{"id":121,"date":"2012-08-09T14:21:26","date_gmt":"2012-08-09T14:21:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.skepticblogs.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/?p=121"},"modified":"2012-12-16T12:44:44","modified_gmt":"2012-12-16T12:44:44","slug":"the-cosmological-argument-against-free-will","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/2012\/08\/09\/the-cosmological-argument-against-free-will\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cosmological Argument against Free Will"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Cosmological Arguments generally argue for the existence for a First Mover, an Uncaused Cause.\u00a0 They often rely on a premise that rejects the possibility of an infinite sequence of past events.<sup><span style=\"font-size: 8px\">1<\/span>\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0But what else can we do with such a premise?<\/p>\n<p>Now that you\u2019re reading this post, let me ask you a few questions.\u00a0 Did you choose to read it?\u00a0 If so, did you choose to choose to read it?\u00a0 If so, did you choose to choose to choose to read it?\u00a0 If an infinite sequence of past events (choices, in this case) is impossible, it follows that you must have done something at some stage without choosing to do so.\u00a0 And <em>this<\/em>\u00a0(or maybe a previous event you had no involvement in) was the ultimate cause of your choice to read.<\/p>\n<p>Naturally the above reasoning applies not only to your \u201cchoice\u201d (or otherwise) to read this blog, but t<span style=\"font-size: 14px\">o every sin<\/span>gle \u201cchoice\u201d you could ever make.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12px\">1. As a mathematician, I find such premises very interesting indeed, but a more thorough discussion will wait until a <a href=\"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/2012\/09\/17\/infinite-dreams\/\">later post<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cosmological Arguments generally argue for the existence for a First Mover, an Uncaused Cause.\u00a0 They often rely on a premise&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,11],"tags":[193,196],"class_list":["post-121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmological-argument","category-free-will","tag-cosmological-argument","tag-free-will"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}