I’ve written before that I don’t believe in free will. The article itself needs some cleaning up and clarification, which I’m sure I’ll get to when I have another eight hours a day to work on writing. I’m revisiting the idea today because memes seem to come in cycles, and I’m seeing a lot of dickering about free will lately.
The essence of my argument against freewill is twofold. The first element is the incoherence of the concept itself. Second, I believe what people think they are talking about when they say free will conflates hypothetical and actual possibility. I’ll briefly explain both arguments.
Defining “Free Will” is much more difficult than most people imagine. We speak of choice as if we know exactly what it is, but without getting into the nuts and bolts of brain mechanics, it’s really hard to explain. Superficially, a choice is the selection of one out of multiple options. The thing is, every animal capable of locomotion makes such choices. If you put an ant on a completely flat surface, it inevitably will do one of three things. It will move in one direction, it will stand still, or it will die. If it moves, it will move in one of many possible directions. If it stands still, it will be doing that instead of moving. Only if it dies will it cease to make choices.
Free Will implies something more than that, however. We humans suppose that our choices are qualitatively different than an ant’s because we think about our choices. However, this clarification doesn’t get us out of our quagmire. Ants have rudimentary brains, and their brains process information. The result of this process is the ant’s movement. That’s what humans do, too, right?
Of course, human choices are qualitatively different than ant choices. The difference is twofold — abstraction and second order thought. That is, we can think of concepts, and we can think about thinking about concepts. To be fair, I should note that it is now known that humans are not the only animals capable of abstraction. However, our ability to think about thinking appears unique.
When I decide whether to have fish or chicken for lunch, I am exercising a number of mental faculties available only to humans. I might, in my decision making process, even think about the process I’m using to reach a decision! I could, in mid-decision, decide to change the method I’m using for decision making. This kind of mental maneuvering is what most people think of when they imagine free will.
Still, this working definition of free will leaves out the “free” part. In fact, what’s missing is crucial to Christian theology. There is an assumption that any human can make any decision at any time. But even here, we have a problem. Are we talking about hypothetical possibility or physical possibility? If we are speaking philosophically, we can legitimately say that a human is capable of deciding anything conceivable. However, if we speak of actual possibility, it’s a different story.
My Go-To example of this is simple. If we really are capable of making any decision at any time, then it ought to be a simple matter for you, gentle reader, to decide right now that you have no hands. Of course, you cannot do so. It is impossible for you to decide something that gives every appearance of being completely false.
To use a much scarier example, it is similarly impossible for us to decide to take actions we believe to be the wrong choice. If free will really does exist, it should be a simple matter for you, gentle reader, to decide to never again wear clothes of any kind. Or, perhaps you should decide to buy a gun and shoot everyone you love in the head. Right now. For no reason other than proving free will.
Luckily for us, such free will does not exist. We are bound by our existing beliefs. And this is where Christian theology falls flat on its face.
Beginning with the story of original sin, we are left with nonsensical premises. Adam and Eve “sinned” by choosing to eat of the forbidden fruit. God chose to punish all of mankind for choosing to defy him, and then God chose to offer man salvation if only he would choose to believe that Jesus lived, and was God Incarnate, and was crucified, buried, and resurrected after three days.
All of this sounds nice, but if it is true that we are limited in our available choices, then the reality is that some people simply cannot choose to believe in Jesus.
As an aside, I suppose one could make the argument that some beliefs can be adopted freely by any human, while others can’t. The problem is that there is simply no evidence to support this position. There’s no scientific theory of which I’m aware that suggests that a certain class of claim has the property of excluding itself from the normal decision making process. Indeed, if such a class of claims exist, the proof of its existence would literally cause us to have to completely rethink everything we know of psychology, logic, and philosophy. (And just to throw a monkey wrench into the works, if the proof of such a class was a member of the class in question, how would we ever prove such a thing without having the proof before proving it?!?)
In any case, for any Christians who might be reading this, I can prove to you that neither of us is capable of choosing to believe as the other believes. If it is true that anyone can choose to believe in Jesus, it must also be true that anyone can choose not to believe in Jesus. Also, since choice is free, and we can literally choose any belief we’d like, you can do a really fun experiment that will not affect your eternal salvation. Here’s what you do.
