Saturday, April 17, 2010

Free will and Destiny !!!!


The question of free will and predetermined destiny is one of the most ancient questions in human mind. Philosophers, priests, theologians, Islamic scholars, poets, writers all are haunted and fascinated by this fundamental question. Everybody tried their best to explain it, give examples, and write short stories to explore it. Mystics have put it in beautiful poems. No matter how it is explained I don't think anybody has given the clear cut answer. When it comes to the end they take one side or other. Either nothing happens without the approval of an out of this world power, that you call God, Ultimate power or any other entity that created and maintained this world or rule on an world that is never created and always existed but he is still the only power who has final say in what happened and what happens next. Like Buddhist don't believe God created universe but still he has the absolute power over it. And other who gives free will more importance and makes God like a United Nation that shows people the right rules, if they follow it or not doesn't have any power to change it. Both side given one or other various degree prominences. Or some tried to bring a balance between both. Either way if God has absolute power why there is the judgment day. If it is free will, still as free nation that we got this freedom with his approval, when we use it than for doing stuff that we are allowed to do, shouldn't be punished right?
Anyways the question remains unsolved. Any answer we find turns to faith again. It is this way or it is that way and the rest is with him. Something that everybody has tried to explain, at the end it still stays unexplainable.
There is no room in this discussion to explain all the different philosophies and explanation and not useful either since unexplainable still stays unexplainable.
The purpose here is that I want to explain the flaws and if I call it so the fallacy of the question.
Our understanding of the world changes dramatically over time. I regret using the word time, you will know why, later in this article. Even scriptures have to be revisited and retranslated. I give you a little example. The first Ayah any Muslim reads is Alhamdu lillahi rabil alameen. How many people thought about what that simple phrase means? Ask any scholar, Islamic theologians, mawlawi, the ones who give fatwa, how many words there is? They are going to say this world that we live in and that world that comes after the judgment day. That is what we heard for 1400 years and we hear today. But does it really say that? God has said worlds. !!!! In that first ayah, if he meant two, he would have said Alamain, not Alameen. Arabic has special plural for two of everything that ends at aain, so the plural like in aalameen is three or more. Now at 21st century we come to multiverse instead of universe. And we talk about String, theory, multiple dimensions, parallel universes, etc. That said, I am not going to take this as proof, because I don't know if string theory is going to last or going to be replaced by something else. This is the problem with people who try to explain the religion and sometime false ideas with science. Science is going to change. And sometime that change comes at a blink of an eye. What used to make sense and justify their beliefs is no longer there and they are wrong again. But still as much as we know now and I strongly believe that definitely there are no two worlds, there are more than two or infinite, I don't know, but I know it is not two. Something in science sticks and this will be one of them. Everyday evidence is making this argument stronger not weaker.
This is a gigantic task. The subject has been beaten to death, everybody that knows something has tried to explain it, it the end all they have done is to state their opinion not proof.

The encouragement I get is the fact that I believe advancements gives us the right to answer this question once and for all. Whatever comes next, it will make it easier to answer, like say a hundred years from now, but even today I think we have the tools to answer.
I give you a little humor here off the subject. There was a student during Rumi's life. He went very excited to meet Shams Tabrizi. He came with a solution. He finally had proved the existence of God. Shams didn't say anything to his ignorance, smiled and said good. But he thought about it overnight and decided to teach a lesson. The guy came in the morning. Shams told him good morning young man and congratulations. I heard all the angels came down to you last night to thank you for proving their God's existence. Until yesterday their God was unproved and you did a great impossible deed for them. Then he start saying to him, you are so ignorant that you think you can prove God's existence. The power of our brain is so unfit for a task like that and will never happen. No one will ever prove God's existence. If you just prove your existence instead of God's existence. You have accomplished a big task.

I recalled this little story because I don't want to sound like that student. Shams is right, until the end of the world no one will ever prove existence of God because he is much bigger than the capacity of our brains to understand and solve.

Now let’s go back to subject.

Time yes the concept of time is very important in this argument. It is a very useful tool. Even though I believe time is a man made concept and probably the fakest concept man ever invented but it works, this is the way our brain is conditioned to understand and this is the only way I can explain it because I am a human. And nothing can be explained to human without using time.
The concept of time is fundamental to this problem.


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Understanding time is gone through some very deep changes especially in last three hundred years or since 18th century. We still don't have an idea what it is but like I explained before in example of two worlds or many worlds, we know what is not.

