How can people think free will exists, In a fundamental way- there is no such think as an  "I"?
599568
This is an excellent question. If God created life and He is all powerful, why do people go to hell for disobeying his commands? Surely God would create us with a pre-ordained destiny if he is all powerful, hence no freedom of choice. Either God created us to go to hell or he is not all powerful, in which case he is not really God.\n\nAll our decisions are formed by our genetic code and past experiences, it is God who decides this. The laws of nature (including quantum mechanics) are controlled by God. In that sense there is no 'I'. \n\nTherefore, either God does not exist and free will does,\nor God exists and some people were destined from the dawn of time to disobey Him. Which leads us to conclude that if hell really does exist, then it is not the fault of the person but a fault of God that sent him there. He is chastising himself. This again invalidates the law of God being all powerful.\n\nIf freedom of choice does not exist, and God does, then judgement can not. If God doesn't hold judgement over his own creation, he can not be all powerful.\n\nWe must have free choice for God to exist. But God controls the life we have! Its a circular argument.\n\nDoes God not exist, then?\n\nHis ultimate wisdom allows us not to know the truth.
1042716
God doesn't make mistakes lol! Think about this... would you want someone doing something for you or in your name if they didn't want to be doing it?? \nAlso, if we didn't have free will we would pretty much just be robots. Where is the beauty in that?
362375
It is not possible to say 'God exists' or 'God does not exist'. There is simply no proof either way.\nThose that say 'God exists' must at some point take a leap of faith.\nThose that say 'God does not exist' must make a similar leap of faith towards scientific / empirical proofs.\n\nI don't know about 'being sure' but I tend to think that almost all the misery caused in this world is due to human choice and free will. Unless I'm mistaken, there is pretty much all the resource, food and know-how on this planet to keep us all well, fed, warm, housed etc. if it weren't for the inherant greed and desire within us all (not being 'holier than thou' here - don't see me selling the laptop to put food in a starving African - just admitting my failings!) Maszlow's heirarchy of human needs is a good starting point for understanding what we need / what we want and why we choose to proceed upwards as we attain our needs.\n\nPerhaps the 'garden of eden' is a very good analogy for what happens when we have free will. Without it all God's graces were given, as soon as human's chose the 'forbidden' path from their own free will, it all started going wrong.\nBit harsh to blame God for what we have chosen as a race to do with the gifts of creation / evolution?
2717
if he has no consciousness how does he create everything you see around you?\nThat doesn't make much sense. Perhaps he has a consciousness but not in the sense of it being in our interests. \nLike for example we think the whole idea of God revolves around us humans. Perhaps it isn't so shallow and larger than that.\nThen again, if what you said were to be true, I suppose we would be in big trouble.
1166088
The concept (that's what this really is) of nothing - or "no thing" is easy to understand and explain its existence. Lets examine a few things to get a grasp of this.\n\nFor example, when there is a lack of water, we say that its state of being is dry, arid, etc. Simply because there is a lack of something doesn't mean it does not exist.\n\nMy second example is that of your self. If you are not in a specific location at a specific time, and I am a witness to that event - or lack thereof - does that mean you do not exist? Surely not.\n\nFinally, the concept of "no thing" goes one step further than the examples above, however it is important to remember that the state of being no thing is exactly that - a state of being. Can something that does not even exist have a state of being (or a state of not being in this case)? It must exist to have these attributes. Simply because some thing does not have tangibility in our physical realm does not mean it does not exist. In fact, I would argue that due to all of the things I've stated here, it is more likely that the things we can not see or grasp are more likely to be real in a truer sense than the things we see, hear, touch, smell, and taste everyday. Simply because it is a concept does not mean it can not exist.
1087025
Personally I don't reject the idea, but I don't exactly embrace it, either.  \n\nLet me pose this to you:  If there are an infinite number of universes, and let's say, just for now, that there is a Divine Creator, did this ONE being create the infinite universes you describe?  Or are there in infinite number of this Creator?\n\nNext thought:  If, for every action/thought/possibility there is a separate universe, on how many of them would you actually exist?  On how many universes did life on Earth actually form (assuming evolution)?  \n\nLastly:  Take the statement that there are an infinite number of possibilities and that what we perceive from instant to instant is merely what we have CHOSEN to perceive at that instant, is there a separate universe created for each of those possibilities which are not perceived, or, because they aren't perceived (therefore not "real") do they fail to "launch" a separate universe?\n\nIf you haven't noticed, I find the ideas of possiblity incredibly fascinating. \n\nI hope I didn't make your brain explode!
