So recently I’ve been pondering upon a real hard question that always draws me to an unanswered result. The question at hand is, do you have any control over your life, or how you turn out? I’ve been thinking real hard about this question, and have come to believe that maybe who you are isn’t based upon what you would believe to be personal development, but more rather the your exposure to experiences and your environment. You are only the product of occurrences throughout life, and the thought of free will is only an illusion that has plagued the world. Essentially, you are a canvas that is painted overtime, being painted by personal beliefs (what you’ve been exposed to and are led to believe) and experiences throughout life. This is a bit out of context, but goes well with my reason for posting this, but why is it that you believe in the religion that you do, or why he or she may believe in the religion that they do? Do they know the actual point in what they’re doing? Of the thousands upon thousands of religions people come to the belief that their religion is “the one” and any other foreign religion seems to be crazy, or odd in some sort of way. I’m well aware that there’s science behind it and many variables, such as, genetics and things of that nature to consider when forming a belief. It’s pretty troubling for me to ponder across the question myself and learn nothing new.
Responses (2)
Do we have any control over our lives and how we turn out. You bet we do. Its all about our choices and the decisions we make. Even the decisions we make as teenagers when others tell us what to do. You can do what you are told but what goes on in the privacy of your brain can be just the opposite.
You are raised in a certain religion. At some point you move away from parents, their choice of religion and their beliefs and rules. You are free at that time to question everything you were ever told. You are free to continue acceptance, disbelieve, have no religion, choose a new religion have some belief but not make it a big part of your life etc etc. There is nothing holding you to that but you.
Its really not the big scientific deal you are making it out to be. Babies are born atheists and until parents or friends or society starts stuffing a kid's head they have no beliefs. It doesn't matter which religion it's just who gets there first with the most power of persuasion. But if you question, examine, explore, or just don't find the need you can dump it all and go in a different direction.
Hope that helps.
The choice you make comes out of your own head. Its based on things youve read heard seen disagreed with agreed with anger disgust trust love etc etc etc you arrive at your
decision based on what you come up with. I think you are trying to find one causation to blame it on or poont a finger at. Take on the responsibility for your decision.
Interesting question. I think I remember myself asking the same question too. So basically your decisions are based on your past experiences. We can be sure of that. But we also have freedom of choices due to our personalities. I have a friend who is slightly nerdy but his two brothers are quite the opposite. They all grew up in the same household generally experiencing the same experiences. But due to a diffefence in their personalities, an obvious difference in their actions can be noticed. What your questions is describing is actually how an "artificial intelligence" (AI) works. An AI uses past experiences to influence it's choices in the future. So far AI's cannot really come up with new ideas that haven't already been input into the system in some way. I think we can also agree that humans are smarter than AIs as we can come up with entirely new ideas. I think you provided a good example of in your question that basically answers your question. Religion. Man could not have been influenced by anything besides his own ideas such as creating a God. How could God have been a past experience of man if man had never had religion before? God is a way man explains the things he does not yet understand. There are all these religions that had to start somewhere from an origional idea. My point is that origional ideas require past experiences and creativity. If you take away the creativity the you are left with an AI. As for controlling your life, you are always given options for which path to take, and you will normally take the path that you are most comfortable with - the one you have the most experience with. But if you take a path you are less experienced with then you are making your own consious decision to do that. I hope I've helped in some way.
Well, I’m in partial agreement with you there, but the decisions you make have to have some sort of link to them. All of which could be represented throughout life. Your decision to part away from a religion must’ve been influenced by exposure to something of great persuasion. There’s causation to everything, and what I’m really asking is, is our actions all representative of past experiences, to which one has no control over? And thank you, I appreciate the comment.