Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is free will.
I live in sin, to kill myself I live; no longer my life my own, but sin’s; my good is given to me by heaven, my evil by myself, by my free will, of which I am deprived.
People would say my children should have free will to eat meat – my philosophy is that is wrong, not healthy for the planet, animals or people. They learned and embraced all they could, taking gradual steps toward becoming vegan.
I’m one of those writers who, when writing, believes she’s god-and that she hasn’t bestowed free will on any of her characters. In that sense there are no surprises in any of my books.
I think it is important to remind people of the extent of our free will.
If a man’s free will to adopt ideas and values is inalienable, his freedom of action – his freedom to put these ideas into effect in the world – is not in such a fortunate condition.
Robots will someday, or maybe, wake up. They may be really smart. They may be as creative, smart and capable as human beings, and fully conscious, and self discerning with free will.
The fact that the underlying laws of physics are deterministic and impersonal does not mean that at the human level we can’t talk about ideas about reasons and goals and purposes and free will.
You marry out of free will. If I marry, it will be from a personal choice, not some social compulsion or norm.
Some people believe God is involved in every little decision we make. Some people believe you’re given the free will to make the decisions. Sometimes people believe God is not involved at all.
For me, the single most important question is how to construct a society that is just, safe, peaceful – all those good things – when people finally accept that there is no free will.
This free will business is a bit terrifying anyway. It’s almost pleasanter to obey, and make the most of it.
Free will carried many a soul to hell, but never a soul to heaven.
You are free to choose what you want to make of your life. It’s called free agency or free will, and it’s your birthright.
God is not willing to do everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to us.
Your true nature doesn’t come out. So the gods let you do what you want because free will would be compromised if they showed up at the White House saying, ‘Take us to your leader.’
The numerous evils to which individual persons are exposed are due to the defects existing in the persons themselves. We complain and seek relief from our own faults; we suffer from the evils which we, by our own free will, inflict on ourselves and ascribe them to God, who is far from being connected with them!
I really wanted to do something positive on the Internet. I wanted to try to get young people talking about, thinking about, life’s big questions-make it cool and OK to wonder about the heart, the soul and free will and God and death and big topics like that, big human topics.
Intellectually, I believe there’s no free will.
This great question of predestination and free will, of free moral agency and accountability, and being saved by the grace of God, and damned for the glory of God, have occupied the mind of what we call the civilized world for many centuries.
Free will is an illusion. People always choose the perceived path of greatest pleasure.
No tribe unites with another of its own free will.
Humanist thinkers such as Rousseau convinced us that our own feelings and desires were the ultimate source of meaning and that our free will was, therefore, the highest authority of all.
There have always been arguments showing that free will is an illusion: some based on hard physics, others based on pure logic.
Pages: 1 2
