[guesswest]

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Fine, say God's will is not "determined"... What is it? What process does it use? Reason maybe? You'd be just suggesting something that is nothing.
Maybe there is no process? Do God's desitions make no sense at all then? In time you come to the point where you can understand that the only thing that would make sense, is that God's desitions also work by causality.

Sure you can choose to swerve into uncoming traffic. But that's not the point. The point is that your desition is based on causality (and maybe randomness).

You, as of right now (this very instant) are a particular person. An extremely complex sum of various kinds of information, which interact with each of the other parts (or some of them) in an immensely complex mathematical calculation that is way too complex for us to understand entirely. That is what you are as of right now. However, any other information that reaches you is going to change you in many ways. It's going to interact with a lot of the stored information that you are, resulting in innumerable events ultimately producing a immensely huge chain reaction. So it's fair to say that one second to the next, you're quite a different person; even if in essence you seem to be the same.

In a particular situation you may have quite a few options; but the situation itself is already altering you. Every single piece of information that reaches you (and that doesn't mean just information that reaches your brain, but all kinds of information) influences you. Of course, we know enough about the universe to know that we really don't know [censored]. So we know that a particular situation can't be thought to be "in a dark room with a bottle of coke and another of beer", there are infinite little things that we don't know about that interact with human desitions (as with anything else in the universe). So it is fair to say that 2 situations that seem identical to us can be quite different from each other. Or at least slightly different, which means the chain reaction they'll produce can result in a huge difference in any given conclusion that we're seeking.

But the idea of humans being determined by causality is that given a human -A- and a situation -B-, the human will always respond in the same way -C-. Not just in his/her desitions, but in everything that he/she is. You may blink at a certain point, at a certain rate; your adrenalive levels may vary in a particular way, whatever.

You can think: "Oh, but if I wanted to I could choose something other than C"... Well, your first mistake is that you assume that by hearing this information, you wouldn't be altering yourself (or the situation); but you are. In other words, if you wanted to do other than C (say D), then it would be because A and/or B are no longer A and B (or never were). Maybe they are now A and G, or J and B, or N and M.


Now, you may think of throwing in randomness to the mix, which is the only other system that we can think of so far (it's really just a derivation from causality) but that isn't going to help; because what you'll have then is that human A in a situation B can respond in ways: C, D, E, etc; based in nothing other than what we call "pure chance".


Yes there are schools and there are philosophers. So what? Do you know how many christians dedicated to analyze their belief are there in the world? Many. Does that mean they must be right?
It's not rational to dismiss a seemingly correct argument simply because many people think otherwise; even if it's experts. Unless of course you just don't wanna get involved, and just choose to take the expert's opinion instead; But I don't think that's the case here.

Anyway, I'm not saying "the soul" is a ridiculous idea, just that most people who believe in it don't even seem to know what it is (or their definition is self contradictory). In the best cases, the soul is just thought of as another way to refer to consciousness, or maybe other parts of the human mind.

On to your last point: If I'm getting this right; is this ideology's point that free will means you as an entity have more influence in your desitions than the outside influence? (even if it is deterministic)

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God's decisions can not be a result of causality. That is true, again, by definition. I should say btw that I'm an agnostic, due to all the paradoxes involved in this stuff. But to say god's will is determined by causality is like saying up is down, it's a fundamental contradiction. If you're referring to some being having his actions determined, he is necessarily not god.

Again, I'm a determinist, so I don't disagree with much of that. My point is only that there is a lot, lot, lot more to this debate than is articulated there. And that it is intellectually useful and honest, especially where many intelligent and thoughtful people are putting forth an argument, to at all times entertain the possibility that you're wrong and listen with open ears.

On the last thing - I can't for the life of me remember the name of this particular school of thought, I haven't done this stuff since I was an undergrad. But the viewpoint is basically this:

The question is asked, 'what is this me that is being determined'? You can obviously reduce this infinitely, your body, your brain, a neuron etc. Certainly within this bulk of things which is collectively identified as self there are internal reactions. One synapse firing and producing a reaction within the brain isn't thought of as determinism, it's just thought of as internal functioning. So the argument is that 'free will' emerges when the sum of reactions within this internality, within the physical and metaphysical area we designate as self, has more bearing on our action than causes external to that self do. I have some kind of problem with this model just in that I don't know how you'd possibly quantify the weight of those variables, internal or external, but I think it holds some weight and makes some sense. It also addresses this issue that we empirically idenfity with ourselves as possessing free will.