Free Will
Is everything determined? Have I already been predetermined to write this two page response on a paper im hardly understanding but writing about anyway? Did God already know that on the twenty fourth day of January 24, 2013, nineteen years into my life know that I was going to be struggling on this assignment? I guess Mr. Hawking and I will never know.
Lets take a moment to honestly think about it. Stephen Hawking wrote his book (in this case we are referring to his short excerpt in The Norton Reader) on the theories and ideas of everyone and everything being predetermined by either God or the theory of evolution. Hawking presents us with the question “are we really masters of our own fate?” While this question is very broad and could have an infinite amount of answers, Hawking proceeds to mention God and his omnipotent being and his knowledge of what will happen to us and everything that we are going to do. He provides us with three questions in which he gives his answer or opinion. In which he sums everything up in his last paragraph by saying that everything is predetermined but might as well not be because how are we supposed to know what is determined if we actually never will. This is all said in his title of his essay which is actually the question he poses.
However I feel that while Stephen Hawking is posing logical questions and then backing up his ideas and with logical and scientific support, why it should matter. I’m not saying he is wrong or right, but what if he forgot to mention something else. What if everything was predetermined but by one person, say God. What if God created earth just like it was and “knew” everyone and their thoughts and ideas but only because they were all the same people. Stephen Hawkins’s three questions are logical by all means but what if we weren’t able to answer them because we aren’t ready, and by “we” I mean a single person. By single person I mean what if God, because he is omnipotent and out of time,
Lets take a moment to honestly think about it. Stephen Hawking wrote his book (in this case we are referring to his short excerpt in The Norton Reader) on the theories and ideas of everyone and everything being predetermined by either God or the theory of evolution. Hawking presents us with the question “are we really masters of our own fate?” While this question is very broad and could have an infinite amount of answers, Hawking proceeds to mention God and his omnipotent being and his knowledge of what will happen to us and everything that we are going to do. He provides us with three questions in which he gives his answer or opinion. In which he sums everything up in his last paragraph by saying that everything is predetermined but might as well not be because how are we supposed to know what is determined if we actually never will. This is all said in his title of his essay which is actually the question he poses.
However I feel that while Stephen Hawking is posing logical questions and then backing up his ideas and with logical and scientific support, why it should matter. I’m not saying he is wrong or right, but what if he forgot to mention something else. What if everything was predetermined but by one person, say God. What if God created earth just like it was and “knew” everyone and their thoughts and ideas but only because they were all the same people. Stephen Hawkins’s three questions are logical by all means but what if we weren’t able to answer them because we aren’t ready, and by “we” I mean a single person. By single person I mean what if God, because he is omnipotent and out of time,
Cited: Hawking, Stephen. "Is Everything Determined." The Norton Reader: An Anthology of Nonfiction. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2012. 539-46. Print.