Barnard17

Under your conditions, yes I believe in destiny, for want of a better term.

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Kevorkian Logic

destiny is bull.

If the world is made up of atoms randomly colliding into each other, and we consist of atoms, then out actions are random. Not preordained.

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"it is only through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect that a certain type of perfection can be attained"

jibber

Yeah fal, i'm just gonna agree to disagree here for one main reason, we have entirely different views on what free will actually is. I believe it is the ability to interpret all the factors of our environment, and be able to make choices based on that, you believe that free will doesnt exist because our environment influences our choices.
BUT
factors in our environment, the pros and cons of each side of the argument, all those things that YOU say eliminate free will because they exist, well, if they DIDNT exist, there would be nothing to make choices ABOUT. Free will is all about wieghing all sides of a question and being able to form your own opinion on it. We HAVE that choice, some people are just more prone to using it more independantly than others, it's all a matter of degree.

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What you've done becomes the judge of what you're going to do -- especially in other people's minds. When you're traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don't have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.
William Least Heat Moon, Blue Highways

Your toughest competitor lives in your head. Some days his name is fear, or pain, or gravity. Stomp his ass.

HOOKED ON THE WHITE POWDER

DontRunMeOver

Random events are only random without hindsight. With hindsight those events are the ones which occured and there is nothing random about them. Even collisions of atoms aren't really random, they just appear so to us because the interactions (currently defined by wavefunction, electrostatics and all that) are too complicated for the theories we've place upon them to fully explain and predict. They're probably too complicated for us to ever get to grips with.

I think my use of the word preordained is a bit badly chosen. Although it's not completely innacurate, it does suggest that I think there is something sentient going on to direct all of these events. I don't. I think its all to do with what we currently call entropy and enthalpy, objects and animals being pulled around by natural forces, with concious actions just representing a level of these natural forces. People choose what they try to do. These choices are the result of natural forces, the choices still made by the individual and the individual should carry the pride or responsibility for thier actions but the individual themself is still an amalgam of all of these forces. Even your DNA is a result of these forces, as involved two specific people (your parents) reproducing and furthermore, one specific sperm with one specific egg.

In addition to this, the idea of 'destiny' (in the scientific sense I'm describing) suggests that nobody who is alive is an 'accident', in terms of nature. Everybody who has been was always going to be and everybody who will be is also just as certain to be. The more free will comes into it, the greater the fluke of your own existence. That, however, doesn't effect my opinion on it as I'm happy to think of myself as a fluke or as inevitable.

There probably is a better term, which doesn't conjure up idea of mythology or religion. Invetability?

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Barnard17

Inevitability seems to suit much better. It also clears any idea of Zeus playing chess with Loke.

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