Free will is an essential component of all Judeo-Christian religions. People have to have a choice of whether to sin or not. They must be able to choose to ask forgiveness for their sins. If a person has no choice but to sin unrepentantly then sending them to hell is more than a bit unfair. Even God cannot fairly punish someone for doing something that he forced them to do. If God created someone who absolutely had to sin and not care about the consequences it would be the height of spitefulness to send them to hell for it. So, I think it is safe to say that for the whole heaven and hell thing to be fair everyone must have free will. But, If God is omniscient, do we really control our own actions?
If you ask any christian they will say that God already knows how everything is going to turn out. According to them, he knows every single detail of every single thing that will happen in the entirety of the lifetime of the Universe. He knew that if he created the Universe you would come into existence and that you would do all of the things that you will do in the course of your life. He had the choice of whether to create the Universe and make these things happen or not. Free will is nonexistent in this case. If God knows beforehand that you will have no choice but to act in a certain way because of what he did, who is really responsible?
There are only four possible answers to this question that I can see;
1) No one has free will and God will punish unbelievers unfairly.
2) No one has free will and God is taking all the blame.
3) We have free will, God doesn't know the entire future and punishment can be justified.
4) There is no such thing as God.
I don't think any christian would be happy with any of these possibilities. Please post if you have thought of other options.
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Question - do you know exactly what your son will do when you tell him to do something. Example - take out the trash.
ReplyDeleteDo you still punish him for not taking out the trash despite the fact that you know exactly what he would do.
I will respond to the rest when I get a chance - I'm supposed to be working right now.
I don't know ahead of time whether he will take out the trash, though I may strongly suspect that he will not. I always have a hope that my child will do the right thing. The point of punishing him is to teach him through direct experience that there are consequences for doing wrong. If I do my job right, he will eventually do the right thing. I don't know in advance when that will be.
ReplyDeletePunishment that God gives people by sending them to hell is very different than the punishment that I give my son. There is no chance for the sinner to learn about the consequences and then take action to correct their behavior. The consequences are permanent and there is no chance to make ammends. Once your in hell your there for good.
I am not following, how does God knowing something will happen invalidate freewill? I am not talking about whether it is fair or not. We can argue that after we establish that freewill and God's omniscience are not mutually exclusive. I submit that your list is inconclusive.
ReplyDelete5.) We have freewill that God gave us, God will judge us according to our deeds.
Just because God knows about the outcome ahead of time does not violate the logic. Using your argument I could say that it is unfair for lawmakers to pass a bill allowing capital punishment. They know ahead of time that someone will violate the law, and that a judge will sentence someone to death for it. How is this not the same thing?
If anyone can accurately predict the future of the Universe given a set of initial conditions, then free will no longer exists whether they are God or not. If your actions can be exactly predetermined, there is no free will.
ReplyDeleteI will borrow an example from Physics in hopes of clarifying what I mean. During the era when Newton's ideas about the motions of bodies in the Universe held sway, scientist were worried that the idea of free will might have to be abandoned. They were worried because given Newton's laws of motion and the position and momentum of every particle in the Universe it would be theoretically possible to predict the positions of every particle as time passed whether the particle was part of a person or not. Hence given a set of initial data it would be possible to predict the entire history of the Universe.
If your actions depend on the initial conditions of the Universe then your actions are not really under your control. If God knows exactly what will happen then that means he has essentially solved this equation.
When Quantum Mechanics came on to the scene many scientists were relieved. Quantum Mechanics states that the state of an object cannot be predicted beforehand with 100% accuracy. In fact, the more you know about the position of a particle the less you know about its momentum and vice versa. I'm simplifying things immensely with what follows, but it could no longer be said that the initial conditions of the Universe could be exactly determined. What's more the progression of the Universe through time becomes more random in nature due to the random way in which particles tend to act when they are small enough that quantum mechanics dominates their behavior. The people who were worried about free will before were very relieved that quantum mechanics allowed things to be so "fuzzy". Now there is some degree of randomness to the Universe and its time progression is no longer as predictable. However, all they really did was replace a deterministic interpretation of the laws of Physics with a non deterministic one that depended on random chance. I don't know which is better, to have your actions be totally predetermined or that they be subjected to random chance.
The idea that God has a way to determine the entire history of the Universe means that for him the Universe works on some sort of scheme that is similar to the Newtonian model. What's more, he set the initial conditions. He is therefore the one that is responsible for the way our lives turn out, not you and me.
