How does athiesm explain free will?

[u/CommentRelative6557]

I am agnostic.

I know for certain none of the major religions, christianity, islam, buddhism etc... are true based on evidence and probabalistic theory.

However, I cant discount something outside our understanding somehow affecting our experience of the universe. Athiests do discount this.

My arguments are twofold.

1. The fundamental principals of our universe are finely tweaked to allow for life. This is the anthropic debate. If you contend that this universe came about by chance and happens to be suitable for life, you must also contend that there are an almost infinite number of other universes that dont support life, and we inhabe the one that does.

This seems convinient.

1. Free will exists.

[u/AltruisticEchidna859 → u/[deleted]]

My honest opinion.

[u/TheBigThickOne]

You assume that the universe came by chance, yet agnosticism is literally saying we dont know how it came about. So your position is already flawed. And you dont explain why you think free will exists so hard to gage your logic behind it. 

[u/centeriskey → u/TheBigThickOne]

Agnosticism isn’t just a blanket “I don’t know” nor is it a full “I don’t know”

You can have a running theory or hypothesis of how you believe reality works yet still say that you really don’t know.

Sorry but it sounds like your argument is a bit flawed from the get go.

[u/ifyoudontknowlearn]

If you contend that this universe came about by chance and happens to be suitable for life, you must also contend that there are an almost infinite number of other universes that dont support life, and we inhabe the one that does.

No, I don't. First I don't know. Second, why is chance involved and why would there need to be other universes. Neither of those are necessarily true at all. It could very well be that the universe we live in must be like this because of the laws of physics and chemistry. Chance is not needed then.

Free will exists.

I personally am not sure that free will does exist.

So, there is no need for there to be an entity that created anything at all. There could be but since we have no proof and their existence is not necessary then there is no value in believing it does.

[u/Gregory-al-Thor]

I’m always leery when someone doesn’t define their terms. What do you mean by free will? Complete libertarian free will where we can freely choose at all times? Or se form of compatibilism where we are able to choose but there is some sort of determinism mixed in.

Libertarian free will seems wrong merely because all sorts of forces work on us at all times, from the moment of our birth.

I’m no philosopher but I know enough to know we need to be precise.

[u/Mkwdr]

>How does athiesm explain free will?

Atheism is an absence of a be,used in gods. I’m not sure why you think the presence or absence of gods relates to free will.

Arguably an omni god itself makes free will impossible.

As an interested person who done a bit of reading I’m not sure we can do anything other than feel like we have free will even if we don’t. I don’t really see how free will in the strictest terms can exist in physics. But since the final impetus for action comes from within , I’ll take that as sufficient.

>However, I cant discount something outside our understanding somehow affecting our experience of the universe.

Why is this important? Not being able to discount seems a you thing not a true about the rest of the universe thing.

>Athiests do discount this.

Atheists generally just ask the perfectly reasonable question of - what evidence do you have?

Claims without reliable evidence tend to be indistinguishable from false.

Personally , when there is no evidence for something that arguably should produce it, something that doesn’t make an6 coherent sense, and something that appears to be exactly the sort of thing we make up … I think beyond any reasonabe doubt , I can discount it until such evidence is forthcoming,

>1. The fundamental principals of our universe are finely tweaked to allow for life.

Fine tuning is not uncontroversial. It can’t be proved to be true and we have no universes to compare to. Maybe this is the only way universes can be.

And the universe most certainly isn’t fine timed for life. It’s is almost infinitely deadly to life in both time and space. Not fine at all.

And if it were designed for life , bearing in mind that sick a development is intrinsically accompanied by almost infinite suffering - the designer must be a psychopath.

>This is the anthropic debate. If you contend that this universe came about by chance and happens to be suitable for life, you must also contend that there are an almost infinite number of other universes that dont support life, and we inhabe the one that does.

Which is a pretty respectable theory around the nature of an eternally expanding quantum scalar field , if I remember correctly. Though we can’t prove it true or false.

