The Illusion of Free Will.

Fate vs. freewill: You physically are a group of over sixty-trillion living cells that do what they do by themselves. Every second, there are trillions of things happening inside our bodies that keep us from dropping dead, and we have no control over it. Blood is being pumped, cells are being created, hormones distributed; a trillion things out of our control have to happen just for us to digest food, and we are not even aware that it is happening right now.

People are aware of the fact that they are not in control of the inner workings of their bodies, but most people are not aware of the fact that they do not control what is going on outside of them either. Most people believe they are in control, and the exact opposite is the truth.


The dance of life: God/life leads and we follow in the dance of life. In other words, the physical environment does something, and your inner environment (mind) reacts to it.

We are under the absolute control of our environments.


You get hungry you eat, need money you work, the phone rings, you answer it, get cold you put on a coat, get hot you take it off, and if you have an itch, you scratch it.

Then there is larger environmental control; where and when you are born, if you are rich or poor, educated, talent, health, looks, sex and race etc. are your life.

n other words, everything outside your spiritual-self, including your mind, is your environment. Your mind was and is created by your genetics and your environment, past and present. Your mind is part of your environment, just as your body is, and it is controlled by the larger environment, directly and indirectly.

You can say lower animals are also in control of what they do and do not do. A bear or wolf can decide what to do from moment to moment, but it is just reacting to what is happening around it. You do the things you do for the same reason a bear or any other animal does what they do.

Humans do the same thing as all other animals, but in a slightly less direct way. Our minds give us a greater awareness of the past and future than lower animals. Thus, we take what we have learned in the past and where we want to go in the future into account when we react to the environment, so we react a little less directly than lower animals when we can.


Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for insects as well as for the stars. Human beings, vegetables or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance. Albert Einstein

The second big realization: Science will realize that Issac Newton's laws of motion mean that the laws that govern all matter include us, because our bodies are matter. We are not in control; free will is an illusion, a delusion. It is "action-reaction" that causes the motion of all things in the universe, including us. There can be no matter in the universe that is exempt from these fundamental laws of nature. His book Principia Mathematica explains the laws of motion, and they have proven to be true. That book is the foundation of modern physics. Our bodies are governed by those same laws, because our bodies are matter in the universe. True or False?

Take a closer look at the things you do and you will see the truth. There is always a reason preceding your every action. From the mind’s perspective, the world is a huge maze. You have choices, but a limited number of them. You always choose what you think is the best one. None of the choices would make any real difference until now. Everyone is playing monkey see monkey do and blindly going around in circles, big and small.


Search "truth contest" on Google, Click the 1st link and open The Present - Not able to post a link yet.

Look at the big picture.


"Living is easy with eyes closed, Misunderstanding all you see"
Strawberry Fields Forever - The Beatles

Contra-causal free will is definitely false (aka, the idea that our behaviors are uncaused). There are, I hear, other ways of defining "free will."

Strawberry Fields Forever - have to say I strongly disagree with your determinist theory. Admittedly we have no control over where or how we were born (or, largely, how we are going to die) but you're confusing control with freewill. We may not be in control of the vehicle but we are free within that situation as to how we experience the ride.

You admit that we have choices but discount the quality of these by saying that they don't make any real difference. Oh but they SO do....! I used to be fatalistic (thinking I could do nothing about my lot, that this was just the way it is - I used to be prone to depression because of this) THEN I studied psychology (specifically, psychotherapy) and allowed myself to contemplate the possibility that freewill could be a reality. Hallelujah - I now have a positive mindset and yes, it makes the world of difference in how I experience life. O.K so I'll still die - but, if we're talking quality of life, I feel reborn, excited and inspired constantly. So how do you appraise that!? Discuss...!

I always look at these philosophies as confessions of feelings of complete powerlessness by the authors.

So interesting, how we have the power to do that.

[Miss Hepburn]

StawberryFieldsForever,

Well, that took a load off.

when you do "see" the picture, you do realize that free will is an illusion. humans like to feel the need that they have power, not realizing that the power they need is already with them.

Originally Posted by Gracey

when you do "see" the picture, you do realize that free will is an illusion. humans like to feel the need that they have power, not realizing that the power they need is already with them.

Perhaps we are looking at different pictures.

Originally Posted by Humm

Perhaps we are looking at different pictures.

and perhaps we are not. we just are at points in our spiritual evolution that we know the picture differently, and that is okay.

[Chrysaetos]

I agree.

What we may consider ''free will'' is those moments where we have options or choices. But these options and choices are always limited and determined by various phenomena; the influence of others, the environment, past experiences. Within choice itself there is limitation.

You can say lower animals are also in control of what they do and do not do. A bear or wolf can decide what to do from moment to moment, but it is just reacting to what is happening around it. You do the things you do for the same reason a bear or any other animal does what they do.

It's just more complicated for us humans because we have awareness and grew up with a self-concept.
Deconstruct far enough and we're just animals with a better brain.

Originally Posted by Humm

Perhaps we are looking at different pictures.

Or looking at the same picture from different places...