Last time in this segment we discussed what determinism is and what free-will is…basically. One of the most interesting facets to this argument is God. The concept of a higher being seems to either irk or tickle our respective fancies more than most topics. God is a polarizing issue. The existence of/morality of God in concept is a topic that splits us into believers or unbelievers.
If god exists, and he is omnipotent, then I believe it is safe to assume that we have no true free-will. Even if we have some moderate free-will in our decisions, if God can see the future we are to assume a determinist faith. Not that theres anything wrong with that, but I like to feel in charge of myself from time to time. If God exists, and he is not omnipotent then I think its only reasonable we assume that he doesn’t already know what we are going to do, therefore we are free to make our own decisions.
Personally speaking I do believe in some sort of Higher being, but certainly not the Judeo-Christian God(far too many holes in the theory). I like to take a deist faith. The thought that God made us and doesn’t mess with us. The greatest gift God gave us was the ability to reason, so I like to stick with the religion that allows me to assert this truth.
So what does all this mean? If God is all-knowing, then what I do matters not? Should I just kill myself to end the cruel joke I’ve been living. No. No one knows if any of this is true or not. What if all our philosophy was wrong, what if the Muslims were right all along? We absolutely have no way to know anything about the afterlife till we get there. Thats the point. We can conjecture and experiment all we want, but in the end all we need to do is pass the time till we die, where either we will be greeted by hell/heave, or nothingness.
next in this series:Causal Determinism, and the monism/dualism/pluralism debate
So watching Eureka Seven and reading through Bateszi and Animanachronism’s stuff, I find myself digging for deeper connections in everyday mundane tasks. It was tough for a while, because lately all I’ve been doing is saging newfags on /b/, and watching George Lopez from 9pm till 4am. So I torrented Eureka Seven to watch to ease me back into anime.
It finishes torrenting and I start to watch, its got great music and pretty pictures, but that’s pretty much it. Until all of a sudden the show depicts an old woman of a certain determinist faith, and she just so happens to be labeled as a terrorist by the government for no logical reason other than “she’s different”.(America for the LOSE!)So what does Gekko-state do?They capture her and go to collect the reward money, and then they go back on the deal steal the money and take to woman to her homeland.When there she spouts some pop-theology to Renton and his mind is blown.
This interests me only because the creators of the show spend these episodes crafting a light anime, when all of a sudden theres ethnic cleansing, and war flashbacks, and old tea lady stating that everything is predetermined. Thats like walking into church and slapping everyone there with a copy of Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
I have nothing serious to say other than WTF? I mean its so poppy and happy then its vietnam then its poppy again.
Since I haven’t even been watching anime lately(save for gunbuster) I figure I should update on the less mainstream reason any visitor comes here. I’m about to leave for a week long ski-trip with my class as a final hurrah before we graduate and go on to better and brighter futures.
I recently overheard a discussion on the matters of free-will vs. determinism, and was too bashful to enter the discourse. As it turns out I’m rather bashful of speaking in public on things that are important to me or pertain to my interests. So I figured I would talk about it here.
Determinism(particularly Causal Determinism) states that “future events are necessitated by past and present events combined with the laws of nature”(1). This means that somehow everything that has led up to this exact moment can be used somehow to predict the future. This completely nullifies the concept of free-will. How can I choose what to eat for lunch if it has already been decided?
Free-will on the other hand states that we have choices all around us and as Sartre put it “Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. ” We make choices everyday i.e. whether or not I choose to breath right now is entirely up to me. Thats not to say that outside obligations don’t matter(would your kind dear old mother want you to stop breathing?), but in the end it is my choice whether or not i live or die(at least part of the time).
This entire argument can’t be proven empirically if the mind is a separate non-physical being. If the mind is entirely belonging to the physical brain then the laws of nature apply to the mind. If the laws of nature apply to the mind, then the future of any individual can be predicted, and free will is nullified. If, however, the mind is pertaining to the soul which is a part of the non-physical world, then determinism must be ruled out. If the laws of nature do not apply to the non-physical world, then the mind or soul or spirit is free to think or act or choose as it pleases.
Source: (1)=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism
The next post will be how all this applies to theological determinism.
