Philosophical Question Time!

Can predestination and free will coexist?

@RickiTarr yes. But no. But absolutely.

I think that everything that happens is inevitable. I don't think we have any real control over what happens. We don't really have any control over how we react to things that happen.

I don't know how to round it off into an actual opinion, but every system and process both natural and manmade are part of an ever more complex chain of cause and effect set in motion an unknowable length of time ago. In fact I would go as far to say that time doesn't exist the way we think of it, but that's a whole different question!

@Reb I ask this because I read an article That was basically a scientist saying that we basically have no free will, but we need to pretend we do lol

@RickiTarr @Reb

I wonder about that scientist. In theory, if you knew the state of everything, you could predict the future. But, Schroedinger showed you can not know the state of everything. Also, quantum mechanics kind of implies that the evolution of things (even at the lowest level) is probabilistic in nature. (Einstein's "Gott wuerfelt nicht." quote).

So quantum mechanics really seems to imply predestination exists only in terms of probabilities, which is pretty week.

I tend to follow Robert Anton Wilson's approach, which is consistent with quantum mechanics and very much anti-predestination.

I follow Sartre's concept of "you define yourself." It is the only thing that makes sense. You are not a passive punching bag for the universe.