Baruch Spinoza
We are all given choices, decisions in life. Some less drastic than others, but choices none the less. I am a believer in free will, the act of making your own decision, and that I was doing what I want and making it my choice, and mine alone. However, there is a religious aspect, which God knows exactly what you’re going to do, before you even do it. So the question arises, do we really have free will? Sure we are given a right and wrong decision, but if God already knows whether we are going to Heaven or Hell, what is the point of putting us on Earth? Spinoza does not believe in free will, making the claim that believers in “free will are mistaken in the belief that the body does not move unless the mind is active... [And] that the mind determines whether or not many kinds of actions are performed” (“Human Beings are Determined). He believes “Whatever is, is in God” (Ethics, Proposition 15). I believe that God gives us choices, and within those decisions, we chose what road (good, bad, right, wrong, heaven, hell) that we are going to go down. I don’t think God knows 100% of our future. I believe he knows the outcome of each decision we take and what we don’t, but that he leaves that up to us. Whether or not there is free will is yet to be determined, but all we have to go on is from philosophers and every human being who had their two cents.
Spinoza rejected the “concept of free will, holding human actions to be motivated by ones conception of self-preservation” (Philosophers).