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Old 10-19-2007, 06:43 AM   #34 (permalink)
Og
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The notion of a soul is entirely an anecdotal claim from myth driven dark ages. There is absolutely no reason, given our modern understanding of the universe, to postulate the notion of a soul other than some wishful fascist thinking in which you hope that there is a celestial dictator who knows your every thought and intention and judges you based on them for all eternity.

Free will does not make sense when you sit down and actually think about your motivation for action. Do you have reasons for behaving in a certain way? Yes. These reasons are a description of how your brain (the machine) is working. Could you change your reasons for action? If so, what would your reasons be for doing that? See?

To be truly responsible for your actions, you need to say that you caused them. So in some odd way, free will as a notion requires causality/determinism to apply. The only way that an action could appear free if it was truly and utterly random (i.e. no reason to connect it to a causal chain).

And furthermore, not all christian's believe in free will. In fact, a large number of them do not (such as presbyterians and other calvinists). They believe everyone is predestined and have bible verses to back it up.
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