Putting it another way. At the very beginning, he knew everything that each and every one of us would do before he created the Universe. He had the choice of whether to create it or not knowing full well what would happen. If someone knows what will happen if they take a course of action and they have the choice of whether to do it or not, they are the ones responsible for the outcome. There is absolutely no way around that.
You are using Physics and Quantum Physics. I am not a physicists but from what I understand of your response it is possible that the universe is operating under both randomness and non-randomness at the same time. We can accurately predict what will happen given a rock falling from a certain height (physics) - there is randomness in energy at the atomic level (quantum physics). Isn't this exactly what free will within an ordered system is about?
ReplyDeleteThe biggest problem with your response is that you are using science. God by his very definition is a being outside of time, space as we know it. You are using proofs from within the machine to analyze the limitations of a being outside of it. How can you logically do that?
To take the other side of the argument, why is the lack of free will a problem? From the perspective of Christianity there are many who take your deterministic model to heart, they are called Calvinists. While I do not agree with everything they say, I do agree with their principles. One is that God is sovereign. From that perspective he is "responsible" for everything. He has ordained everything. Since everything is his anyway, he created it, he can do with it whatever he wants.
Question - do you consider Eisenhower responsible for the deaths at D-Day? There was a massive loss of life, Eisenhower was the one who planned it, he ordained it, set it in motion. Those men’s lives were his responsibility, he was in charge. Was he responsible? Yes.
There is an interesting problem here. If God created us as robots to do exactly what he wanted we would be like animals. He could have done this. He choose to give man choice, knowing what he would do with that choice. Without choice there is no individual. To say that he was wrong for doing so would assume that you know the end of all things, and that you are fit to judge the means of the end. Eisenhower knew that men would die; he judged the ends justified the means.
Eisenhower new men would die on D-day if he did what he did and he is at least a little responsible for those deaths. If you were able to ask him I'm sure he would tell you the same thing. Any good officer would feel the same way.
ReplyDeleteI was using science mainly as an example of how free will is thrown out the window if everything is known beforehand. But, you can use science to talk about God.
If God exists, then he created science and it is therefore possible to reach conclusions about his nature based on what he decided to create. Therefore, using science to talk about God is not necessarily automatically incorrect. I will agree that God is not completely definable through Science alone. Which brings me to my next point.
God is not totally alien to reality, if the Bible can be believed, he interfered with reality on a regular bases in Biblical times. Based on the nature of that interference even more can be learned. The intersection of these two facts are where I draw my conclusions from.
There are really two aspects to what we have been discussing. Whether freewill exists if everything is predetermined. That isn't really arguable given the definition of the word "predetermined". If the future can be known in total in advance by anyone then free will doesn't exist.
The other aspect is responsibility. If God knew everything that would happen in advance and he created the Universe anyway then he, not you and me, is responsible for every single thing that happens. God is the prime cause without that prime cause nothing can happen. If that prime cause is intelligent and has a choice of whether are not to initiate reality then the prime cause is responsible. Again, this is not really disputable. I think you'll agree that if I personally set in motion a chain of events I am responsible for the results of those events whether I know the out come or not. Why would you hold God to a lower standard?
Sorry for taking so long to post back.
ReplyDeleteI would ask on what basis you are making your statement. You say that it isn’t arguable. How do you make this statement, that is making a claim of truth and you have no grounds on which to make a claim of truth.
Your argument is the classic one regarding free will and omniscience.
1.) You have free will and can choose A or B
2.) God is all knowing - by this we mean that he knows what you will choose.
3.) God knows you will choose A.
4.) You have no choice because God already knows what you will choose.
I am saying that your logic is flawed. I reject #4. Knowing and choosing are to independent actions. You could have chosen B - God would have known that you would choose B instead of A, that does not change the free will choice. There is no active interference by God. There is no compulsion to do either A or B. The logic you are using is flawed. You make the jump from knowing to directing.
Here is the equivalent of what you are doing.
4+2 = 6
3*2 = 6
12/2 = 6
Since the result of all of these operations is 6 then all of these operations must be the same thing. I am using a elementary example - you could do the same with physics or statistics. You are getting the same result but the way you get there is two completely different things. You wouldn’t call the two operations the same thing in mathematics, yet that is what you are doing with freewill and omniscience.
We are talking about two things but they are related. Freewill means that you are responsible for your actions. There maybe a prime cause in the universe, much in the same way that Eisenhower was the prime cause of the D-Day invasion. All the men bound for Omaha beach had a choice of whether to be there. Forcing someone to participate in an invasion would be impossible. They had choices, jump off the boat, hide, etc... They made the choice to be there.
