Comment by oneeyedpigeon
3 months ago
> When I went to school, I was taught that free will is the distinguishing characteristic of the human species
Hugely off-topic, but that strikes me as a very strange thing to be taught. Personally, I believe that, if humans have free will, other animals do too, but that's all it is: a belief.
Biologically humans are just animals with more powerful brains. Why do some people think we alone have novel things such as free will?
This is what Christians teach. God made us in His image and put us on Earth so we can dominate it, including all living creatures. He gave us Free Will because He loves us, but will punish anyone who use it, because we should submit to Him. This more or less is what my Catholic school was teaching anyway.
Luckily god doesn’t exist so you can use your free will without being punished by anything :)
stuff like this gets taught in school? that’s like a take from the 1600s. literally descartes’s argument that animals are just automatons and only humans have minds.