My Christianity: Free Will

[Mempho]

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God Can See the Future

Now, the determinism people will point out very quickly (and quite correctly) that God can see the future. They think this presents a conundrum for the concept of free will. It does not.

Suppose that God is on his throne, peers through time into the future, and one day and sees Susie being born. Susie is a wonderful child and grows into a beautiful, young woman. She is beautiful, smart, giving, and caring. She donates time to feed the poor and is an avid churchgoer. She gets engaged to a young man who loves her very much named David. Her life is a blessing to all around her. One night she comes home from feeding the poor and finds Tom in her house. Tom has made a dark choice and proceeds to rape and kill her.

Would God not think of this as a terrible tragedy? Of course he would. After all, it was not Susie’s fault and she was a blessing to all around her. It was Tom’s fault because he made the wrong choice. God could’ve intervened but he did not. If God intervened every time that something bad happened, he would eventually end up removing Susie’s capacity to love all of those around her because all of the opportunities for everyone who ever lived to make a wrong choice would be extinguished. Love is a choice. Without that choice, humans are nothing more than biological material. With that choice, however, the door for evil is always open.


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This doesnt address the supposed conflict between free will and omniscience, it addresses the problem of evil.

In your scenario, the argument would be that Tom had no choice to rape Susie as God already knew he was going to. If he got to that moment and then chose not to, God would have been wrong (which is impossible). Therefore, at the moment he made his choice, he was choosing between only the one option that God had already seen. (Furthermore, God could have made Tom such that he wouldnt have chosen rape at that moment. When someone is shot, it's not the gun's fault.)

It also avoids the problem of why didnt God make us able to choose between a whole lot of good choices? It doesnt have to be rape vs not rape. Tom could have been exercising his free will on a much more benevolent scale - God could make a world where we went around choosing "Do I give Susie one birthday present or two?" Why allow us the ability to do such awful things that some of us do? He could make the dark just a little gloomy rather than pitch black.

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Well, if he makes the worst case a little gloomy, then he eliminates the choice for total darkness.

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Yes - which would be a more benevolent thing to do.

Do you have a response to the bolded part?

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You assume the fact that just because God sees the future that it eliminates choice? Since God transcends time, does that mean that the choice never really existed?

[Sephus]

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If humans did not have free will, they would be incapable of love, since they would be essentially be biological robots.

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How do you know what a "biological robot" would experience life as? Your inability to imagine consciousness as a biological phenomenon DOES NOT say anything about the true nature of consciousness.

How do you know that our experience of love is anything more than a psychological elaboration on chemical pair-bonding? Again, your inability to imagine what psychology+chemistry can account for does not constitute an insight into the necessity of free will.

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This is off topic. Yours is a philosophical question about the nature of conciousness. That's a complete other thread. I'm trying to explain Christianity.

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when you used the premise "anything without free will can not love" to make your argument about free will you introduced the topic. if you don't want to talk about the claim you made, you should retract the statement and find a different way to demonstrate that humans have free will, or at least that free will is both possible and consistent with all your beliefs about god.

[Mempho]

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If humans did not have free will, they would be incapable of love, since they would be essentially be biological robots.

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How do you know what a "biological robot" would experience life as? Your inability to imagine consciousness as a biological phenomenon DOES NOT say anything about the true nature of consciousness.

How do you know that our experience of love is anything more than a psychological elaboration on chemical pair-bonding? Again, your inability to imagine what psychology+chemistry can account for does not constitute an insight into the necessity of free will.

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This is off topic. Yours is a philosophical question about the nature of conciousness. That's a complete other thread. I'm trying to explain Christianity.

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when you used the premise "anything without free will can not love" to make your argument about free will you introduced the topic. if you don't want to talk about the claim you made, you should retract the statement and find a different way to demonstrate that humans have free will, or at least that free will is both possible and consistent with all your beliefs about god.

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I didn't realize that I had to describe the Christian definition of love. It is always used in a voluntary context when referring to humans. I've never seen involuntary love referred to or implied in the Bible.