268551
How do we know that atoms aren't conscious?  If we are made of the same spacedust that everything in the universe is, albeit in a complex and dynamic arrangement, then perhaps all matter and even time itself has a form of existence and experience.  Maybe we are not even individuals.  Just because most people think they are making decisions for themselves doesn't mean they are just running on some form of autopilot.  I read that the part of the brain involved in complex decision making processes finishes neural activity sometimes up to two minutes before a person thinks 'they' have decided.   On the matter of whether God created us for his own sake, I think it would be alot more likely that people created the concept of God for their own sakes.  If we are in God's soup, I'd liken our fate more to that of a fly than a cracker.
1062311
If nothing exist, It must be outside our own Universe where there is no time, matter, energy nor space. Just 'nothing' which cannot be comprehended. \n\nHow can you comprehend nothing if nothing is existed?\nThere is nothing to be comprehended afterall.\nYou better stop thinking nothing and start thinking something.
148997
The term "destiny" often implies predetermined: the word used is "predestination."  But free will is a real thing, and you are indeed responsible for your own choices.  The whole "free will vs. determinism" question has been debated ad nauseum in philosophy.  To me, the concept that there is an all-seeing being who can predict what you will decide does not mitigate your responsibility to decide as wisely as you can, and so the question is moot.
440599
Peace on you...Allah Knows everything that will happen. The first thing that He created was the "pen" and He ordered the pen to write. The pen wrote until it had written everything that would happen. And then Allah began to create the universe. All of this was already known to Him before He created it. He does have absolute and total control at all times. There is nothing that happens except that He is in control of if.\nThere is a mistake in the question: "Free Will." Allah alone, has Free Will, He Wills whatever He likes and it will always happen as He wills. We have something called, "Free choice." The difference is that what Allah "Wills" always happens and what we choose may or may not happen. We are not being judged on the outcome of things, we are being judged on our choices. This means that at the core of everything will always be our intentions. Whatever we intended, is what we will have the reward for. Each person will be judged according to what Allah gave them to work with, how they used it and what they intended to do with it.\n\nAs regards the actual "Judgment Day" - Allah tells us that everything we are doing is being recorded and not a single tiny thing escapes from this record. Even an atom's weight of good will be seen on the Day of Judgment and even a single atom's weight of evil will be seen too.\n\nThe one who will bring the evidences against us will be ourselves. Our ears, tongue, eyes and all of our bodies will begin to testify against us in front of Allah on the Day of Judgment. None will be oppressed on that Day, none will be falsely accused.\n\nHe could have put everyone in their respective places from the very beginning, but the people would complain as to why they were thrown in Hell without being given a chance. This life is exactly that; a chance to prove to ourselves who we really are and what we would really do if we indeed had a free choice.\n\nAllah Knows everything that will happen, but we don't. That is why the test is fair. May Allah bless us.
458998
here's an answer NOT straight from a philosophy book...\nS.E.X.
