I have Faith

[madnak]

Ah. Well, I can share my perspective on accomplishments. I'm not sure it will have any bearing on how you look at things. But I think we all need to find our own way of looking at the world and at ourselves. So that's okay.

When I accomplish something, I often feel gratitude. It's not necessarily toward "God" (though I'm sure it is a similar feeling to that kind of gratitude). I am an agnostic, so my feeling of gratitude is more toward "luck." I feel lucky to have been born with an above average mind, with a good heart, and with a caring family. I feel lucky to have been exposed to the situations that made me who I am, because I know that if things had gone differently my life could have ended up much worse.

(As an example. When I hit a draw in poker and win a huge pot, my first instinct is to think "thank you thank you thank you!" Thank who? I haven't the foggiest. The pseudo-random number generator on Party? There's really nobody to thank. But I feel a sense of gratitude regardless. Toward the world perhaps.)

Where does responsibility come from? Well, that's hard to say. I know, for instance, that some people would give an arm and a leg for my intellect, my health, my upbringing, my education... It seems like I have all these things that so many people wanted and failed to get. So it would be pretty unfair to them if I just wasted away, wouldn't it? It'd be a really sad state of affairs if "fate" dictated that I "won the lottery" and completely wasted what someone else might have put to good use. So I feel a responsibility to use my own initiative and ensure that "as luck would have it" I am a responsible person capable of taking control of my own life.

Because even if my choices are predetermined, I still have my choices. If I knew which choice I were going to make, that could make things easier for me. But since I don't, I have to choose - whether or not that choice is "already made" in some cosmic sense. And it would be a real waste if I made destructive, hopeless choices. So I try not to make those choices.

[Zygote]

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I don't understand what you are saying here. With probabilistic determinism nothing is certain, anything could happen

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If everything works according to a probabilistic framework, then, there isn't much room for free will. Whether or not anything is certain isn't really relevant because either way there isn't space for free choice:
-If everything is certain, there is obviously no room for free influence.
-If everything is random and uncertain, and the framework is probabilistic, then, your free will is no more than the roll of a fair die.

The universe is seemingly governed by fundamnetal laws and every effect can, seemingly, be objectively traced back to a cause (even if we do use probabilities). So where does the free action come into play?

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I define "I" as my consciousness, which I believe allows me to have free will.

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Your ancestor's brain was only awarded consciousness to further satisfy the needs of selfish genes. Your darwinian impulses and your consciousness are simply the product of past experiences. experiences which are themselves products of random fluctuations.

Restating, your consciousness is a slave to your darwinian impulses, impulses that exploit and use your consciousness for selfish ends. The selfishness of the impulses only exists in a random, probabilistic sense as well, as does everything else in the universe.

Your consciousness does have a degree of control, but what is in charge of your control? The control you think you have is being further controlled. Consciousness has no desire without impulses. So agian, when you make what is seemingly a free decision, and lets call that "the effect", then, what was "the cause"? Was it your free will? I doubt it. I believe you can trace that cause down through impules, environmnet and eventually to fundamental laws.

We work according to the logic of our masters and are slaved to their goal. A goal that seems to be the playing out of randomness, confined only to the logic of fundamnetal laws. We are illuded to subjectivity while reality really only leads to one objective truth. The truth that the cosmos, in their entirety, is the only identifiable self and the only thing deserving as of the classification "I". Any further division of individuality is just an illusion, IMO.

[Zygote]

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I know free will can neither be proven nor disproven, but why is it that theists ( I'm not including you here) are adament that we don't have free will?

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From my experiences, there a theists with all different kinds of views on the subject. i think it'd be interesting to start a thread about this to find out where the theists on this forum stand.