Greatest enemy of mankind is free will?

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A_Wanderer

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I was just watching over Angel season 4, anyway the world is at peace and everything is great except the cost is there is no real free will, everyone is happily subservant to a higher power. Now the question that I raise is this.

Given the history of mankind is our greatest enemy our free will, could everybody lead happier lives if they did not have control or make choices?

As wrong as it is to our sensibilities a strong logical argument can be made against free will, you could end war, violence and starvation - but would the cost be too high?
 
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You'd end war, starvation and violence, but you'd also cause war, starvation and violence.
There is no removing free will. Hypothetically you can win this debate, but it is never practical with humans.
 
Hmm....interesting. I may have to answer this after I reread 1984, which I would recommend to all.
 
No, free will isn't our enemy. It's what makes us human, it's too basically a part of human nature to fight. Sure we all make wrong choices. But often the concept of "wrong" is based on opinion or something else besides "fact". I know "relativism" gets under some people's skins, and I'm not a Milquetoast in the morality department, either. But I'm hesitant to tell someone they are wrong when they are basically just different. Being different and respecting differences is what life is all about, IMHO. If we can't do that it's a sad day for humanity. These days there is so much intolerance. This scares me. We don't like Politician X, so we have to demonize him.
 
starsgoblue said:



How would that cause these things? This is a hypothetical...so answer hypothetically. :scratch:

Take away my free will and I will fight you. Violently if I have to. If I try and remove someone else's, being the free will removing type, I might also add on oppression, inequality, substandard living levels, poverty, starvation etc. Why stop at free will? Taking free will from one, will add on to another's. There has to be a power scale. Someone loses, if someone is to gain.
 
removing free will, will, as a result, leave our most fundamental gift of reason futile and useless. I personally don't believe that God should be the supreme moral governor, as our ability to reason is ignored as we must conform the moral rules outlined by God. Hence, I believe that humans must use their reason to make their own decisions, after all, didn't God give us this gift of reason in the first place? Why should we waste it then by obeying his so called rules? In that case, it is up to us to not abuse free will and reason accordingly.

GO VERTIGO GO!!
 
What kind of power would we be giving free will up to? Because if you believe in an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God in the manner of the Judeo-Christian tradition, we were given free will as a gift from that same God.

St. Anselm called God "that than which nothing greater can be thought." This "nothing greater" has already given us free will. I sincerely doubt S/he would take it away, and thus, since I couldn't possibly give up my free will to something less than God, I would not entertain thoughts of giving it up.
 
BonoVoxSupastar said:


Look up the word, slave.

You guys aren't understanding my point....I was asking as if we had never been born with free will, not that it was something that one could take from another....that we all had just not been born with it period. Now do you understand what I'm asking?
 
You have to flesh out the scenario more. So if we're born without free will, how do decisions get made? Somebody else makes them for us? I presume God then programs/ordains/determines it all. If that scenario, ie. complete determinism, then God being a perfect being, all his/her actions will be good and, sure, you should have a fairly unchaotic, though kind of mindless, existence. Also, the question doesn't really matter in that scenario because nobody would have the knowledge of the distinction between having free will and not having it. We wouldn't have the free will to think of what it would be like to have free will.
 
mankind exists because of free will

if you remove free will we would be a different species

a less interesting one also
 
We loose our free will but we are given a sort of blissfull ignorance about it, so much so we don't even care.
 
starsgoblue said:


You guys aren't understanding my point....I was asking as if we had never been born with free will, not that it was something that one could take from another....that we all had just not been born with it period. Now do you understand what I'm asking?

Now yes, lol. Sorry I took your other reply at face value.

In this case though if we were born without it, we'd be the same as any other animal species. We'd hunt for food, perhaps fight with each other but not from ego but for self preservation, and if times were tough like they can be for some species with weather etc, then we might face starvation. But this is assuming we then lose our ability to rationalise along with our free will. Which at the moment is what I think seperates us from other species anyway.
 
actually, if anyone has read brave new world by aldous huxley, it seems to me that there is an example of a "functioning society" where everyone lacks free will, yet there is no "hunting for food" and no one is fighting for self preservation. actually, as in the original post, the people in this world are happier, healthier, and safer than a "free-will" world.

this being said, anyone who has any inkling of free will cannot survive in this world. once you gain knowledge of it, essentially it becomes a necessity of human life.
 
A_Wanderer said:

Given the history of mankind is our greatest enemy our free will, could everybody lead happier lives if they did not have control or make choices?


A lot of people don't believe in "free will" (myself included). I believe there is a very distinct difference between freedom and freedom of the will. But this is all religious so I'll shut my trap now.
 
it seems to me like this is cliche to bring up, but could a matrix paralel also be drawn? i mean inside the matrix, people really don't have free will, everything is ultimately controlled my an external architect. yet, the people function as they always have, not even realizing that their "free will" is an illusion.

yet, when shown true reality, a reality where the can make decisions, and impact their life and the world around them, most make the choice to live in that world.

so, by looking at the matrix, we see that a world without free will is peaceful, orderly, normal, and comfortable. but, even so, most people who become aware of this lack of freedom (of the will) make the choice to leave their peace and comfort for a world of war, hunger, and general uncomfortableness.
 
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