God's Plan

Edit: This thread is making me pissy. I'm staying out of it until the OP provides some feedback.
 
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Sadly there is no "god" and god's plan is a means whereby people give up responsibility for their own path - as well religion has been used as a control mechanism over the millenia. That said some people get great comfort from religion so it has its place.
 
I will try to refrain and wait for the OP to join in again also.

There is a God, yukon1; maybe you have not found Him yet. We can disagree comfortably I hope. I will try my best to do my part at it.
 
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Satya said:
Edit: I got my point across.
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Actually I decided to wait to respond. I was hoping you would cool down.

I will explain, not due to your demand for an explanation, but for the sake of clarity... because no offense dude, but you don't really seem to understand the meaning of the debate between free will vs determinism/predestination.

It doesn't have anything to do with predicting or controlling the future save for the possibility of whichever mechanism could be doing so might be a causative factor in choices.

It is a question of whether one's will is determined or free in terms of making choices.

So your asteroid example, while amusing, was kind of irrelevant.
 
Jack said:
It is a question of whether one's will is determined or free in terms of making choices.

So your asteroid example, while amusing, was kind of irrelevant.
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The asteroid example wasn't meant to mean anything but that we have no control over our future and related to the thread topic, not the side discussion on free will. It had no relevance to free will and you distorted and took my post of context by the way you quoted it. The relevant example was that he had no control over the circumstances of his past and how those experiences affected him in the present. That should have been self evident from my prior posts. The only choice he had was over how he dealt with his circumstances and even that could be affected by future unforeseen occurrences (once again, not related to free will but to the "plan" concept of the thread). You went at my post with the clear intent to distort and poke fun at it, not to hold a legitimate discussion and that was why I was pissed.
 
I used to not believe in free will; because ultimately we are an assemblage of materialized energy particles. Quarks and what have you... the stuff of string theory if it ever proves correct. With this comes the two choices that either

A) Randomness occurs at the subatomic level, as quantum physics suggests.

OR

B) The randomness perceived by quantum physics is only random because we do not understand, nor can we analyze and observe the true order of things. This would be why they are developing string theory, since really we do not understand existence fully. With this model there is complete order in the universe, and all things make sense somehow.

With either choice, it would be naive to assume that there is free will. Ultimately we are the result of either random subatomic interactions, or orderly subatomic interactions and choice is an illusion. This is what I thought for many years. However, once I had positive confirmation that souls are real, I began to adopt a new philosophy.

Maybe in this existence there is no free will as far as the chunks of matter are concerned, but if you adopt model A, then it could be possible for an external entity to influence the chunks of matter ever so slightly, yielding massive results over the long run.

I now believe that our souls are an entity both separate but connected to our physical form and they have the ability to influence our futures by steering interactions in our body on a subatomic level. Free will likely does not exist for chunks of matter in the known universe, but in other dimensions where we know very little of the physical laws that govern those dimensions, who is to say that free will is impossible?
 
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Satya said:
The asteroid example wasn't meant to mean anything but that we have no control over our future and related to the thread topic, not the side discussion on free will. It had no relevance to free will and you distorted and took my post of context by the way you quoted it. The relevant example was that he had no control over the circumstances of his past and how those experiences affected him in the present. That should have been self evident from my prior posts. The only choice he had was over how he dealt with his circumstances and even that could be affected by future unforeseen occurrences (once again, not related to free will but to the "plan" concept of the thread). You went at my post with the clear intent to distort and poke fun at it, not to hold a legitimate discussion and that was why I was pissed.
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Well I suppose I can disagree with you there as well then, (for example if I take care of my body I am more likely to be healthier when I am older. that is an element of control, the choices I make today will effect me tomorrow) but that's not the issue.

The issue right now I suppose is the presumptions about my motives.

Maybe you didn't know this, but I sort of viewed the issue as an either or, essentially a or ~a. I was trying to find out exactly where you would fall on it when the asteroid example made me go WTF!?

Rather than saying "don't distort my words," you could have said "that is not where I was going with my example." I had no clue what you were talking about, I just assumed it was a hollow "tough guy" warning.

But I guess I too could have looked harder for an alternative understanding of your words rather than thinking "damn I gave that guy waaay too much credit".

In the context of our discussion, it wasn't clear to me that you were switching back and forth continuing to relate your points to the main topic, which may be the cause of the confusion. So for my part in that, I apologize.

Aaaanywaaaay, as I have probably pissed you off enough for one thread, I am good on just returning to the main topic, maybe making a separate thread later unless you're scared.
 
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Jack said:
Aaaanywaaaay, as I have probably pissed you off enough for one thread, I am good on just returning to the main topic, maybe making a separate thread later unless you're scared.
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Ha! Finally someone on the forum who might be able to give me a challenge.
 
Satya said:
Ha! Finally someone on the forum who might be able to give me a challenge.
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exclamation point? Might make a wonderful thread for you two. Can we pick the subjects?
 
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