1. Find a nice, safe place where the likelihood of life-ending disaster is virtually zero.
2. Choose not to believe in Jesus for five minutes.
3. After five minutes, choose to believe in Jesus again.
Simple, right?
Except that you can’t do it. You can choose to pretend like you don’t believe in Jesus. You can play mental games where you imagine what your beliefs would be like if you didn’t believe in Jesus. You can even decide that you’d really like to try not believing in Jesus for five minutes.
But you can’t decide not to believe. You either believe or you don’t.
The same is true of us atheists. No matter how much I might want to believe in Jesus, I cannot. Imagine if the Templeton Foundation offered me ten million dollars to genuinely believe in Jesus right now. Trust me — I’m no dummy. I would really, really want to believe in Jesus so that I could get ten million dollars. But I couldn’t cash in, no matter how much I wanted to. The same is true for you. If the James Randi Foundation offered you a million dollars to believe that you have no hands, you couldn’t do it.
So what’s left of Christianity?
Some theologians have recognized this dilemma, and rewritten Christianity so that there are two groups — the chosen and the damned. Ironically, this version of Christianity is plausible, at least insofar as free will goes. The problem is that such a doctrine doesn’t have the scare power to control the minds of followers. If I cannot control my own destiny, and am either saved or damned from birth, then I have no particular motivation to do or not do anything at all.
It’s also pretty difficult to reconcile a loving God with a character who would knowingly institute such a system. What would make such a deity worthy of admiration or worship? Nothing I can think of. If man is not free to choose his own eternal destiny, then we have no choice but to place complete responsibility on God for the suffering of millions of humans for all of eternity.
So, on the one hand, we have a God who set up a whole religion around “free will” but forgot to give people genuinely free will. On the other hand, we have an immensely evil son of a bitch who arbitrarily creates and then eternally torments humans. Either God is an imbecile or the most evil creature imaginable.
While it’s true that there are a lot of Christian denominations, and each of them has their own take on salvation, this leaves the religion as a whole without much justification for its existence. Belief in Jesus is not a free choice, so… um… I guess we should all try to be good to each other, and try to live good lives, and … um…
Doesn’t it seem simpler to just admit that the whole story is kind of goofy, and was made up by Bronze Age men who didn’t understand enough science or philosophy to recognize the absurdity of it all? Let’s not be glib about this. Christians are the ones who insist that their entire religion is about salvation and grace, right? They say, “This is what makes Christianity different from other religions.” Well, if that’s the case, then a simple thought experiment has just rendered the core essence of Christianity nonsensical. It doesn’t prove that there’s no god, or that there isn’t a correct religion, but it does prove that if you happen to believe in a religion based upon free will… YOU ARE WRONG.
Hi,
nice post, you make some good points, many of which ive thought about myself recently.
Your thoughts on God as either “imbecile or evil” don’t make much sense to me however, even though I agree with the free will part. The question you might ask yourself is; where do I get my perceptions of evil and good? If God made man and chose some of them for damnation and some for salvation maybe that is whats good, maybe we don’t know the full story. Just like free will, Evil and Good need to be defined.
If God exists, saying that he is evil is illogical since the creator is the one who made the rules, not the creation.
Humans can only understand the rules within their system, they cant possibly understand a God outside those rules and cant judge him as good or bad unless he has given them the same knowledge he has.
I believe in a God but I disagree with the theology today, not sure where that leaves me.
anyway, good post, good to think about. cheers
Well, you’ve got a lot of problems here. You’re confusing a lot of different ideas. To begin with, you have to address the nature of good and evil as it applies to attainable knowledge. Regardless of what caused morality to exist — whether it was an intelligent deity or blind evolution — it is either knowable or unknowable. That is, we can either use reason to work out moral problems, or we can’t.
It’s obvious, or should be, that we reason about morality all the time. We don’t look at a checklist of do’s and dont’s. We have very complicated ideas of what’s right and wrong, and they change based on the situation. In other words, morality is knowable.
Having observed that morality is knowable, we can make the observation that regardless of the cause of morality, we can evaluate it on its own terms. That is, IF morality exists, and IF we can understand it, THEN any action, including that of the originator of morality, can be judged within the framework.
In other words, God doesn’t get an exemption from morality just because he invented it. If I was the inventor of baseball, people would properly give me credit for inventing a fun sport, but I would not be the only guy on the field who didn’t have to play by the rules.
