Free will

I only skimmed this so I may be mistaken about something, but how is it that you don't believe cells are conscious yet somehow feel that these particles are conscious enough to determine your entire life.

Your basically admitting you are a slave to your mind?

There is actually truth to this, most people are slaves to their mind, but this is exactly what eastern spirituality is about - becoming free from the dominance asserted by your mind and learning how to use it as a tool instead, so that you can truly be free.

This is one of the main things meditation teaches you to do.

 

Shredderbeam, if we do not have free will how can the concept of personal responsibility exist?
The ramifications for this in the idea of laws and punishment are immense.

 

Not a slave to one's mind, but merely a slave to causality.

Determinism only applies from a "extra-universal" perspective. Within the context of our own minds, free will exists. This idea doesn't really have an impact on our lives, as we still feel as though we can make choices, and act as though we can.

 

we should all have the choice to do what we want to

 

Yes, you completely misunderstood. It was directed more to conversations I have had with shredder before. What I was saying was not based on reason but on religion. I was saying I believe in free will, but that other Christians do not. This bases is all around religion and nothing else as I stated before.

 

This can be explained with the everything is controlled by every particle I think. If there is a murderer and he's not getting punished by it, his brain would keep reacting in that way (so he would keep killing people) unless there is a change by the environment (eg the court). That makes him change the way he acts, or rather somehow there are some particles put in a different place and they start reacting differently.

 

How is it a normal man becomes a murder?

What's the change in the particles?

 

I don't really understand that question, could you rephrase it or explain it a bit?

By the change in particles I meant, that you are reacting differently then before, if you were always a murderer then when seeing people you might think 'oh I would like to kill that person'(bad example I know but I hope it's clear). But once you got punished by something you might (or might not, depends on the person really) stop thinking about killing people. So the punishment must somehow have an effect on your brain where the particles don't react in such a way that you want to kill people.

 

People can't make you mad/sad/happy, you have the free will to make yourself mad over a situation :O