Well, there's two ways of thinking it. Either you're a fan a Newtonian Physics, in which case you'll argue that if one knows the position and velocity of all particles in the Universe, one can reconstruct any event from the past, or accurately predict any event of the future (=destiny). Or, you're of the Quantum Mechanics Church, in which case "the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that the values of certain pairs of conjugate variables (position and momentum, for instance) cannot both be known with arbitrary precision. That is, the more precisely one variable is known, the less precisely the other is known"(=free will, quote from wiki).
That said, what I believe sort of depends on my mood. Believing in free will certainly makes life seem more worthwhile than the alternative, although a lot of times I find it easier to just say "Hey, it had to happen, there's nothing you can do about it, the same way you can't do anything about what comes next." As for the question in the thread title, I think they can. While it may seem that these two, shall we say, beliefs oppose each other, I think they don't. I believe free will is when someone chooses something by himself/herself, without being conscious of any other influence. In other words, I believe that one has chosen freely when one is not aware of any outside force (that does sound a little melodramatic, doesn't it?) influencing their choice, even if such a force does exist. Of course, we could get into the whole concept of manipulation here, but I think that's something to be discussed in another topic.
Cheers,
Gabe
That said, what I believe sort of depends on my mood. Believing in free will certainly makes life seem more worthwhile than the alternative, although a lot of times I find it easier to just say "Hey, it had to happen, there's nothing you can do about it, the same way you can't do anything about what comes next." As for the question in the thread title, I think they can. While it may seem that these two, shall we say, beliefs oppose each other, I think they don't. I believe free will is when someone chooses something by himself/herself, without being conscious of any other influence. In other words, I believe that one has chosen freely when one is not aware of any outside force (that does sound a little melodramatic, doesn't it?) influencing their choice, even if such a force does exist. Of course, we could get into the whole concept of manipulation here, but I think that's something to be discussed in another topic.
Cheers,
Gabe
