My concept of free will and determinism is that there are both in a way. What we see manifest at our level as free will is at its core determinism, driven by how the environment has evolved our personality to react and think about things. When asked to think of a color we quickly come up with a choice, made by either a preference for or a recent memory of, yet if asked when we actually chose that color at the thinking level we can’t find a single point where there were others to pick from, we just “came up with it”. Our free will is a conglomeration of things beyond our control.
That’s pretty much exactly why I think it’s more about a lesson on how to treat others. Humans fundamentally believe they’re free to choose things, regardless of their religious affiliation. We always tell ourselves we want this and that, and decided x and y, etc. Regardless of the reality of free will, we all think we have it.
The only genuine purpose of saying Free Will is a gift from God I can think of is simply to make the dummies that want to force behavior on others hesitate about stepping on “God’s domain”.
So Andy Weir’s “The Egg”. It’s a good philosophy.
My concept of free will and determinism is that there are both in a way. What we see manifest at our level as free will is at its core determinism, driven by how the environment has evolved our personality to react and think about things. When asked to think of a color we quickly come up with a choice, made by either a preference for or a recent memory of, yet if asked when we actually chose that color at the thinking level we can’t find a single point where there were others to pick from, we just “came up with it”. Our free will is a conglomeration of things beyond our control.
That’s pretty much exactly why I think it’s more about a lesson on how to treat others. Humans fundamentally believe they’re free to choose things, regardless of their religious affiliation. We always tell ourselves we want this and that, and decided x and y, etc. Regardless of the reality of free will, we all think we have it.
The only genuine purpose of saying Free Will is a gift from God I can think of is simply to make the dummies that want to force behavior on others hesitate about stepping on “God’s domain”.