Free will - its centrality to Christianity

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Free will - the capacity for choice that is neither determined nor random but a property of personal will - is central to Christianity, it is necessary to Christianity.

A Christian must accept as axiomatic that there is such a thing as free will; he may seek to elucidate the concept, but that there is free will cannot be doubted, nor should empirical or rational justification for its existence be sought, since there cannot be any such justification.

It is a perilous misdirection of motivation to look for a justification which intrinsically cannot be found.

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That humans posses free will is indeed common sense: the knowledge is spontaneous, ineradicable common sense; almost all of our behavior and social life is built on the assumption that free will is real.

The scope of free will, whether it is operative in a specific situation, the ways by which it is influenced by habit or coercion - such matters are legitimate topics for discussion or investigation; but that free will exists cannot coherently be challenged; and for Christians the fundamental operation of free will is a necessary component of the bedrock of reality. 

Free will may therefore be considered an aspect of natural law; an aspect without which other aspects of natural law make no sense.

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To doubt such axioms as free will is not a coherent strategy: all specific doubts must be based on (at least implicit, if not explicit) acceptance of axioms. Universal skepticism is rationally impossible. To doubt free will is simply incoherent. 

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However, precisely because free will is so fundamental a phenomenon, and even though we know what free will does, it is impossible to define with precision what free will is or how it works.

So the mechanism of free will, its inner causality, its strength, physics, psychology, neuroscience... such matters cannot be investigated nor analyzed.

Obviously not.

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Those who have a problem with free will, who are puzzled by it (which puzzlement has more of the nature of a pathology than of a legitimate topic for curiosity) are likely to be misled by the questions they ask.

The framing of specific questions that are intrinsically unanswerable leads, with a strong tendency, to misleading or plain false answers - because when a question is irrelevant the answer must be a non sequitur.

Curiosity based on mistaken formulation of the nature of free will cannot, therefore, legitimately be satisfied: at most curiosity may become distracted or simply exhausted.

Or the failure to satisfy personal curiosity or to allay personal dissatisfaction may be interpreted as some kind of refutation.

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For Christians, free will is one of the essential attributes of Man. Christian salvation entails free will: it is only understandable on the basis that Man is a creature with free will.

Other attributes are necessary for salvation as well as free will; and it is assumed that other creatures than Man may also possess free will - for instance angels.

But Man's free will constrains the whole scheme and system of Christian salvation - without free will the human condition - Man's meaning, purpose and relation with God - is nonsense.

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Therefore one cannot be a Christian and deny the reality of free will.

Of course what people say about free will, what people think they believe about free will, may not be an accurate description of their true beliefs.

But whatever he may say, or imagine, the Christian must truly believe in free will.

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This in itself is not a problem - since there is no genuine alternative.

However confusions over free will may have the effect of blocking Christian conviction: when a person thinks that free will may not be true, or may not be coherent, or may be explained away in terms of (say) social pressure, psychology or neuroscience... then such doubts and worries may also block consideration of Christianity since it is correctly perceived that the Christian model necessarily entails the operation of free will.

Because understanding (even at the most basic level) Christian salvation, entails understanding that free will is intrinsic to Man.

Free will is not an optional extra or added bonus, but intrinsic to humanity and to individual destiny.

Reality only makes sense in terms of free will.  

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Why then does free will strike so many modern people as so vague and elusive and doubtful a concept?

The answer is that this is precisely what happens when humans try to deny the validity of their built-in nature and knowledge; when human challenge, subvert and invert natural law. When humans try to pursue a strategy of skepticism.

What results is not a deeper and more secure understanding - but no understanding at all, mere error and confusion, and if the skepticism is not recognized as a snare then this state of error and confusion may be permanent.

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A culture like ours, which encourages, and indeed enforces, the systematic denial of all forms of natural law, will therefore permanently be unable to perceive or engage with reality.

To challenge, debate and 'investigate' the reality of free will as if it were a mere hypothesis is therefore a one-way door to nihilism: to implicit denial of the reality of the real.

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Understanding free will

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I have always regarded free will as axiomatically real - in the sense that if you doubt free will then you doubt everything - but always had a problem in saying what it was, how it worked, how (in a world of cause and effects) anything could be free. 

When I became a Christian, at first this did not change. I was pleased to find that Thomas Aquinas firmly asserted the reality of free will, but was disappointed to discover that he did not elucidate it but simply regarded it as a gift from God.

I was happy with this until I began to discuss the matter with 'WmJas' on his blog 'Bugs to Fearen Babes Withal'. The thing about WmJas is that if he does not understand something, he does not pretend to understand it - and he could not understand my attempted Aquinas summary (probably because there isn't really anything to 'understand' - it is simply a set of doctrines set down next to each other).

WmJas shook my faith in the adequacy of the Aquinas approach. I began to think: it is all very well to say we have free will and why - but what is it that we have?

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The problem is that we generally talk and think as if everything has a cause, and every cause has a cause, and this leads to an infinite regress - so there is no space for free will to enter in to the causal chain.

My approach was then to ask where or what there is that that certainly does have free will?

The answer for secular materialists is - nothing. Free will is excluded by the assumptions.

But for Christians? God has free will for sure.

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God has free will because God is an uncaused cause.

In fact, that is one of the divine attributes - albeit not expressed in this kind of philosophical language; but people understand that God wants and chooses without being 'influenced' by anyone or anything - he is the primary origin of motivations and actions.

I found this helpful, indeed it made a big difference to know that free will entails the property of being an uncaused cause.

But then, if God has free will, do humans have free will?

We already know that answer to that; and the answer is yes, humans do have free will - because divine revelation (e.g. the Bible) tells us that humans must be able to choose, in and of and from themselves, because humans are again and again choosing God, or choosing to reject God.

In fact, Christianity does not make any sense as Christianity unless humans have real free will. The ability really to choose is absolutely at the core of it.

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So, since humans have free will - does that mean that everything alive also has free will?

No, only humans, and maybe a few other entities - but the point is that free will is not a universal property.

(Indeed it strikes me that a universe of universal free will would be a universe without causality - chaotic.)

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But how could it be that only God and humans have free will? That is a very important question - and the answer is not one likely to be universally agreed on. But the obvious inference seems to be that God and Man share free will because God and Man share 'divinity' - and free will is a divine attribute.

This is NOT to say God and Man are the same, that would be absurd and is false - but that, at least to this important extent, God and Man are of the same kind: they are both the kind of thing which have free will, are autonomous agents, sharing the capacity to originate action: both God and Man are uncaused causes.  

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My conclusion - Humans have free will for sure, and this is an essential component of Christianity, and the only other sure example of free will is God - thus free will is a divine attribute - something we share with God.

And this implies that humans, even as they are in mortal earthly life and in sin, are divine beings - since only divine beings are autonomous agents.

(For Aquinas, the need for an uncaused cause, and unmoved mover, is one of the strongest arguments for a god.)

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Does this analysis make a difference? To me it certainly does. I now feel I know what kind of thing free will is, what essential properties it has and what it means.

This description also clarifies why secular materialism (mainstream modern culture) cannot talk sense about free will - because they deny the divine and without the divine there can be no uncaused causes and  no space for free will - merely an infinite regress of causation.

It also clarifies that any Christians who deny free will, and the autonomy of human agency, are (to that extent) wrong - and it is also wrong to overemphasize the earthly and sinful nature of Man when the reality is that we are mixed beings who contain this divine attribute of free will - and (since this is a divine attribute, not a mortal contingency) this is true no matter how depraved we are.

