Prior to the spell being cast, Thomas had no interest in tennis...that was his freewill, post-spell he had no option but to like tennis, surely that is the opposite of free will.

It would be interesting if the spell was lifted whether or not he would continue to infatuate over it or not though.

Have to admit, I like Thomas, and its good that he has a new hobby.

Slightly different question.

Do the tendencies people are predisposed to by being a certain race and being raised by family members of a certain race outweigh free will? Or do people chose to mold into these certain tendencies like eating a certain meat product sounded by fried bread crumbs?

Well all black people are definitely born criminals.

no *censored rest of comment*

Race has nothing to do with it .. I think you have to look at culture if you wanna find the real differences between peoples.

I respectfully disagree, my roommate this year is black, she was raised in a preppy northern boarding school around lots and lots of white people. However, I have noticed she has some of the same stereotypical qualities associated with people of her race.

If it's culture why would she still have these characteristics if she did not grow up around anyone with these characteristics? Or take

Or do it the opposite way, my bf is from the smallest most redneck city in NC, all his friends are fairly hickish (strong accents, very racist, lots of plaid, hunts, ect), except for him. If he was surrounded by all that his whole life, wouldn't he have those characteristics? Perhaps he's just predisposed to having the very northernish characterists he has?

Maybe this is comming down to the nature vs. nurture thing, but do people have enough free will to defy their nature and nurture?

There are many things that shape us. For example, we want to create identities for ourselves. Your friend could have a concious or unconcious need for defining herself as a black person and you can do that by adopting a behaviour that you regard as "typical black".

I do something similar, I adopt behaviour that I think of as manly because I want to define myself as a man. I also have a very norwegian mindset which I think can be very different from f.ex many americans on this site, but that doesn't mean I would be a typical norwegian had I been raised in America.

Interestingly, the colour of your skin is often not such a good way to "rate" how distant or close your genetic relation to someone else is. Sometimes, two peoples with the same skin tone are further apart genetically then they are to someone of a radically different skintone. Interbreeding between races makes this even harder.

In the end, we're all basically adapted the same and I think if there were no cultures, that would be appearant.


(your BF could've had a good upbringing or maybe he just makes an effort to behave well around you. There are many possible explanations besides race.)

I don't see any evidence for a biological relation between race and behavior. You're going to have to bring in way more than anecdotal evidence to prove it too.

*Let me first be clear in saying that I do not think one race is superior to another race. That is white supremacists bull**** in the finest.

I haven't taken biology in a long ass time so I might get some of this wrong. As I understand it the concept of a race refers to gene frequincies in a population, and the different races are often defined by their inherited characteristics determined by these gene frequencies.

Would you deny that all people are born with certain characteristics from different family members? Studies of twins separated at birth show that they can have identical characteristics even if they grew up in different cultures. So if a person has a strong racial family history (I am not referring to people who are a plethora of different races) of liking strawberries with whipped cream would they not be more likely predisposed to liking strawberries with whipped cream.

Do they have a choice on whether they like strawberries and whipped cream? Or at the moment they were conceived in the back of a pick up truck it was destined that they would like strawberries with whipped cream?

Genes are of course very important, it's just that I don't think there's a lot of genetic basis for big differences in behaviour across races. Within each big race, there would be a lot of variety in genes affecting behaviour - likely so much that separating genetically caused behaviour from culturally caused behaviour is practically impossible.

I understand you wanna say something like "on average, asians are more genetically disposed to certain kinds of behaviour than black people", but I think that argument is on shaky grounds. It's also hard to test. ;)