37036
Well I used to think about that a lot. Well, let me be honest here, before you go through my whole mumblings; I'm tying to prove that after reaching a point in a string of reasoning, we as being human beings cannot continue...\n\nOK, let's see. \nLet's start with a definition of matter and time. I'll assume that we agree that you and me and everything that exists around us, our universe, or the whole world is made of matter. (I define matter as something which is comprised by atoms). Matter is subject to change, and in fact transformation is a property of matter. Now what’s the definition of change? The word “change” itself implies the existence of “time”. When we say that X (X being anything material, a table or a human) has changed from A to B, we imply that there was a time point T0 in which X was in state A, and another time point T1 in which X has changed into state B. So as we can see, MATTER and TIME are much interleaved abstracts. \n\nWhat about SPACE?  Space is where matter can exist. How about ENERGY? Energy is the ability to change the state of matters. What about us humans? We live in this world, we are made of matter and exist in space and all the rules of energy apply to us. We are part of this world anyway!\n\nConclusion 1: MATTER, TIME, SPACE and ENERGY are all interleaved concepts that apply, in fact govern our world. \n\nNow another branch of reasoning: It is obvious to a logical mind that every thing which exists should have a cause, a creator. There cannot exist something material that had no creator. So if you start from anything material, let’s say your computer, and go back in the chain of creators. You can go back to through this chain, but you have to stop somewhere or else your reasoning will be caught in an infinite loop. There has to be a stop somewhere. Let’s call this entity as G.\nNow, this creator G cannot be made of matter, because everything which is made of matter should have a creator. So, it’s logical that the first creator should NOT be made of matter. As such, none of the other terms of TIME, ENERGY and SPACE govern it or its actions. This creator G is what we call the God. \n\nConclusion 2: God is not bound by MATTER, TIME, SPACE and ENERGY. \n\nSo, now by using the first two conclusions, I can reason that your question is irrelevant in some way. MATTER, TIME, SPACE and ENERGY are all the foundations of our universe, and God created them. He is out of this bound. \n\nTo clear things up, let's think about the “big bang” theory. In a nutshell, it states that at first, TIME, ENERGY, MATTER and SPACE were unite, squashed together in a tiny tiny dot. Now they still don't know what was the condition of this pile of matter and energy and time at the very first moment of time (they believe it exploded in a BIG way), but scientists have good answers for what happened after about 1e-43 seconds (i.e. 0.0000.......001 seconds, the number of zeros being 42). From then, it's known. It’s also proven that the space HAS boundaries. See the reference to know more about it. \n\nBut what was there BEFORE the big bang?! We just know two things about it. First, as I reasoned above, God SHOULD have existed before, to create that small, condensed dot of TIME, ENERGY, MATTER and SPACE. Second, I (and for this matter nobody) cannot imagine what it was like before, because we are all part of this world, material. We cannot even imagine it; we are SO made of matter and time that we cannot think outside it. As an example, as I stated earlier, it is proven that the universe (hence the space) is bounded and it’s increasing for now, but a long time from now it will start decreasing. What IS outside the boundaries? Nothing! It even is not vacuum, there is nothing, not even time exist there!  (Another good answer is that we don't know, and we'll never know, because we can't reach there and see). It is obvious that comprehending the meaning of “nothing” i
420688
the most logical and simple answer possible....we exist. relating to your answer...in all infinite possibilities we are some how here it would be arrogant to think that we are the only ones, we probably aren't the first either.
439354
Does one  exist in the first place?
1115399
This is called fatalism, and is in logical error. Clearly everything is not predetermined. To your question I add another: did you type that question of your own accord, or was that predetermined too? Obviously, we have free will. Obviously, we have personal responsibility. God is sovereign, which means He has power of choice and consequence. We only have power of choice.
212175
:}  No one can know anything for a fact beyond any doubt..\n\nEven our very senses fool us. There are dreams and mirages. We’ve all thought we heard saw or smelled something that was inaccurate.\n\nThoreau in Walden Pond, Presented the idea that we could know that we exist because if we did not we could not question whether we did or not.\n\nHaving established that nothing, beyond perhaps our own existence, can be established with absolute certainty, we must proceed to behave as if those things for which there is significant evidence, in fact exist and work as the evidence would suggest they do.\n\nWhile this procedure at times will lead to error, for the most part it is necessary to pursue this line of reasoning, called inductive logic, if we are to conduct normal life functions.\n\nIs there a god?  I use the same process. So for my purposes Yes, as far as my data goes in allowing  me to analyze the information, the preponderance of evidence suggest that God is a certain fact.  \n\nThen using the scientific method it simply remains to see if the predictions I make based on this hypothesis come to be\n\nAnd they have.\n\nI'm 100% sure \n\n\n\nOne additional fact \nMy salvation depends less on my faith than on his faithfulness!
76747
Because free will is all about choices. God know before a person chooses but HE doesnt choose for that person...its up to the person...People are finite, GOD IS INFINITE. That's what makes HIM GOD!!! And if you dont get it...be not dismayed...neither do I...but I believe and have faith in HIM who created heaven and earth.  He wants our love and He wants us to choose HIM...ptl