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In other words, getting a clearer understanding of free will has led to a clearer understanding of much else - it has turned out to be a very important 'breakthrough' indeed!

(Thanks to the stubborn refusal of WmJas to acknowledge that my previous mode of understanding was adequate. The Socratic method, perhaps?) 

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Notes on 'Free Will' (or agency), God and Creation

There are so many incoherent ideas-about and explanations-of Free Will, and yet its reality is so vitally important, that this is something that almost everybody needs to sort-out for themselves (assuming that they cannot ignore the explanations).

For Christians, Free Will is at the heart of the religion; and indeed, when (as has quite often happened) Christians neglect the matter of Free Will then the whole nature and practice of the religion gravitates into something quite un-Christian.

Indeed, when Free Will is taken out of Christianity, we get something approximating to Islam - in which obedience to God's will becomes the central virtue.

Nonetheless, taking Free Will seriously (as I think we must) takes us to places a long way from mainstream Christianity

1. Free Will is about thinking, not about actions. (Necessary to avoid incoherence.) Free Will is not all of thinking, not even most of thinking: Free Will is one kind, and the most fundamental kind, of thinking.

2. Free Will needs to be considered an uncaused cause - that is, the thinking of Free Will cannot be explained in terms of being a consequence of anything else. So we should not try to do so.

3. This means that the thinking of Free Will can be observed only after it has emerged. We cannot, and never could, perceive what is going-on in Free Will: Free Will emerges from a black box. We might observe it as it emerges from the black box, but could never see it being formed. 

4. And when I say 'we' could not perceive or observe the workings or causes of Free Will - I also mean our-real-selves cannot do this. The (obvious) reason being that Free Will emerges-from our real-selves. So we-our-selves are in the position of observing thoughts as they emerge from our-selves - we can do so only after they have separated from ourselves.

5. What applies to our-selves also applies to God. God cannot, does not, perceive and know what is going-on where the thinking of Free Will comes-from. God cannot see-into our real selves; cannot analyse of Free Will: nothing can.

6. The 'workings' of Free Will are opaque, even to the creator - the reason is that God did not create that-which from-which Free Will emerges. That entity from-which Free Will (our real-selves) emerges is prior to creation.

7. God's creation works-around this; but Free Will is not a regrettable constraint. Creation is about bringing the Free Will of personal agents into voluntary, loving harmony and further creativity.

Note: What I have done above to is make a metaphysical assumption that Free Will is really-real and really-free (because implied and entailed by Christianity); and to reason from that assumption. 

The function of free will

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A comment from WmJas stimulated what seems the clarifying insight that the 'solution' to perplexity over free will is to understand the function of free will.

It is what free will does that is vital - not trying to understand what it is, or how it works.

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The essence of free will is that - although it is a natural, spontaneous and common-sensical understanding - free will is a theological concept.

Therefore, if we do not accept common sense, and try to elucidate the nature of free will in an atheist, non-transcendental, secular context - then confusion and error are inevitable.

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Because if we do not know, or deny, the function of free will - we cannot ever grasp what it is.

(How could we understand the eye if we did not know it was for seeing? - or rather, if we denied that vision was a possibility.)

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Aquinas (apparently) said that free will was given to Man by God; free will is not something found in most of the universe but was specifically given by God to Man (plus or minus other creatures, such as angels): free will is a defining feature of what it is to be human. 

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Implicitly, free will was made a property of humans in order that Man *may* become the kind of creature God intends. A creature that may, but is not compelled to, choose salvation.

The fact that the rest of the perceived universe seems to be either determined or random is irrelevant: free will is a divine gift, God makes it work in whatever way it does work.

And however free will does work, it is not the same way that other things work that we we come across in the world.

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But how free will works is not necessary to know - what we need to know is that we have it, and we use it to make choices: but to make the choices rightly we must accept that free will exists and that its use matters.

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The reason we have free will is made clear in any true account of Christian salvation: humans have free will so that we may choose rightly. The right choice must be chosen.

These choices can be dramatic, or they can be (and necessarily are) mundane.

Most people make these choices very frequently and unavoidably: they are the core business of human life - the choices that (could be said to) move us either towards heaven or towards hell, salvation or damnation, The Good or the Anti-Good, truth or lies, beauty or ugliness, virtue or sin. 

These choices are happening: it is a further matter of choice whether we acknowledge the fact. 

Furthermore the choices are obfuscated by all manner of things: our own original sin, our accumulations of previous bad choices, the malign or confused influence of others, denial of the reality of choices, transcendental purposive evil at work in the world...

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In such an account, free will should be, must be, regarded as non-problematic and essential. It is what we do with free will that matters; not definitions, nor descriptions, nor explanations of mechanisms.

But if (as modern man has done) we try to understand free will after subtracting (assuming the falseness or irrelevance) of God, creation, transcendental Goods, purposive evil etc - then it is not surprising that free will seems incoherent.

Instead of making right choices, we obsess over whether choices are real or how the choice mechanism works: a sure-fire recipe for ruin.

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Thus a society in which we obfuscate the central human activity of choice (moral choice of course, but also choices relating to truth and beauty; and to the unity of virtue, truth and beauty) - this would be and is a society intrinsically damned.

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NOTE: I accidentally changed the background colour of the text, and don't yet know how to revert it - sorry!

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Free will versus the Left brain - a 'fusion' of McGilchrist and Sheldrake?

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Reading Iain McGilchrist's The Master and his Emissary and mixing in some ideas from Rupert Sheldrake, provides me with what seems a very promising way of thinking about that long-standing philosophical chestnut - free will versus determinism.

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McG makes it clear that the Left hemisphere perceives reality in a deterministic way - as linear sequential chains of discrete causes and effects.

Yet the Left brain also has a problem, an intractable problem, of truly linking cause with effect, since reality is seen as static units resembling a 'snapshot' and it is difficult/ impossible to see how a cause statically-conceived can actually 'cause' anything.

But although the Left hemisphere can perceive that its own perspective is inadequate, it is intrinsically incapable of conceptualising anything else!

It has its precise and partial way of representing reality, and that is all that it can do.

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Determinism is like that.

If we conceptualise the world in terms of causes and effects, then of course then can be no free will since we have already decided that everything is caused by something else.

On the other hand, this assumption opens up an infinite regress (as Aristotle realised) which can only be terminated by a first cause or unmoved mover. For some reason, modern thinking never acknowledges this infinite regress of causality - just too impatient I guess...

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To assume that reality is conceptualised in terms of causal chains is and unfounded - it is not something that humanity has discovered.

Rather it is something that modern man cannot help doing.

We know it cannot be the whole truth - yet (we moderns, at least) cannot conceive of any other way of imagining things.

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Well, McGilchrist points to another way - the Right hemisphere way.

Whereas the Left sees reality as a sequence of snapshots, the Right sees reality as a dynamic whole.

A dynamic whole cannot be expressed in terms of a sequence of snapshots; but how can it be expressed?

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My notion is to conceive of Right brain function in terms of three-dimensional and dynamic morphic fields to complement the Left brain conceptualised in linear cause and effect sequences of static units.

(In reality, there are both linear sequences and morphic fields on both sides of the brain, considerable overlap - but McG is completely convincing that there is also a qualitative functional distinction, and this can be summarised - the point can be made - by treating the Left as if it were purely linear sequential and the Right as if it were a morphic field.)

