Here's an interesting idea on predestination.

[Sikz]

Here's an interesting idea I had today. Not trying to say it's true necessarily, just found it interesting and thought I should post it. It's adapted from an msn conversation (heh), so the style is probably a tad odd. :)


We may be destined to live, but if we're stupid and make a choice to jump off a bridge into a pit of lava the predestination to live goes away. In effect the present changes the past as well as the future.

I mean...

Your destiny might be to kill the president, that might be your preordained fate and destiny;

But if before you kill the president you do something stupid based on the fact that you are preordained to kill the president (EG you cut off your limbs and leap into the sea, thinking you can't die until you've killed the president), the predestination changes so that it was never preordained in the first place and another set of fates takes its place, and the new set is usually the old set with
slight changes.

So at the end of time (assuming there is one, which I doubt) we can look back and say that everything that happened was preordained, and that would be true from that standpoint.

But from a point before then, what was preordained might be different, but some slight stupidity screw-ups chang it before the end of time.

Basically the past and future are preordained, but the present is not- the present influences past and future, so what is preordained actually changes based on decisions in the present.

 

[FZ+]

That doesn't seem to make any sense. What is the point of predestination, if it is changable? I mean, your idea of pre-ordination seems to be an irrelevance...

Please correct me if I am wrong.

 

[Sikz]

Indeed, it is an irrelevance. That's part of the point- predestination exists but it's relative. Whatever we've done was predestined, but whatever we go do is free will.

 

[M. Gaspar]

Please say what "force" predestines an event.

 

[Overdose]

Its kind of along the lines of a medium saying to me 'such and such will happen tomorrow' then it doesnt..and I am like 'what a load of bollocks she was talking'. However in one of my alternate realitys this does actualy occur, but in this reality it doesnt, and I am none the wiser. In short its a possibility that we have a finite no. choices we can make in life, each choice is preordained, however we can chose which preordained event to expereince.

 

[Janitor]

I was going to say that I disagree with what Sikz posted, but at the very last second I changed my mind, and now I agree with Sikz.

 

[Royce]

all of the above if possible proves that there is no predestination. We could just as easily say that you were predestined to think that you were predestined to kill the president but that you were actually predestined to jump off the bridge. Where does it end?

 

[olde drunk]

the present is a product of the past and future. it is where all past probablity tjreads and all future probablity threads intersect. you, we have freewill to activate which threads will be physicalized(experienced). they(threads) are all valid and exist, just not activated.

pick your poi-sin. lol

peace,

 

[THANOS]

In a way i feel everything is predetermined. A baby is born into this world, the way the parents are would take in effect on how the baby will be raised. The friends of the child will also begin to take the step of how the child sees the world and act in it. Then teachers and the role models (celebertys, big brother, uncle, local athletes etc..) The surroundings also take a step into who they become. Which includes the healthy and unhealthy surroundings, safe and dangerous. Not one person can be rasied the same because even when around the same types of raising not everything can be the same. Now it is fact that our surroundings brought us simple people into intelligence. What makes it look like free will is that we can't predict what the others are going to do because we do not know how there mind is. If you shared all your secrets and all your ideas, beliefs, and reasons for doing everything or anything. Of the people you love most and dislike or even hate the most. Could you be manipulated into doing things and could your free will be taken from you?

 

[pocebokli]

in probability mathemathics, if you have a closed system with at least 2 variables there are at least 4 or something possible results (i never had the knack for mathemathics, so irregularities are to be ignored, but you get the point, yeS?:-)

i think we could apply this, on a larger basis, to our system, like described in the above post, the system of human relations and also our environment.

the only things predestined within our system are the available possibilities and outcomes of our actions. As we learn more of our world and learn to manipulate with both the power of our free will and environment more options open to us.

for example: we are all "predestined" in at least one thing; to live our lives and die of either old age or by being murdered by local granny or walking too clumsily on the edge of niagra falls.

but, as psychology has proven, we all have "switches" in our heads which prevent us to commit suicide. which work exactly as physical switches in, say, computers.

some switches fail, as even a complex biological system is submitted to occasional flaws (scsycofrenicz (doh how do you spell that?) and other "mentally ill" persons, as we refer to them), while some just can't stand rising pressure from the environment.

so there's another alternative for a human being, a new path opens to conclude the chapter of one person's interaction within the known reality.

and so, i think, is with other things. we live in a system of countless variables so i could not agree that there is a giant mathemathician above us, who has set his mind to complete the calculation in one certain way and none other.