Published on 12, July, 2020
Causality has always been a fascinating subject to me. A fun thought exercise I like to do is trace back events that needed to happen for things in my life to exist as they do now, and see what's the most obscure thing that was vital to that series. That and the understanding of the probability of any given individual's existence has made me appreciate how intricate every single life is. We're all products of a specific series of events, consisting of a near incalculable number of nuances and distinctions that we might never hope to fully understand and appreciate.
I learned in recent years the concept of Laplace's Demon. A hypothetical being capable of observing every particle of the universe and its current momentum, if I recall it right. That such a being, with a sufficient intellect, could accurately predict the future if it could calculate where every particle has come from and in what it's present momentum is.
Thinking about these things has given me the opinion that chaos is just our inability to fully calculate the momentum of all of the contents of the universe. That every single thing that happens, could not have possibly happened any other way, because the series of events that lead to every moment were put in motion from the instant the universe was created.
I'm not an individual. I don't have free will. I don't make choices. Everything I do, I was always going to do exactly as it pans out. And any element of it that goes unpredictably is simply my lack of awareness of all the elements contributing to whatever comes out of it. But that even then, those elements were always guaranteed to come into play at that moment.
It might sound like I'm trying to absolve myself of responsibility for my decisions. But if I'm right, then I was always going to come to these conclusions, so who's to say what's right and wrong?
But in all things I try to keep an open mind. What do you all think?
Free will is fallible.
That's why Christians require salvation.
However, taken to extremes the Augustinian view on the lack of free will means that salvation is preordained, you will either be saved or not. This results in the idea that doing good or evil deeds during your life has no effect, which is quite a dangerous concept.
The Reformed Churches talk about 'The Book of Names' in Revelation.
People have free will but most people are stupid and ill informed. Therefore it's an uphill battle to achieve anything good in this life. The good people like Jesus tend to die young and the people who follow the herd live long. But one has to believe there is something beyond this life, that people like Jesus are the right ones.