Oh Isabel, how I yearn for your tender touch

[Jaxian]

@Squall

How can you demand freedom of choice from a government that’s not there? Enlighten me, again.

If this was in response to something I said, I’m afraid I don’t think you are making much sense.

[Squall]

@Jaxian

I seriously doubt anyone is blaming the government for letting them have sex after they got AIDS.

BEFORE they get it is the issue…

@Squall

There are places where governments don’t exist, Jaxian. Who gives them free will?

Trot, blaming God for the results of free will, a lot of others doing to same. Heaven help us all if God ever decided to sue for libel.

@Jaxian

I’m not sure there are many people demanding freedom of choice from God, as your previous statement implied. Though perhaps you meant demanding freedom of choice from governments and then blaming God.

Actually the opposite. They get free choice whether they want it or not (some don’t, curiously). They then think the government is responsible. If everyone has free will, but government is not everywhere (and it’s not), WHERE is free will then coming from?

[crazy-fool]

@Squall

Like scientists sticking their heads in the sand, Rav, when the miracles that are seen (even in cynical America, on occaision) come headlong against their intellectual applecarts? There’s a scientific fact.

How can you demand freedom of choice from a government that’s not there? Enlighten me, again.

Where was God during the great miracles of science, like the dropping fo the first atomic bombs? Perhaps (s)he was taking a tea break.

The last I checked there was a Government in America, voted by you the people.

[Jaxian]

@Squall

Actually the opposite. They get free choice whether they want it or not (some don’t, curiously). They then think the government is responsible. If everyone has free will, but government is not everywhere (and it’s not), WHERE is free will then coming from?

Aha, I think I am beginning to understand your argument a little bit better. However, you are mixing up two different topics here. When someone demands freedom of choice from a government, they are asking the government to allow them to make a specific choice without being penalized under the law. Free will is a bit different, and it refers to the ability of a creature to decide the things that it does for itself.

When you ask where free will comes from, you are assuming that it comes from somewhere. Of course, free will is not a tangible object, it refers simply to an idea. Asking where it comes from is equivalent to asking where hate comes from or where beauty comes from. Free will exists because people have the ability to send electrical impulses from their brain to other parts of their body in order to make these other parts of the body move. It does not really “come” from a source.

[King_of_the_world]

Hate and beauty flow from opposite ends of the great goddess.

The goddess is Trot.

[Squall]

@Jaxian

Aha, I think I am beginning to understand your argument a little bit better. However, you are mixing up two different topics here. When someone demands freedom of choice from a government, they are asking the government to allow them to make a specific choice without being penalized under the law. Free will is a bit different, and it refers to the ability of a creature to decide the things that it does for itself.

When you ask where free will comes from, you are assuming that it comes from somewhere. Of course, free will is not a tangible object, it refers simply to an idea. Asking where it comes from is equivalent to asking where hate comes from or where beauty comes from. Free will exists because people have the ability to send electrical impulses from their brain to other parts of their body in order to make these other parts of the body move. It does not really “come” from a source.

Free will can be taken away by such things as hypnotically conditioned response, or drugs. I’m reminded of The Machurian Candidate, and the CIA’s experiments with mind-control through LSD…and for that matter, TNG’s Borg Overmind.

The question I’m asking is what basis to we have for “freedom” to be right and totalitarian control to be wrong?