Free Will

Thank you for joining the debate. It is very much appreciated. ~ This is exactly the opening argument I predicted you would begin with. It is a good point and likely the reason that many believe people have free will. You will need to think deeper than this. Of course, human nature has always been to reach conclusions through what we can observe. People believe that they have free will because of the fact that they have the ability to choose. It is as simple as that. They make the observation that they are able to decide whatever they please. A person may think, 'well, I can choose to either drink orange juice or apple juice, so therefore I must have free will.' With just that observation it is over for most people. The matter is far more complicated than that. While people may be able to decide for themselves, this does not mean they have free will. First let me establish that I do not believe that all people are seperate. Obviously, there are over 7 billion people on Earth, but that is physically. What I mean is, people are all the same 'spirit,' not that I believe in spirits. Basically, what I am saying is that every single person on Earth is not an individual 'spirit', or 'free will.' Everyone is the same but they all become different based on random factors that they have no control over. These random factors include, genes (who they are), and everything around them. A person's life is determined by random factors that they do not have control over. It may be very confusing to grasp the theory I am proposing, so I will give an example. If I were to commit a crime in my lifetime such as murder, what would most people say if I asked," would you have commited that crime if you were me." Well of course most people would likely say, "of course not, I would never have killed that person." This is not true. Think about it. If you were me you would have killed that person too. Actually, you would have done everything I did down to the very last detail. Oh, you do not believe me? You think that somehow you would have choosen a different path than I did, if you were born as me. Somehow you would have a different free will therefore allowing you to decide otherwise? If you were to be born as me, you would be given the same genes. [You can not choose what genes you get] Ok so now you are born and you have my parents who raise 'you' excactly the way they raised me. 'You' have my brain. [That was decided by the genes] Everything 'you' do would be EXCATLY the same as what I did because I variable needs to change in order for you to do somthing differently. Wait, you still think you will not end up killing the person. How? What variable would be different? I predict these could be some of your possible guesses. "What if the weather was different and one day and 'I' get struck by lightining causing me to be unable to kill the person. Or maybe, what if 'I' fall in love with someone after bumping into them and this prevents me from killing the person. This could not happen. If these things never happened in my life they would not be different just because 'you' were born as 'me'. The point is, everything would be the same and you would end up killing the person. The reason is because there is no different variable. We all are the same with different rndom factors that we did not chose. Even in math it can not be different. If a+b=c the answer will always be "c" unless a variable changes. If you had recieved the RANDOM factors I had recieved, you would do everything I did.What I believe is that people are only what their body is. Take this as another example. There are many different sets of different random factors. Each set of random factors is a predestined life. An already set railroad; each crisscrossing, twisting, turning, and crossing each other. Each set of random factors has its own railroad. People are the random factors. If any person had the random factors of another person they would have taken the railroad that belongs to those random factors. One’s life turns with every decision they make but it has all been planned out, depending on the random factors they were given. Someone may have made the worst decsions but how can they be to blame if anyone who had recieved their random factors would have followed their railroad and would have done everything they did.If I had the set of random factors that Hitler had, I would have done everything Hitler had. I have his genes. [So far I can not control genes] I am born as him. Now where do I deviate from what he did. The answer is, I don’t. How can I? I have the same brain as him, this was determined by my genes. The people that were around Hitler would treat ‘me’ the EXACT same way they treated Hitler. So now that I am given the same random factors as Hitler I do everything the same as Hitler. You may believe I have a different ‘spirit’ that is ‘me,’ so therefore I would somehow chose my own choices and not do what Hitler did. If that were true, how did I choose my ‘spirit' or ‘free will’ that makes me different than Hitler. Wouldn’t that still be a random factor? It really does seem as though people really do have free will, but it can not be true. People are all pre programmed from the start. Now, I await to hear my opponent's counter arguments. -JR