Why is Free Will so important, anyway?
Offline Most theists seem to use the Free Will argument to explain evil and suffering. And most atheists argue back that free will is no excuse for the degree of evil. Both sides usually try to make free will fit in one way or another because we instintively think it's of vital importance. I'd like to ask, why is free will necessary?
As Bandangle asked in another post, "Let me ask you this: which would you have preferred: that God created you WITH free will or WITHOUT?"
I'm pressuming it was a rhetorical question and the expected response is, "WITH free will, of course!"
But I'm not going to say that. Instead I want to take a different approach. While I'm quite convinced the Free Will argument does not work I'll pretend for a moment that it does and answer the question a different way.
If I could get rid of hunger, poverty, disease, war, rape, torture, and all the other horrendous acts of humans (and nature) that cause suffering, yes, I would sacrifice free will. And what would be wrong with that? You might argue that would be sad and we'd be bored and unhappy. Not if you consider God could have created us in any way imagineable (and probably ways unimagineable) and could have created us to be perfectly content with no free will. In fact, it would have been just as easy for him to create us so that we were downright ecstactic about the idea of having no free. Yes, we could have been created as deliriously happy robot-like creatures. But, if we were deliriously happy about not having free will, if we were deliriously happy about being robot-like beings, then why would we care that we didn't have free will? We wouldn't want it because God would have created us to not want it. So what? Everyone talks of free will as if it's this magical wonderful thing we should want above all else. (And here I'm talking strictly about free will pertaining to God, not to be confused with "freedom" as in free from restrictions imposed by other humans.) But why? If God tells us that without free will we will live happy, peaceful lives, but with free will we will have disease, war, and other miseries, why should we ever strive for the latter?
So, considering God could have made us not want free will, he could have made us learn or know everything we need to know without free will, he could have made us perfectly content, happy, peaceful, God-loving beings without free will, why do theists insist it's so vital that we retain our free will?
"The Bible looks like it started out as a game of Mad Libs" - Bill Maher
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Well, I know I hate talking about it. I've always considered it to be a flimsy concept and a sure way to get into a useless circular argument. I don't run into too many theists who appeal to it these days; I think they're as uncomfortable with it as anyone else given that their answers aren't all that great. I've always wondered why a creature with a sinful nature as determined by the actions of its ancestors can be considered to have any more free will than creature that is effectively the accidental result of a quantum fluctuation.
"The whole conception of God is a conception derived from ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men."
--Bertrand Russell
We need to have free will so that we can choose to either follow God or disobey and walk away in sin. Theists have to insist that we have free will to support the argument we need God's help to be saved through the sacrifice of his son. If we didn't have a choice then we don't need to be saved by Jesus. It all would be on God not us as he would be the only one in control to alter any outcome. No free will equals no need for salvation which is why they argue so hard for it. Atheists argue if the game is played the way they say and God knows all outcomes then there isn't free will anyway. The game is played only for God's grotesque enjoyment of his weak minded creations. Theists never seem to get that part at all. Omniscience and omnipotence means he knows it all and can change it. If you can make the rules and know the outcome the game is rigged and you can't win. This means you can't remove free will from man and have theism especially Christianity as anything meaningful. It wouldn't be.
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"I guess it's time to ask if you live under high voltage power transmission lines which have been shown to cause stimulation of the fantasy centers of the brain due to electromagnetic waves?" - Me
"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.
The normal theist repsonse is 'because god didn't want robots.He wants us to choice to serve him.' The fact that he could have created us to not know or care about the difference seems irelevant.
I wonder though,the world you describe seems to match the Garden of Eden. Did Adam have free will? God spoke and lived plainly with him,so he had no doubts as to god's existence.Why doesn't god do this today? It'd save alot of trouble.
IMO,the fact that we still only have two choices,heaven or hell,does not constitute free will anyway.If that's god's idea of free will, I don't want to see his dictatorship.
