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kitler53 on 14 July 2014
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RubberWhistleHistle said:
Salnax said:
RubberWhistleHistle said:


Without getting into too much detail:

Even within the confines of physical sciences, there is wiggle room. According to concepts such as chaos theory, the future is not predetermined even when only considering physical laws. When taken to their logical conclusions, these principles basically mean that something as seemingly minor as some neural activity is both undetermined and potentially highly influential on surrounding conditions.

On the other hand, if God is omnipotent and omniscent, he basically runs the entire show, leaving no room for free will. Unless he were to make the metaphorical rock too heavy to lift, which is another can of worms.


thats a very good point, and i can see how uncertainty in neural activity can cause a sort of butterfly effect in everything that surrounds it. 

but this is an extremely fundamental concept (and it was only discovered recently!) that governs existance. quantum mechanics covers these ideas that, you never know where the electron is going to be, because everything has a wave associated with it and electrons have so little mass, that their wave characteristics are more apparent than something bigger than it. so this idea of uncertainty turns out to be something that is integral in how things behave, and therefore, you cannot predict everything thats going to happen for the exact reasons you just layed out. its impossible. this, however, does not mean that free will is possible, but i see how youre saying that it opens a door for free will to be in the discussion there. 

as for the points in your last two sentences..  God doesn't control everybody's actions. i know this is something that a lot of atheists or nonbelievers bring up, but i just think its a huge misconception. and the rock thats too heavy to lift i always have thought of that as a useless point. think about it, it defies logic. if God created logic, how is he just going to disobey that?


..as is basically everything you've written about athiests in this thread.

the label "christian" not mean every christian has the exact same beliefs.   their are catholics, lutherans, methodists, baptists, and probably 100 other sects that all have varying views on the same core concept.   well, the same goes for atheists.  you're projecting a very extreemist, skinner-esque viewpoint onto atheists that does not suit all who wear that label.

just because i don't believe a god created this world and watches over us judging whether i'll spend an afterlife in heaven or hell doesn't mean the only alternative thought is we're a bunch of meaningless chemical reactions with predetermined results.