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Saturday, March 20, 2010

Free will: Fact or fiction?

by Joey Lawsin

Do we really make our choices .... or ......
something makes our choices for us?


The systemic laws we write on our cells determine the decisions we make. (Lawsin 2000)

Do we make decisions to ourselves, or something make the decisions for us? If so, what is it? What is inside us that determines our choices? Is it our soul? Is it our sub-conscious? Is it the cause and effect of our prior experiences? Does freewill really exist or everything is just an action-reaction event?

When someone is watching a sad movie, why does someone involuntarily cry? Is it her choice to cry or something inside her makes her cry? Is that free-will or god tells her to cry?

When someone is sleeping, why does someone subconsciously dream? Is it his choice to dream or something inside him makes him dream? Is dreaming controlled by free-will?

Who tells us  to wake up in the morning? When we are heavily drunk, why do we blackout without knowing it? Why do we peeh or pooh? Are these our own will or our body tells us to do so?

Is it the physical self or our prior experiences that decide in making choices? Is it the body (hardware) … or the mind (software) … that makes the choices? But knowing that the mind is just illusory based on the Lawsinium Software Illusion,  is the mind also an illusion?

What about the ability to do the number two.... If your stomach is empty, obviously freewill cannot get rid of the things inside your stomach. Even you choose to do so, if won't let you. Your physical body won't let you empty anything. Right? Now let us make this more interesting .... if you ingest food into your stomach, still your freewill cannot get rid of these raw materials even you have a sound judgment to do so. It wont work unless chemistry takes place. Once these digested materials are converted naturally by your body, your body will send you a signal telling you it is high time to pooh. Your body makes the decision for you and not the other way around. Again, it is not your choice. Even if you try to control it, your body in the end will make a way to release them. From these three consecutive events - action-reaction, cause-effect, physical-chemical - choices are not freewill but laws of nature.

The Law of Natural Choice or the Lawsinium Law of Second Option governs our ability of choosing. This natural law always provides two and only two choices: a This or a That ! Either it does this or it does that. Whatever the consequence is, there are always two options. But how does this law know which option to choose? The answer is algorithm! The decisions we make each day came from our past thoughts and experiences. We program ourselves. Remember that the brain is empty when it is on its infancy. It doesn't have any information. It needs to acquire information. Even on its maturity, if the information is not stored properly the information is not there.

Let us say that you have a pencil lying stationary on your computer desk. If I ask you if the pencil is moving, obviously you will answer it is not. Your answer is almost always common with everyone I asked - it is not moving. Since it is a common experience, you have no other choices except option no.1 -- the pencil is not moving. However, if I explain it to you that it is moving, then you acquire a second option-- the pencil is moving.  Here your mind now has two options to choose. Over time, this experience becomes automatically part of your decision making process. It is our past experiences that lead us to make decisions. It us who program ourselves.

Now, what is free will?

The term “will” means the ability to choose or not to choose. “Free” means the ability of the mind to decide; or, the ability of whatever a person wants to do or not.

In God's perspective, free will means human freedom. Others equate free will as moral responsibility. My four legged best friend doesn’t know freewill but he does know the moral meaning of unconditional love.

If free will is true can God sin? Can people sin in heaven?

Do we have ownership of our action, or something does?

In decision making, there are no short-cuts. Like in algorithmic of computing, every action is a procedure ... a list of instructions. The reaction time from avoiding a car collision to pressing the break doesn't involve freewill ... it is an instantaneous action.

A dog salivates when he hears the ring of a bell ... seems free-will ... but this is the by-product of preconditioning. Is freewill an action-reaction cause and effect?

What about sponges? They dont have brain, heart or any organs at all .... They have the ability to mate as either a female or a male - one sponge assumes the male role, while the other plays the role of a female. They are capable of playing both as female or male as well. They can produce sexually and asexually. The reproduction happens not by free will but how they sense and react with the environment.

An electronic transistor is manufactured to make choices or decisions, does it come with free-will? A game of chess online makes its own choices when playing against it, does it has free-will? What about dizziness, drunkenness and numbness, do they control you or you control them?

The eye is the best perfect example of freewill. It adjusts itself to the rules of light. Light enters the eye through the pupil and this pupil narrows when it is bright, and widens when it is weak. This process is necessary to see far or near. The pupil works mechanically and is not subject to the will. And through the mirror equation, we know that everything is inverted, but unknowingly, the eyes and the brain work together to compensate this inversion and consciously we see things right-side up.

