Free Will and Predetermination in the Best of All Possible Worlds

Ok, this post may get a little uncomfortable, but I think it will end on a positive note.

One of the great questions that troubles religous or philosophical minds is the whole Free Will versus Predetermination thing.

Some believe your choices are down to you.
Others believe that everything was laid down at the begining of time.

So which is true?

Or are they both true.

Well, in a sense, they must be.

As I have already implied, the universe will not end a second later than it has to. I cannot see any other way than saying that from the instance of the big bang, everything that happened must be pretty much set in stone.

There will have been many routes to the end.
But only one is the fastest.
And that is the one we experience.

So let's look at your choices.
Right now, you are choosing to read this. A choice you made.
But what is the YOU that made that choice?
What kind of entity are you?

What dictates your thoughts?



Basically, electro-magnetic impulses following grooves eroded into your brain. Your thought patterns have developed over time and been built on. They are the product of the chemicals present in your brain and the grooves that have been laid down by their reactions over time- what we see as our experience, our 'memory'.

It's all a chemical construct. What we see as our thoughts, are entirely chemically conditioned.
Ultimately, you make good choices, because you are a machine that works, you make bad ones, because you are one that doesn't.

The you that decided to read this, is a series of chemical reactions.

Now chemical reactions simply follow the laws of nature.
You have no control at all over your thoughts, really.

Yes, you have free will. You can make any decision you want.
But chemicals will make it for you.
Because that is what you are.

When you face moral dilemmas, when you agonise for days over a course of action, still, when it comes down to it, the decision will have been made by the paths followed by the chemicals in your brain.

So really, everything that happens is simply just all part of one big series of reactions, all part of the same reaction, the one we call the universe.

So when you do good things, you were always going to.
And when you do bad things, you were always going to.

The mistake people make (though of course, those who make it were always going to make it) is drawing the wrong conclusions here and forgetting that the very processing of this fact is being done by those same chemicals.

If you blame fate for doing the wrong thing, it was inevitable you would.
If you choose free will and make a hard- but right- choice, that too was inevitable.

Because the universe will not end a second later than it has to. We live in the universe that uses up most energy quickest- that is certain.
And the one that uses up most energy, must be the one, surely, in which life proliferates as much as it can, does as much as it can, LIVES as much as it can.

This is not only the most efficient universe there can be, it is also the best of all possible worlds.
It is the one where Life crawls from the Amoeba, through the Hagfish, the Reptile, the Monkey, then Man, Superman, till we are indeed gods.

God did not make Man in his own Image- he gave Man an Image of what Man would be.

Which means that everything we experience, everything that happens to us, every pleasure we experience, every pain we suffer, it all serves some purpose.



We cannot see it ourselves, we may die miserable, unable to comprehend.
But not that often, I think, if we learn to go with the flow of the universe.
To accept what life gives us, both the pleasure AND the pain.

Because we are being taken somewhere, and if the universe truly is as efficient as it can be, it must seek to reconcile as far as possible the capacity to feel contentment and enlightenment that it has given us, with a realistic possibility of actualising that.

Nothing has no reason.
Nothing serves no purpose.

Out of everything we think we have lost, a greater good will come.

Regret nothing.
Rejoice at every experience you have had.
It is part of your journey.