Joe's musing about free will and God.

[regular.joe]

I've been mulling for some time now about this topic. This topic has surfaced in a couple of different forums. Now, I know that there are many dwellers here who think that belief in God is a bit passe, and obsolete in this day and age. I have no real quarrel with these dwellers, their belief, or non-belief is really none of my business. But, like I said, I've been mulling on this topic for quite a bit now. I would like to submit that perhaps free will is not possible with out God, or if you will a Universal Intelligence. I am going to imagine for a moment a universe without God. A universe of determination and logic. A universe where enough information, observed and squeezed out of nature will bring about all the understanding and knowledge about it's workings. We are products of that universe. The electrons and particles that make up our very thoughts in our brains, the chemical stew that houses our memories and ideas. These processes can all be traced back to a beginning. That is the rub, because if this is the case, what we majestically call our free will is really just a process of the universe, brought about by a chemical catalyst. No vaunted free thinking here. In fact, if that is the case, then the black marks I'm "causing" to be typed on the screen, connected to these so called "thoughts" in my brain are really not freely thought about by "me" at all. Just a series in a long series of chemical and atomic interactions, easily understood, by who I'm not currently sure.

I've decided to brave the sometimes treacherous critical analysis of the Cellar dwellers, and throw my idea out on the table for discussion. This is not necessarily a belief of mine this idea of free will that I'm discussing, just an idea that's been rolling around my brain for a couple of weeks now.

I fully expect that within 100 posts Radar and TW will be arguing about the U.S. Constitution and George Bush.