Theists love free will because it's a cop out to many arguments. That's what I say. To even suggest free will can exist with a all knowing being doesn't make sense. "Yes,god knows beforehand what you will do, but you're still free to do something else."
Whatever.
Psalm 14:1 "the fool hath said in his heart there is a God"-From a 1763 misprinted edition of the bible
Argument from Sadism: Theist presents argument in a wall of text with no punctuation and wrong spelling. Atheist cannot read and is forced to concede.
But if God created us as happy, peaceful, God-loving robot-like beings incapable of sin in the first place then why would we need salvation?
It's kind of like the argument that there must be evil so we can learn the difference between good and evil. But, actually, if evil didn't exist, we'd have absolutely no need to know the difference, now would we?
There'd be no need for salvation from sin if sin never existed. And God could certainly have created us incapable of sin. To give us free will with the capacity to sin does make it appear their God is just doing things for his own amusement. It's certainly not for my benefit because I'd obviously be better off in the no-free-will world that contains no sin or suffering.
"The Bible looks like it started out as a game of Mad Libs" - Bill Maher
So then God is giving us free will for his own amusement, not for our benefit in any way. Obviously, it's only caused us misery. So it comes to God being the creator of evil ... and he's an ass hole for finding amusement in our suffering.
"The Bible looks like it started out as a game of Mad Libs" - Bill Maher
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"I guess it's time to ask if you live under high voltage power transmission lines which have been shown to cause stimulation of the fantasy centers of the brain due to electromagnetic waves?" - Me
"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.
I've observed that theists versed in a little bit of philosophy get really twitchy about free will, but for a different reason than some that have been mentioned. To put it simply, free will is almost as nonsensical as "supernatural."
Think about it. What does free will mean? The standard answer is that it is the ability to choose. However, this simplistic definition runs into some serious problems. The first is that we do not have the ability to choose in many cases. For instance, I cannot choose to believe that my hands do not exist. With relation to god belief, it's the same. None of us can "choose" to believe in god any more than we can choose to believe in underpants gnomes.
It may seem a trivial point, but it's important to note that nobody can choose anything that isn't possible. I can't choose to fly to the moon by flapping my wings and then actually do it. I can't choose to be female when I wake up tomorrow. This becomes really important in a minute.
Even when speaking of things that we routinely call arbitrary choices, there are problems. Suppose I get to choose between pasta or steak for dinner. Which will I choose? To you, my choice will seem more or less arbitrary, but am I really making an arbitrary judgment? Suppose I choose steak. The words, "I think I'll have the steak" really mean "based on the way I feel right now, I desire steak more than pasta." Can I choose to desire pasta more than steak, or am I really just following the unconscious mandate of neurons? I can not really control what I'm in the mood for. I can, however, act on something other than what I would most prefer. If I know that steak gives me an upset stomach, I can opt for the pasta. Is this really a choice, though? My neurons have fired, and I think that the best option is not the one I desire the most. Can I change that feeling arbitrarily? Nope.
In the end, we get to an uncomfortable conclusions. People always do what they think is best.
Read that again, because it's counterintuitive, but true. When you do something "against your better judgment," what you're really doing is admitting that in this instance, you think (for whatever reason) that despite lots of good reasons not to do a thing, things will be better in some way if you do.
People always do what they think is best. It cannot be any other way. So, is there really such a thing as choice? This may sound like behaviorist reductionism, and in a way, I suppose it is. I don't mean to imply that choice doesn't exist in a colloquial sense, or that we are not responsible for our actions, or any other nonsense like that. However, the distinction is very important for the question of "Free Will and God." A theist need not admit to evolution or materialism to be confounded by the dilemma inherent in the definition of free will.
Either "choices" are arbitrary or they are determined by real factors. If they are determined by real factors, what does "choice" actually mean?
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
It seems, that free will is a kind of illusion. The more developed the being is (emotionally, morally, spiritually, and so on) the less of the free will it has. Experiences and wisdom takes away your freedom to make wrong choices. When you too well know, what is right, you don't really have any other choice, than to do things well.
