I hope you know this doesn't make much sense.
It does not make sense to you. You are comparing non-sentient, inanimate objects to sentient, animate beings, based on the supposition that they are alike fundamentally. Following your dyadic comparison, an atom cannot chose to bind with another atom on a Saturday rather than on a Monday
Events conspire to determine the day of their unification (see evolution; development; etc.). A hydrogen atom would not chose an oxygen atom over a carbon atom as can a person chose to marry one person over another. What you have here is a false analogy.
Choice can be represented by a series of concentric circles, whereby the more choices made along a certain path, the tighter the circle becomes, circumscribing your possibilities.
That is a superficial analysis.
Be careful with the words "know" and "believe." I think you believe there is no free will. But you most certainly do not know that there is not. The most dangerous people in the word are those who know they are right. Don't be one of those!
I made clear what I believe in my initial post, which was not that I believe that we have no free will. Before you make a conclusion, check you have read the text.
I have noticed that those who tend to be prone to the deterministic view on life, those stoics in belief, tend to have suffered the most, have been victims of some condition or situation. Psychologically reeling from the distress of emotional, physical or financial suffering, they must find a way to alleviate the torture of either their own responsibility over the situation or angst for being in a position to not change their course in life. The solution is determinism. By embracing such a black and white view, it simplifies life for them, places it in a context that is palatable, removing their own responsibility over their situation or making said situation more acceptable. I'm not saying this is you Mandy but, rather, a general condition.
In all of this, where is the proof? Where is it? Show us how many events or situations you (not you Mandy, "you" in general) have predicted accurately, and then show us how many you have failed to predict accurately.
If (a) astrology works and (b) everything is in the stars, then (c) you should have remarkable accuracy, less (x), astrologer error. But if you are a good astrologer, then the error should really be small! And as a poster said earlier, she knows someone who predicts weather, etc. accurately. That doesn't count! Predict the future of a fee will agent, and then we will talk. Successful predictions merely reflect capturing the correct probability. You will find that there are a substantial amount of erroneous predictions made by really good astrologists.
Once you do that (not necessarily you Mandy) then people can start using the word "know." But at this moment, it is all a bunch of unsubstantiated opinions.
Dear Cypocryphy,
Thank you for being so considerate (very sweet).
Broadly, in respect of your philosophical arguments about santient beings, they rely on certain philosophical axioms. A philosophy student can argue with me on the basis of error in logic. But I refute the axioms. Do an astrologer's predictions leave an error gap owing to free will or do they leave an error gap owing to the fact that humans are severely constrained by perceptual limitations?
I am a scientist by trade, a postgraduate student and researcher (assistant to professor) at one of the world's prestigious universities. My peers (professors/postgrads) think it is highly amusing that I "believe" in astrology, magic, tarot, a universal God, etc. When I ask them why, they say "
Because it is a scientific impossibility!" I
cringe at such ignorance, particularly as it comes from a scientist. However, I use the example here, amongst astrologers, to demonstrate that even people who might be considered at the cutting edge of "knowledge" and win awards for their contributions to science are really no more or less jaded in believing that their view is irrefutably correct. Their view is irrefutably messed up. Scientists are really just trying to understand our condition and they have not got very far, at all.
What I know (not believe) is that that humans are clueless. We do not know what is going on in space. We do now know what is going on a km below the earth's own crust. We do not know what is going on in our brain/how the brain works. We do not even know how the hell we are conscious. And we are paradoxically limited in studying consciousness with consciousness. Even when we try to be objective we are limited severely by what technology has to offer.
When we do not know somethng about the human condition it is easy and tempting to ascribe that to "free will" or "fairies." But objectively there is no shame in admitting we do not know. Not knowing something is not the same as knowing (i.e., that we have free will). You can believe in what you like, more power to you. I dont believe in something for no reason.
