[quote=Greg]they do, but you also have to look at it from a social view of what free will is and not just the scientific term. Like the catalyst church. scientifically it would make them impatient adventist. but that is not what it really is[/quote]

But this is not what you said in "Are babies agnostic or Atheist"

Your confusing your points Greg. Here you say that you can't just look at it scientifically, but you must look at it at a social view, but in the thread about agnostic or athiest babies, you are changing your view to where you are saying it should only be looked at scientificly and that not socially or on what state of mind the babies are in.

Okay, here I go.

When ever I have been confronted by a person asking telling me that "I have been given freewill by God so that I can 'choose' to love him or not," I always respond with:

"If we are given free will, then what happens to the so-called 'prophecies' when humans colonize Mars and other planets across the solar system, and even the galaxy?"
"Are these people even 'saved' considering that it only states that everything in your Bible is to happen on Earth, not other planets like Mars?"
AND...
"Another thing this brings up is that it seems from this thing about humans colonizing Mars would mean that your God is incompitent when it comes to delivering a 'devine plan!"

Strange thing is they never can come up with a logical response to that question.

Probably something to do with the fact that not a single ink blob in the ENTIRE Bible says anything about 'prophecies' happening on other planets.

I would like to see what other people think about this.

Please comment!

according to Quantum Physics, all our actions are already predetermined, based on the positions and velocities of every particle in the universe (including photons - which are the particles that make up electromagnetic radiation)

however, it is impossible for us to know exactly what is going to happen in the future. not only because of the paradox of being able to alter what will happen, but for two other reasons:

1) we cannot know the precise position and velocity of every particle in the universe. by precise, I mean absolutely 100% accurate. and this is impossible for even one particle, let alone every particle.

if you measuer the distance between two objects, how accurate can you be? are you 1mm off? how about 0.1mm off? or how about 0.0000000000000000001 mm off?
when you think about that, you can see how it is impossible to be absolutely precise. this is the same for velocity aswell.

2) even if we had the exact position and velocity of every particle in the universe, you'd still need a computer powerful enough to calculate how it's going to end up.

it would require a computer so enormously powerful, that even if it were theoretically possible to make one that fast, you would need to build it using a lot more matter than the universe is composed of. and that's not even counting what you'd need in terms of memory storage (storing the past and future positions and velocities of every particle in the universe)

so anyway, my point is that it is impossible to predict the future, given what we know about Physics. that's even though our actions may be predetermined.

In reality, we actually do have choices though. we have the ability to interact with situations and try to make the outcome in our favour.

this being the case, our choices are still predetermined; we just have no way of knowing what we are going to choose until we actually do the choosing.

[b]of course, whether you call them choice is dependant on whether you are speaking relative to one's perception, or from a physical standpoint[/b]

relative to a person's perception, we have choices.

relative to a physical standpoint, our actions are predetermined.
we just cannot know what we will do until enough time passes, and we actually perform our actions.

[quote=Thor]Vamp, thats fine by me but interestingly it is a very simular form of irrationality to that of fideism - believeing in God because it makes you happy. The Rational Response Squad are against that, but if you are not I suggest you post a thread on it in the RRS Activism forum.[/quote]

Allright, so it is a form of irrationality, but what I've seen, people in general need something to...believe that they think is good, or at least I do, that is a truely unknowable concept, while free will is probably non-existant in reality, I choose to believe it is. It can't really be proven either way. If life was perfect, I wouldn't need something to cling on to, I wouldn't smoke (Well, I actually like smoking, for some odd reason.), and most of all, I wouldn't be a lovesick dumbass...-_- Dammit...That is like believing in God...Good point.

Allrighty then...free will may or may not be real, I don't know either way, so I prefer one way...Oh Dammit...that still sounds like a Christian...Somebody enlighten me a bit, perhaps on how to get rid of all my clinging, at least, please?