When someone takes away your freedom, you still know, what it is like, you still want freedom, you won't lose it in your heart and memory, but the awareness I described, is probably the end of a concept of free will. It doesn't matter then, what you want, what you must, what you should, what you will do, all this is just one thing, the only right thing to do. I don't say I mind it, after all, everything we do is meant to be a good choice, and by time, we will be able to make only good choices, nothing less.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
I would say you are entirely able to believe this.However,believing it won't make it any more true. I'm sure there are many people who firmly believe that they are in contact with aliens(or god) or can fly, or other things. It just doesn't affect the actual facts.
Psalm 14:1 "the fool hath said in his heart there is a God"-From a 1763 misprinted edition of the bible
Argument from Sadism: Theist presents argument in a wall of text with no punctuation and wrong spelling. Atheist cannot read and is forced to concede.
It seems, that free will is a kind of illusion. The more developed the being is (emotionally, morally, spiritually, and so on) the less of the free will it has. Experiences and wisdom takes away your freedom to make wrong choices. When you too well know, what is right, you don't really have any other choice, than to do things well.
When someone takes away your freedom, you still know, what it is like, you still want freedom, you won't lose it in your heart and memory, but the awareness I described, is probably the end of a concept of free will. It doesn't matter then, what you want, what you must, what you should, what you will do, all this is just one thing, the only right thing to do. I don't say I mind it, after all, everything we do is meant to be a good choice, and by time, we will be able to make only good choices, nothing less.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Yeah, we know that. But the theists always seem to ignore that. The whole point of the Free Will argument is to blame Mankind for the existence of evil, not God. To theists God is the innocent observer, heartbroken over our disobedience and the misery we have brought upon ourselves.
"The Bible looks like it started out as a game of Mad Libs" - Bill Maher
You miss my point entirely. I can believe this, but I cannot choose to believe it. I can convince myself to believe it. The two are very different.
Irrelevant to the point.
And they cannot arbitrarily choose to believe otherwise. Only if they believe contrary evidence will they change their belief. They cannot choose to believe evidence. They simply do or do not.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
You can't choose to do the impossible, but you can choose to believe the impossible. You could, in fact, choose to believe your hands dont' exist. But then you would be put in a little white room with a paper cup full of pills. For some reason, though, belief in supernatural beings is not yet considered insane.
"The Bible looks like it started out as a game of Mad Libs" - Bill Maher
Actually I'd say you can't CHOOSE to believe your hands don't exist - you could go insane and wind up believing it, but that's not a choice. You could PRETEND to believe it for some reason, but you won't really believe it.
Matt Shizzle has been banned from the Rational Response Squad website. This event shall provide an atmosphere more conducive to social growth. - Majority of the mod team
Ok, I understand what you're saying. But theists want to believe we do in fact have free will and the ability to choose any way we want. As the quote in the OP implies, we should want free will more than we should want world peace and an end to disease, famine, and other suffering. So, whether free will actually exists or not, what do thiests think is so damned great about having free will anyway when it only results in our misery?
"The Bible looks like it started out as a game of Mad Libs" - Bill Maher
I totally agree.
I chose to believe in God about as much as I chose who my parents are. That's why I always get onto people who criticize others' beliefs--the notion that anyone chose to have this belief or that is an illusion, for the reasons you just stated.
That's not to say that I'm a Calvinist--if I am, it's descriptively rather than prescriptively. I don't particularly feel as though I chose to believe or was chosen to believe. I think it's much more tangible, physiological, and psychological than that. My genes, my upbringing, and my surroundings have much more to do with my beliefs than choosing or being chosen, whatever those things may mean.
Upbringing and surroundings I can see. I have a hard time seeing a genetic predisposition to God belief. Are you comparing it to an addiction (for which there is genetic predisposition)?
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
Free will, in the sense that theists use it, requires the existence of a supernatural soul that is not subject to naturalistic forces or even logical cause-and-effect.
