on April 21, 2011 at 6:30pm

evolution can do something because of something else

if a random mutation causes something that on its turn causes (something else) less death then this mutation will be more likely to survive

so when you have a mutation that gives you a slight feeling of free will, and this causes you to get in less fights, you'll have a better chance of survival

you last paragraph is the something like: the eye could not have formed cause its to complex for 1 step: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEKyqIJkuDQ&feature=related

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Permalink Reply by Berty on April 22, 2011 at 4:17am

i agree on the natural selection part
for me its just a way of speech
but i understand that people (not you) that don't understand natural selection thorough enough could be confused by my way of expression

when you're drunk you have a weaker feeling of free will :p
you don't feel so responsible for your actions
and so you are a bigger danger for sociality

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Permalink Reply by Berty on April 22, 2011 at 6:47am

indeed, self-reflection is needed for the illusion of free will. i think the illusion of free will is more of a gradient. its not complete free will or none at all. the 2 extremes can be shown like this: max illusion of free will: humans, smallest illusion of free will: a robot following instructions. Now do you agree that some animals are closer to machines then others. for instance is the cockroach easier to replicate as a machine then a human? we know that computers don't have an illusion of free will and definitely no free will itself.

being drunk lowers the inhibitions, doesn't disable them completely. I think its the other way around, the illusion of free will is causing the inhibitions. so someone that is drunk might have just as much feeling of free will, but less inhibitions because he's less in touch with the world, so he doesn't feel very responsible when he does something wrong. so the inhibitions disappear because the brain is having trouble assessing a situation and determining if the outcome of an action will give him a bad feeling.

damn this stuff is getting abstract :p

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Permalink Reply by Berty on April 22, 2011 at 12:37pm

a person who has no higher brain functionality : no feeling of free will at all, just alive

a person with degraded mental capacity: slight feeling of free will

people with stronger feelings of free will, will be more likely to uphold there moral beliefs.
for instance: killers will have the urge to kill and have the feeling that they are not in control of there actions -> less feeling of free will.

lets just say that we disagree on the subject :)
we agree upon the notion of the illusion of free will (or am i wrong?)
but you don't think its because of natural selection that this came to be?
so how do you explain the illusion of free will?

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Permalink Reply by Berty on April 21, 2011 at 6:20pm

ok some reaction:
1/ you cannot disprove God because he doesn't have a reference in time or any measure in our universe for that matter.
2/ indeed but feeling responsible is a condition for guilt, right?
3/ indeed, everything works with chances (quantum mechanics), you cannot predict what will happen

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Permalink Reply by Berty on April 22, 2011 at 4:24am

1/ good point :)

2/ can you feel guilt without feeling responsible?
hmm maybe so, you feel guilty for people in Africa that are suffering starvation, but its not directly your fault, maybe we feel guilty because we can help them.
so i agree :)

3/ i think you're wrong here. Einstein had the same idea, perfect determinism if you have the exact state of the universe and enough computing power to calculate the future. But this seems to be invalid cause quantum mechanics states: you can only calculate the probability of a certain future, and because of that your prediction will get less and less likely when you go future in the future. So i don't think we can predict the future even if we had a perfect knowledge of our universe + a knowledge of how everything works exactly + unlimited processing power. We could however calculate a good probability for the near future, don't you agree?