Do I have 'Free Will' or is everything preordained...I cannot make my mind up on

Question:

Do I have 'Free Will' or is everything preordained...I cannot make my mind up on this one and need help

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

Well, this is the philosophical question of "determinism;" what causes things to happen as they do in the real world.

!. Calvin carried the ideas suggested by St Augustin to their logical conclusion in his "Predestinerianism." For persons who accept the Biblical nonsense, God is all powerful and causes every event by his will. He knows everything, "the beginning from the end" in the words of the Book. So If he causes all and knows what he has caused and knows "the end from the beginning," then he knows all that has, does and will happen and has and will cause it. If this logic holds on the states premises, then all is already decided. Whether you are "saved" or "damned" is decided from all time.

2. Naturalism manages to arrive at a deterministic philosoply quite without any gods. They argue that (as Newton stated) every particle of matter in the universe is attracted to every other particle by a force inversely proportional to the distance between them and relative to their mass. If this is true, then, like the frames of a motion picture film, the next relationship of all those countless particles is predetermined by the present position and the forces created thereby. It's like a pool ball being released and filmed as it falls. In successive frames, the position of the ball is decided by it position in the previous frame.

3. Then there is Marxism, which, by the by, is also a deterministic philosophy arguing that all depends upon economic forces. In his argument each stage of economic development is the result of the previous, and no other stage can be the outcome. It's too long to develop here, but that is the basic argument

If any of these is true, then the idea of free will is denied. Wait until some theoretical physicist comes up with the proof of Einstein's unified field. Then it's over for us unless we just say, "Horse ****! I can decide what I do and what I refrain from doing."