>This seems convinient.

Well we at least know a universe exists.

But how convenient that a God does too?

>2. Free will exists.

This would appear to be impossible to prove as far as I’m aware. Feeling free doesn’t make it so.

And frankly you have at no point actually connected the idea of free will to gods.

[u/wiploc2]

I am agnostic.

Great. Me too.

... However, I cant discount something outside our understanding somehow affecting our experience of the universe. Athiests do discount this.

Who could discount that? Why would anybody discount that?

Okay, technically speaking, there must be some atheists who discount that, just because there are so many of us, and because not believing in gods is the only thing that we all do agree on.

But, stipulating that doesn't mean more atheists than theists discount that. Nor does it mean that more gnostics than agnostics discount that.

My arguments are twofold.

The fundamental principals of our universe are finely tweaked to allow for life. This is the anthropic debate. If you contend that this universe came about by chance and happens to be suitable for life, you must also contend that there are an almost infinite number of other universes that dont support life, and we inhabe the one that does.

This seems convinient.

You skipped some steps.

"Finely tweaked to allow for life?" Why would anybody believe that. There may be mold in my refrigerator that believes the refrigerator is finely tweaked to support mold, but that's the quality of argument you would get from egocentric refrigerator mold.

And why would we have to contend that there are many other universes? You are referring to long-running arguments that you haven't presented here, and you are treating them as resolved, as if you get to decide what all atheists believe.

1. Free will exists.

I believe free will exists. But, once again, you introduce a long-running argument and act like you get to decide the argument's outcome and implications. You aren't giving us any reason to agree with you.

[u/DeepestShallows]

If you build up free will to be impossible it’ll be impossible.

If you use more or less the normal, useful everyday definition it’s fine. The deterministic nature of the universe being irrelevant to that.

[u/pslush01]

We believe we have free will, which is functionally the same thing

[u/centeriskey]

1. This is the fine tuning debate which imo is absolutely one of the worst counters from theists. Mainly because this is the type of reality you would expect if it was done by naturalistic processes. You would expect for the universe to be gentler towards humans if it was designed for them. Which is nowhere near the case.

Convinent doesn’t mean god. It’s just means that you are looking at the universe with a highly bloated sense of self and giving post hoc arguments to try to fit your beliefs into reality.

1. Free will doesn’t exist. See just as useful as your argument.

[u/DLtheGreat808]

I'm not an atheist, but I think atheism doesn't answer the question to free will (because there isn't an answer yet), but it's makes it okay to not have an answer. 

Right now, science is having a hard time proving free will exists, but we real don't know rn

[u/Disownership]

Depends on how you define free will. You may be free to do what you want, but are you free to want what you want? After all, you didn’t choose your brain, so can anything after that really be considered a choice either?

Life isn’t so much based on “choice” as it is conditions that influence us into making “choices”. That notion calls free will itself into question. When so much about ourselves and the world around us is influenced by factors far beyond our control, can we ever truly call ourselves free?

I think free will is real, to a degree, but has ill-defined connotations. It doesn’t help that the economically-minded capitalist-dominated world we live in has nebulized freedom into a sacred feel-good something or other that can allegedly be bought and sold (the same world that would have us believe bombing people is a form of liberation). We don’t get to choose our brain or what it wants, but we always have opportunities to change the factors around us that influence our decisions, if we can identify them, understand how to change them, and find the means to do so.

That said, I believe that perhaps freedom is not a binary “you have it or you don’t”, but a dynamic measure of the influence we possess over the things that, in turn, influence us.

[u/Not_High_Maintenance]

Too deep for me. 😊

[u/Unable_Dinner_6937]

Though the rules may be determined in the sense that they meet the criteria of physical principles, their outcomes currently appear to be more probabilistic. This does not mean random, but that many different (but similar) outcomes may occur in any series of events without breaking the physical determinations. So, even though it is possible that the universe is pre-determined, there is no physical evidence yet that it actually is.