This seems helpful to me; the idea of Right brain as a field of activity exerting its effects in a manner analogous to magnetic fields or gravitational fields.

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Note: by Sheldrake's account a morphic field imposes form, pattern, structure onto the system in it influence - organising disparate events and processes; furthermore the field is teleological, containing 'attractors' which dynamically shape the system towards goals.

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The Right brain (by this view) is in contact with the environment by being affected by other morphic fields - the gives it the distinctive 'holistic' grasp that the Left brain lacks.

McG conceives the optimal cognitive situation as being when the Right hemisphere dominates, using the Left for specific detailed processing tasks, then the Right taking up the results of Left processing and integrating them into the larger whole.

This could be imagined as the Right brain taking detached linear sequences of the Left brain (like strings of beads) and embedding them into dynamic three dimensional patterns of organisation - so that each causal sequence is put into its proper place and related to other sequences and to the much larger and dominant aspects of form that are not encoded as causal sequences...

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So, this picture of the brain would have free will as fundamentally a Right brain phenomenon; with free will operating as a field; this picture standing in contrast to free will being more usually (but incoherently) considered in a Left brain fashion, as the first, (somehow) uncaused and initiating step of a chain of causes and effects leading to obervable behaviour.

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I am suggesting that morphic fields, conceptualised in terms of McG's Right hemisphere functionality, could be considered a mechanism for the operation of free will, an explanation for 'how' it works.

This is, of course, merely a manner of thinking about free will: a new analogy which breaks the tyrannical power of free will conceptualised in terms of Left brain causal chains.

To see free will as a field does not describe what free will actually is, or what makes it free. In a sense the shift from linear to field thinking has only pushed back the explanation by another step - but this pushing back does create the space necessary as a preliminary to recognizing that the exclusion of free will is a metaphysical property of a form of representation, and that the exclusion of free will is not a property of the observed world.

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Because free will is a metaphysical concept, not a physical concept - free will cannot be discovered by science, but nor can its absence be discovered by science.

There is a very widespread notion that 'science' has discovered that free will is an illusion, never existed, was merely a religious dogma.

This is a mistake - the actual situation is that the assumptions and methods of science have made free will incomprehensible.

Modern people cannot even imagine what is meant by free will - and assume that this means that science has discovered the absence of free will, or discovered that free will is an unnecessary hypothesis.

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Free will is not a thing which is, or is not, out there in the natural world waiting to be detected - or found absent.

Free will is a metaphysical assumption - just as determinism is a metaphysical assumption.

But determinism is carrying the day in practise, because people cannot understand what kind of a thing free will might be. Public thought can only see reality as chains of cause and effect, and can only assume that every human act of will, every choice, must have had a cause or causes (whether we know them or not) - and therefore every act of will or choice can be explained-away.

People are simply locked into this way of thinking and can see no escape from it.

Perhaps understanding Left and Right brain differences, and thinking of causation in terms of organising fields instead of linear sequences, might open up the recognition that there is no 'must' about determinism.

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When we feel that reality 'must' be deterministic, we are simply reading-off the distal consequences of our proximate assumptions.

Change the assumptions, and determinism melts.

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Discussing free will: A problem with arguing about Christianity, is that most people most of the time don't understand what they are arguing-for

I'm a bit obsessed with this business of "understanding" as a pre-requisite!

As a spontaneous "philosopher"; I am naturally an argumentative person, who has striven for the past couple of decades to suppress this trait because it was (mostly) a pointless waste of my life... More exactly, it was pointless in terms of trying to change other-people and the-world (which is what I was trying to do)... 

Actually, the arguing was sometimes useful to me, in clarifying my own understanding; especially when I became aware that I did not really understand what I was arguing-for. 

This was also something that sometimes happened when I was teaching... I'd be standing writing something on the board and expounding it; when I realized that it didn't make sense or I was just putting-out a black box assertion. 

These were significant moments of learning. 

It has happened on this blog too. Early on in its history; I was trying to explain to William James Tychonievich what was "free will" and how it worked - because he did not seem to be able to grasp what I was saying and kept on questioning me...

When I realized I myself did not understand what I was saying about free will. 

Ultimately, I was parroting forms of words that I had heard or read elsewhere, and they really didn't make sense. I was repeating the classical theological arguments about free will, that I had come across in Boethius, CS Lewis, and scholarly accounts of Aquinas - and I recognized that I could not understand them, not really.

Further thought led to a recognition that my personal inability to understand was not (in this case) from inadequate intelligence or insufficient thought; but that the arguments were intrinsically un-understandable because they contained abstractions that served the role of a black box; a logical package the role of whose content was asserted but could never be grasped. 

The classic theological argument I was defending was that God was assumed to be omniscient, omnipotent (an "Omni-God" and created everything from nothing including me; and that free will was then gifted to me by God. 

The particular incomprehensible abstraction was that God could and did give free will - which is the agency of an individual to act from-himself and independently of God. 

This is incomprehensible because if literally everything - including everything about me and my environment is made by God; then it makes no sense that God could "give" something that was independent-of and autonomous-from God. 

In other words: The assumptions excluded the answer; the assumption was that absolutely every-thing came from God, was contradicted by the assertion that God could make something independent-of-God, and then give it to me.   

 

 

How is it that such a stark contradiction became Christian dogma - how is it that so many very intelligent and thoughtful people have ignored (or not seen) it? 

One answer is that such people were not really interested either in understanding or in explaining free will, but were instead absolutely committed to the assumption that the Christian God was an Omni-God. 

So the fact that they personally did not really grasp what is is free will or how free will worked; did not really matter to them.

Another reason that the contradiction is ignored; is that the contradiction was re-named a "mystery"; and thereby safeguarded from critique.  

What they were (evidently) most focused-on was winning any possible argument directed against the idea of the Christian God being an Omni-God - and the statement that an Omni-God could and did create autonomous beings by an act of gift did not really need to be understood. 

How such a gift actually made sense was of secondary importance to them. 

Also, having made this assertion of gifting free will; the incomprehension was sustained by the fact that their definition, their understanding, of free will was negative - free will was being defined in terms of independence-from God. 

Significantly, the scientific assertions about free will have a closely analogous negativity - being defined in terms of something that is not caused. 

Something I have learned is that when something is negatively-defined, it becomes ungraspable in itself, of itself. 

So, the mainstream orthodox statements about free will have the effect of making it mysterious at best and ineradicably incomprehensible at worst... 

...As anyone knows who has tried to discuss free will in the public forum. Argument devolves to assertions that some-thing was done by free will, versus assertions that it was instead the inevitable outcome of preceding causes - whether scientific causes, or caused by God. 

Free will is a particularly stark example of the problems of un-comprehended "abstraction", and definition by negation. It results in making mysterious, and indeed unreal, something that is one of the primary spontaneous experiences of every human being! 

Something, moreover, that is essential to being a Christian (at least by my IV Gospel rooted understanding.) If people cannot freely decide to follow Jesus Christ or not, then this excludes values from Christianity. 

Arguments against those whose assumptions make free will incomprehensible (whether orthodox traditional Christians, or mainstream secular people) is futile - since these people do not really themselves understand what they are asserting - and do not see any need why they should understand it!

To repeat: such people often have a fixed and committed belief that personally genuinely-understanding what they affirm is not necessary. 

(As indeed, it would not be necessary if free will had indeed the negative, abstract, subordinate role they assert for it.) 

