I don't believe in that fate crap, but I do believe that the government tries to control us all.The only free people aren't real.

yea the government is really just a bunch of jesus freaks who love god so much they turned the us into a theocracy..

ChainzOfMisery Wrote: yea the government is really just a bunch of jesus freaks who love god so much they turned the us into a theocracy..

...Hardly.
Anyway i'm going with no, it isn't an illusion. Nobody ever tried to fool me into thinking i was free beside the media, so in actual fact, it isn't an illusion at all, it's more like a lie, or a myth.

krackerjack Wrote: ChainzOfMisery Wrote: yea the government is really just a bunch of jesus freaks who love god so much they turned the us into a theocracy.. ...Hardly. Anyway i'm going with no, it isn't an illusion. Nobody ever tried to fool me into thinking i was free beside the media, so in actual fact, it isn't an illusion at all, it's more like a lie, or a myth.

whadya mean hardly??? ur jus mad cuz im right and ur left so screw u and ur little dog too!

Free will is always possible. It's always possible to do exactly what you want, the question lies in the difficulty it takes to achieve it and whether you are willing to accept the consequences having done so.

ChainzOfMisery Wrote: whadya mean hardly??? ur jus mad cuz im right and ur left so screw u and ur little dog too!

Firstly i'm not anything, because i try to avoid politics now.
Second off, are you even aware of who "Jesus" was?

I'll just shut up now though, because i don't wanna say anything that might get this thread closed.

ChainzOfMisery Wrote: yea the government is really just a bunch of jesus freaks who love god so much they turned the us into a theocracy..

If this country was a true theocracy, I'd be dead.

God gave it to all of us, and we should respect it. If you blame Him for anything just know that it's not His fault, and that you have free will so it's your own damn fault. Believer or not, we have free will.

God didn't give us jack-shit.every piece of land that is in existance was won with weapons.

NeedlesKane said it best.If we didn't have free will we wouldn't be on this site.

If free will was an illusion, then not doing anything would not be in violation of it. Neither would be trying to deny whatever controlling force is behind it. The reason: Because that is what you are supposed to do it. It is actually a very depressing state of affairs to have such a thing as free will sapped out of the very process of chance.

I do not believe that there is such a thing as predestination. If there was there would be no point to anything in the cosmos. A simple way to do it is to refuse to do anything. Eventually something/body will move your ass. And those that perpetuate the lack of free will is the cause of it. I on the other hand point out the flaw in their logic: I defy anything that tells me no. And if I were to defy predestination that would be a paradox. So don't preach at me about me being wrong when what I do is supposed to happen. And if what I do is supposed to happen then you are wrong for preaching at me which in turn makes you wrong for correcting me but it is what you are supposed to do so you see it is a continual loop that could eventually collapse the universe because of stagnant growth so go sit on a fucking shovel the wrong way because that is what you are supposed to do.

-Shoe

Of course you have free will.I see someone else here is a Legacy Of Kain fan.....Anyway say your girlfriend was kidnapped and you could help her but you don't, that is an excercise of free will.Sure some situations in life are harder to control than others....but everything can somehow be controlled in some fashion. When your back's up against the wall and everyone is jerking you around and you feel like a puppet on strings don't forget....you can always kill yourself. Which an ultimate act of freedom. That will show them.......

kiasyd Wrote: ....you can always kill yourself. Which an ultimate act of freedom. That will show them.......

Not necessarily. You could always screw that up. Suicide, upon survival, is something that manages to take away very nearly all of your freedoms, what with the institutions and whatnot.

kiasyd Wrote: ....you can always kill yourself. Which an ultimate act of freedom. That will show them....... you_suck Wrote: Not necessarily. You could always screw that up. Suicide, upon survival, is something that manages to take away very nearly all of your freedoms, what with the institutions and whatnot.

If you screwed up suicide, you just wouldn't be trying hard enough.
How can you screw up a runnning swandive off a 30 story building?

krackerjack Wrote: If you screwed up suicide, you just wouldn't be trying hard enough. How can you screw up a runnning swandive off a 30 story building?

Chance, which is actually, the only possible thing that could come between a person and ultimate free will.

kiasyd Wrote: Of course you have free will.I see someone else here is a Legacy Of Kain fanfont>

Damn right I am. A proud one at that. What i'm really trying to say is, are the choices you make your own or are you following a predetermined path no matter what you do?

I guess thats true.

It's a long one, but here's my angle on it:

Take the dimension theory, as seen in the Red Dwarf episode "Dimension Jump", and plenty of other sci-fi stuff. Basically it means that whenever you make a choice, a parallel universe is created in which the other choice is played out. So let's say you're trying to decide whether to go see a movie or not - right there, two different realities will be played out, one where you go see the movie, one where you don't.

My problem with that theory is what leans me towards the idea of predestination: how do the dimensions know which realities to play out? Right now, I've got some choices. I can:
- Keep typing this post
- Stop typing and go play Spider Solitaire
- Run across the street naked and set fire to my neigbour's house while singing the Hamtaro theme song.

Those are all things I'm capable of doing. Yet I know there's no chance in Hell that I'm going to do the third option. So will there be a dimension where I do do it? Or will there only be dimensions for the choices that I'm actually likely to make? How do they know which decisions I'm likely to make and which ones I'm not? That's my problem with it. Unless there's divine intelligence involved, I think the dimension theory is bunk.

So if that's true, then predestination starts to sound feasible. Thinking about it for a while, there seems to be very little difference between the choices I'm likely to make and the ones I'm not, which leads me to believe that there's only one path. Whatever I do, that's what I was always going to do. No matter how wacky or spontaneous I try to be, I can't change the choices I end up making.

Hence the use of the word "illusion" in the thread title. We may be free to do whatever we want, and the choices we make may be our own, but in the end I suspect the future is as unalterable as the past.

Heh, I knew it was only a matter of time before someone brought Legacy of Kain. I still need to finish Defiance.

But no, I don't think free will is an illusion. Just the fact that I decided to sign in and reply to this proves that. Then again, I can't prove that I even had the option in the first place, since looking back, I did what I did based on the circumstances. So really, are we deciding based on our will, or on our surroundings? I'm just talking randomly right now, but there really is no concrete solution.

Also, there is no fucking way that the U.S. is a theocracy. Whoever said that is either blind or ignorant(no offense, serioulsy). I can't even begin to list the vast number of laws and politics that completely violate basic religious values of all faiths.

Dude, hurry up and finish it. Before the last fight...something tragic happens.It's makes me glad I brought defiance.

Yeah, I won't spoil it for you either. But if I was a little pissed(putting it mildly) off at what happens. I really hope they don't end it like that. I think they won't. The head of Crystal Dynamics said that Defiance is NOT the last game in the series.(Says so in an old Xbox mag of mine in an interview.)

predestined by fate? -----> no!
predestined by other forces like our rulers and stuff ---> yes! they control us in a way... that I believe... our choices our dictated to us subconsciously by our leaders...

I believe free-will is only available to those of us who are strong enough and willing to take the consequences of in doing so. Free-will is not in all of us but only in some. We all have our own specialties in some kind of way and it is our own choice to decide what happens, OUR choice.