You might want to respond, “Well, yes, but you’re a human, and under morality. God is God, and above morality.” While we can’t rule this out as a possibility, we can make the observation that one of two things is true if this IS the case:
1) Morality is NOT what we think it is. (Since God doesn’t act morally, but defines morality, then we must be mistaken about what morality is.) If this is true, then morality becomes unknowable, which brings us back to square one. So, if morality isn’t knowable, what is this thing we’re doing when we evaluate each others’ actions?
2) There are two separate kinds of morality. One is unknowable to us, and the other is knowable. Think about this carefully. Even when you rationalize that one of God’s actions seems immoral but must be moral since he’s God, you’re using OUR FRAMEWORK of morality to think of his actions. You can’t use another because you can’t comprehend another. No matter how hard you try, something evil in our perception only becomes good when God is applied to it. That means we are not using a method, but simply looking at a checklist:
1. Did man do it? We can evaluate it.
2. Did God do it? It’s automatically good, regardless of any evaluation.
If morality is not what we think it is, then both god and man are inscrutable, and nobody has any right to tell anybody what to do about anything. If only one form of morality is inscrutable, then we have no yardstick by which to judge God, and therefore…. (DRUMROLL)…
No reason to trust him when he tells us he’s good.
So… yeah. Big problems.
Hi, that was a fast reply, im too tired right now at 3:am to answer all of it but i will say this. Baseball and God doesn’t make a good analogy =)
God made the rules, including morality, but he isn’t part of the game. In my previous post i meant that we cant judge God by our rules even if they are given to us by him. It would be like a pawn in chess getting angry when the player moves him to a certain square that he doesn’t like. The pawn has rules on how he can move, but doesn’t choose where he moves and does not know the game plan either.
If God exists then only he knows the whole truth and all the facts that go into planning this universe from beginning to end. I don’t see how you think our knowledge here on earth can allow us to figure out if Gods plan is evil or good.
Speaking about God as if we understand him is like penguins discussing nuclear physics, it isn’t going to make much sense.
By the way, you have already judged God without knowing how the game ends! No one knows how it ends but him.
so… yeah, Big problems understanding him
This is what we call a “naked assertion.” The reason we call it that is that it is a statement which sounds authoritative, but when it’s critically examined, it turns out to have no logical or empirical foundation.
Funny. Now THIS is a bad analogy. What we are comparing is two sentient beings evaluating created systems of value. A pawn on a chess board is not sentient, and has no opinion whatsoever on its movements.
Are you suggesting humans are not sentient?
Again, a poor analogy. Penguins don’t have the ability to perform second order thought — thinking about thinking. Humans do, and presumably, god does as well. (Although this assertion runs into severe problems when we consider the problems with omnimax qualitites.)
In a strict “debate” format, there would be little left for me to say. Your entire argument rests on bad analogies and naked assertions. However, my purpose here isn’t to win a debate, so I’ll take the time to explain the fundamental error in your thinking.
GOD IS A HYPOTHESIS
Your first, and most egregious error, is assuming the existence of God. Unfortunately, you can neither demonstrate his existence empirically or by necessary steps in deduction. So, that means that your conclusion rests on the empirical truth of your “given premise” — God exists and created morality.
What you are asking me to do is exempt one factual claim about the universe from falsification. And it’s not a small claim, either. If you’re right, and God exists, it is very, very, very important for scientists to know about it. After all, scientists study morality. It’s part of the empirical phenomenon known as “human living.” At this point, there is simply no evidence whatsoever to suppose that your hypothesis is true.
To put it simply, In order for me to decide whether your claim is true or not, I need to examine it rationally. The only way I can examine the issue of God creating morality is to first discern whether or not God exists, THEN whether or not he created morality, THEN whether “God Morality” is knowable by humans.
You’re not just putting the cart before the horse. You haven’t even invented the wheel yet.
For someone who uses analogies you sure don’t understand them very well. (they are just pictures) I thought would understand the illustration with its imperfections, just like your baseball analogy but that’s not so i see now. So let me simplify: if I am a human created by God, and if God sees the whole picture and I dont, does it make sense for me to judge him? Shouldn’t the creator be smarter than the creation?
You made references to the christian God in your original post so of course ill assume that is what we are talking about. When discussing God of course that is hypothetical, how else can we talk about something we haven’t seen?
We can also assume he doesn’t exist and then discuss that… whatever you please.