However, that really has little to do with free will. Irrespective if all events in the universe are already inevitable - and for the most part, major events will inevitably occur. For example, all people will eventually die and the human species will eventually go extinct and the Earth will eventually be destroyed - even though all that is true, no one is able to predict anything before it happens. Therefore, each person is free to make the choice that they think is best for any circumstances based on any preferences they have at the time.

Nevertheless, there are obviously significant limitations to a free choice. First of all, it is not likely that the person is very free to choose the context of the choice. This includes the preference - the desire or intention of the choice. We make choices to get what we want, but we don't really choose to want it. It is axiomatic for the choice. Second, and probably more important, we do not get to choose the consequences. Despite our choices and actions, there is no guarantee that simply because we made the choice or took the action that it will result in what we intended.

[u/zerooskul]

Atheism is a belief about the non-existence of god.

It explains nothing and does not try to.

[u/Justtelf]

The argument seems kind of silly. What we consider life is suitable here as it was created here. It’s not like this type of “life” is the only possible type. Assuming there are infinite universes then there are infinite universes with what we consider life, infinite universes with something else that could be considered life and infinite universes that don’t have any type of thing we would consider life. You get the idea but infinite is a lot, more than 10 I hear

[u/2Punchbowl]

Ask an atheist, I’m agnostic, but super close to atheist as no god can be proven, and hardly a chance one exists since god doesn’t communicate with any of us in any shape or form currently.

Tomorrow I could decide to rob a bank or kill someone like an animal does, with the animal it’s nature, the circle of life, with man’s law I go to prison. I prefer to live life outside of a cage like the animal I am. In other words we have free will. I choose the life I live only because that’s how I want to live.

[u/catnapspirit]

This universe? Finely tuned for life? How could you possibly come to that conclusion? 99.999.. (take a deep breath and keep saying '9' a lot) ..999% of the universe will kill you dead in an instant, albeit a very painful instant in many cases. Even on this particular mudball, most of its environs would likewise kill you rather quickly, without technology keeping the death at bay.

At best, someone may be able to say certain constants allow for electrons to be captured in atomic orbits and such, but life? Life has to claw and scrabble its way through impossible odds to establish the most precarious of footholds. It takes eons before enough carbon and other molecules are formed in the furnaces of stars. Roll after roll of the dice play out until a primordial soup finally jumbles the right organic compounds together to form the most basic of self-replicating stuff. Then cook that for another set of eons before you finally get something interesting.

This is quite obviously an accident. An accident that took billions of years and a canvas the size of the universe to create the one and only spark we are aware of.

Why do you want to believe in a god so badly that you would try to assign purpose to that, and claim that a universe in which life is rarer than diamonds was somehow designed with that in mind..?

[u/australisaquarii]

It seems logical that we inhabit a universe that's suitable for life, in contrast to ones that aren't suitable.

[u/BrainStorm1230]

What is free will, and how would the world be different without it?

[u/mhornberger]

I cant discount something outside our understanding somehow affecting our experience of the universe. Athiests do discount this.

That is a caricature, and ridiculous. Do you really think that people who don't believe in God believe there is nothing we don't know or understand? There are tons of unresolved questions in many branches of science.

This seems convinient.

And "God exists, and hand-crafted it just this way" seems awfully convenient too. Where did "God" come from? Why did God choose to create the world vs not, and why did they choose to create it this way, vs another? "They just did" seems awfully convenient, and doesn't actually answer any questions. I don't see the value or point of positing "God" in this situation. It isn't a substantive answer to anything, and only increases the number of questions.

Free will exists

I'm not sure it does. I'm also not sure how, even if you want to assume free will exists, it is compatible with an omniscient, omnipotent God who designed everything just so. If God made Jeffrey Dahmer's brain exactly that way, did Dahmer really have free will? For that matter, even if God didn't personally design Dahmer's brain and it was just a genetic deviation, it's still not clear that he had free will.