Free Will

What do you think of the idea of free will? Personally, I think it's nonsense, but I'd like to hear what others think.
 

Moved to PR&S because this is a philosophical question. 

All an illusion. Everything may not be set in stone, but we can't change it. We are incapable of doing so.

As Jroa said, this is a question of philosophy, not science.

I think it's true, it makes sense of everything really.
A common question is, if there is a god, why does he let murderers live and good people die? Answer is 'free will', if we don't have it, how will we find out the consequences of our actions? It takes many lifetimes to figure this out for most of us, i also believe that we have all been male, female, homosexual, aliens, and animals in previous incarnations, just to learn these things. We've all been black, white, red, yellow etc too, all different races. A good book to read which discusses all of this and more is 'Matthew, tell me about heaven' by Suzy Ward, available online only.

Free will is not a dichotomy. We have the freedom to make choice: our actions are not set in stone. They may alter and shift the worldline: we do have the power to change events, and there is a degree of randomness in the world, otherwise divergence and altered worldlines should not be possible.
However, consciousness is not responsible for this freedom. You can ascertain that simply by asking: where do your thoughts come from? Consciousness is not eternal, so it cannot cause itself. Our thoughts are not in our control: the control we feel is an illusion.
Free will, however, is not. We have freedom, if 'we' are said to be our bodies, and everything contained within.

I think it's true, it makes sense of everything really.
A common question is, if there is a god, why does he let murderers live and good people die?

This question doesn't make sense to me, because it assumes more about God than is ever defined. The Judeo-Christian God is described to advocate benevolence, but where did it ever say he would universally disallow or intervene during an act of malice?

For those dorks who favour inductive reasoning, here's something catchy I worked out: It is said that God gave us free will. Said free will would be rendered pointless if he were to not allow our free will to manifest itself as an action rather than being confined to free thought without literal divine intervention.

Free will in and of itself makes no sense to me either, because it dismisses the notion of cause and effect. Something caused someone to have a particular thought at a particular moment, directly. And not just something, a series of reactions. There are no two possible outcomes; the perception of choice is a conglomerate of emotions that function, as always, as a way to motivate us to survive, and is one of the most integral parts to our consciousness. I think people choose not to believe this because it doesn't validate their self-centred view of the world, and for whatever reason, they think that if this were the case (and there would thus be no absolute goal in life), they should change the way they live. No, just enjoy life. Find a way to stimulate your endorphins without relying on believing in existential purpose.

We've all been black, white, red, yellow etc too, all different races.

Maybe I have amnesia, but I don't recall ever being black, red or yellow.

Free will is not a dichotomy. We have the freedom to make choice: our actions are not set in stone. They may alter and shift the worldline: we do have the power to change events, and there is a degree of randomness in the world, otherwise divergence and altered worldlines should not be possible.
However, consciousness is not responsible for this freedom. You can ascertain that simply by asking: where do your thoughts come from? Consciousness is not eternal, so it cannot cause itself. Our thoughts are not in our control: the control we feel is an illusion.
Free will, however, is not. We have freedom, if 'we' are said to be our bodies, and everything contained within.

Exactly what makes the electrical signals in your brain different than the star we're orbiting around, or an asteroid? Nothing, really. What, other than quantum objects such as photons, are capable of being random?

Free will is actually a bit of a nonsensical concept.  We certainly appear to exert control over our actions, but in reality our actions and even our thoughts are dictated entirely by our previous experiences, our relation to the world, our genetic dispositions, our needs and desires, ie things over which we really have no control, and it's really only the complexity of the confluence of those factors that makes it appear that we do have control.  At least as regards the decisions, and the actions we take based on those decisions, of living beings everything really can be said to be predetermined.  Obviously random, chaotic events do exist (or at least they seem to based on our current understanding of the natural world) but we have no actual control over how we react to those random events.  And even if some of that chaos is built into our decision-making processes, as I understand some have proposed as a way of justifying their belief in free will, that wouldn't be the same as free will.  It would really be the opposite of free will.

We have free will. That does not preclude foreknowledge: I know what I did yesterday, but I still had the freedom to choose at the time. The souls of humans are what make us unique in this regard.

We dont have free will. We (our consciousness, our will) are part of our biological neural network. I am not a neurologist, but I think that what grants us this greater self-awareness and reflexive capabilities is an improved verbal feedback loop. In other words, we think because we can talk to ourselves. This is coherent, as far as I know, with the behaviour of people who havent learnt a language at all, and the behaviour of animals, who only have "lesser" feedback loops, probably image memory, and feelings.

We have free will. That does not preclude foreknowledge: I know what I did yesterday, but I still had the freedom to choose at the time. The souls of humans are what make us unique in this regard.

Or to shorten...

"There is a difference between knowing the path, and walking the path."
~Morpheus

For once we agree Test.

So God did not influence the thoughts of those men?

So God did not influence the thoughts of those men?

What do you mean by influence? He would have addressed them, but He did not force them to do anything, He merely knew that His address would be enough.