My life is a lie, and so is yours.

[devonin]

Given that your conclusion seems to be nihilistic determinism, where nothing matters because nothing has meaning, yet nobody has any choice in their actions, I'm at a bit of a loss to understand what points of discussion you could be looking to engage in.

A few things stuck out at me though.

Originally Posted by Tokzic

It occurred to me that the phrase "in the universe" bugged me a lot. The universe is everything, not merely the borders of the space which encompasses everything. People talk about it like it's a box, but the nature of it puts it beyond that line of thinking.

Why? You can easily refer to something as being "in" something that is infinitely large (In fact, if it is infinitely large, stands to reason everything but it is contained within it). Consider all the real numbers between 1 and 2. There are infinitely many of them, and yet I can easily say "1.3 is in the list of all real numbers between 1 and 2" as though that list is a container, because it is. Just an infinitely large container holding an infinitely large number of things inside.

We have direct control over the ultimate fate of our own personal pile of atoms for a handful of decades.

I'm not sure how you reconcile this with your later assertion that we actually have no control over anything, because every action we make is "controlled" by subconscious things we can't override or deny.

Doesn't that mean that the universe's ultimate fate has been set since the beginning of time? After all, chance is an illusion too by the same lines. Once the laws are set for existence, everything that happens - from beginning to end (if such things exist) - is inevitable.

Well, for one, your use of the phrase "has been set" implies some degree of conscious action, you'll need a God for that. For another, I can see how you want to appeal to the billiard ball theory of the universe, where every cause creates one exact specific reaction which in turn creates another exact specific reaction. Theoretically with a perfect understanding of the universe, you should then be able to point out exactly what will happen in what order and when, and voila you've created determinism, but you also made reference to chaos theory, which tends to work against the idea that every reaction is predictable.

Personally, I think it would be more cogent to say that we have free will within certain guidelines (So I guess it isn't -totally- free will) The universe does seem to run according to very specific and fixed rules, most of which we're still coming to understand properly. It seems like we can actually do anything we like, as long as it follows the overall rules. I mean, I'm not fated to type this because of an infinitely long chain of cause and effect starting with the big bang, I can't see any evidence of that, but typing this is one of the valid choices that follow the rules, so I can make it. I can't, conversely decide to float 6 inches off the floor, because rules like gravitation tell me that it isn't a valid choice.

So from this, the sense of self, the sense of living, is an illusion. The entire experience is based on a pile of situational circumstances that are beyond anybody's control. You get pulled in and have your hard-coded by the wants of your parents. You begin experiencing the situations that shape your soft-set wants. And then you die, having accomplished nothing but act based on the programming you've been hand-fed from fate.

Once again, it is -really- hard to try and prove determinism without also suggesting a being responsible for it. But I fail to see how influence equates to fate or lack of choice.

Your parents -try- to instill certain values into you, and you are free to decide to accept them or not. If we were "fated" to be "hard-coded" by the wants of our parents, why do so many children and teenagers go through rebellious phases where they thwart their parents' desires? And yet, it can't be fate that all children try to rebel, because all of them don't.

It just sounds to me like you're concluding that because actions have consequences that seem reasonable to you given the actions (As opposed to consequences that are seemingly random) that those consequences must be -required- by those choices no matter what.

One of the strongest things going against deterministic systems is that whether things are pre-determined or not, we have a -fantastically- accurate illusion of free will. So accurate, that the vast majority of people find it incredibly difficult to even comprehend -how- determinism would work, and even in religious systems with an all-powerful, all-knowing diety, with a specific and explicit divine plan for all creation, it is simply assumed that free will -must- exist.

Pointless speculation time. Isn't it odd that everything that we know was created by one happening? If we were all created from the same Bang, then are we all linked?

Everything wasn't created from one happening. A bunch of things were created by it, which in turn turned into, created or otherwise effected change in other things. All kinds of things exist now that didn't exist in the short aftermath of the big bang (presuming that's your theory of choice) and I find it just as silly to credit the big bang as the direct creator of everything in the universe as I would to credit the first human to raises horses as directly responsible for glue.