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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[Loud Whispers]

You spend 11 years wandering the fucking desert you become convinced God hates you

[Orange Wizard]

But the fact that he only mind controls someone once ever compared to all the times he simply kills people through plague/smiting/famine implies that he is pretty reluctant to do so.

Yeah, fair enough. Still, it only applies if people have free will in the first place.

[Rolepgeek]

Eh.

I figure it's easier to believe in free will than not to, because the latter involves a lot of mental acrobatics and double think to really function whilst believing. If you try and use it to just justify doing whatever you want(heh) to, it just makes you a dick, and that's still kinda true if you use it to say something like 'well everything must be the way it is now because that's how it will have been no matter what because no such thing as free will,' and then something about how trying to change the status quo is futile (despite status quo changes having occurred many times through history).

And if you just go on acting no differently, then you're just pretentious, there's no point in not believing in free will, and while you could make the argument that you believe in it because even though you can't actually change what your behavior will be, you know the truth.

Though the idea of knowledge, if there is no free will, is kinda moot. As well, you could make the argument of no free will based on a purely rationalistic argument. But like I said. What's the point?

If there is a God, and He acts as He does in the Bible, He is not omni-benevolent, or even all that nice of an entity, as far as I can tell. It's redundant to me if he exists or not, or rather whether I believe in him or not; why would I pay homage to an entity with fewer apparent morals than I? If I go to hell for not believing him, I dunno if heaven was a place I wanted to go in the first place.

...feel like a bit of an ass for just spouting opinion/belief randomly when I come in. >.> Apologies if that's faux pas.

[Graknorke]

From your perspective you feel like you have free will in that you make choices, but from an external perspective there was only one thing you were ever going to choose. Does that make sense?

[XXXXYYYY]

And if you just go on acting no differently, then you're just pretentious, there's no point in not believing in free will, and while you could make the argument that you believe in it because even though you can't actually change what your behavior will be, you know the truth.

... I don't really think so, as someone in that position. At least, I try not to be.

The way I see it is that, while I don't think free will exists, the distinction doesn't actually matter in daily life.

What's the practical difference between free will and not in a system where the two are, for all intents and purposes, identical? There's no difference really - we wouldn't be having this age-old discussion if there was.

"Free will" isn't even well defined enough to really have a good discussion on, anyway.

[Orange Wizard]

...feel like a bit of an ass for just spouting opinion/belief randomly when I come in. >.> Apologies if that's faux pas.

We're not going to spurn your contributions.

Although it would be nice if we could talk about something new instead of retreating the same old "God's a dick", "ikr" thing that we have going on.

[Graknorke]

Well yeah but this is preferable to discussing the elephant in the room.

[Rolepgeek]

Nah, long as we keep it civil, that's exactly what this sort of discussion is for.

So...is the elephant Islam? Or am I an idiot, and it's the far simpler elephant of 'why is this religion right and all the others wrong for X religion'?

[Arcvasti]

From your perspective you feel like you have free will in that you make choices, but from an external perspective there was only one thing you were ever going to choose. Does that make sense?

Yes. Graknorke has basically perfectly summarized my views on the subject.

[Graknorke]

Yes you have correctly identified the elephant. Basically there's a decent portion of the kinds of demographics that make up B12 who have a very strong interest in defending Islam despite the fact it stands against a lot of their other values. It's a thing I don't really understand.

[Orange Wizard]

Islam is a very explosive topic.

[Descan]

Just to clarify, my point about free will was never to fall into the cliche of "FREE WILL DOESN'T EXIST!"

But only to say I don't see why people think God cares about free will.

[Rolepgeek]

Well, speaking from stuff I've encountered, seen, been informed, and etcetera, I disagree with a lot of the values of Islam, and I agree with a lot of the others, like a lot of other religions. Thing is, Islam, and more specifically Muslims, are demonized because TERRORISMMAHGURD as if the religious doctrine of it is the only thing determining whether or not religious violence occurs. I would personally defend Islam on it's strong points (granted I have sadly less knowledge about it then I'd like), but there's a big difference between fundamentalist Islam and all of Islam. It does have over a billion members, after all...

Just to clarify, my point about free will was never to fall into the cliche of "FREE WILL DOESN'T EXIST!"

But only to say I don't see why people think God cares about free will.

Oh, I would disagree. I would say he in fact has some sort of weird, big complex about it, just like we probably would if we were trying to make something truly sentient. He wants his kids/creations to like him, but if he just makes them that way it doesn't really count, but if he doesn't do anything they might think he's a dick for not being nicer, but doing everything for them is hard...incentive/disincentive should work, right?

[Graknorke]

Nah, Islam is big on the honourable holy war front, and its adherents have been practising as such for the entire history of the religion where they could get away with it. The other Abrahamic religions at least have the excuse of "well people don't interpret it that way". Islam doesn't, because a lot of people do.

[Frumple]

Yes you have correctly identified the elephant. Basically there's a decent portion of the kinds of demographics that make up B12 who have a very strong interest in defending Islam despite the fact it stands against a lot of their other values. It's a thing I don't really understand.

... you mistake trying to avoid blatant ignorance and blanket, xenophobia-driven demonization for defense, mostly. It only looks the same because much of the criticism of islam is rooted in the same sort of fuckheadedness that drives the worst kind of militant atheists.

Most of the folks that have spoke in favor (and I use the term lightly, because no, most of the folks that speak up are not ignorant of the problems that plague it) of islam in general on b12 have more or less just been trying to give it the same treatment most people give the other major religions. For various reasons, it's really hard to get people to do that.