Monday, November 10, 2014
Determinism
You can see parallels almost immediately between " Is Everything Determined?" and the "Parable of the Kingdom: The Ten Virgins". Stephen Hawking wrote " the grand unified theory that determines everything in the universe raises man difficulties." this is similar to when God turned away the foolish virgins for being presumptuous that they knew when to meet the bridegroom. It is similar in the fact that Stephen Hawking and the parable seem to agree that everything being determined is unbelievable. Hawking even questions it so far as saying " can one really believe God chose all the trivial details like who should be on the cover of Cosmopolitan". I personally think that we all choose our own path, I also believe that God takes the choices we made and uses them to determine whether or not we are worthy to enter heaven. If everything was pre- determined there would be no point in heaven or hell, all of our lives would be essentially obsolete. I feel as if Hawking also believes this, he mentions that if everything is determined then how can we punish people for doing bad things? I agree with this determinism seems like a flawed idea to me, I also believe that science and religion both disprove it.
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I agree that you can see parallels between "Is Everything Determined" and the "Parable of the Kingdom". They both are talking about the uncertainty of the world and how we never know what is going to happen next. The Parables of the Kingdom are obviously coming from a religious point of view and Hawking's is more like a persuasive essay. I also believe that we all choose our own path and God gives us the free will to choose what we want to do. I don't believe that God makes us do certain things but instead gives us the option to choose what we want to do. I do not believe that predetermination is real because one that would make no sense at all for one to strive to get to heaven or hell.
ReplyDeleteThere are definitely similarities between the two readings, yet I did not see them as immediately as you but I see where you're going with this. Both readings discus the difficulties of human choice and action. In the "Is Everything Determined?" reading by Stephen Hawking he brings the question of responsibilities and if our actions are pre determined "Why should be be punished for it?". While in the "Parables of the Kingdom" the actions are with punishment (even though it is not clearly stated" I think they are similar in the ways you described as them both discussing the determination of one's actions but they go about this subject differently. I don't exactly agree with our lives being obsolete if everything was pre-determined because we could still live life and make our own choices during our lifetime its just that in the end theres nothing we can change about our fates but that doesn't mean we can't perform normal or maybe even abnormal actions because either way the end result is known. I don't think pre-determination is a subject that should dictate the Heaven and Hell situations. But that also bring the question of if everything is pre-determined how would we know that? If we did know that then people would act differently but no one actually knows if that is true or not so since we cant know we can't assume that acquiring knowledge of pre-determination will change our entire way of living as well as the actions we make.
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