In philosophy, part of the theory of determinism (i.e. everything is predestined) is that given the current state of everything in universe, we should be able to apply the laws of nature and project what happens next. This goes for everything from weather to human emotions (after all, emotions are just neurotransmitters flowing in your brain, affected by stimuli from inside and outside the body). So if we punched in where everything is, what speed/direction it's moving, its chemical state, etc into an unimaginably powerful super-mega-computer-2000 and programmed in all the laws of nature, we should be able to let it run and tell us exactly what's going to happen 10 mins from now. Don'y worry, I would never try this on the Conquer Club server!!
But here's the catch - in physics there is something called the
Heisenberg uncertainty principle which stipulates that we can't accurately measure the physical universe. So we will never be able to determine what will happen in the future. There will always be a fudge factor. Some people (myself included) believe that fudge factor was put in there to allow for god to mess around and/or people to have free will.
According to Judaism people have free choice. So I once asked a rabbi "How can people have free choice when god is supposed to be all-powerful and all-knowing? Surely god knows what we are going to next?" His answer was "God is so powerful that he can place limitations on himself, he hands over control of part of the universe to you when you make a choice".
So now I'm gonna be late for work because I chose to waste my morning time blabbing about determinism. Stupid free will!