The general lesson I draw from this is related to the importance of really understanding for oneself - and of not being satisfied by black box abstractions, or parroting stuff taken from other people... 

This is true, no matter how prestigious is the source of the black box argument. 

And further; if we are to avoid intractable error, our personal understanding needs to be in positive terms. 

It might be objected that this cannot possibly happen in practice; given the sheer number of things that must be taken on trust in any complex civilization. 

This is true in a quantitative sense, about most matters of assertion; but is false when it comes to those matters which are of core significance to our-selves. 

And there we come to the crux, for a Christian at any rate. What really is most important for us to understand - what, indeed is it vital for us personally to grasp? 

In the past, Christians regarded belief in the Omni-God as vital and necessary; but understanding free will was merely optional; to the point that it was not understood - and indeed not understandable within the assumptions. 

Yet; here and now, for myself and probably for most people; it is vital to understand - that is really to grasp in positive terms - free will, agency, the basis of individuality. To say it is "real but a mystery" is an evasion, when something looms so large at the heart of our existence. 

The needful understanding is something made impossible both to those who accept mainstream orthodox Christian theology (and indeed theologies of most other religions); as well as the much larger numbers of people who regard "science" as the basic assumption behind all explanations. 

As so often; the individual cannot look to any of the most powerful influential, prestigious, ancient or modern external sources for an understanding of some-thing that he may regard as a matter of prime importance. 

As so often; the individual must either do it for himself - i.e. discover by his own efforts a genuine understanding of the reality of free will...

Or else must take the consequences of assimilating, living-by, and thinking in-accordance-with, the socio-cultural insignificance of his own agency.  

 

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Note added: It is pretty obvious why it has suited, and still suits, the powers that be; to create and maintain a situation in which free will is kept mysterious, contradictory, un-understandable -- while top-down and collective imperatives are by contrast clear, simple, easily comprehensible. This endemic doubt and uncertainty keeps people obedient to external authority. When people cannot satisfactorily conceptualize them-selves; then they are controllable at the deepest spiritual level. 

The nature of free will

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Free will is absolutely central to Christianity - but what kind of a thing is free will as conceptualized by Christians?

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It is tricky, because it does not seem to be like anything else - or at any rate I find it hard to find an analogy for free will.

Its properties must include on the one hand an ability to choose, whatever past experience a person has had - yet on the other hand free will must be (and clearly is) influenced by past experiences.

So, free will is, in one sense, an unchanged changer, persisting throughout life; yet in another sense its current choices are affected by previous choices - such that in some sense the probabilities of choices change throughout life (good habits/ virtues practiced over long periods make it more likely the next choice will also be good/ virtuous - and vice versa).

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The will must be free, and yet it is clear that the human will is corrupt (this is explained by original sin; but the fact that the human will is corrupt is a matter of observation and experience).

Human have free will, yet will almost always choose wrong; and we are - indeed - helpless to do otherwise; which is why we cannot save ourselves but must have a Saviour.

On the one hand we are saved by Christ - because we cannot save ourselves - yet we are also required to choose, despite that we will inevitably, helplessly choose wrong most of the time.

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How to make sense of this?

I think only by assuming that or free will works about other people but not ourselves; our choices can save others but not ourselves.

And the primary choice is to love not hate others; to be loving and humble not prideful towards God.

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I think this is pretty much all that most people (nearly everybody) can do with free will.

And I think this is what is implied by the two main commandments from Matthew 22 as interpreted in the Book of Common Prayer:

37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

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This would mean that the main function of life on earth is to love first God, then neighbour - but that it is the loving of neighbour which requires mortal life on earth, and therefore is the primary function of free will.

Most people cannot live by the Law, cannot reform themselves or even their external lives - but what they must will is described in these two commandments.

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And love of neighbour is a matter of will, not action - action is constrained, will is not.

And it is never too late, and we are always free to do this, and nothing whatsoever (either internal or external) stops us doing this, and no amount of experience or habit matters, it can be overturned in the blink of an eye - love of neighbour is the proper domain of free will.

Thus we can, by our love for them, save others (but not ourselves).

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Free will and sleep (and psychosis, dementia, damage)

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Does we have agency, free will, during sleep - during dreaming?

If agency is real, then the answer must be yes - because if we say no then the implication is that humans only have free will under what may be exceptional circumstances of health, alertness and at certain ages.

If we were to say that free will is absent during dreams, then we would have to say that it was absent during delirious states and during psychosis (schizophrenia, mania, psychotic depression); and also during dementia, and epilepsy, and some forms of brain damage...

And then we would have to recognize that similar conditions apply to children, and many of the elderly, and to people with mental handicap - and indeed to almost any human being for much of each day.

So we end-up with a concept of free will being regarded as something that is an exceptional state enjoyed only by exceptional people - and that at other times human choice is unfree but merely a product of circumstances and contingencies.

And this view is incompatible with Christianity.

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(The above is to equate free will with strict and legalistic ideas of mental competence; rather akin to the legal concepts of fitness-to-plead and responsibility. But this is not the human condition - and these legal concepts are operationally deployed in a crude fashion based on an assumption of competence within certain age boundaries.)

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So, our understanding should be that free will is something indestructible that stands behind all contingencies.

Free will is eternal and always and necessarily operative, regardless of the choices and possibilities of action - such that the brain damaged person in a coma who is 'shut-in' without movement or sensation is nonetheless assumed to have free will for as long as they are alive - they are not just 'able' to make choices among their mental contents, but necessarily will make choices among their mental contents: free will cannot be switched -off.

*

Since salvation depends on these choices, and since such choices may be disconnected from perceptible action, we can understand how it is intrinsically impossible for us to judge others in relation to salvation - because we can only perceive another person's actions, and indirectly infer their freely willed choices from these actions.

*

Yet of course the soul which chooses must be (is) in some way connected with the mind and body which enacts (or fails to enact) choices - therefore we can ask: what is the nature of this connection? - how may we conceptualize the connection between the soul which has free will, and the mind and body which are subject to circumstance?

I think one answer is the concept of empathy - the soul has empathy for the mind and body, a sympathetic resonance with the happiness and sufferings of mind and body, such that the soul feels what they feel.

Again the analogy of the parent can do the necessary work: a good Father or Mother will feel the pleasures and pains of their children, by empathy.

Somewhat likewise, the soul is connected to the mind and body by a necessary and unavoidable empathic identification - while it retains agency under any circumstance.

*

Yet the soul's agency, while eternal, is affected by mind and body - because empathy is necessary the soul is changed by its own choices - there are consequences to the soul from its previous choices.

Thus free will is always; but that which freely chooses is changed by its choices.

Therefore (without outside intervention) the soul will corrupt itself even after a single initial wrong choice - since the consequence of even a single wrong choice will necessarily damage and corrupt the soul to a significant degree, and make that soul significantly less good and more likely to make another bad choice.

The process is cumulative and the result may be a soul practically incapable of making a good choice even while wholly retaining agency and free will.

*

We may perhaps directly perceive this process in ourselves, but only indirectly - by inference - in others.

*

Astrology and free will - the medieval understanding (C.S. Lewis)

*

From Imagination and thought in the Middle Ages - by C.S. Lewis. An essay delivered in 1956; posthumously published in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, edited by Walter Hooper, 1966.

*

"...the planets had more than a physical effect. They influenced the course of events and they influenced human psychology. Born under Saturn, you were disposed to melancholy, born under Venus to amorousness.

(...)

"The important question, theologically, was whether the planets compelled or merely disposed men to action.