For Newtonians time was independent and was fourth dimension. He was right in his explanation of the word and bringing one formula that explains the whole world. Gravity was the cause that all stars and planets staying in their orbits, the only reason. , Right? Yes explainable but wrong, now we know that dark matter if not more at least has equal role in not letting stars and galaxies absorbed by one other. What else? We still don't know yet.
Then Einstein came, Time wasn't miss independence anymore. , and was just part of space-time fabric. And wasn't absolute but relative, changeable. Now Einstein’s theories, at least some of them started crumbling. Maybe the rest will follow but still as Newton is still relevant today, Einstein will be relevant for a long time.

Then the theory of quantum came and it changed our whole perception about reality. Nothing is the way we see and sense it. Our basic understanding always changes. An electron can be in two places and multiple places at the same time actually can be in infinite places. So since an electron can be in infinite places in a specific portion of time, is there only one electron in the whole universe? Maybe not but we cannot definitely say no according to quantum explanation of probability. A man can be in Mars and earth at the same time. Sounds crazy, right? And you will dismiss it right away. But not so quick, if the theory and formulas of quantum physics were wrong, we would not have had microwaves and flat screen TVs and cell phones and car alarms and remotes etc. They all used quantum theory and formulas or it wouldn't have existed or worked. And everything else from now on will have to use it.
That is the biggest challenge to Einstein’s way of understanding Time, space and universe.
Variation to time includes the following. Time passes slower close to huge objects, like Egypt’s pyramids. It is proved. So in a sense Pharos could change time and that is proved with experiments. Time significantly slows down in higher speeds, and Very significantly at speeds closer to the speed of light. It may even stops, an astronaut travelling at that speed like say for 20 years, when he comes back to earth, centuries would have passed and all the people he knew would have died long ago.
Time bends, there is access between past and future and at least scientifically possible to go backward and forward. So time is not always from past to future and is not a straight line.
And listen to this famous theory of the end of 20th century that still forcefully exists. It is called Retro causality. Events that are taking places in the future can effect past. Mind boggling, right? True? I don't know.

Now one last thing about time and see how falsely we use it. People ask what was before Big Bang. The words (before) and (after) without thinking about time don't exist because they measures time. Time is a concept of our part of the universe. Time is part of space-time fabric at least until now. Time is not independent. And last, this time was created with big bang. Conclusion: The question itself is false, is wrong, you cannot use the word before when time itself doesn’t exist. Like your son is not born and someone asks how old is he.
I hope this is easy and make sense. Because this is the whole point for answering the question of destiny and free will.

We ask the question because we think time is the same for us and for God. Big ignorance, we know time is not the same even in this universe and we don't know even if exists in another universe. Time and space definitely doesn't exist in the world after judgment day, our bodies don't go there, and our soul does. So heaven and hell is not in space, so we can forget about trees and creeks. Sorry that is another subject.

So time for God is not the same, time for God doesn't exist, He doesn't use it, he doesn't use anything we use. He just creates and watches, or doesn't create if he chooses to. Actually using (wants) is the wrong word to use for God, he doesn't want, he chooses. That is how Quran puts it, if he chooses so, if he chooses to. Want is for us and also free well is for us.

What God does and how he does it we have no way to comprehend. But we do know that God created us. When he created us he gives us our weaknesses and our strength, our limitations and our power to explore. We have to advance, to expand to invent to take care of ourselves and of others and our environment. How we do it, he let us find out for ourselves. If there was no error, there never would be learning. The evolution of human being would have been worthless. If God would have prevented all the bad things and practices, we wouldn't have a human population now. Liker if he destroys Taliban before they blow a school killing fifty innocent children, or when they act like their car battery is dead as they did in Peshawar and when good hearted people gather to push the car to start in the middle of the market they explode it killing seventy people, think how many times God would have done that and how much world population would be now? He would have killed all the Taliban and Pharos and Tyrant armies and crusaders and Romans etc and the population of the world would have been 25 now.

Conclusion



Here comes the relevance and where all comes together. How we use time is the way we are conditioned to use it. Does God choose for something to happen? Is that act prewritten and is it destiny? We seem to think so because God knows it before we do it or see it, so God’s knowledge comes before our act and get precedence. The truth is God doesn't use before and after. He is not psychic to know what happens tomorrow in a sense we understand it. For him, time doesn't exist; he created it for us, in reality time is creation of our brain, the way we see our part of one universe. He created us with free will., to shape our part of the world, like he created sun to affect our solar system but he doesn't interfere with everyday’s sun's function but he still knows how sun would act and when it is going to burn out of helium, not because he sees in advance, but because time and before and after doesn't exist for him, he is not bound to it or by it. He observes it without looking back and forward and without before and after.
remember when you avoid false argument and put it the right way, suddenly you see the answer very clearly. With that I end this subject. God bless you all.


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