[soon2bepro]

Lol yeah, the soul. I figured some people would come up with that explanation. It's really funny when you think about it. It's like, no matter what you throw at them in the subject, they'll just hide themselves in the "soul" card. Soul is another thing that people don't really know what it is, by the way.
Their argument basically is: I don't know how we could possibly have free will, so I'll say we do have free will since ultimately it all comes down to our souls. (which doesn't really solve the problem, since ultimately it doesn't make any difference whether it's the soul or the mind that makes desitions)

We really can't figure out what this "autonomy" means or implies. We have no idea as to how it would be possible. I mean, we can't even imagine a way for there to be anything such as "free will" for anyone. Not even God!

I don't see why God can be an entity without true "free will" and still serve it's purpose. You can still pray to him to try to change His mind (or whatever other purpose); you can still count on Him to have planned things in a certain way that works out for the greater good.

In fact, if God's choices were not bound by the limits of reality... What would be the point in making them? They'd be senseless. The very idea of making desitions means He'll have reality and ONLY reality in mind when making them.

Sure, if He wanted to, He can make another desition, but why would He want to in the first place?
This is the very concept that explains why free will for humans is just a feeling. Sure, if you want to have coke instead of pepsi, even for a whim, or just to prove you can, you can do that. But given that particular situation (which is next to impossible to reproduce) and the particular you (which is orders of magnitude harder to reproduce since you're changing every time with every little bit of information that is added to your system), there's only one choice you're going to make.

In other words, just because there's only one desition that He can make in a particular situation, doesn't mean He is not omnipotent. He can do whatever He decides to do still.

On a side note, a good way to experiment with human reaction/desition issues, at least to start with, would be to use people who suffer from absolute anterograde amnesia.


(edit to add):
The existance of randomness isn't going to help give more autonomy to the free will issue. I hope you see why.

(edit again - forgot this part):
About the variables being so complex that we would automatically have free will... Well, that's just nonsense [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

I mean, does the concept of free will have as a prerequisite that we don't understand all the variables involved in the complex cause-effect//+random process?

If so, I'll agree, but most people don't mean that when they talk about true "free will".