On Free Will

Lately, I was remembering the Stoics from my humanities class. Their teachings said that "we have no control over much of what happens to us. We can only control how we react to them".

But lately I've been thinking, do we have control over anything at all? Meaning, do we have free will?

The Stoics' teachings already take care of things that happen to us without concern (which is a lot) but what about when we do things that we want? Don't we have control of that?

You could say that, but there is one problem: do we chose what we want?

What I'm trying to say is, did I chose to want to become a physicists? Or to want to eat that burger? Or to want to take the bus instead of my bike?

What is the source of our wants?

Our wants appear to simply be put on us by something (can be god, nature, chance, destiny, who knows) without any concern from us. However even if we have concern over them then you would have to ask what made us choose some wants instead of others (did we want to want those wants? Did we choose them randomly? Any option you pick has its problems).

Ok, but you can say no to your wants, right? Well saying no to your wants is a want in itself. When you say no to a want is simply because you want something else. Like saying no to your want to eat a burger because you want to be healthier. Or saying no to having an afraid because you want to go to heaven or because you love your wife.

So it appear that we have no control of the outside (physical world), but we also have no control of the inside (our mind). Thus, we have no free will at all.

About the necessity and appeal of religion and the great masses

I have been thinking about this for quite a while now: about why religion is so appealing to people.

So, I decided to read the Gospels to see what was it that attracted Christians. Well, I couldn't get far because there was one thing that really bothered me about it: heaven.

When Jesus is on the mount he says that the poor and good will get all the rewards and that the wicked wont. Ok, I get that, but there's one problem: in order for that to happen heaven has to exist. Only if heaven exist can the teachings of Jesus be good teachings, if it doesn't, then they are bad, specially since he says to give away anything that anyone asks of you (that guys asks you for you house and car? Give it to him. Someone sues you? Give it more).

Well, we know that Jesus doesn't prove that there is a Heaven, so why does people assume it?

There's actually a reason, which is a "perfect moral world". As you may know, we do not live in a perfectly moral world: good people tend to get bad things while bad people tend to have good things. However, by adding Heaven, Karma, resurrecting as a higher or lower species, etc, the world becomes a morally perfect world; now good people will have good things and bad people won't (if not in this world, then the next).

Now, that's the appeal part of the title, but what about necessity? Is religion necessary?

Well, practically, yes. But only for the great masses of the people. Remember, most people don't care about existentialism, physics, philosophy, etc. They only care about waking up, going to work, going to bar, have fun, go to sleep (or something similar). So they need a quick answer to pop out every now and then when they do ask "why am I here?" or "what is the source of goodness?" or "what is goodness?".

And that is fine with me. Remember, these people are the foundation of society, the people that don't question anything. If everyone went around questioning everything, we wouldn't have a society (think about, what if we all questioned what the government does? Or every single foundation of societies like morals?).

Ok, but what about China? China is pretty much all atheist. Well actually the state is atheist, a lot Chinese people follow Buddhism, Taoism and Chinese folk beliefs. However those religions have pretty weak definitions of what "god" is (Buddhism doesn't have one, Taoism has man-gods, and Chinese Folk changes depending on where you are in China) so we see them as atheists.

Now, there are quite an amount of atheists in China (that I know) however, in the last 20 years that amount has been going down as the the Party eases up on religion. Here's a News article about it.

But Pedro, there are still a lot of atheist in China! What about them? Well you have to remember that even though the Chinese Party has ease off on religion, they still don't like it. So they still teach and tell people to be atheist, and most people just take this for granted (remember? They are not suppose to question government).

I used to be an atheists, so I know how does it feel to be an atheist who became atheist.

I have no idea how does it feel to be an atheist who was indoctrinated by the government or parents or was simply never told about gods. So I don't know how all those atheist in China think, but I can assure you that most of them do not understand physics, philosophy and the stuff, so they must have some quick way of answering those question so they can go back to having fun.

Anyone knows? Maybe they have a mystic belief too?