Where Is My Mind

Freewill and Destiny (part 1)

I'll start off by making one thing clear; in this world MOST PEOPLE WHO CLAIM TO BE ATHEISTS ARE NOT!

Right, moving on. Freewill refers to the belief that every person has the power to decide freely what he will do. It is choosing one thing when you have the chance or power to choose another. What do you think? Do you have such a power? Some say that the future is fixed, and how one gets there is just a matter of destiny.

Now, destiny refers to that ultimate agency which is believed/regarded as pre-determining the course of events. Destiny simply refers to the belief that everything that happens is that which was meant to happen by a higher being or a higher power. Immediately we have a problem here, a clash that many people never seem to detect. You probably believe that you have freewill, that you make your own choices, of your own volition, fully aware of your self; however you also probably believe that there are things that you are destined to do in the future or to become, most if not everyone believes this. When a child has grown up and become a doctor or great engineer or scientist or even a thief or a swindler, you somehow know that he was meant to be that, he has always been brilliant with machines so it's fitting that he has become a head engineer. 

"They are so good together, it's clear that they were always meant to be together." 

"They are not together for certain reasons but we all know they are fated for each other, they belong together." 

"Of course I'm rich, I work hard, I learn everyday, I strive much and reach far, I was always meant to be rich."

"They are ignorant and foolish, they refuse to learn, to cultivate, and do not strive much nor do they take any risks or make any plans, they were meant to be poor."

But that there is a problem, you cannot believe in both destiny and freewill at the same time. Look at it more closely, if you have the power to decide what you want, then it effectively means that you do not have a destiny, your destiny is whatever you make it, you decide everything for yourself. But if you believe that you have a destiny (as we often do) then what you're saying is that there are things which have been determined to happen to you in the future and those things will undoubtedly happen without fail because that is how a higher power has made it, you are saying that you are living inside some sort of plan, a plan which was made for you by someone else and you are just playing out a role, like a story or a play.

Do you understand what I'm saying? One cannot have these two at the same time! There can only be one. I will say one more thing here which is major. If, out there somewhere, there exists an all powerful God who has created everything and has also made a grand plan for his creation, then it effectively and directly and assuredly means that we do not in fact have freewill at all. If all things must go according to plan, it means that all the components in that God's plan must work the way he meant them to work, otherwise the plan might be in danger of ruin or unintended alterations.

Even you yourself often make plans, am I wrong? I will instantiate an example here, if you made a business plan, a very elaborate one which outlines all the guidelines of how you'll take your business from nothing to success, from step zero to a hundred, step by step; then you would do well to follow those guides to the letter, in order to achieve what you have envisioned. Even so, it is the same with this, if God has made a plan, then he has to actively influence his creation to lead it in the way of the plan.

Now, you know the thing of which I speak, and you know it very well. In fact I'm sure that you yourself have at some point uttered words along these lines: "It's God's will" or "Let your will be done" or "Everything is going according to God's plan" or "Don't worry, God has a plan" or, if you will perhaps at this point claim to be an atheist then even you too have at some point said these words "It was always meant to happen", "what will happen will happen, there's nothing we can do about it", "He's not supposed to be the one! It is I! I was supposed to be in that position! I was meant to be the president!". You can imagine many such words and phrases which you have undoubtedly said and thought throughout your life, perhaps every day even. By saying such words, you are unwittingly admitting to the notion that you don't have freewill, and are rather much like a puppet being controlled by strings and playing out a script. 

It is quite strange if you consider it closely. There is one person who escapes death by car accident simply because something else came up and prevented him from getting on. Later they will say, "perhaps he wasn't meant to die", or he will say "I was spared...". One person is saved as a child from imposing odds against his life, seemingly by whimsical chance, only to become a great figure who shakes the whole world. If he's evil they say "he should have died back then, for our sake" and if he is good they will say "he was sent to us by God", but whatever they say no one thinks it was mere chance or coincidence, it was simply ordained from on high, he was meant to be what he is. One person can have a dream which reveals to him future events and assuredly such things come to manifest themselves as he had seen them. Then they say "it was a warning from God" or "he was sent to save us from the doom". 

There seems to be a something inside all of us which simply rebels against the very thought that our lives are just meaningless chance, a string of coincidences simply weaving itself, we believe very strongly that without a plan our lives mean effectively nothing at all, like ants or like turds even. We believe that we have a purpose, a meaning, and that purpose can never exist without destiny! yet alas, despite that we also believe in freewill. Could there perhaps be a compromise between these two? What does it look like?

If you're a Christian and are finding it a bit difficult to incline yourself to my words, then I will prove to you beyond peradventure that this is the case. I'm sure you know the account of Moses, how he was sent by The Almighty God to the Pharaoh of Egypt to command him to let the Israelites go(for they were slaves under Pharaoh there, 400 years). The Lord God also said, and I quote, "...but I will harden Pharaoh's heart, so that he will not hearken unto thine words...". And it was verily so, Moses was rejected multiple times, even as Egypt was smitten by brutal and terrible plaques from the finger of God itself, Pharaoh did not concede, an unthinkable thing, considering the descriptions of the plagues; normally anyone would let them go after the first plague or two, surely after the third. 

Yet, in that time, Pharaoh himself was, beyond the shadow of a single reasonable doubt believing himself to be the master of his own decisions, he didn't just believe that he was the one refusing, he knew he was! There could never have been any doubt in him as much as is in you about his cognition. He could never have imagined that there was an Almighty power making him do things, hardening his heart, meddling with his affections, and that there is the point is it not? The fact that God is so All-powerful means that even if he were influencing our choices, we would never suspect a thing, we would never know it! Job said, "Lo, He goeth by me, and I see him not: He passeth on also, but I perceive him not".

Anyway, I will leave it all to you to reckon for yourself what you think about that. Whether you are Christian or religious at all means nothing really to this, you can still consider it regardless. I will also leave the Christians with a little food for thought here. Now, whoever reads this, please understand; If God has a plan, it means that he made it before he made the world, before the world was made, everything was already written. Consider this, if you, as a Christian was never meant to have a bicycle, for example, it means that no matter how much you might fast and pray for one, you'll never have it, it won't happen. Even so, if you were never meant to be saved in the end, it also doesn't matter what you do, you will burn with the rest of us hehehehe. Therefore it is as Solomon said, although he was a fool he was wiser than any other. The only thing really that a human must concern themselves with is to eat drink and live their lives, ceasing to bother with these foolish questions to which there can be no answers, just a myriad of assumptions and suppositions and sighings. 

So, if there is a God and he has a plan, then we almost certainly do not have freewill, but if God doesn't exist then we have freewill, however, every human in this world knows, even the so called Atheists, they all know in their heart of hearts that God exists, or some other power similar to him in power and magnitude, it's an inherent sort of instinct, natural, we are simply born knowing it. Physicists seem to be on to it, yet alas because they also seem to not see that they are on to it (more on this later).

I will take up the topic of God's plan later on. Also I will write down my reasons for supposing that there are charlatans among Atheists in the world later, and my reasons for supposing that physicists are on to something they do not see, for they do not want to see it. For now this is the end of this section.