"If they compelled, then of course there was an end to human freedom and responsibility.

"If they merely disposed, then planetary influence, like heredity or health or education, was merely part of the concrete situation handed over to the individual to do the best he could with.

*

"The theologians were in fact, as so often, fighting against determinism.

"Nor were they fighting against a phantom: in Renaissance times, if not before them, astrological determinism was very widely accepted. It seemed (odd as this sounds to us) to have the support of age-old experience and common sense, and the theological resistance seemed idealistic wishful thinking.

"In the Middle Ages men's mind's no doubt wavered. The ordinary, moderate, respectable view was summed up in the maxim sapiens dominabitur astris; a wise man, assisted by Grace, could get over a bad horoscope just as he could get over a naturally bad temper.

(...)

"On a practical level orthodox people, while admitting planetary influence, strongly disapproved of 'judicial astrology', the lucrative practice of foretelling the future.

"They did not need to deny that some astrological predictions might be correct.

*

"Planetary influence could not remove free will but it could alter the states of mind and imagination which free will has to deal with.

"Any man can master the psychological raw material and thus refute the prediction; but few men do and therefore the predictions will succeed as regards the majority.

"Just in the same way and for similar reasons a modern theologian might say that Marxian predictions based on economic determinism or Freudian predictions based on psychological determinism will usually be true, and true about mass-behaviour, but not necessarily about a given individual."

***

Comment:

Medieval thinkers were more rational about astrology that modern thinkers are about genetics.

*

Medieval Christian understanding was built-around free will: that free will could be influenced, but was not ultimately compelled, by emotions and images, by disposition and circumstances, by planets and angels and demons.

By contrast, the modern 'scientific' understanding, by its prior assumptions, excludes free will from rational causal explanations.

Yet the modern thinker does not recognize that he has excluded free will in his assumptions. Instead he believes that he has discovered free will does not exist.  

*

The modern thinker ignores free will when he is at work - until after he has reached his conclusions; then he wonders how on earth he can make sense of his conclusions in a world where free will is assumed.

Having constructed a model of the world without free will (a model world with which he is well satisfied); he begins to wonder - in a bewildered fashion - how free will might somehow be re-inserted into the description of the world?

Then, finding that free will has no role, serves no necessary causal function in his model world; the modern thinker believes that somehow free will has thus been refuted, has been discovered - after empirical investigation - to be absent, been exposed as a primitive philosophical error...

*

Once what Lewis called 'chronological snobbery' has been pushed aside, a decline in human intelligence, in reasoned discourse, seem inescapable.

Again and again I find that modern thinking cannot distinguish between assumptions and conclusions.

I mean really cannot distinguish between assumptions and conclusions; not even (especially not even) when the difference has been pointed-out.

Neither is this basic inability a trivial matter, but is a radical fact of modern discourse. And it leads on to unbounded evil consequences because the devil is inaccurate (to quote Charles Williams - meaning evil does its work by building-upon falseness).

***

Note: I could not recommend highly enough this essay by C.S. Lewis to anyone with an interest in medieval thought, or indeed the history of ideas. It is simply superb.

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The advantages of Pluralist Christianity

I used to write a fair bit about pluralism; but have not done so recently. I continue to regard it as absolutely vital to my Christian thinking. 

Yet nearly all Christians, who expressed a preference, seem to have regarded themselves as monists: that is, they assume that originally there is just 'one thing' and that is God - and every-thing that exists comes from God, and everything is, therefore, ultimately part-of-God.

This assumption creates terrible - I would say insoluble - problems of contradiction for Christians particularly; because it is vital for Christians to be able to explain evil and free will, but monism leaves no 'space' for these. 

The Problem of Evil is simple and obvious. If God is everything and made everything, then he must have made evil things too; yet the Christian God is known to be wholly Good. 

But where does the evil in this world come-from if God is wholly Good? 

If everything is God, and God is Good - there cannot be any real evil. 

Most monist Christians usually end-up asserting exactly this - that there is no real evil; that evil is just a temporary or illusory appearance of Good; and everything that is, or that happens, is ultimately Good. 

However, while such a view is coherent for a Hindu or Buddhist, it is not compatible with being a Christian - where evil needs to be real. 

Thus the problem of trying to be monist and Christian is the problem of trying to explain What Real Evil Is, without violating the assumption that God made/is every-thing.

In a nutshell - if you really want to be explain why evil is real - you need to be a pluralist. 

The Free Will (human agency) problem is similar in form, but the problem comes from the fact that Christianity (but not all other religions) is based on love of God (and Jesus Christ); and that love must be freely chosen (or else it is not love). 

Indeed each Christian must be able to choose to become a Christian; to follow Jesus by a genuine act of agency. 

To put it the other way around; it is not possible (is not coherent) to be able to compel somebody to really-be a real-Christian. 

So free will is essential to Christianity; which means we need to be able to explain where free will comes-from... Yet the monist has assumed that everything comes from God, and is God: everything.

Where could free will come-from if everything comes from God? 

How can a total system create something like free will that is supposed to be independent of its creator? 

There is no basis for free will in monism, because it is already assumed that every possible 'basis' has been made by God.  

If God is everything; where is free will (to choose or reject God, to love God or not?) supposed to come-from?   

Thoughtful monist Christians usually acknowledge that their metaphysical assumptions cannot explain free will; but state some version of the assertion that 'free will of Men was created by God by some mystical divine act beyond human comprehension'. 

But this inability to explain free will in a monist reality is a problem, given that agency is so vital for Christians. (Not for Muslims perhaps - but for Christians, yes.)

And because monists cannot explain free will, there is a tendency to downplay free will, to ignore it; not to talk about it. Or simply to get confused about it.

At an rate, it is a chromic weakness, and indeed something of an embarrassment, that mainstream Christians are unable to give a clear and coherent explanation of free will in relation to God the creator.  

The above are only two of the intractable problems that Christians encounter in being a monist; yet nearly all Christians are monists. 

Intellectual Christians are, indeed, more serious about their monism than about Christianity - more concerned to maintain their monist assumptions than to be able to explain their faith clearly and simply. If any sacrifices need to be made in squaring Christianity with monism - it is Christianity that makes the sacrifices. 

(In some times and places, Christianity has seemed to forget or suppress free will; and converged with pure monotheism in engaging in compelled conversion and demanding obedience to the uncomprehended will of a God, who is not 'loving' by any human discernment of love - but rather by definition (i.e. love is God, rather than God is love).) 

This has been a problem since very early in the Christian Church, and has remained so. 

The strange thing is that it seems likely that all humans begin as pluralists when explaining the world, and the Bible (including the Gospels) makes the easiest 'common sense' when read from a pluralist perspective. Yet nearly-all the Christian denominations and churches insist on monism as an article of faith - sustaining this ancient and intractable problem and confusion. 

Mormons are the major exception - since Joseph Smith 'discovered' pluralism as a principle of Christian theology; and it was in Mormon theology, as well as the philosophy of William James, that I discovered explicit pluralism and realized it worked much better than monism in explaining those things that most need to be explained for a Christian. 

Or, to put matters more accurately; the problem is monism more obviously than the solution is pluralism!

Monism is an alien philosophy wrongly-applied to Christianity; and, unsurprisingly, therefore it creates all sorts of insoluble difficulties. 

However, monism will not be abandoned until there is an alternative; and almost nobody knows that there is indeed an alternative. That is the role of explicit pluralism. 

