Free Will

A relaxing and informal subject, no? This sort of area is one of those that is usually thought of as quite deep, but like a few others, is actually quite foundational to everything else we might believe. So; I present to you one of my foundations.

I believe that we have free will. However, from reasoning I have come to the belief that free will cannot exist as a physical or mental attribute, only as a spiritual one. This is because we understand that our physical world is built on physics, and causality, and also that our mental worlds are built on the foundations of the physical world (e.g. nature and nurture).

The reason for my belief that free will is a spiritual element of ourselves goes like this...

Giving: Africa vs. UK

In African church services, giving money is done very differently to how it's done in English church services.

The African churches I have visited have involved everyone getting off their seats, and dancing joyfully in a line to the front, where they drop their donation into the box or bowl. Music sets the pace, and you really get the sense of joyful giving that the Bible says God wants.

Switch over to a sunday morning in England- and I'm even talking about charismatic churches here- and it's a very different scene. The sung worship in some british services may be similar in style, but instead of the time of giving being a focussed and celebrated event, baskets or boxes are passed covertly along the rows of seats, so that people are distracted as little as possible from their singing.

I Believe Science

I trust science, but I don't trust scientists. I believe in all verified findings, but not necesserily the conclusions drawn from them.

If a man holds a rock in your face and says "This rock keeps albino polar bears away, because the rock is here and albino polar bears are not," would you believe him? He has drawn a cause-effect relationship, after all.

Yes, it's a silly and extreme example. But in real life, the possibile conclusions that can be made from a new finding are often very similarly, but subtly, woven into the discovery, as if the fact and opinion are both a single fact.