Free will vs Omniscience

Not only are we not free to do things that we could physically do, our ability to do them varies between individuals and by circumstance.Today I can't steal from shops, but I also don't need to. If I was starving I probably could. Individuals brought up in a different way to me *are* able to steal from shops. Their barriers are lower than mine.Religious fundamentalists are able to murder indiscriminately those of a different belief - and even their own - based solely on that belief.A priest can rape a child - I can't; physically can't, even regardless of any desire to.A psychopath can do almost anything that we'd call evil and is only contained from doing so by intelligence and knowledge of social retribution.Apart from being a religious fantasy, our freedom to act and/or decide is not the absolute that religious people argue. Our actions are bounded by our personalities, background, beliefs, brain structure environment and circumstances.Most of those attributes are randomly distributed.

And then You could do it if... That's not the requirement. Can you do it just like putting out the trash? If you could you have free will and you're a psychopath.

It means that your freewill is bounded. Dinking or not drinking lemonade either pink or white does not involve moral choices; you do not feel morally constrained. Exercising trivial neutral preference is not normally considered a freewill issue. If you qualify this such that you are able to do it only when it becomes a moral good, you've proved my point. To have real freewill you must be able to do things that you know to be properly bad. You must be able to choose evil over good. Nope, a psychopath is someone who lacks empathy. It's the existence of empathy that proves that we lack free will. Or maybe you're not understanding the argument?

I have nothing to say about your made up nonsense, it's pointless but I do not. I label it the human condition. Doing wrong is natural, it's part of our evolutionary history. Our propensity to do wrong can be influenced by many things, only one of which is mental illness.

What is? The fact that doing wrong is natural? There's no slope it's just a truism. Well that's just a pile of sh1te not worthy of comment either. Humanism is not an extreme Phat, it's just part of the developmental process of becoming a grown up society. Once religion disappears from a society, nobody misses it.

They'll be what they are now, variations on liberal democracies.

Of course not, religion will just be a minority irrelevance - as it is now in some modern Western democracies. We really don't care Phat, believe what you like. I have no idea what this means, can you try again?

What? Devils and plots in heaven and god being outfoxed and sending a god that was only a man to make up for something a snake did thousands of years earlier?Phat, this is not just un-fucking-believable, it's really embarrassing . You're never going to stop making stuff up not only about what you want to believe but also what everyone else does too are you?I don't choose anything about origins, I haven't a clue and never will. I just point out errors you people make when you attempt to recruit bits of science you don't understand for your neurotic god.

Both are technically easily accomplished. That's your interpretation not mine.My claim is that, for instance, you are incapable of killing a baby just because you feel like it today. If that is the case, you need to explain how you think you have free will. This is not about after the fact regret, I'm saying that you can't actually do it can you? It's not 'morally difficult to choose', you can not do it (without qualifiers). Or can you?This is not an academic question, it's a practical, pragmatic one. Bollox. So our freedom to act varies by individual. Which is exactly what I say. Our free will is bounded and only the psychopath are able to operate entirely freely - if they so wish. The clever ones don't of course, because there are social consequences.Empathy constrains our freedom to do evil.

I suspect that our own decisions form only small very small part of what we become.For a start, we are a product of the genetic make up of our parents and our time and place of birth determine our culture and our beliefs. Parental income determines educational standards and parenting itself predicts outcomes for health, crime and achievement.Our personalities and intelligence are not our choices, nor are our psychological illnesses and dispositions.We are all products of our genes and our environment, it's far too simple to suggest that we are in control of our life choices - the majority are either already made for us or are not acheivable.

Of course not. Very few people have that freedom of will - thankfully. But you couldn't actually could you? Your freewill to actually do it is severely constrained by your sense of morality. Nope, you have no constraints preventing you putting out the trash Exactly my point. Your feelings constrains your ability to act freely. You know that you can't, why pretend? Only a psychopath could casually kill a baby. Are you a psychopath?

There are only three ways of finding out about this god of yours1. Personal revelation. This is delusional but you and many others believe it. The major problem with it as far as evidence goes is that it's personal to you so meaningless to others and that the revelations differ between individuals indicating their personal manufacture - we make the god we want to believe in. (Hence your rejection of much of Jesus's message.)2. The Bible. The source of ALL information. The multitude of problem with this as a source of factual 'truth' have been discussed to death here. But it's all you have.3. Other people. Priests, apologists, bloggers, everyman and his dog. All these people derive their opinions from 1 or 2 above so are the worst possible source - third hand 'knowledge' from people with no more information than yourself applying their own prejudices to the message. You don't have to, many of us have experienced it for ourselves. You're not special Phat.

I know you didn't but that was my requirement. We know there are circumstances when normal people may be able to kill a baby. Some more easily than others and some probably not at all.My requirement is that you do it as casually as putting the bins out for no other reason than 'well, why not?'It's seems a perfectly obvious point to make that our freewill is bounded. We are restrained to varying degrees by our sense of morality - empathy. The killing the baby thought experiment just shows an extreme boundary. And no, you could not casually kill a baby. Or at least I hope not. But there are people who could.

You can't argue that Phat because it's not an argument, it's just you not wanting to believe something you don't like.It was true for me, accept it. In my case it had nothing to do with science or disproving god or choosing anything. It was just a realisation that the whole thing was a pile of made up nonsense.I was about 14 and I'd never heard of evolution or the scientific method. Just accept it, I believed exactly like you, then I didn't. Don't try to spin it, it's a fact.

I've seen many of those but only in a mental hospital where they belong. If those things happened in the church I attended my parents would have had the sense not to take me there - it would be child abuse. No wonder you're so fucked up.If that's what you think belief in Jesus is, you're as crazy as they are. I believed as deeply as anyone could without the hysterical pantomime, accept it and stop projecting.