Do humans truly posses free will?
Most of us look back on our lives as JW's and cant believe what we believed and did , so why did we do it?
Maybe we didn't realy choose , it only seamed like we did.
Maybe Jehovahs witnesses are the result of human flaws and limitations which we have no power over.
1.All humans are flawed.
Nearly all humans have emotional desires, boh genetic and environmetaly governed.Desire and emotion drives humans to act.Knowledge can also produce emotions which drive humans to do things.Without emotional responces a human will find it hard to do anything apart from the robotic processes of the body (breathing , blood circulation etc)! (See "Phatoms in the Brain."V.S.Ramachandran.There are many other books that discuss similair issues)
The flaw is your emotional driving forces are not always linked to what is true or right but what you desire whether good or bad for you.
Through out history people due genetic makeup or upbringing have desired various people, objects or power.Jehovahs witness are a product of some individuals desire to be Gods spokes man on earth, some peoples desire to serve a god, some peoples desire to live on earth for ever (and other desires)
2.All humans have limitations.
We are largely limited by what we know, and what we can know.
Some people are raised by God fearing parents, some by atheists.Some people are able to learn a vast amount of information about the world others are limited for various reasons (poverty, location, lack of intelligence).We are limited in what descisions we make by what we know about a given situation , and by what we are able to know due to time resources,desire and ability.
Some people may posses good knowledge of the religious general history,history of jehovahs witness, sience , nature or many other things.What knowledge you posses then can change your emotional driving forces.Like wise what want to learn is also linked to your desire for various types of information, which may lead you down a dead end path.(see pint 1)
So when a human has a certain emotional desire couple with a certain ( lack of) knowledge he is a suitable candidate for being a Jehovahs witness.Other desires or mixes of desire and knowledge will lead people down different paths in life.
Your emotional drives and knowledge can change through life due to the effect of both these "forces" on each other and contact with other people with different knowledge and desires .
What humans do with their lives is largley down to these above factors.
So is free will just an illusion?Are the acts that we feel like we are choosing to do , selected for us by our brain due to factors such as genetic make-up and environment?
Well maybe there is more involved.But these factors do play a large part.Our life as jehovahs witnesses was probably impossible to avoid at the time.
Now however our circumsatnces have changed.Getting the right knowledge to the right people is very important, as Jehovahs witnesses well know.
So when we look back on our lives as witnesses , and cant believe what we have done, well thats because now we would never be driven down the same course, our knowledge and desires have changed.We are now unable to be witnesses.So even thought it feels like we could choose to be witnesses , the fact that we won't, shows that maybe its not a choice at all!
Edited by - sleepy on 29 July 2002 17:30:30
Edited by - sleepy on 29 July 2002 17:43:34