We are free in our choices in so far as we are aware of multiple possibilities and have attained the means to initiate that choice. i.e. If i am unaware of a potential choice or action I can take(prior to choosing),or I have not attained the means(prerequired skill/material) I have no capacity to initiate that action.
So, is this free will? saying that we have the capacity for choice when we have an awareness of multiple potentialities and the means required to act.
My choices are limited by my awareness, my actions are limited by my location/skill or attained means.
Where does fate come into play? I would say that when i commit myself to any action I am the author of my own destiny. I struggle to realize, or fully experiance, my ideal outcome(which is formed prior to action) when I commit to any action, and the effect or result of my actions define my relative success.
But that said, only people who operate with the upmost freedom have the ability to experiance they’re ideal outcome. That said, its hard to imagine a person who’s will is perfectly free.
A)Is it good to kill? no. Is it good to kill someone who is trying to kill you? yes.
B) When we say something is good or bad we can talk objectively about the pleasure or pain incurred or the success or failure experianced, because we can learn this from our experiance. If i put my hand in a flame, it burns my hand, causes pain. The pain is less desirable than pleasure or an experiance void of both pain and pleasure, so i say that pain is bad. Pleasure is a desirable experiance, more desirable than pain or an experiance void of pain and pleasure, so i can say that pleasure is good.
Success is the goal of any action, nobody strives for failure. I prefer to succesfully occomplish what i set out to do rather than fail, so, failure is bad and success is good.
I judge the succes/failure with regard to my initial goal. If i accomplish my goal, i am succesfull, if i don’t accomplish my goal, i fail. The awareness of pain and pleasure is an inherent capacity of most humans. There is no way to wrongly feel pain. When i judge the “morality” of an action, what do i use to substantiate my claim? when i develop my morality, i develop an ideal of what a perfect world would be like,for not only me, but everyone.
What grounds do i have for stating that my ideal is right and your ideal is wrong? We are all human, what makes one humans ideal superior to another humans ideal?
C)We can derive the idea of god by expanding human capacities to be unlimited. man is limited in his knowledge - presence - power, GOD is unlimited in his knowledge - presence - power.
aka the idea of god is not something mysterious, its the idea of a perfect being or a omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient being.
D)I can make a human quite easily. Its called sex without a condom. I fuck a chick, my sperm fertilizes her egg, an embryo develops and eventually is born and lives and dies.This goes for most every other animal on the planet.(some orginisms produce asexually)
really, take the god orgy somewhere else, if Descarte couldn’t get it right i’m not sure if anyone can. We don’t need proof of god, beliveing is enough.
I am born into a struggle that only ends in death. The fun part is the struggle and the rewards we get when we succeed.
E) God doesn’t control time. Time is the measurement of existances longevity. I am alive now, i have been alive for 22 years. The past is a memory of experiances which have occured. The future is an idea of what will come to be. Right now is where i become what i am. When i commit myself to a descision, i become the author of a story in which i feel the effects not only think of them, I am the painter who experiances the painting becoming something new and i can interact with the image, not just imagine it.
Every time i move from place to place, my consciousness paints the image of my reality, but its bristles are so fine and stroke so precise and quick i hardly notice the fabrication process.
We don’t need god to guide us, gods guidance is for the weak. Hence, he consideres you his sheep, and thinks you need a keeper. The real independent soul or man acts for his own reasons. The real “good” man is a man who does right for the sake of right and the avoidence of failure and pain.
Pain and Pleasure;
Other humans can give accounts of pain and pleasure that i will understand because i understand they’re language and i am of a like nature(conscious/aware, sentiant/sensations, rational/capable of reasoning).
Morality;
Through our experiance, reasoning, imagination, we have the ability to form an idea of what is an ideal outcome to any situation. If something causes me pain, it is bad(for the time being), if somehting causes me pleasure it is good(for the time being). As i age, i develop an idea of what is good and bad and when i try to apply this to peoples actions in general, i moralize. The point i was making was that each persons morality is a product of they’re development and the belifs they formed along the way .i.e no one morality is more legitimate than another. Also, the only way to become aware of the acceptance of any system of morality is through enforcing this system by means of a judicial system and police. look at the population of our prisons, people in prison disagreed with the implemented system of morality and we’re punished.