And of course, since we don't control our eyes by freewill, it is just right to say that what we experience is nothing but physical. The perception of "seeing" is not emotional, a will or abstract but it is physical. My camera can also see things, pictures are its proof. There is no emotion or freewill that is involved. It is all but physical.

It also follows that love, pain and all the various emotions that we experience are all but physical. Freewill itself is nothing but physical. We live in a mechanical physical world. We are not even alive. We don't even exist. It is all but illusion. And such, freewill is also but an illusion (Lawsin, 1988).

We think we control ourselves or we make choices, but as a saying goes: “We can do freely whatever we want, but we can not will whatever we want.”



( .... this article is not yet edited and to be continued .... )




"Judging is the cause that creates the effect of choosing." ~ Joey Lawsin



** Other empirical examples for this article can be found somewhere on this site while its complete scientific discussion is in the book Originemology by Joey Lawsin.


Disclaimer: The author retains the copyright to most of the research materials on this site unless cited otherwise. However, some of the articles are edited on a day to day basis without notice. If you are interested to use any of these works for the purpose of scholarly discussion or study, please first inform the author by email or cite the author's name or the source as follows: A Journal of a Creative Mind, Joey Lawsin, 1988, USA.

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Books that I have read to satisfy my curiosity on religion:

A comparative View of Religions - J. H. Scholten
Atheism Refuted -Thomas Paine
Atheism in Pagan Antiquity - A.B. Drachmann
An Atheist Manifesto - Joseph Lewis
A study of the Messiah - J.E. Talmage
A System of Logic - J.S. Mill
An Outline of Occult Science - Rudolf Steiner
Bible Myths and Parallels in Religion - T.W. Doane
Babylonian Legends of Creation - E.A. Budge
Common Sense -Thomas Paine
Criticism on The Origin of Species - T.H. Huxley
Christian Mysticism - W.R. Inge
Cosmic Consciousness - A.J. Tyndall
Creation by Laws - J.L. Lawsin
Dream Psychology - Sigmund Freud
Determinism or Freewill - Chapman Cohen
Evolution of Theology: an anthropological study -T.H. Huxley
Evolution: Old and New - Samuel Butler
Evolution of Creation - J.L. Lawsin
Exposition of Darwinism - A.R. Wallace
Einstein Theory of Relativity - H.A. Lorentz
Elementary Theosophy - L.W. Rogers
Esoteric Christianity - A.W. Beasant
Feeding the Mind - Lewsi Carroll
Five of Maxwells's Papers - J.C. Maxwell
Forbidden books of the original New Testament - William Wake
Heretics - G.K. Chesterton
Heretics and Heresies - R.G. Ingersoll
History of the Catholic Church - James MacCaffrey
History of Ancient Civilization - Charles Seignobos
History's Conflict bet. Religion and Science - J.W. Draper
Intro to the History of Religions - C.H. Toy
Jewish Theology - Kaufmann Kohler
Judaism - Israel Abrahams
Logic, Inductive and Deductive - William Minto
Lamarck, The Founder of Evolution - A.S. Packard
Mystic Christianity - W.W. Atkinson
Mistakes of Moses - R.G. Ingersoll
Mysticism and Logic - Bertrand Russell
Myths and Legends of Rome - E.M. Berens
Mutation - Hugo de Vries
Nature Mysticism - J.E.Mercer
Natural Selection - Charles Darwin
On the Origin of Species - Charles Darwin
Originemology - J.L. Lawsin
Pagan and Christian Creeds - Edward Carpenter
Pagan and Christian Rome - R.A. Lanciani
Symbolic Logic - Lewis Carroll
Sidelights on Relativity - Albert Einstein
Philosophy of the Mind - G.W.F. Hegel
Story of Creation: comparison study - T.S. Ackland
The Antichrist - F.W. Nietzsche
The Holy Bible - R.G. Ingersoll
The Freethinker's text book - A.W. Besant
The Expositor's Bible - T.C. Edwards
The Limits of Atheism - G.J.Holyoake
The Ancient History - Charles Rollin
The Sayings of Confucius - Confucius
The Game of Logic - Lewis Carroll
The Gnostic Crucifixion - G.R.S. Mead
The Critique of Practical/Pure Reason - Immanuel Kant
The Origin of Jewish Prayers - Tzvee Zahavy
The Analysis of Mind - Bertrand Russell
The Problem of Philosophy - Bertrand Russell
The Brain - Alexander Blade
The Higher Powers of the Mind - R.W. Trine
The Human Aura - W.W. Atkinson
The Legends of the Jews - Louis Ginzberg
Thought Forms - C.W. Leadbeater
The Wonders in Psychology - J.H. Fabre

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