Sorry I probably explained badly.
Let me make a different analogy.
If a boulder rolls down a hill, we would never think, 'Hmm, I guess that boulder just felt like rolling down the hill today!' we know that something caused it to do it. It's possible that it was teetering on the edge of rolling and all it took was a bit of wind or an animal bumping into it, or maybe a tree fell and knocked into it. Regardless of what the exact cause was, we know that inanimate objects in the real world follow physical laws of cause and effect.
Nothing ever happens randomly or by chance. (I suppose this could be debated!)
When a fire starts in the woods, something started it. Maybe there was a build-up of dry leaves and twigs and whatnot which got really hot from sunlight. I can't claim to know. But I do know that the fire didn't just up and start on its own. Something caused it.
There is nothing which happens in the inanimate physical world which has no cause.
Yet for some reason we believe that our choices are not bound by these same physical laws?
How can it be that my decision to eat eggs instead of cereal has no cause?
When something has a cause, that means that it happened instead of whatever else - we say - MIGHT have happened instead. For example, when the boulder rolls down the hill, it is doing so INSTEAD of staying on top of the hill and not rolling down it. The cause didn't offer the boulder a choice. It directly caused what happened.
And so I think it becomes very hard to believe that our actions, thoughts, beliefs, and 'choices' are somehow not caused when that is contrary to how everything else observable and testable works. Everything operates via cause and effect. Why wouldn't our choices?
It's possible to argue that it is irrelevant whether our choices are caused, because it is still 'us' choosing it, despite 'not being able to choose otherwise'.
It's a complex topic. Hard to be concise!
11-Sep-2021 22:46:42
