Schrodinger's Cat Box and the Garden of Eden

At the quantum level it's all in superposition, i.e. potentiality ... as long as you don't look.
 
I'm not altogether sure that they are, or that they are not.

I think the difficulty in this case, however, is with the particular terms that are used in the original quote:
In reply to:
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God exists in an eternal present which, despite extending through our past and future, does not require events to be determined or necessary. Rather our exercise of free will determines the future to which God, by virtue of his transcendence of temporality, relates as the present.
 
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The currents of the universe will carry you to where you will go, but how well you ride those currents is free will.
 
Dennett approaches the question as a matter of "stance". From the design stance, all is pre ordained. Each time you, the designer, run the machine, you get the same answer and outcome.

For participants, we are in in a different stance, say, the action stance. We, as humans, as animals, are choosing machines. This is what we evolved to. We avoid, choose, pick a way, survive. And our choices count, for us. Its as real as real can be.

We're not the designers, we don't really take the design stance in our subjective experience. When we rationalize, we can take it as our objective experience.
 
GT
Yes, in the view of the design stance. But not illusory to those in the action stance.

When we speak of viewing objectively, usually we are in the design stance. So, we abstractly arrive at the implications of determinism. In the subjective experience, or the action stance, that's not so very important.

I like this view as it resonates with my experience. I accept determinism and its implications. I go on living my life and making my choices. I understand the situation via the "stance" perspective.

I think I'll have another beer.
 
Misha & Coelacanth, is there a difference between theistic determinism and physical determinism? I mean in the implications that each has for the idea of choice. Accept either and free will is lost.

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To whatever degree the future is determined by some other thing or power, it is not determined by free choice.
 
GT
As I understand it, the implications of theistic and naturalistic determinism are the same re free will. My view is the naturalistic one.

Coel
The "stance" view is simply one of perspective. We can abstract the "design stance", it is the more informed stance, as you say.

When I refer to our subjective experience, I mean that of our senses and feelings and common judgements, not so much our abstractions. Of course its hard to draw the line.

Another way of expression is that the limiting impact of determinism on free will is a true, but banal fact.
 
Determinism presumes a deterministic universe, which is an untestable assumption. There is a strong chance that our universe is at its most basic level stochastic.
 
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