Ask yourself where a free choice would come from in a human brain. Every thought, every concept is a mental state that is perfectly dependent on the mental state that preceded it. As Hamby pointed out, even the most arbitrary, baseless choice you can make is at least due to a particular arrangement of neurons and a particular sequence of firings that is, in turn, perfectly dependent on another prior state an instant before. With enough calculating power, we could trace every thought that we have back to the moment of our first brain activity. Free will has nowhere to be. Even if, as some have theorized, brain activity is fundamentally quantum and therefore subject to Uncertainty, all that means is decisions ultimately boil down to a perfectly random coin flip. What is free about that?
We are machines, ladies and gentlemen, just very complicated ones.
Lazy is a word we use when someone isn't doing what we want them to do.
- Dr. Joy Brown
No, not an addiction. More like personality traits inherited from my parents that made me more interested in irrationality, which includes but is not limited to theism.
It is strange that we have no free will when it comes to the single most important events of our lives. Before we are even born, it appears god violates our free will.He creates us without consent,then sets us on a path he knows will either lead to heaven or hell.
Psalm 14:1 "the fool hath said in his heart there is a God"-From a 1763 misprinted edition of the bible
Argument from Sadism: Theist presents argument in a wall of text with no punctuation and wrong spelling. Atheist cannot read and is forced to concede.
No offense man, but you sound like those ungrateful teenagers on Sally Jesse Raphael who say things to their parents like "I didn't choose to be born, so I don't have to do what you say!!"
I think he sounds more like Fulke Greville:
"The whole conception of God is a conception derived from ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men."
--Bertrand Russell
I previously thought there was some sort of free choice but I see that isn't really true is it? That even random chance affects us in the same way where it is considered based on data availability. The event is considered and a choice is made based on data though sometimes emotions alter it to some degree. Unstable emotions and mental imbalance may result in decisions that don't fit this pattern. But that is another topic entirely.
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"I guess it's time to ask if you live under high voltage power transmission lines which have been shown to cause stimulation of the fantasy centers of the brain due to electromagnetic waves?" - Me
"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.
I don't want to derail this thread with a long explanation, but consider this for a minute. Emotions serve a purpose, right? If we didn't need them for something, they wouldn't have evolved. What is that purpose?
If you ponder the things that virtually all humans do -- form long term mating bonds, make babies, and sacrifice tons of their own resources in these pursuits, you realize that human behavior is not individually rational. In other words, it benefits the human species for us to mate and make babies, but it is a net loss for an individual to do it.
Why do we do it anyway? Because we're emotional. Emotions are a natural adaptation that helps us be irrational so the species can survive.
Think of it the other way around. If it was perfectly rational to be altruistic and giving and self sacrificing and to make babies, why would the emotions have developed in the first place? Natural selection doesn't spend millions of years building complex neurological circuitry that is just fluff around the edges. If we didn't need our emotions, they wouldn't be here.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
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"I guess it's time to ask if you live under high voltage power transmission lines which have been shown to cause stimulation of the fantasy centers of the brain due to electromagnetic waves?" - Me
"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.
Yep.
I wasn't clear. I wasn't trying to correct you, but rather add another element to the conversation. It gets really tricky talking about emotions when you realize that one of their primary purposes, it appears, is to make us do irrational things.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
____________________________________________________________
"I guess it's time to ask if you live under high voltage power transmission lines which have been shown to cause stimulation of the fantasy centers of the brain due to electromagnetic waves?" - Me
"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.
Even emotions are only brain chemistry following a certain pathway based on a previously existing state of mind. They certainly are not under the control of the consciousness, so they are not "free" in any sense. But they do not result in thoughts or behavior that is "free" of pre-existing stimulus either. As I said, a powerful enough computer could predict every emotion you will have based on your present brain state and access to all of the input variables.
Since God is supposed to be such a computer, and he built us to be the way we are with perfect foreknowledge of all our actions, he is perfectly responsible for every evil thing that has ever occurred.
Lazy is a word we use when someone isn't doing what we want them to do.
- Dr. Joy Brown