Your thoughts on this...?

firm belief in something for which there is no proof is the definition of faith. And in that definition is the answer to your question. Or as Rah put it some things just are not meant to be answered.

I think that the whole is more than the sum of it's parts. Yes, our brains involve trillions of chemical reactions, electrical signals, etc. But the result of this is something more than just chemicals and electrical signals. We can have the freedom of choice because rational thought emerges from these reactions and signals. This allows us to choose. I don't believe that there is some sort of power outside of ourselves that controls it.

Your position would be accurate, if it was really a choice between the two things that you described, but it's not. Or at least, not as you explained the first option. In biology, this is called "emergent properties". It was a very interesting post, though.

Look it is not a rule that guides the life you gave an example about following the latest fashion or doing the things that we do usually every day, about me I do the opposite like if the fashion is bright colors I wear the darkest color I may find and I go to school everyday but one of the days I may think of just being absent for one day.

Somehow it depends on the personality like what is too complicated for you is really easy and simple for other people. There is no rule for what you said every rule has some odds.

If living things starts out as very simple structures of chemical, evolution of cognition will make sense. There weren't much decision to require complex chemical reaction. Human organism, or we can include animals also, conceived with the complex nucleus of the egg and the sperm already involve complex decisions as evidence in the combination of DNA. We are further evolved than primitive single cell organism. Most decisions are stored in our DNA.

I see what your saying and it's a good question. I enjoy looking at all the odd possibilities of life.

One that makes the most sense to me is basically what Descartes (sp?) said: I think therefore I am. Imagine this for a moment: We only exist as thoughts. Everyone and everything in the world is a thought. It was explained to me by someone in a philosophy board. Basically there is a "God Mind" that can think of everything that exists at once. For example he's thinking about me sitting in my chair and the words coming on my computer screen and the soccer ball on the floor and the jeans hanging in my closet, therefore, they are all there. If he decided to stop thinking about soccer balls all together, they wouldn't exist anymore.

Now obviously, this is a theistic idea. But it does make some kind of sense. Think about it, no one has ever thought of anything that no one's thought of, because the moment you think of something, it has been thought of. (That was difficult to type haha)

This would also explain people who have "supernatural powers". Like the kid in The Matrix who could bend the spoon. Maybe he's more in touch with the "God Mind", therefore, when he thinks of the spoon bending, it happens.

I know this didn't answer your question, I just wanted to give you something else to think about.

I think about this all the time.

One starts to wonder whether or not the mere idea of "a God" may just be "the result of millions of complex chemical reactions."

I think this is one example of some of the driving forces of agnosticism, especially for scientists. On one hand, one can't help but want to find out the truth about God, on the grandeur scale of things. But on the other, one starts to realize that at least at our current stage in human thought, we have indeed reached our limit. That is...

We can only prove so much.

Understanding evolves; direct opposition by a catalyst requires a reaction. There is no real choice because God supersedes the physical and chemical reactions.

There is no external source. There is no such thing as choice. We think what we think because of the effect of certain things on other things. Just like if I say not to think of a pink elephant you have no choice but to think of the pink elephant. When you smell a smell it may elicit a memory from childhood without your having chosen to remember recall it or even remember it in the first place. Your "chosing" to wear the blue suit is based on a chain of thoughts that spontaneously flow from one thought to another. It may seem nice to be able to think about it, but you're not thinking about it. you brain is just following a path....

This leads us into learning, neural connections and a whole lot of other stuff I really don't want to get into right now.

This is western v eastern philosophical debate. Descartes symbolizes western culture: I think therefore I am.

Asia says: I am therefore I think.

Does the mind come from the physical world or does the physical world come into existance because of the mind?

"If a tree fell in the forest with nobody around to hear it, would it make a sound?"

But if everything is a chemical reacton, and it is clearly a chemical reaction - we can have no choice in how things world. There is still no free will. God may have made our brains able to fire chemical reactions until our deaths, but he did not give us free will.

yes! someone who thinks! and thinks about something worth thinking! i've been ruminating on this for quite a while and still haven't found a satisfying answer. i want to believe your second option very much, but it's difficult to even guess. while it's somewhat upsetting to learn that a majority of one's reactions are determined simply by synapses, i can't help but believe that we have a certain level of control over it.

just an opinion. didn't answer your question at all.