Thus far this semester, we have written a couple posts that have made a few cracks in the surface of the free will/ fatalism debate. The first post was Zach Sherwin’s Ontological Argument Against Fatalism, and then a few weeks ago I presented Chrysippus’ views on Free Will and Responsibility. While we’ve by no stretch been exhaustive here of course, perhaps we’ve piqued your interest a bit with what we have covered. If so, I’d like to continue the discussion here with something that’s been rattling around in my brain for a while, so let’s ensue on a separate and all-new branch with an aspect of the quandary that’s yet to be mentioned.
Throughout the rest of the post, I’ll refer to God – for the sake of argument and of brevity for this blog, assume I mean the traditional Judeo-Christian God. Here’s the question: Is human free will incompatible with God? If humans have complete free will, meaning that they have real freedom in choice and action all the time, then God would necessarily not interfere with human will. But does it follow that God then can’t influence free will? Even if we say, he could but he chooses not to, does his ability there, even as just an option, mean freedom is somehow diminished? In the ultimate and complete free will scenario, would God’s mere ability to alter, influence, or affect our decisions mean that, really, we’re only as free as long as he allows, that freedom is more dependent, then shadowy and illusory, than we think it is? Humans then have freedom when God chooses not to exercise his ability, meaning that he could, at his choosing, decide to step in and affect human free will as soon as he wants to. He is all-powerful, so of course God has every ability to affect (and remove) free will; even if he has decided not to do so, especially in respect to human choice in salvation, he, in theory, could, right?
This poses problems for some – they would say that we then cannot have free will at all. Consider their argument: At that moment when we say God can affect human free will, it no longer exists. More deductively: If there exists the possibility that humans have free will – that what and how humans choose or decide is not able to be influenced, altered, or changed by God – then God can’t affect human free will. But God is all-powerful, so he can affect free will. Therefore, free will is incompatible with God and his omnipotence.
But is this necessarily true? Isn’t it sufficient that he doesn’t routinely affect free will, even though he can? I would argue that their claim assumes too much. Free will isn’t necessarily defined as only holding true if God can’t affect free will. He may have chosen not to, to preserve free will and free choice, to let human beings choose what they will, including sin and salvation. But God is still omnipotent; he could interfere and may and may have, or he may not. In any case, the mere fact that he can affect free will doesn’t mean it necessarily cannot exist. Here I’m not arguing for or against free will per say, or addressing free choice in terms of salvation in the Calvinism v. Arminianism predestination realm (though this does bear worthy and interesting implications in apologetics), but I’ve attempted to prove that at least the one claim above that’s put forward by some is too weak to be accepted, being flawed by definition, and that it does not conclusively or deductively prove free will’s incompatibility with God’s sovereignty.
So there you have part three of this semester’s posts on fatalism and free will. Whether this is all really for naught, you may be the judge (if you can). Perhaps this is truly a “timeless” dilemma, one flawed from before its beginning. But give us your thoughts, if you so choose.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Freedom is Not Free
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5 comments:
I agree with you, that one can imagine a world (regardless of whether that world is this one or not) where God exists, humans exist, humans have free will, God is sovereign, and there is no contradiction in the previous four points.
I'm curious, though. You assert that "complete free will" refers to when humans "have real freedom in choice and action all the time". However, if that is your criteria, is anyone truly in possession of complete free will? I imagine that there exists a time in everyone's life when they do not have freedom in action, whether they are undergoing surgery or temporarily incarcerated (or, perhaps, less extreme examples can be considered). Is complete free will even possible in this world? If so, is it possible that some people have complete free will and others do not?
Look forward to hearing your thoughts!
I think that the more serious problem for free will comes not from God's omnipotence but omniscience, since that seems to entail that God knows what I will do before I even begin to consider doing it. Though it could be that omnipotence implies omniscience. If you can do everything, then you can know everything, and if you can know everything, why not actually know everything?
Zach,
Great questions as always. If I were to “choose” to be a proponent of complete free will, I might argue that indeed, we all have freely chosen actions or causes which produce other actions or effects. If one is having surgery, the patient must have made at least one decision, consciously or not, that has led him there. Even if it was a surgery to remove a cancerous tumor for which he would claim just happened to him, the surgery itself requires the free choices to happen – you choose to have the pre-operation procedures, to meet your doctor, to sign the papers, to drive to the hospital, etc. You may just as well choose to not “let” the tumor affect your life and actions, and ignore it (though presumably not for a very long time). There is always a prior cause to every effect, and at some point, it is your choice and your responsibility for what becomes of that choice, even if you made it involuntarily. Sartre argues that “everything which happens to me is mine” and that “there are no accidents in life” including a country’s war you don’t support or weren’t directly responsible for, and even your birth is not exempt from this responsibility. (Sartre, “Freedom and Responsibility,” Being and Nothingness) Say you have been wrongly incarcerated – somehow that is another product of your birth and being, perhaps also for living or being at the wrong place at the wrong time, but Sartre would argue that that which happens to you, happens through you, and that denying your responsibility would be to deny the foundations of what makes you a person. (I think.)
Dr. Papazian,
You are certainly correct -- that is a much harder point to try to refute. Why would God limit his omniscience? Is his omniscience and our free choice mutually exclusive? It seems so, to me at least. So here’s a question. Did Adam and Eve have the free choice to eat the forbidden fruit? It seems like they did choose, but also that they were always going to choose that, that God knew they would, and that they would not have done otherwise. If they wouldn’t have chosen otherwise, they also couldn’t have chosen otherwise. Some question if God purposefully blinded himself and only after their choice planned for man’s ultimate salvation, and that he does the same for man to freely choose salvation out of their own wills or not; this is not a view I believe is well-substantiated in the Bible. If there is interest, I can make another post with the cases for both the God-chooses-us side, as well as for the we-choose-God side with several biblical references in evidence for each, but for now I’ll leave it as is.
A final question for anyone: Imagine that we could replicate the world precisely as it is at this very moment, down to the very minutest detail. Now let’s just pretend that at this very moment I’m contemplating whether or not to shoot my roommate, a wrong I recognize both morally and legally. Free will proponents say that in world A, I could choose to pull the trigger, but that I could also choose not to in world B. The worlds are exactly the same, and I’ve been conditioned in the same way, history’s identical, my moral conscience and knowledge of legal ramifications are the same in both worlds, and my motivations and inhibitions are identical. Is it possible that you would really choose anything different in that very same split-second in both worlds? It’s highly dubious to me. I think I was always going to choose and rationalize it in my indistinguishable mind A and B the exact same way, and that there is no possible way to decide differently if every detail is identical in both worlds. Perhaps there could exist worlds in which every available choice, as unlimited as could actually be, are exercised, that every single possible combination of mankind’s choices exist in worlds so that you may not have the ability to do differently in this one world, but that as you-subscript-x, you did choose otherwise. Which could very well mean that, if what we have chosen in life makes us who we are, you would not be the same being if you chose even one different thing in life, even something as innocuous as eating that apple this morning or not.
You seem to conclude that if God can somehow interfere with our will, then the notion of "free will" has to be done away with. Let us delve into the definition of free. Free means without cost. In order to have free will, our will to action must come at no cost to us. God might know what we are going to do before we do it, but we cannot assume that His knowledge comes from the choices that he has made for us. Knowledge of future events cannot be definitively correlated with intervention or the formation of those events. I know that anytime something falls on this earth, it will go in a downward motion; however, my knowledge of that does not mean that I in any way am responsible for that object falling.
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