[Sephus]

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If humans did not have free will, they would be incapable of love, since they would be essentially be biological robots.

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How do you know what a "biological robot" would experience life as? Your inability to imagine consciousness as a biological phenomenon DOES NOT say anything about the true nature of consciousness.

How do you know that our experience of love is anything more than a psychological elaboration on chemical pair-bonding? Again, your inability to imagine what psychology+chemistry can account for does not constitute an insight into the necessity of free will.

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This is off topic. Yours is a philosophical question about the nature of conciousness. That's a complete other thread. I'm trying to explain Christianity.

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when you used the premise "anything without free will can not love" to make your argument about free will you introduced the topic. if you don't want to talk about the claim you made, you should retract the statement and find a different way to demonstrate that humans have free will, or at least that free will is both possible and consistent with all your beliefs about god.

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I didn't realize that I had to describe the Christian definition of love. It is always used in a voluntary context when referring to humans. I've never seen involuntary love referred to or implied in the Bible.

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the word voluntary has different senses. i can claim that sometimes humans do things because they want to, therefore some actions are voluntary. i can also claim that all human actions are determined by the laws of physics and are in that sense involuntary. in order to say that some actions are both voluntary and involuntary i only have to change my focus.

you want to prove to other people that humans have free will. you can't build your conclusion "humans have free will" into the definition of one of the words you're using to make the argument.

[bunny]

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You assume the fact that just because God sees the future that it eliminates choice? Since God transcends time, does that mean that the choice never really existed?

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Not at all - I believe in an omniscient God and free will. I was merely pointing out that you havent explained how you think it's compatible. You introduced the topic as if you were going to provide an answer to the free will vs omniscience objection, then actually talked about the problem of evil existing.

I dont find the free will vs omniscience argument problematic, but I'm interested in hearing how others have solved it..

[Phil153]

Yep, he's in no way touched on the subject of omniscience and free will.

His story is about God intervening in other's choices, and has nothing to do with the fact that if God knows everything, free will cannot exist.

[Phil153]

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God gave humans free will. If humans did not have free will, they would be incapable of love, since they would be essentially be biological robots.

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Do dogs have free will, or are they robots? How about orang-utans? Did God infuse them with free will? Dolphins? Ants?

This is merely a question to understand the distinction you make between biological robots and creatures with free will.

[Mempho]

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you want to prove to other people that humans have free will.

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Just because your mind can comprehend a level of focus where all actions are involuntary doesn't make it a reality and doesn't disprove free will. I can imagine floating through outer space without a space suit. That doesn't disprove that humans need oxygen and a certain level of atmospheric pressurization in order to survive.

[bunny]

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Just because your mind can comprehend a level of focus where all actions are involuntary doesn't make it a reality and doesn't disprove free will. I can imagine floating through outer space without a space suit. That doesn't disprove that humans need oxygen and a certain level of atmospheric pressurization in order to survive.

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You dont think the burden of proof is on the advocates of free will? We seem to live in at least a broadly deterministic universe in that current states are contrained by previous ones. If free will exists, doesnt it imply that the physical universe can be influenced in some way not encoded into the initial state?

[Sephus]

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you want to prove to other people that humans have free will.

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Just because your mind can comprehend a level of focus where all actions are involuntary doesn't make it a reality and doesn't disprove free will. I can imagine floating through outer space without a space suit. That doesn't disprove that humans need oxygen and a certain level of atmospheric pressurization in order to survive.

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where did i suggest that i thought i had disproved free will? where do i appear to be trying to disprove free will?

you're the one trying to prove things in this thread. my responses to you are intended to show that your arguments are faulty. this is what is happening.

you: X is true because of Y.
me: your argument fails to prove X.
you: your argument fails to prove not X.

you're right, but i don't know why you thought that was my goal.

what my post is intended to show is that we can agree that decisions are "voluntary" but disagree about whether they are the product of free will. do you see how this, if true, makes you point about "love in the bible being voluntary" moot?