Free will and nofap

I may be a religious person, but i'm also a sane person to know that my brain isn't me, my body, isn't me. The mind is a very complex thing. You keep talking about cause and effect, but i feel like you don't really understand what these mean. You take for granted what good ole sammy sam says because he sounds sooooooo smart.

In all seriousness though, I can understand why the atheistic world view cannot accept the idea of free will, because it simple contradicts it. If we truly live in a material world with nothing else existing then it would make sense that free will cannot exist because the mind cannot exist. However i want you to take this case as an interesting prospect.

They did a study where they performed an open brain surgery on a patient who was still conscious. The surgeon activated a part of his brain that triggered his arm to jerk forwards. Then the surgeon asked the patient why he just jerked his arm like that, the patient responded it was not me who jerked my arm but something else made it do it. For the longest time people though that your brain was the same as your consciousness, then they realized that it isn't that simple. You're consciousnesses or the "mind" is actually an extremely complex thing to figure out. Now some people believe that the mind is your soul, i personally believe it a bit of both.

If we want to talk science, then the science is clear that we have choices which are not dictated. You have the mind and logic to make judgement about the world you see around you. If you choose not to become religious, this was based solely on your own decision that was not dictated by anyone else. You may have inclinations which can lead to make one decision over the other, but the decision is still yours to make. Just because you make these decisions through chemicals happening in your brain does not mean your mind did not have anything to contribute to it.

Think about it this way. Your mind is the starting point of anything you do, then your mind triggers your brain to do it's thing and to move the necessary body parts it needs to, then the body goes and does what the brain tells it.

 

Not true... I can call myself myself. My mind i can call myself, My likes and dislikes i can call myself, My history and memories i can call myself, and most importantly my soul i can call myself... or to put it in laymen's term my "will". My very being i can call myself.

If there was nothing i can call myself then i would not exist. But i do, and i have a presence.

Never said you were

 

I think your focusing too much on my use of the English vocab to explain something.

Nope, no human is merely just one thing. This is the beauty of creation, we are a combination of multiple things. Theologically i can say that i am body soul and spirit.

But if you don't believe in that we can say that man is body, mind and will.

Even if you were to only look at the human body it is composed of multiple parts. Can your heart say to the brain that i don't need you to live, or can the blood say that it is the only means of life? or can your eyes say they have more authority over the limbs because it can see all things. Not so, but all these members work together to form your physical body as one.

This is in essence what we believe about God, that he is composed of multiple parts, and this is why he created things to resemble himself.

 

No, we are created in his image and his likeness. Meaning we are created with certain attributes which God can only posses. But by our mere essence or nature we are not divine. We are actually created from nothing, so our true nature is nothing, without him holding us in existence we would revert to nothing.

Existence is also another attribute of God, it is not something to take for granted.

 

Whether we have free will or not, people have gone from being undisciplined to being disciplined, clearly that's possible.

You could make it easier for yourself to become more disciplined. Build good habits. I would recommend trying https://habitica.com/static/home to gamify your life, gain points for beneficial actions and lose health in the game for destructive actions.

 

You are 100% right. But I would have to ask, have you ever read or watched a movie that had a hero? This hero had to go on a journey to vanquish or stop or create something? There is some ultimate goal. There are villains and friends...etc...etc...different settings and conflicts and all types of crazy shit.
We are all a hero on a quest to either slay or become allies with the dragon, which is our addictions. We are all destined to come across conflicts which are going to motivate the desire to relapse.
If we have and utilize the proper tools, weapons, armor, shields...etc...etc....we can overcome, they could overcome. Everyone. I can't even begin to try to explain or understand the full depth of the reality we find ourselves.
Shit, there's multi-verse theory...string theory...materialistic science...quantum physics...the possibility that this whole existence is nothing but a computer simulation...
Fuck man, all I know is that there are tools out there which can be utilized to make a person more capable of standing against the suffering of existence, and that is what we experience because we are consciousness trapped within bodies that live according to the laws of nature.

 

Prove your free will and create a phantom hand that unzips your pants and rubs you off.

 

The problem is that you are trying to separate yourself from the universe. How can you be in the universe and not be of the universe? That is where the two meld together.
Science...Spiritualism...Matter...Energy. What is inside our skulls is a machine which can combine the two and attempt to understand. Through continued attempts at this understanding, who knows what would happen. Maybe true free will.
By just laying down and accepting that we are evolved animals operating according to the laws of nature...or machines operating according to a universal program...completely negates the fact that we are a conscious beings capable of observing, analyzing, and improving.

 

Well stated.

 

The ability to do or create anything, with no limitation and without being influenced by some external source.

 

Have you ever taken a philosophy course or read into the ancient thinkers who tried to answer the very questions you're asking? People have been trying to answer this question and variations of it for thousands of years. Do I have free will? Is the world around me real? Am I real? (This is where "I think, therefore I am," came from. I perceive, so at the very least I'm real.)

I believe in free will. I also believe that there are aspects which we have no (direct) control over. I live on the planet Earth. I was born in America. My ancestors came from Europe. My upbringing was lacking, but also not the worst. In many ways I am the product of my environment and of my genetics. I have changed my life course multiple times because of either the situation at the time or from pressure from others, sometimes only to regret it. Yet my choices are still my own. Now, sometimes habit, urges, and other things will override my higher decision making. Or I simply fail to fight. Does that mean I didn't have my free will? Well, what if I choose to recondition myself through new habits? Then if during the same type of situation that caused me to do one thing, I instead choose to do something else? What should I call that?

Martial artists, through many hours of conditioning, can depend on muscle memory to perform their moves without thinking about it. Same with pretty much anything else, we choose to exert our will repeatedly to condition ourselves to respond in certain ways to whatever situation. And this is happening all the time whether we know it or not. We can choose to guide that process, or to let it run itself.

So maybe I rambled, but I found that as I was typing I was coming to understand this a little better myself. So I kept going. But anyways, look into the various philosophies around these ideas, especially those thinkers who struggled with them and how they eventually came to a conclusion one way or the other.

 

Tells ppl to do research then links youtube videos. Dude stop being lazy and go pick up a book instead of watching youtube for information. Theres free resources everywhere. Go read plato and aristotle as a base then move into descartes or find a syllabus to structure your approach to learning. Dunno why you are asking these philosophical questions on a forum like NoFap.

 

Philosophy is life. I've wondered myself at times whether my free will truly matters thanks to this damn pmo addiction. I'm tempted to wonder it now actually, despite believing in the power of the will.