Yet of those who know this alternative, extremely few bother to make the intellectual effort to understand things differently, to think them through; despite that it is so easy to do so - literally child's play!

Aysmmetrical arguments - the rhetoric of evil and modernity (and the example of free will)

*

A false assertion of symmetry is a characteristic rhetorical device of secular modernity; it works by pretending that two sides of any argument or debate are 'symmetrical' alternatives - either implying one thing or another alternative thing.

Symmetry may be a reality in some discussions, such as when comparing Judaism and Christianity, or the Big Bang and Steady State theories from Physics.

But very often a disagreement is between a positive statement and its negation: and this situation is not symmetrical.

*

So, to consider Good and evil.

Evil is not an alternative positive program to that of Good, evil is (merely) the destruction of Good - evil is anti-Good. The two sides are not symmetrical. 

*

The political Left versus Right is not symmetrical; because the Left is not a political blueprint - in the West it is (merely) opposition to Christianity and traditional society.

(Of course the Left used to have various blueprints, however we now see that they were just tactical assault weapons, and were discarded before they came anywhere near any danger of being implemented. The Old Left defined itself as being in favour of the dictatorship of the Proletariat; but the modern Left ignores, loathes, and tries to destroy the people it used to call the Proletariat and claimed to love - we now see that the Left was lying. We now see the Left is and always truly was a moving target, a fluid and evolving spirit of opposition and destruction.) 

(Note: The Western political Left is here defined as including all the mainstream self-styled 'right-wing' political parties and groupings including conservative and libertarian. The only true political Right is the Religious Right (but not necessarily or usually Christian) - who are of course a very small and un-influential group in the West.)

*

And rejection of free will is is simply that: a rejection of free will - a negative doctrine.

A denial of free will cannot be refuted, because there is nothing to refute; the argument against free will is simply a set of challenges to the reality of free will - a set of various assertions that if X, or Y, or Z is a true and sufficient (complete) explanation of reality... then (logically) free will cannot exist.

The rejection of free will provides no alternative proposal of what IS reality, merely consisting of a set of attacks on free will.

And the potential number of attacks on free will is unbounded, and so the process of attacking free will need never end.

*

(Just as the number of criticisms of Christianity, or of existing society, is unbounded - so the Left can never - in this sense - be refuted: it has no fixed positive program that could be refuted: the Left is simply the process of subversion, destruction, inversion - of whatever is, using an unbounded range of 'justifications' - injustice, inequality, inefficiency, retribution, compassion, imperfection...)

*

There will always be grounds for criticizing anything - and due to limits of human understanding and expression intelligence and attention, this applies to Truth as much as to error- since any actually-existing expression of Truth will be deficient or insecure if placed under a microscope.

Free will is (obviously) True; but any actually expression of it is deficient and criticizable - if it is a short description it will be partial and hard to contextualize, but if the description is long, it will contain insecure logical links and be prone to human inattention and defective memory.

Always, descriptions are constrained (on both sides) by human limitations.

*

But the fact that something - anything - can be criticized for incompleteness, ambiguity, imprecision, possibly wrong assumptions and the rest of it, is trivial. 

Such criticism is trivial (or worse) in science (where it is indeed a typical strategy of anti-science - micro-methodological rigour pretending at truth-seeking but unilaterally applied to reject something you don't want to believe).

And micro-criticism of defective statements is also trivial - it is fake profundity, dishonest rhetoric: it is dangerously unserious - in theology, metaphysics and philosophy.

*

After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it -- "I refute it thus." 

- from James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson was expressing impatience, and indeed anger, at the dangerous, seductive unseriousness of this kind of conversation. 

Johnson's was a proper response to arguments against the reality of free will. 

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Science and free will

*


(From an e-mail.)


I see science as working within the assumptions of metaphysics - so that before any science is done there is an implicit metaphysics of causality. And science cannot investigate what it assumes by its very existence.


*


Scientific reasoning studies cause and effect processes, as you say - which means it cannot use cause and effect reasoning to challenge the validity of cause and effect reasoning.


This is also the argument why it is incoherent to challenge free will - but CS Lewis states it much better than I could in Mere Christianity and elsewhere; and indeed I'm sure you have felt the force of it yourself when engaged in such arguments. If free will does not exist, then what are we arguing for or about?


I don't think science has made any contribution at all to understanding of free will, quite the opposite - it has led to great confusion.


*


Before any discourse, before science, we must assume free will - we assume that there is something possessed by humans that is not determined and not random but an expression of our individual ... essence (hard to think of a suitable word).


At least we must assume free will among the participants in the discourse, and of course we would need to exclude those who did not have it else the discourse would be invalidated.


In general, I have behind this a metaphysic that humans come into the world gifted with reason and free will (and other attributes), and these are divine gifts and upon their validity depends... well everything else.


*


Like CSL I argue that reason and free will cannot be challenged coherently because the challenge itself depends on the validity of reason and free will. In fact this is obvious!


But the problem for modern people is that in denying God they deny the validity of free will and reason - because if free will and reason are nothing more than evolutionary products - the products of random variation and differential reproduction - then of course free will and reason are mere contingent and temporary accidents and naturally have zero validity, and no real knowledge is possible of any kind - including exactly this knowledge about the evolutionary causes of free will and reason...


Which is nonsense.


*


Therefore we must believe in 'god' (albeit not necessarily the Christian God, but something much simpler, with metaphysical properties), or we cannot believe anything at all.


The ancient Greeks perceived this - that 'god' is necessary to underwrite the validity of every inference; doubt god and you are (know it or not) plunging into impossible and intractable paradox.


This is probably the deep reason why godless philosophers cannot comprehend even the most basic philosophy, cannot comprehend the stuff that was worked out two and a half thousand years ago.


*  

A morphic field metaphor for Free will?

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NOTE: I have already had second thoughts about this post! More to come on this topic. But it may be worth seeing my 'workings' and the comments by Nathan, for those who find Free will 'a stumbling block'.

*

Free will is an intrinsic part of Christianity - there can be no Christianity without Free will.

Yet Free will is a metaphysical assumption, not a discovery - no experience, no evidence can make any difference to the reality of Free will: either it is assumed or it is not.

But what is it? How does it work?

*

Ultimately, the question is bogus, and did not trouble our (most intelligent and thoughtful) ancestors; the question is unnecessary, unanswerable, pseudo-profound...

But why does the question nonetheless torment some people spontaneously?

How can the question be dealt-with; can anything be done to clarify matters?

*

One reason for this question may be that we spontaneously see Free will as a little man inside our heads who chooses between alternative courses of action: a homunculus controller sitting at a console in our brains pressing button A or button B.

Obviously this is a grossly simplified metaphor, but it is hard not to think along such lines.

Is there an alternative metaphor for free will? One which captures its essence to some extent - rather than merely kicking the can down the road from ourselves to another but smaller person doing the choosing?

*

Perhaps the answer is to break out from linear, sequential causality and to try the alternative of field thinking - along the lines of Rupert Sheldrake's version of morphic fields which organize and impose form.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/breaking-tyranny-of-linear-and.html

If free will was conceptualized as an organizing field - perhaps something like a magnetic or gravitational field - it could be seen as exerting its influence by a tendency to impose a pattern on human behavior (as a magnet imposes a pattern on iron filings).

As a field, Free will might vary in its strength and range, and might interact with the consequences of its own action (as a magnetic field attracts iron, and the closer the iron moves the stronger is the effect of the magnetic field).