Stoic people who have experienced trauma are not a separate class of people who skew the results of the bell curve. They fit neatly into the bell curve, because they have had the opportunuty to experience a lot more of life. If life is a constant, an axiom, then it is an eror, in my eyes, to think that the laws which apply to one person do not apply to the next, however different their situations. The simple bell curve illustrates this.
To confirm your contention, I am a person who has experienced and re-experienced trauma. Initially, I was a child of war. I saw lots of people massacred, stomachs blown up on buses, dead bodies in the road (with no one to clean them up), bombing sirens, anytime of day or night. That is really just the tip, but this is not the place. I say "re-experienced" for several reasons. One of those is that I saw how it had continued to affect everyone even after it was looong over. I also experienced extreme guilt from survival, amongst other things. I take it you can understand that for me the war was predetermined, I didnt will it into existance. Neither did I will anything that lead up to it or the consequences of it on other people.
But I was left with this personal issue of dealing with life, twice. The first time, I was young and dabbling recreationally in drugs. I took too many ecstasy pills. I became unconscious and nearly died, but had a complete meeting with the source* that sent me back to life. The second time, there were no drugs or alcohol involved but I could not live anymore from guilt of survival (the war). I changed like 10 therapists in the space of a few months because it was evident to me that they did not have the foggiest clue of what I was talking about. They seemed to have this idea that I needed to be comforted. I didnt need to be comforted, I needed to understand my place in the world. I then realised, what my father told me all along, that I was the only person who could clarify this for myself, effectively will myself into health. I did that.
You say:
I have noticed that those who tend to be prone to the deterministic view on life...tend to have suffered the most, have been victims of some condition or situation. Psychologically reeling from the distress of emotional, physical or financial suffering, they must find a way to alleviate the torture of either their own responsibility over the situation or angst for being in a position to not change their course in life. The solution is determinism. By embracing such a black and white view, it simplifies life for them, places it in a context that is palatable, removing their own responsibility over their situation or making said situation more acceptable.
What you have said there is over the top rediculous
. If a person has undergone a deviational occurence, lets say a threat to their life, how are they supposed to go back and change it? Do you know something I dont? A time machine perhaps? Or are you of the persuasion like many "counselors" and hypnotherapists out there 'that one cannot change the situation but should change how they view it to a way that is more comfortable.' I dont need to put my head in the sand in order to deal with reality. It is what it is, sometimes, hard to grasp, just like many other things, but that is all that needs to be done. Thinking that I can go back and save people or take responsibility for a past event that was out of my hands, factually, or aim to forget all about it, is percisely the wrong thing to do and drives people into madness. I am yet to see someone who takes responsibility for something they have not done appear healthy. Similarly, a rapist who takes responsibility for his actions is not necessarily healthy.
I did not "alleviate" my torture by ascribing my experience to determinism. Neither do I view myself or have ever viewed myself as a victim of anything. That is your judgement. It is thoroughly subjective. And your generalisation is clearly based on unfounded opinion. I alleviated it because I accepted it. Did any person in the war with a gun kill out of his own free will? No. He was completely and utterly influenced by circumstance. I saw boys and men who before the war were the nicest of neighbours and husbands become killers, all in the space of a year. They suffer with guilt now percisely because they feel a personal responsibility over something they were forced to do. They could have said 'no' but they would have died and left their wife and children without food.
Most of our problems happen because we are doing them to ourselves. We fail to just accept things as they are because we are socially conditioned to believe that life should look a certain way. If you want to have a sounder understanding of the universe, you should not impose your value(less) judgments on it, such as what is normal and what is not because they will be reflected in the erronuous conclusions of your readings, at which point you will make the illogical statement of "
I am an astrologer therefore I am not wrong. You have free will that accounts for my error." You should also rememeber that astrology is a form of measurement, not the form of measurement. It is a form of explanation, not the explanation. Your own mind is rejecting evidence as evidence. How objective are you? Start with yourself, then try to understand others.
And for the record, I did not say we have no free will. I said we have access to a very small amount.
* this was at an age when I had never heard of OBEs etc.
