Determinism and Predeterminism vs. Quantum Physics
In this post, I will talk on determinism and predeterminism in detail to shed light on the myths and facts associated to these belief systems. We will also see how quantum physics breakthroughs have invalidated many false theories that we humans have believed for years.
Such talks would only be welcomed by open-minded people because when it is about questioning the reality and existence of higher power, most people prefer to stay inside the prison created by their minds.
I won’t blame them because the ego needs convictions for survival and questioning your beliefs is like killing yourself because you will be a totally different person when your core beliefs change.
I went through such a transformation when I stopped believing in a God who has sent my soul in this world which he created and he’s sitting comfortably in someplace like heaven watching me and my actions every single moment.
My views are often liked by some people while strongly hated by others independent of how they are related to me.
I prefer to not get involved in such arguments anymore because as I said when you challenge someone’s deeply held beliefs it is like you are threatening their lives. No doubt that it is the root cause of so much violence in the world today.
But, a strange thing happened when the beliefs I had about the existence and the creator got peeled off layer by layer. Before I even began to think that I am free of that belief bondage, I was having a new set of ideas that replaced the old ones.
And again, I would defend those beliefs by arguing with others and my ego will find a reason to be right. In fact, we just can’t help defending our perspectives as our whole sense of reality is formed by what we believe deep inside.
Then I realized that beliefs are like the foundations of a building, there is no right or wrong way to lay the foundation, but it is your choice to choose the one that’s strengthens the structure.
In actual words, I believe we all are free to choose the ideas that empowers us and discard what is making us weak. That should be the only criteria, it is not at all about what’s right and what’s wrong.
So, what I am going to discuss here is not something using which I want to prove my opinions right, I am just going to share my views on few concepts like predeterminism and determinism from what I have learned till now.
Predeterminism
Predeterminism is a concept that’s usually accepted by the people having strong religious viewpoints, even though a little willingness to know the truth can wipe out these types of convictions, some people like to keep themselves locked in such prisons because they find it safe.
According to this concept, there is a creator who has created this world and written a story for everyone, like a movie he has scripted all our lives and we have no control over what’s happening.
Believing this way has a lot of advantages.
Yeah seriously, you get to blame God for your current circumstances, you can avoid holding yourself accountable for the mistakes that you have made, and most importantly, you can try your best to make God happy so that he tweaks your story a little.
You can find this in your own society or maybe in your family, people are trying to make some superpower happy, thinking that everything that happens in their lives is according to what God has planned beforehand.
A simple approach can falsify such beliefs pretty easily.
First of all, people have formed the image of God as a super powerful being who is different from us.
Allow me to bring a very obvious fact to your attention – Whenever the creative process occurs not one but two forms comes into existence, which means that the moment we have a creation we also get a creator.
You exist that’s why the creator is there. Suppose something destroys the whole universe at this very moment whom will you call the creator? God will cease to exist because none of his creation will be there, that’s right the “creator” or “God” these two are just labels used by us.
Second of all, if I assume that there is a higher power independent of “all that is”, whom we can call God, then could he be so unfair and biased that he writes happy stories for some and painful stories for others? Could he be so cruel that he has given you no free will and wants you to punish yourself to get his sympathy?
Isn’t it quite clear that this concept is not only disempowering, but also an excuse used by people to avoid responsibilities?
I am not denying the existence of higher power here, however, I want you to see that the “idea of God” is often used by people to define their identities.
Determinism – The Law of Causality
People who have a very firm understanding of the law of causality are like nightmares to me. Why? Because I cannot falsify this concept completely neither can I adopt it.
Einstein was a determinist, how can you stop yourself from considering the philosophy which was accepted by the most popular genius who ever lived.
Recently, I had a very interesting debate with a person on a Facebook page which was so intense that people kept on reading and hitting the like button every time one of us came up with a reply, a biologist was also taking part in our discussion. That person’s opinion influenced me so much that I could not just stop thinking about it.
The discussion kept going on for more than a week, finally, I broke that chain of posts since I knew it will never reach to a conclusion. I would have pasted the link here, but sadly the page owner has deleted it.
So what is this all about? Before proceeding any further I would like to warn you that this philosophy is outrageous since it challenges the existence of “you” yes the soul or the observer.
Determinism says that everything is governed by the law of causality and whatever happens in your life is the effect of some preceding cause, it eliminates the possibility of any randomness.
“C” happens because of “B” and “B” is caused by A. That’s right, they say that whatever is happening today is a result of what happened before and this chain goes back to the very beginning.
It is not as simple as it appears – Everything that you are is a result of the information that your brain picked up from the time of your birth until now.
This particular thing is the basis of many of my posts in this blog – Conditioning of the mind, I strongly believe that all the results we get in our lives is directly related to the deeply ingrained beliefs in our subconscious mind, that’s why I promote products like the Christie’s Unlimited Abundance program which helps one to clear their old mind programming.
But, this philosophy is not at all consistent with my true beliefs, why? Because it denies the existence of the “free will”.
According to this theory, everything that defines “You” – Your life, your body, your beliefs, your identity are all results of a series of various events. You have been conditioned and all your actions and thoughts are determined by certain factors, not you.
Here’s a link that I got from that guy which he used to prove his point – Unconscious decisions in mind.
That’s a research work which shows that your brain gets prepared to perform an action before you even consciously make that decision.
Obviously, I was shocked to see that.