It seems you are more interested in spewing big words to make yourself feel smart, rather than try to understand the point. Stick to the point and only speak of carts and wheels when its relevant.
I assume based on your total lack of rebuttal that you have none?
Here’s the Wikipedia link for Analogy. If you read it carefully, you’ll see that I’m quite correct in my analysis of the various analogies used by both you and me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy
“So let me simplify: if I am a human created by God, and if God sees the whole picture and I dont, does it make sense for me to judge him? Shouldn’t the creator be smarter than the creation?”
I got it the first time. What you’re not getting is this: Leaving aside the fact that you’re ASSUMING the existence of a God and two separate versions of morality, EVEN IF YOU ARE RIGHT, you’re still setting up a catch-22 whereby we cannot evaluate any action within this second, unknowable morality, and therefore have no reason to trust anyone’s word — including God’s — that he is in fact acting morally.
And for the record, Len, I’m using layman’s language here. I’m specifically avoiding using philosophical or syllogistic jargon. If you’re having trouble with these basic college level words, I’d suggest you have some groundwork to lay before you’re prepared to solve philosophical problems of dualism and morality.
English is not my first language, i speak other languages and would be happy to continue this discussion in any one of them if you like. How about it, is your swedish as good/weak as my english?
Here is whats funny, we both were talking about God or at least what morality would be like if God existed (hypothetically). Then all of a sudden you decide that I am the one assuming things, when in fact we both had to assume something in order to discuss it. How else do we discuss God unless we can assume for a moment that he exists?
“What you’re not getting is this: Leaving aside the fact that you’re ASSUMING the existence of a God and two separate versions of morality, EVEN IF YOU ARE RIGHT, you’re still setting up a catch-22 whereby we cannot evaluate any action within this second, unknowable morality, and therefore have no reason to trust anyone’s word — including God’s — that he is in fact acting morally.”
When you said that God is evil because he created some humans for salvation and some for damnation, you ASSUMED that scenario was true. Maybe God will save everyone in the end, how do we know?
And if your assumption is correct, maybe God made two moralities for our own protection here on earth. When we die the next one might be applied. Obviously i’m making wild guesses but the point is; we cant possibly know and therefore cant judge God either. Is it so unthinkable to you that maybe we should just trust him anyway, maybe that is the beauty of trust.
No, I’m afraid English is the only language in which I can continue this discussion. My Swedish is nonexistent, but I can curse like a sailor in Dutch. If your level of language comprehension here is insufficient, I’m afraid we are at an impasse due to communication barriers.
Bleh. In any language, the burden of proof is the same. He who makes the claim provides the empirical evidence. We’ve already hashed out the “What if God Created Dual Morality” question. You have yet to refute my statement that if this were the case, we would be unable to evaluate God’s trustworthiness, and so would have no reason to believe that he was, in fact, good.
On the other side of the coin from philosophical claptrap, we have empirical reality. Biologists, zoologists, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, neurologists, and evolutionary theorists ALL converge on approximately the same model of human morality. Think of the implications of that. Many branches of science find compelling evidence to build a natural model of morality which has no need for a supernatural entity, and can be parsimoniously explained with the available evidence.
Sure, there are still questions. But that’s the nature of science. The large questions — what is morality, for instance — are answered beyond the shadow of reasonable doubt, taking all the evidence into consideration.
So, on one side, we have an armchair philosopher proposing:
1. An incomprehensible, supernatural being who created a “thing” called morality, and imposed it upon humans uniquely.
2. A second, incomprehensible set of morality which is only known to the supernatural being, and cannot be evaluated by humans.
Um… all things considered, Len, I’m going with the evidence, not the supposition.
Yeah. Obviously, you’re making wild guesses, and you have no evidence to back up any of them, while on the other hand, I’ve got access to the university library where there is literally an entire floor of data devoted to the subject at hand.
I’m going with the evidence.
I have no problems with understanding any of the things you said (in english), but I think you have problems with the logic part. If you dont understand logic i suggest you take a course before you say any more.
I don’t need evidence to back up my wild guesses, thats why i called them “wild guesses” They are much the same as YOUR wild guesses on what God planned for mankind and YOUR wild assumptions that we have to be able to understand God… Proof?
