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To: Zeneta
The issue is simple: we all make choices, but could those choices be made otherwise? From a religious perspective it might seem as if a divine being knows all, including knowing in advance what you will choose (so your choices could not be otherwise). Or we can take a physics-based perspective. Everything in the universe has physical causes, and as you are part of the universe, your choices must be caused (so your choices could not be otherwise). In either case, our experience of choosing collides with our faith in a world which makes sense because things have causes.

Wrong on both religion and physics.

First on religion. God is aware of what free will choices will in fact happen, and also the far more numerous counterfactual free will choices that won't. If I watch somebody do something and see what he does, that does not determine what he does. At that point of time he had a choice. If I could somehow watch him from some vantage outside of time itself, like God does, this would not change. Now if God made the universe with a physics that was deterministic and immune from interference from non material things (say a soul), then indeed you would not have free will...but of course that follows without bringing God into it, if the universe somehow existed without an outside agent and there were no outside agents, and it was fully deterministic...why then determinism would be true and free will false, but that has nothing to do with models that have God or the human soul in them.

Second on physics. Quantum physics strongly implies the material world is NOT deterministic. If you are not very familiar with why check out this short simple cartoon on the quantum slit experiment

30 posted on 07/18/2015 2:46:01 PM PDT by AndyTheBear
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To: AndyTheBear
Quantum mechanics isn't an "out" for a deterministic world.

If the choice is between being a robot and making decisions purely by random chance, then I don't think that's much of a choice.

43 posted on 07/18/2015 5:37:17 PM PDT by who_would_fardels_bear
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