Openness is a very nice quality indeed. I have not meant many (if any) liberals who are open to me and my ideas though...so much for openness.
What do you think on my other questions?
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Free will is what you make it.. kind of similar to the thread about what is Good vs Evil. Free will is another one of those society based areas.. I have free will enough to take a baseball bat and club someone to death but I don't because it is not socially acceptable to do something in this "civilized" world where back in the cave man times it may have been.
Then you and I could be friends...but more often than not I hear that audible snap signifying that all meaningful conversation is over before finish my first sentence when talking with others with opposing views.
EDIT: maybe that kneejerk reaction that people of all beliefs have is the programming and reasonable discussion Is the free will.
fixed that for you.
As for being meat robots, There are only three things in this life that you are REQUIRED to do, the rest are choices.
1. You have to be born.
2. You have to die.
3. You have to live until you die.
The remainder of your life is a choice, and subject to free will. That is the beauty of how God made us. I think some people made be more predisposed to make one choice over another, but it is still a choice.
Matt
I do not believe that there is such thing as absolute free will, or at least it is very rare. We are free to make choices on given options, but usually our decisions are affected by our past: our education, parents, experiences, sense of responsibility, etc and at some amount might be even genes. Some people make decisions based mostly only on their political, religious etc ideologies. Sarcastically could be said that we are mostly prisoners of our past and present.
Human behavior is usually inevitable in many cases. Even marketing agencies and salesmen know this. Political and religious leaders use this fact as a tool when shepherding crowds.
A creature with absolute free will (free from any outside/inside factors such as society, laws, other people and even instinct of self preservation) wouldn't survive for long (yes i've read my Darwin).
Jims link was very interesting but i see it only as a sad example how some institutes want to saddle everything to suit their own agendas. It is hard to believe that the original research mentions anything about politics. What i'm more worried is that there are surely people who take this kind of 'news' for real, if it just happens to suit their own visions.
I am not sure but i think there was an error in that text also: Not only 40% of all people have this or that gene. Everyone does have it (excluding mutants). About 40% of people might have some gene dominant.
After all it is just another zero research. There are many other charming researches such as: people who have problems with their weight usually are not so physically fit either or redheads have better sex :confused:
I think the main flaw of the article, is that politically speaking, "liberals" are indeed liberal and "conservatives" are conservative which in reality is very far from the truth. In other words mand liberals do not understand fully what they are liberal about and many conservatives do not even know what they are conserving. The people who put forth these ideas are charlatans. They hide true agendas in the name of science.
The Articles of United States Constitution could be the most Liberating ideas of contemporary history. It is a living attempt to create an minimalistic form of governance where people can live and freely think without the pitfalls of complete Democracy.