It implies that you feel like you have the control over your actions, but you actually don’t, hence the notion that you are a timeless being sitting in the controller seat of this body is negated and that means that consciousness is a brain phenomenon, in simple terms – There is no “you” independent of the body.
The deterministic approach makes you believe that you are a puppet who can’t help what is happening in their life and on top of that there is no God to blame. Yeah, that’s the only difference between predeterminism and determinism. Here, there is no God who has created the universe since everything is a result of a complex cause and effect chain which started at the very beginning (maybe the big bang).
A peacemaker and a murderer, both are “conditioned” that way, can you really buy into that? I don’t know about you, I can’t! However, they have evidences to prove that these claims are experiential.
If you are reading this and you believe that you are not really that helpless, especially if you are someone like me who believes that we are the creators of our lives then it’s time to target the very root of this philosophy.
What was the initial cause?? Bingo!! What/who started this chain? They don’t have a straight answer to that.
They deny the existence of a creator hence, there is nothing which would have set this into motion. There is an assumption at the very beginning on which this whole philosophy is built, it is like a huge building floating in the air.
Since this is what my blog represents – You can have a complete number system which is accurate, but you still need the indefinable quantities “0” and infinity.
What Challenges Determinism Scientifically?
The question about the initial cause still remains unanswered, but there is also a branch of science which challenges this philosophy – QUANTUM PHYSICS.
The double slit experiment which never fails to amaze people still remains a mystery. I am going to provide the video below which will better explain all this, it shows how the presence of an observer affects the behavior of an electron.
This experiment shows that the involvement of a conscious being affects the outcome of any event, if it happens at the microscopic level, it might be happening at all levels, isn’t it?
I had enough things going on my mind after exploring a lot of such information that my head was about to explode and it was then when I again stumbled upon a quantum physics study after knowing which I really had to watch a terrible movie in order to take my mind off all these stuff for a while.
It was something called the delayed thought choice experiment and according to this experiment our conscious involvement not only affects the behavior of the electron in the present moment, but it can also change its past. I know you might be thinking that I am off my rocker by now, so here’s a video that will explain these two experiments better: –
Here is another short video where the very popular theoretical physicist Michio Kaku talks about how Einstein’s famous “God doesn’t play dice” statement is challenged by Quantum Physics: –
The Ultimate Truth
I have realized that in my spiritual journey till now I have known nothing about the reality or higher power, then why am I still on this path?
It’s because I have been able to break many barriers that were created by the limiting beliefs present in my inner mind. This means that I can now more easily discard any set of ideas that were passed down to me by the society if it confines me.
Our ideas about the reality are not based on the absolute truth, it is just an idea that became a belief and then turned into a conviction.
For example:- “A” decides to drink a little wine every day after dinner, his son “B” after growing up does the same thing which he learned from his father. This ritual perpetuates generation after generation, now we are looking at the P generation where nobody dares to even question why they have to drink a little wine after dinner.
P considers it as a very important ritual, he wants Q to follow it and teach it to R so, Q is told that according to their culture if they don’t do it then God will punish them and send them to hell after death. And then we have “V” who decides to question all this until he reaches to the very point from where it all began, he definitely disappoints others in his family and maybe he will be renounced by them for doing this, but he has dared to bring the change by letting “W” make his decisions by listening to his heart.
All beliefs are subject to change, you can protect your strong viewpoints, but that doesn’t makes it real. Information received by our senses is filtered by various mind mechanisms like the reticular activating system, so we are never able to perceive things in their purest form using our 5 senses.
We use “words” to explain our thoughts, however, the truth can never be described, it can only be realized when one achieves greater levels of present moment awareness where the cognitive processes pause for a while, allowing one to get the glimpses of the truth, they call it enlightenment.
I really don’t know if that ultimate state exists or not, but I do agree that detaching yourself from your thoughts using continuous practice of something like mindfulness exercises or vipassana meditation makes you realize that these beliefs are like the clothes that we wear, you can choose the one that suits you without getting too attached to it.
Thus, I now hold beliefs that empowers me and I keep my mind open for better ideas, it’s true that sometimes I react to the viewpoints of others since few deeply ingrained beliefs keep working for long, but on the conscious level, I try my best to take all these thoughts lightly.
My Current Perspective
We have reached to the end of this long post and I know what’s still missing “a conclusion”.
I really have no intention to finish this post ambiguously. Even though you might be already having some opinions about what we have just discussed, but still a post requires the author’s final thoughts, so here is what I believe right now: –
According to what quantum physics is pointing now, there is nothing right or wrong, whatever you believe becomes true for you. But I do believe that whatever happens in this “time and space” is governed by the universal laws.
The law of cause and effect is not only a metaphysical law, but it also works accurately at the physical level, your actions decide your results!
I agree that our actions are the effect of the thoughts present in our subconscious mind, however, unlike deterministic people who deny the existence of free will as they assume that our conscious awareness is also a result of some brain mechanism, I believe that we are the creators of our realities and we are responsible for what we do and what happens in our lives.
Since “thoughts” are independent of the time and space, I am inclined to believe that it is not governed by the law of causality. Our mind mostly receives random thoughts in every moment and we do have the free will to choose the right thoughts by becoming aware of our mind activities.
The universal laws does not make us helpless puppets, instead they give us an opportunity to create in the same way like the mother nature does.
I hope you enjoyed this post. What is your perspective on life, god, and reality?, I am so eager to hear your opinions on this.
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