*

As yet the metaphor of Free will as an organizing field is vestigial - but promising enough that I think it could perhaps be helpful in breaking-out from the apprent inevitability of a homunculus controller.

*

Free will is a metaphysical thing

*

Free will is a necessary assumption (not a matter of observation); a metaphysical thing, coming prior to experience, framing experience.

It is not possible to observe free will nor to measure it; indeed experience has no relevance to the existence, nonexistence, strength or weakness of free will.

Free will is not empirical at all.

*

Free will is a necessary and inbuilt assumption in (at least!) all creatures capable of recognising the question of free will.

Christianity (and other things) are built-around this metaphysical assumption of free will.

*

The point, therefore, about free will is not to understand it - free will cannot be understood more than to acknowledge that it cannot coherently be denied - but to use it well.

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How does free will work? The Divine Self and the Conscious Self

In brief, I will describe how there are two elements to free will. 

1. The creative power of the primordial Divine Self 

We are all Beings who have existed from eternity. And as Beings we have the capability to originate thought. Therefore, we are not merely passive and reactive - but can generate thought from our-selves. 

2. The directive power of the Conscious Self

For there to be free will - more is required; and that extra was provided by God when he 'created' us; that is, when he made us into Children of God ('Sons of God').  

What God provided was the Conscious Self, which has the ability to direct the attention of the Divine Self. 

It is the Divine Self that enables us to originate thought (independent of external causes). The Divine Self is what make's each Being (and each Man) and uncaused case. 

But in our primordial situation, before God created us, this originative thought was passively responsive to whatever external situation we were in. 

We would have been able to think, to originate uncaused thoughts; but we had no control over what it was that we thought. 

There could therefore be no free will primordially, because there was no control over the originative properties of the Divine Self. Free will was made possible by God's creation of Men.   

When the Conscious Self is added to the Divine Self, free will becomes possible; because the Conscious Self can 'point' the Divine Self at one thing or another. 

The Conscious Self could also be termed our 'will' - in other words, we can consciously will our Divine Self to attend to what we are observing, making, reading, doing - or whatever it may be. When this happens, we are able to choose where to deploy our divine creativity. 

The Conscious Self cannot 'control' what comes-out-of our Divine self. Because nothing can control the Divine Self - the Divine Self is the basis and reality of our ultimate freedom, autonomy; our capacity to create-from-ourselves. 

But we can consciously control the subject matter attended to by our Divine self - we can therefore choose what the Divine Self deploys-itself-upon.

So, conscious will can direct our Divine Self; and that is why we need to be conscious in order to be free. 

If the Conscious Self was not present, or not actually conscious; then the Divine Self only responds to whatever external circumstances present to it. But with consciousness, potentially we can voluntarily influence what we think about.    

And that is how free will works, what free will does; and why it is important for Man to become more conscious...

Because consciousness is what enables freedom; and freedom is what enables us to choose to accept Jesus Christ's gift of eternal resurrected life. 

Trance, dream, prophecy and revelation

*

It puzzles me that altered states of consciousness should be necessary for prophecies and revelations - I mean for real prophecies and revelations.

Because, this fact of happening during 'altered states' is nowadays taken to confirm that prophecy and revelation are bogus, a pathological product of a malfunctioning brain - and that is indeed pretty much how I used to see things before I was a Christian, e.g.

http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.co.uk/2007/07/alienation-and-animism.html

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But that wasn't how people saw things through most of human history.

Past societies knew perfectly well that abnormally functioning brains could and did produce hallucinations, delusions and the like - but they also believed that altered states of consciousness were associated with genuine prophecy and divine communications.

*

But why the association between prophecy, revelation and altered states?

Most plausibly, it is as if altered states are necessary to overcome some bias or resistance in us - some resistance to divine communications - that is, to communications which come neither from the external environment nor from inside our own brains and bodies but otherwise.

The bias is that attending to environmental and personal stimuli is 'biological' - and seems to overwhelm other possible activities; the resistance is - in a nutshell - sin: that we do not want to perceive divine communications, we resist divine communications, and therefore these must come when our resistance is down.

*

It is important to consider this question in terms of the absolute reality of human agency, of free will - and that God is not able (or perhaps will not allow Himself) to overcome human agency, but rather that free will is a fact of the situation - free will must be 'worked around' because it cannot/ will-not be overcome.

So even though God can force a communication to be seen or heard, He cannot force it to be understood correctly.

And even when God is able to communicate his will on a matter, He cannot force the prophet to agree to that will - the prophet might (because he is free) hear the word of God, understand it, yet and oppose God's will.

*

Therefore, the mode of divine communication needs to take into account that the prophet is a free agent, and mode must therefore be persuasive of choice; because free will, if properly understood, is the kind of thing which simply cannot be coerced.

*

(Indeed, some persuasive techniques - ancient and modern - exploit this fact, in that they may successfully persuade free will and result in the desired choice by asserting that free will has no choice! That free will does not exist, or can be/ has been, coerced - 'therefore' the agent 'might as well agree' to what is being asserted. This is, indeed, a routine of the modern era - telling people they are blank slates formed by the environment and/or helpless robots controlled by their genes, and 'therefore' they 'ought' to choose to do whatever propaganda tells them!)

*

Among genuine divine communications, it is notable that there are some prophets who see God (in some form) and receive direct communications while wide awake, in clear consciousness;  some who receive messages brought by angelic visitations; many example of receiving a message in a dream; and also there are visions during prayer of possible trance states.

Probably, an interesting approximate typology could be devised which examined the nature and circumstances of these modes in the context of the strength and weaknesses and roles of the specific prophets concerned, and the needs of God - maybe even a hierarchy of prophets, ranked in terms of their openness to God's communications... but I don't know enough even to begin this.

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"Because there is no God, then I'm not responsible... right?"

*

Something I think I perceive widely throughout society, and used to feel myself when an atheist - and still it comes-back at times, is that:

1. Because there is no God (who knows everything), then

2. Life is a matter of impressions, hype and spin - there is nothing deeper than the impression I make on others: and upon myself. Therefore

3. If I do anything bad, then it is not really bad if other people don't know about it, and

4. If I don't know about it then I cannot be blamed for it.

*

So, it apparently follows that... anything I can't remember, I can't be blamed for; anything that happened without planning I can't be blamed for; anything I do on the basis of intense 'overwhelming' emotion I can't be blamed for; anything I do unthinkingly simply because other people are doing it I can't be blamed for; anything I do that was encouraged by my upbringing, I can't be blamed for - and the same applies to anything I do in reaction against my upbringing; anything I do on the basis of those more powerful, famous, prestigious, better informed, cleverer... I can't be blamed for. And so on.

*

At the end of this line is a particularly nasty kind of faux-humility that denies the ability to choose; as the justification for making short-term, selfish, irrational choices.

*

There is no subject which generates more confusion than that of 'free will' - this ought to warn us that the whole discourse is wrongly framed.

The reality of free will, or agency, is not a matter of empirical knowledge, experience, not susceptible to scientific investigation...

That we can and do choose is simply an assumption which we must make in order to make sense.

Everything we say and do is based on this assumption - it cannot coherently be denied - nor can agency be limited in its scope. By trying to set limits to our own responsibility we simply end up talking evil nonsense. 

*

Once the subject of free will has been raised, often by a call to take responsibility; we find that we must (even tho' we know not how) be responsible for all our choices - starting with whether we live or die. Everything we think or do must involve agency.

