[Vision2020] Christ Church and freedom of religion

[Chasuk]

The subject of free will is of intense interest to me; I have occupied
a lifetime studying it, and reached no satisfactory conclusion.

A purely mechanical universe is exactly the opposite of what you
describe, and allows for no randomness whatsoever, but locks us into a
casual chain from which there is no escape.  It includes in the
composition of man no soul or spirit, but only the biochemical
processes that provide us the illusion of  free-will decisions.  Mind
is the consequence of the anatomy and the physiology of the brain, and
chance is merely a word that we have invented to express the visible
effects of all unknown causes. This is an unhappy conclusion, but no
more or less unhappy than a universe in which free will and randomness
actually existed, in which the swarm of subatomic particles beneath
our feet sometimes coalesce into solid earth and sometimes don't.
That would be a hellish existence.  I would rather believe that I was
a meat machine, a soulless, yet still thinking automaton, than believe
that I was a kite buffeted by an unfathomable wind.

Yes, that is a distressing explanation for the universe and my life in
it, but it is also the best that I have been able to derive without
equivocation or the invocation of the paranormal.  For my own
philosophy, I would prefer to believe that which is likely true than a
comforting fairy tale.

If anyone reading this has any intellectually honest answer that would
help me to break free from my mechanistic prison, I would be truly
grateful.
-- 
http://emmagoldman.wordpress.com/

"Aren't people absurd! They never use the freedoms they do have, but
demand those they don't have; they have freedom of thought, they
demand freedom of speech." -- Søren Kierkegaard