“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.”

-Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States of America

I had an interesting discussion with a friend of mine, Anthony, today. He began by trying to establish a debate around the existence of free will versus fate. He worded his initial argument as follows.

  1. Stance One: Free will does not exist. Everything in the world is causal; every action is a result of chemical reactions in the body; he defines fate by this.
  2. Stance Two: Free will exists. Namely, everything occurs from randomness. There is no causation — this stance is the antithesis of Stance One.

I challenged the very nature of this argument. I learned from Atlas Shrugged that checking or challenging premises and assumption is key to solid foundations and logic. I disagreed with the absolute nature of the argument, the limited scope, and the rigidity of black and white views forced onto a highly fluid topic. My belief is that both free-will and causation exist to allow the universe to function, so I attempted to pull the argument further out to a universe view at least. We ventured quite deeply into a multiverse discussion.

After we both defined our views of fate and free-will, the discussion deepened based on my initial statements:

  1. First, essentially all of the universe functions in a cause-and-effect manner. Since the dawn of the universe, the laws inherent to our dimensions governed body interactions. Everything physical that we see today is a result of some interaction between particles which has occurred before, and follows as a logical conclusion. Our emotions are caused, biologically, by the different balances of hormones, neurotransmitters, and chemicals within our bodies. Our thoughts, actions, and personalities are all heavily influenced, shaped, and even entirely created by the cumulation of all of our life experiences. Everything is an effect of some cause, some stimulus from our environment. Each stimulus is, in turn, also an effect of some previous cause, and so on and so forth until the origin of the universe.
  2. Second, the reason why my first statement says, “essentially all,” is because there are a few highly significant exceptions to this rule that are integral to humanity’s existence as it is now. The origin of the universe is said to begin with the Big Bang. Well, I further conjecture that the Big Bang was created due to one or more reactions between Virtual Particles due to Vacuum Fluctuations (also referred to as Vacuum Energies). Vacuum Fluctuations basically describe the phenomenon of energy, and even matter, spontaneously, randomly occurring in the presence of absolute nothingness. There seems to be no cause whatsoever to enact this initial effect.
    Big Bang, Conceptualization

    Big Bang, Conceptualization

    Additionally, we have yet to discover the biological base of consciousness. I believe the origins of this may have a very abstract origin, if any at all. I consider the seat of consciousness to be similar in inexplicable origins to Vacuum Fluctuations at this moment. This realm of intangible thought is held aloft from the law-bound tangible universe – in our minds, anything we can conceive of is possible, so is anything we have not conceived. I hold these causeless phenomena to be at the foundation of what I refer to as free will. Human choice is influenced, if not determined by outside forces, but the fact choice exists at all is an indication of free will, in my opinion.

The rest of our discussion centered around exploring the possible existence of two separate universes interacting with each other – the tangible and the intangible. Anthony speculates that one can view these interactions from two different perspectives, one as viewing the tangible world affecting the intangible (your environment and experiences affecting your thoughts and decisions) and the other as the intangible affecting the tangible words (your thoughts and ideas made into actions and objects). Furthermore, he believes these two perspectives formulate what may be a new interpretation of free will and fate for him – fate being oriented around the intangible affecting the tangible, and fate representing the opposing view point.

I personally believe the universe to function due to regular feedback between the two, originating with the intangible nothingness affecting the tangible universe. But again, who knows? The nothingness of the tangible world may have affected the intangible to cause its Vacuum Fluctuations in the first place. At this speculation, Anthony began to question whether we can truly know anything? I staunched this train of thought, as my faith is firm and foundational in this respect,

“I completely believe that human beings can know anything and everything. Regardless of our current or past comprehension, human beings will always find a way to acquire knowledge of our universe and others, should they exist. In this, I believe without logic, reason, or evidence. This stance is my faith. This ideal is my God.”