Making humans;
Like any animal we mate and make little animals. Who made the 1st human? the guy who wrote that book or darwin. but really, how could i, who am not a historian or evolutionary biologist, tell you that? I’ll be the 1st person to tell you i don’t know how humans became existant. There are alot of scientists who don’t know either. But you can’t prove that Adam existed any more than i can prove that we evolved from monkeys or single cell organisms.
About time;
I could kill myself and take complete controll of what you call judgement day. My dreams are not the same as my conscious experiance. I had dreams where i jumped from one world to another in an instant(because the laws of physics and sensation do not apply in dreams. If i fall off of a building in a dream, i feel no pain. If i crash a car, there are no reprecusions(exception being me waking up, which happens after every dream). Earth has a universal system of time. If i have an appointment at 10:00AM Eastern Time and i arrive at 10:05AM i am late.Don’t try to sound profound,it just complicates things. Say what you mean and back it up with a sound argument. Saying that we don’t have an accurate sense of time in dreams does nothing to substantiate your claim that god controls time. Time is the measurement of existances longevity. The earth spins on its axis every day. Every 365 or so days we orbit the Sun. We can break time down into min. sec. ect.
God’s Guidance;
I had the guidance of my parents, my family, my teachers, aquaintences ect. My ability to think is a result of my brain/sense organs and thier functions.
My senses aquire information about my environment. See light(and objects that reflect light), hear sound,smell fragrence, taste flavour, feel force/texture/temperature ect. My memory allows me to recall past experiances and recognize sensations that I have felt before. Can you , before ever experiancing the taste of wine, like it or dislike it? can you, when you hold a baseball
at arms length, reason a priori, that a the ball will fall to the ground rather than the sky? you know this because you we’re taught this, and you observed from experiance, that the theory holds true when we test it.
We are born with the capacity to learn and as we age we expand our knowledge base, from this knowledge base and the awareness of our current environment, we can reason and make descisions.
just because i can have an idea of god doesn’t mean i have proof of his existance.
It also doesn’t mean i don’t believe in god, i hold matters of god as faith, i need no proof.
I attain all my awareness through the senses, my mind has the ability to formulate ideas based on this information i aquire.
i am mortal, i am conscious, i am self sufficiant, i progress through a series of experiances ending in my inevitable death. This goes for every other human.
Don’t assume i don’t belive in the soul, i just consider it analagous to the mind.
soul- non-physical controlling entity(controlls body) which is judged by a creator god(im catholic)
mind- the capacities of consciousness which allow for recognization of stumuli and reaction and reflection and reasoning and imagination.
I belive that we have the capacity to be our own guide. Nobody live my life for me, everything i do is for my own reasons.
I am human amd the author of my own existance.
I would say that i act of my own accord and this also means that i don’t believe in fate in its ultimate sense; living in a world without any control.
But, i also think that based on my attained knowledge/beliefs i am predestined for some actions. More or less everyday its a neccesity that i aquire and eat food, drink fluids, because i belive(with strong grounds) that i would die without those things and i don’t want to die.
Also, there are certain potential situations in which my range of possible actions are limited by my awareness and skill and history. e.g. if i applied to harvard or any ivy league college, my lackluster high school grades, being a canadian citizen, having no way to procur funds to pay for the education, would all limit my ability to get accepted and undertake this action. My history to date has made it predestined that i could not go to harvard.
My history or my prior experiances, play an integral role in any action i wish to undertake, but being that I am the person in direct control of my actions i am responsible for any predetermined limitations which plague my aspirations and potential actions.
My birth is responsible for my initial location, my lack of money limits my ability to move. If i we’re to save some money i could move, but to leave the country i need a passport.
We all have our limitations and our history(the string of experiances that preceed this moment) is responsible for our current state(our aquired skill/ knowledge/ assets) and thus also responsible for our limitations, but, being that we are responsible for our history ,as we act of our own volition in most cases, this means that our fate is the result of our own choices/actions and its us that program ourselves so to speak.
Regarding God, i have never seen anyone sufficianty prove that he exists, i have never seen someone sufficianty prove that he doesn’t exist. I suspend my judgement untill i have proof enough to belive without doubt.
If i told you a boat existed, we would agree because we have both seen a boat and know from past experiance that it is existant. Nobody has seen god and thus we can’t say he exists like a boat does.
But, on that note, i still belive that god exists and hold matters on faith. Its the one thing i don’t need evidance to believe in.