It's already depressing enough to hear scientists tell us that such a great and beautiful thing as love is caused by nothing more than drug-like hormones that act on our nervous system. It's even more disgusting to hear some scientists explain that heroism, generosity and charity may be only based on an instinct created by evolution to preserve other individuals of our species. And maternal love is, of course, an instinct to protect the offspring and ensure that their genes are transmitted to the following generations. Natural selection and all...

But it goes even further than this. According to some scientific experiments, even such mundane things as our favorite color is linked to instinct: for example, they claim that pretty much everyone likes blue because we instinctively make an association with the color of the sky on a beautiful day (meaning safety, peace, etc.). And more recently, I heard that political orientation might be somehow linked to the way the brain works; unfortunately, I wasn't able to find this article again, but if I remember well, it was in the Los Angeles Times.

Is there such thing as free will, or are we nothing more than machines made of flesh?

Yes, there is such a thing. Yet after reading your post, am beginning to wonder how much of it we really do have. :rancer:

Favourite colours are a bit iffy to suggest it's all ingrained in DNA coding. When was young, hadn't ever thought on what my fav was until the family played a game of Parchessi. When my father selected red, that was the one I'd wanted. After mom was given blue and my sister green, I was stuck with yellow. Yellow is the farthest candidate from being a fav in this lifetime. It works in some colour combinations and only if not overdone. Pastels in colours works even for those yucky yellows.

Red cars were what I'd owned. Naturally that is the most common shade for motor vehicles. But as my tendencies changed towards earthly colours (browns, oranges, greens, etc.), hunter green is without a doubt the bestest ever. :) Call me a druid. Though hardly accurate, the preferences for the colours of nature are very alluring. This is from someone that spends an inordinate amount of time in front of a computer CRT.

First of all, pretty much anything genetic isnt black and white. You are predisposed to show this trait, meaning its more likely that you will, but its not definite. We still dont understand many of the mechanisms that regulate gene expression and function.

Second, we know about as much about the brain as we do about quantum gravity. Ok maybe not that bad.. Anyway the point is that we have no idea how many of the functions of the brain happen or work. We dont know where memories come from or how they form much less the emotions associated with them. The hormones are what let the rest of your body know WHEN your brain gets happy. Yes, some of them can effect thought processes and such but even those we dont know all that much about.

In short, yes, we have as much free will as we chose to have.

Okay... This is part science, part philosophy, but it occurs to me that without the existence of a soul, free will would be impossible. I know my reasoning is a bit hard to follow, but I'll try to explain...

Think about it: if there is no soul, then it means that, as neurologists say, our thoughts are nothing but electrical waves transmitted via synapses from one neuron to another. Those waves are what shape our ideas, our memory and our imagination. But what causes those electrical waves? They logically need to have a cause, don't they? Cause --> effect is one of the first laws of the Universe.

Without a soul, our thoughts are necessarily caused (in other words, directed) by something. And our consciousness cannot be the thing that directs our thoughts, since consciousness itself is nothing but electrical waves in our brain; as such, what causes our thoughts would ultimately have to be external stimuli. That would mean that according to science and logic, we wouldn't even have control over our own thoughts, let alone our actions.

Sometimes I really hate science. <_<

No No No. You do not need some archaic concept of "Soul" to answer this question, rather you need to re-think the question itself.

A) Why do you think of your brain as being a separate entity than "Self?" We are our brains in some sense, or at the very least who we are is linked with the brain, or is a product of it.

B) The Brain is not a unified entity, it is built of several interactive networks, for the various types of mental processes, from "Awareness" to "Speech & and Language" to rudimentary coordination, etc etc. Different parts of the brain do different things and interact, ie they cause each other. "Brain" in this sense does not really exist, other than referring an organ in our skulls.

C) Genetic determinism is a bad argument, other than, it makes a set of broad rules and limitations of the body, including the brain. IE, we can't all be basketball players, and there's only been a few brilliant minds (we could argue over who), etc...Yes sure, our genes do limit us, but there is nothing in the genes (that we have evidence of) that, determines what I'm writing here, or what i find beautiful, or who i love.

Re-Thinking Free Will

Before one even gets to whether or not we have a "free will" one needs to consider what "will" is...not that i personally have a great definition, but I think of free will, as our ability to make choices (minus all other influences). However when do we ever have this in real life? Our decisions are always influenced by outside forces, economic, values, political, experiences....etc.

I do not like this "Free Will," no no, i do not. It makes no sense in any given context. Even when we have choices, so many factors go into what those possible choices are, not to mention are ability to make informed choices, I mean rarely do we really "know" in any substantive way, what the longterm outcomes of our decisions are.

I'm somewhere between free will is some kind of illusion that makes us feel like we are in control, and maybe at best we have a partially free will. Sometimes, someplaces, we can actually make a real informed decisions, where we can accept the consequences...so on and so forth...

But again, this idea that because we have a nervous system, and a brain, that "therefore" we don't have free will, is absolutely ridiculous. I mean yes when I move my hand and a signal in my brain, moves my arm, etc...and again this is only hypothetical, i mean we don't do things for absolutely no reason, there is not arm-moving in a vacuum, there is not a "will" in a vacuum, our choices always happen in a particular moment, in a particular place, a given context.

It is only within the particular context that "will" as an issue can even emerge.