But this insight immediately generates a sense of vast and intolerable weight of sin, due to the multiplicity of wicked choices we have made and will continue to make; an insight from which we are desperate to flee.

And modernity, with its inbuilt denial of the reality of God, flees into nonsense, paradox, distraction: obliteration of the insight.

*

To be coherent, to avoid nihilism - which is the (incoherent) denial of the reality of reality; we must therefore build our world-view around the reality of agency - free will must sit at its heart.

Responsibility is all or nothing; therefore it must be all.

Only if this is understood can we understand the nature of life, including the problem of pain and evil - that we live in a universe in which free will is primary, that this world is a place for free will, that the nature of humans is as entities with free will, that the vital course of history (and the future) - the meaning of life - is a product of free will.

*

We need to understand that the only coherent way to frame the problem of responsibility is directed towards an awareness of life as a field for the operation of free will.

The core, essential, real history of things (whether we know the details, or not) is the consequence of agencies. 

*

Summary of the metaphysics of free will

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I have written quite often about free will on this blog

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=free+will

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The reason why people (why I myself) find it hard to grasp this subject is that it is metaphysical, not scientific; i.e. it is about our assumptions concerning reality - not about our investigations of reality.

Another problem is that the metaphysics of free will is that - to be real - the free will must be an unmoved mover, an uncaused cause.

It must be - so it is!

*

That places free will outside of science - because science is only concerned with caused things.

This means that science is necessarily incomplete - since there must BE uncaused causes, or else we have infinite regress in a-caused-b-caused-c-caused-d forever! - and a situation which nothing could happen (this was pointed-out centuries ago by Aquinas).

*

But free will conceptualized as an uncaused cause implies that each Man (and maybe other things) is to some extent an uncaused cause - and this creates difficulties for most philosophies, which are monist - and refer all causes back to one cause.

The conclusion seems to be that God has free will and is an uncaused cause; but the same also applies to each Man.


How can this be understood?

The only two rational conclusions I can see; are either

1. To state that God caused each uncaused cause: i.e. God caused (created) each Man to as an uncaused cause.

Or

2. The theology of pluralism: that God and also each Man are alike in being uncaused causes, and 'always'-have-been. God and each Man are (at the level of being uncaused causes -  although not necessarily as 'persons') basic constituents in the universe.

*

The first is the solution of Aquinas, the second is the solution of Mormon theology. Each solution has advantages and problems - and different implications.

I personally favour the Mormon metaphysics, partly from temperament - but mostly because it solves the problems that are most dominant for me, and I find the consequences congenial; while the Thomist solution  seems too obviously paradoxical and leads to problems (such as the problems of pain/ suffering and moral responsibility) further down the line.

But both solutions are viable in some ways, unsatisfactory in others; and both are much preferable to the up-front, in-your-face nihilistic incoherence of denying the reality of free will!
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Atheist objections to divine morality - reasons to reject the reality of creation

If morality as presented as God's will, then this tends to strike a modern atheist as His opinion against mine. Why should God's morality be right and mine wrong; why should God get to set the rules for everybody?

The reason is that true morality is not detachable from reality, but interwoven inextricably - God is creator, and what we call morality is just one aspect of reality that we have picked-out and called morality.

So God's rules apply to us because God created us and everything in our world... but the moderately-sophisticated atheist will soon pick up the inconsistency in this argument... If God created everything including myself, how and why is there a conflict between what I want to do and what God wants me to do?

The answer is 'free will' - but where does freedom come-from if God has created everything? It doesn't make sense.

And - more profoundly - why did God make Men with free will? What is the intention of this - if not to sin, then how are Men supposed to use their free will? If the answer is merely to choose to obey God, then this choice is pointless - God might as well have made Men to obey in the first place!


My different understanding is that God created our reality, our 'universe'; but God did not create our free will: free will comes from our-selves.

And further that God is not primarily aiming at obedience; but instead at Men becoming gods.

My understanding is that God could not make men as already-gods - because being a god entails free will; so the intention is that individual Men will choose to grow and develop towards divinity. 

So... God has created the reality in-which we dwell; and morality is part-of living in alliance with the nature and purpose of God's creation; living aligned-with reality. But free will comes from that part of our reality which God did not create; hence the conflict intrinsic to this life. 


If we choose Not to live in alignment with creation-reality (to reject God's virtue, truth, beauty in unity), this is a rational choice; but ultimately that negative choice-to-reject condemns the rejector to life outside creation.

What is outside creation? In essence nothing; that is chaos, lack of meaning, no purpose, zero relationships.

But modern Man does not believe-in the reality of meaning, purpose, or permanent personal relationships... indeed modern Man regards all of these as tyranny, and would actively reject them.

So be it: if modern Man does not want them, then he is free to reject them.


What would he get instead? He would get his own way - complete freedom in a context of total isolation. If modern Man really does not want to be a part of creation, if modern man wants his own personal autonomy above everything; he will presumably choose to reject creation - including God's morality. 

From this you can see why love is the key for Christians; love is the positive reason why you or I or anybody else would actively-want to embrace the reality of God's creation; and eschew the absolute isolation that total autonomy would entail.

Agency is the main limitation and constraint on divine knowledge and power ('omni-science/ potence')

Regular readers will know that I regard the characterisation of 'an omni-God' - that is a God described in terms of abstract absolutes such as omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence - as a wrong, tendentious, harm-tending error of mainstream Christianity. God is not all-knowing, not all-powerful - and one major and vital limitation on God is agency, or Free Will.

God's knowledge and power is rooted in his being The Creator; and the crux of the problem for mainstream Christianity is that if God created Free Will, if he created the 'mechanism' of agency - and because creation is something on-going and continuous (not something done once in the past then left), then God would have knowledge of and power over Free would... But then agency would not be truly autonomous and free: merely just another expression of God's ongoing creation...

To me, the above mainstream Christian explanation is seriously incoherent; and given the importance of Free Will to Christianity, we need to try and do better... 

Since (as I assume) agency is real and will is indeed free; then these need to be regarded as Not having been created and sustained by God. But instead, agents with free will are pre-existent to God's creation - already-there when creation began - used-by God in doing creation, but not made-by God.

So; the nature of reality is that God's creation is the means by which he pursues his divine plan, a plan to have children and to raise them to become divine like himself (and this has now been fully accomplished by Jesus Christ - so all Men have a model and method) - working-around the constraint, a 'constraint' which is itself necessary for full divinity, of Man's agency.

Thus we have God's creation, inhabited by living, conscious agents with (various degrees of) Free Will - God controlling many aspects of the situation, but neither knowing nor controlling the 'inner workings' of agency.

In other words the real-self is divine, and opaque to God the creator. God must therefore pursue his goals 'indirectly'. However, this indirectness is a feature, not a bug, since it is only genuine free-agents who can fulfil God's plan.

(The alternative being a universe of unfree, wholly-controlled automata; fake/ simulated persons merely.) 

And insofar as reality consists of many agent beings of many kinds - including what we currently (mainstream) think of as minerals, vegetables, and animals; which are alive and conscious to different degrees and in different ways - the nature of reality consists of God setting up situations and responding to the consequences of agency, in a continually purposive but not-predetermined fashion.

It explains why Free Will is a necessary part of the plan; God had to work-around agency in order that the plan could be achieved; and without Free Will there could have been no plan for divinisation.

This description seems to me an exact fit for the nature of reality as I perceive and understand it; which is why I share it here.