I will make a statement for you. Without God you have no basis on which to make truth claims. You have a system that does not acknowledge the ability to declare truth. You have a system that begins with man (humanism) and attempts to reach out from himself as a starting point. There is a huge problem with that, you are a finite point, mankind is a finite point, you are grasping at the infinite using the finite. This system will not stand. It ends in despair.
You made the statement in your first post that you had given religion a “shot” and found it lacking. Have you considered the end of your system. The system that begins with man as the fundamental ends with his death into despair. Look at modern art, look at modern philosophy. Philosophy, the study of truth, ended with existentialism. The idea that you were a point of reference unto yourself, that you made your world, your reality. You make yourself a god. Your the golden calf. Sounds a lot like the first sin to me - “you will be like the most high”.
If you start with man as a reference everything is subjective. Laws are arbitrary rules set by a group of men. You have no way of saying something is right and something is wrong. You don’t want to live that way though. You want justice if someone hits you, or steals from you.
I submit that your system is flawed, and that your “unarguable” conclusions are not only arguable but flawed and false.
It is unarguable given the definition of the word "predetermined". If something is predetermined then the choice has already been made. Also, it is not you that is making the choice. God knew how everything was going to turn out BEFORE he created the universe. HE had the choice of whether to create it or not. Therefore, he is responsible for ALL consequences of that creation. It cannot be any other way. I think you'll agree that I'm responsible for the consequences of my actions even though I don't know how everything is going to turn out. Are you going to hold God to a lower standard of infalability than poor little me?
ReplyDeleteWe are not talking about the term predetermined - we are talking about omniscience. We are asking whether God KNOWS not whether God predetermines. Free will and omniscience can exist together.
ReplyDeleteI doubt we will come to agreement on this, people way smarter than I have been arguing for centuries over this issue.
Here is my stance.
God is all knowing. He created man in his image and gave man free will, which is the ability to choose. Man choose to try to become a god himself when he fell (it will make you like the most high). God knew this would happen but judged the end of all things worth the suffering. If you knew the end of all things, and were perfect then you would be fit to judge. As a Christian I do hold that God is sovereign over all creation. As a Christian I believe that God gave his son to save man, if again they made that choice.
So to omniscience (not predetermination - this is something different) it can live very well next to free will. God knows, he doesn't command.
4+2=6 - Omniscience
12/2=6 - Free Will
These are not the same operation. You are calling them the same thing though.
I think that your thought process in regards to predestination and free will is logical, given your assumptions and your frame of reference. The problem is that your constricting yourself to the human frame of reference. Heres a site that might explain the problem with frame of reference through an example that Einstein gave:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.faithprinciples.com/open.htm
Frame of reference or worldview is always a problem between theists and naturalists or “materialists” as CS Lewis called them. Naturalists believe that the cosmos is a box. Nothing is outside it, and everything in it can be measured or seen by one of the senses. Theists believe that there is something outside that box, and things outside the box cannot be seen when your inside the box. And if are a naturalists, then yes, if we already know the result of something, then there cannot be any free will. But if you believe that there is something outside the universe (which usually leads to the belief in a higher power) then you cannot use the same assumptions.
And the conversation so far has been restricted by those assumptions. As one example, most theists believe that since God is outside of this universe, concepts such as Time don’t work. The word predestination shows the limits of our language, because pre- assumes that something comes before something else. But if Time is a human invention and does pertain to God, then the common understanding of predestination is taken from the wrong frame of reference.
Now, we don’t know what Gods frame of reference is like, as we are part of the cosmos and cannot see out of our box to view God, so we cannot use this frame of reference to fully prove freewill and predestination. But we are no longer using the human frame of reference that would require that they are mutually exclusive.
So, before you can really start a discussion on free will and predestination, you have to make one important assumption. You have to answer the question, does a higher power exist? That might be frustrating, because maybe you wanted to use this topic to prove or disprove that, but you can’t. Whether or not you believe in a God determines whether free will and predestination are mutually exclusive or not.
CS Lewis, who switched from atheist to Christian on completely intellectual level originally, realized the issue that is it hard to determine the existence of God if he is indeed outside the cosmos and undetectable to us through the scientific method. Lewis felt that if there was a God, then the evidence would be found in his creations, namely, humans. I think studying the nature of man is the way to go if you want to prove/disprove God. “Mere Christianity” succinctly explains Lewis’s thoughts on this topic. And while I’m tossing out books, “The Question of God: CS Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life” contrasts the naturalist and theists worldviews of Freud and Lewis in an objective manner.
Andrew,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment. I will review the material you reference and give it some thought. However, my initial thought is that other reference frames are irrelevant as long as things can be predetermined in this one.