“He who made the claim has the burden of evidence”
I hear this all the time, mostly from people who do not understand that saying something does not exist is also a claim. Like i said, take a course in logic and it will clear out the mist.
Lastly, I never said God exists for sure, i’m discussing what the implications of that would be given what you said in your original post, just like I thought you were doing.
You were offended that I didn’t like your conclusion on what God is and so you started getting emotional and that never bodes well for any discussion… sorry buddy you need to calm down then reassess what you think I said, you have missed the point almost every time.
If you admit you have no evidence, and that you’re guessing wildly, why are you spending so much time trying to convince me of anything? Are you just upset by what I’ve extrapolated from your guess? Let me try one more time:
1. What does it take to evaluate anything? Knowledge of that thing.
2. You claim that “God Morality” is unknowable to humans.
a) In the next breath, you claim that our means of evaluation is God’s word that he is, in fact, acting like “Good God Morality.”
From here, we have a problem. You must solve an internal contradiction because you’ve claimed both A and ~A. If you choose to say that “God Morality” is knowable, you appear to be left with only God’s word as evidence by which we can know god morality. If you choose to say that God Morality is unknowable, you must retract your statement that we can know God is acting in “Good God Morality.”
If God’s word is the only evidence we have for our evaluation of God Morality, then you’ve backed yourself into the original corner I mentioned a long time ago — that you have no empirical evidence for the existence of God.
As for my speculation on God’s intent, etc, I take the claims made by Christians and treat them with deductive logic. That’s not wild speculation.
Quite true. saying, “X does not exist” is a claim, and if someone were to say it, they would be required to back up their claim. However, I have not done that, and am under no obligation. Instead, you have hypothesized a being called God, and I have rebutted with the demand for evidence to support your hypothesis before I will accept your claim.
Since you’re expert in logic, I presume you’re also familiar with the basic rules of formal debate, and recognize this simple fact. (Don’t gripe, buddy. You started the snark by telling me I my wordifying was too high class for you, and now you’re stumbling over basic stuff. Pot, meet kettle.)
Yeah. I get that. I’ve gotten it every time you’ve said it. Would you like to continue telling each other what we’ve already said, or would you like to show me where I’m wrong?
Would you like to backtrack and count insults, or perhaps see who threw the first punch?
If you get it, then why do you keep saying that I have claimed God exists?
You make claims based on what you THINK christianity is, which is just wild GUESSES, that is why i put in the wild guesses of my own to illustrate that, but you missed the point again.
Let me correct you on who started the hypothesis about God, YOU DID! reread your first post, especially the last sentence where you mentioned something called God. So tell me, if you didn’t hypothesize, what exactly is that God you were talking about there?
I have not made any claims at all except that we cant expect to understand God (the one you mentioned in the first post) unless of course we know the rules that govern his world.
Your conclusion restricts God (the one you mentioned… ) to being one of two things; imbecile or evil.
You cant prove that unless you know Gods (the one you mentioned… ) world and what happens there.
I wonder if you will understand the point now, or if you will once again put words in my mouth and miss the point.
Logic is not your forte, but you might get there.
Ok. I get it. So… um… you’re spending all this time arguing with me just to get the point across that I’m picking one version of Christianity and running with it?
Admitted.
Can I have this three hours of my life back?
Actually any version of Christianity you pick will tell you that God cant be completely understood by human thought and logic.
Sorry if you feel it was wasted time but at least you know that the definition of God you had was not the same one Christians have. Might be worth something.
like your article just not the conclusion
cheers
So… all this for you to tell me that my conclusion is wrong because there’s no logical conclusion to be drawn?
What a hollow victory.
You really thought there was victory somewhere in this discussion? Perhaps if you had understood the point from the first response it would not have come to ALL THIS. The only victory i see is understanding someone elses point of view. I understood yours and disagreed, now you understand mine too. end of story. good bye.
Len, call it language, call it what you want. This is no victory. That was sarcasm.
Maybe because of language barriers, I still don’t understand what you’re saying, and if that’s true, I apologize. However, as well as I can understand it, your point is this:
If God created two moralities, and humans can’t understand one of them, then maybe he’s good even when he’s bad, because he made the rules. Oh, and also, not all Christians believe the same thing.
If that’s your argument, then it’s nonsense because we can only evaluate what we can know, and speaking of the unknowable is meaningless. By extension, calling something good which we’ve previously called unknowable is contradictory.