With our modern world view, it's easy to believe that science has taken the place of God. But a lot philosophical problems remain as confusing as ever. Like the problem of free will. This philosophical problem has been around since before Aristotle in 350 B.C.
St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, these people all worried if we can be free when God already knows in advance everything that you are going to do before you do it.
In modern times we know that the universe operates according to a large amount of fundamental physical laws, and these laws control the behavior of every object in the universe. These laws, because they're so understood, they make possible amazing technological advancements.
If you take a close look at yourself you will see we are just physical systems also.
We are just a very intricate arrangement of carbon molecules. We are made of mostly water, so our behavior is not going to be an exception to these fundamental physical laws. It starts to look like no matter if its God planning things out in advance and knowing everything you're going to do or if it's these fundamental physical laws controlling everything. It does not leave that much room left for our freedom.
You might think that it is better to just ignore the question, disregard the mystery of free will. Think "Oh, well, it's just sophomoric. A historical anecdote. The question has no answer. Just forget it. " But the question does not go away.
If you think about uniqueness for example, who you are. Who you are is mainly a matter of the free "choices" that you have made.
Or what about responsibility. One can only be admired, be found guilty, held responsible or respected for things you do of your own free will.
The question doesn't go away, and we don't really have an answer for it. It looks more and more like all our decisions are really just a pretense.
Think about how it works. There is some electrical signal in your brain. Then your neurons fire. Then a signal is sent down into your nervous system. It goes into your muscle fibers. Then the muscle twitches.
You might, lets say, lift your leg. It might look like it's a free action on your part, but every part of that process is actually controlled by physical law, chemical laws, electrical laws, ect.
Now it is starting to look like the big bang set up the original conditions, and the continuation of human history, and even the beginning of it, is just the continued pattern of subatomic particles based on these fundamental physical laws.
You think you are special. You think you have some sort of special individuality. That now comes under attack. It is really challenged by this concept.
Right about now you might be thinking, "What about quantum mechanics? We know enough modern physical theory to know it is not really like that. It is more like a probabilistic theory. There is room. It is moveable. It is not deterministic." And that is going to make it so we understand free will.
When you look at the details, it is not going to help because what happens is you have some super small quantum particles, their behavior is evidently random. They zigzag. Their actions are absurd in the fact that it is unpredictable and we can't understand it based on anything that came before. It does things randomly, according to a probabilistic framework.
Will that help with idea of free will? Should our existence be probabilities, some random swerving in a disorganized system? That starts to sound like it's worse. I would rather be a gear in a big deterministic system than be some random swerving.
We can not just ignore the question. We need to make room in our modern world view for people with all that that entails. Not just bodies, but people. That then means us spending time to solve the problem of free will, making room for "choice" and "responsibility", and spending time to understand distinctiveness.
Thank you to anyone that spent the time to read this.
I am now going to try to figure out if I chose to write this or if it was fate. xD
It's an inescapable conclusion if you start with the assumption that the only things to exist are the things we can measure, weigh and melt.
Assumptions are bad but, I have to assume that there are many things that exist that we cant "measure, weigh and melt"(yet). We are learning of new stuff all the time.
If we were to assume "that the only things to exist are the things we can measure, weigh and melt" what would the "inescapable conclusion" be?
Determinism. If there's no such thing as a soul, then we ARE just neurons firing.
If we have/are souls then they exist without being measurable.
Are you saying we cant have free will without a soul?