The Delusion of "Free Will"

Discussions on a ranges of philosophical issues including the nature of truth and reality, personal identity, mind-body theories, epistemology, justification of beliefs, argumentation and logic, philosophy of religion, free will and determinism, etc.
Justhuman
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Re: The Delusion of "Free Will"

Post by Justhuman »

RickD wrote:
Justhuman wrote:
RickD wrote:I just don't see how it logically follows, that if God knows what we will choose, therefore we really aren't choosing.

That just makes no sense.
No, we can choose, but according to Gods plan. The point is that if God knows everything (in advance) He needs not (cannot?) make us choose anything (else), because that would deminish His knowing everything. IF he decided to make us choose something, it would have been predetermined that He did/does that.
That's not an argument against free will. You do understand that, right?
Yes I do. The only way to have free will in a theistic God universe is if God doesn't interfere in what He created. Any interference nullifies our free will. And He doesn't need to interfere, for He knows already how things work out.

Is the free will an illusion because everything is planned by God? If he guides things to His plan, than free will is also bound to that plan, at least partly.

And I just don't see the need for our free will if God already knows who will pass and who will fail. It 'feels' useless. Whatever I do or choose is already known by God.

So, why condemn individuals that chose differently than what God wants. Differently than what He created?
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Re: The Delusion of "Free Will"

Post by Philip »

JustHuman: The only way to have free will in a theistic God universe is if God doesn't interfere in what He created. Any interference nullifies our free will.
That's poor logic. We have free will but not unlimited power. God has both. We can desire and try whatever our wills and limitations will allow for. That doesn't mean that an all-powerful/all-knowing God cannot thwart our desires and actions.
And He doesn't need to interfere, for He knows already how things work out.
What makes you think that He sometimes doesn't interfere BECAUSE He wants things to work out a particular way - or if He did not, He would interfere. Or He doesn't interfere as the free will actions of people will produce the outcome He desires. Ah, but is that outcome of our free will actions God's ultimate desire, or merely one piece of the puzzle He's orchestrating?
JustHuman: Is the free will an illusion because everything is planned by God? If he guides things to His plan, than free will is also bound to that plan, at least partly.
Of course, we are all bound to whatever aspects of our all-powerful God. The free will of man is not the issue here. The issue is that God is both all-knowing and all-powerful.
And I just don't see the need for our free will if God already knows who will pass and who will fail. It 'feels' useless. Whatever I do or choose is already known by God.
Again, if there is a God Who has established right and wrong - if God wants US to choose to love Him as opposed to being forced, then free will is necessary! What is FORCED love? Would that truly be love, under coercion? If there is an established morality and we must use our free will to make choices that God sees as either permissible (or neutral), or sinful - if we could not FREELY choose to sin, then our sin would be God-caused. Free will explains how there can be a God who sets the standards of righteousness, but allows us to choose how we will exercise our free will - whether sinfully or in God-honoring ways - without Him being responsible for our sin.
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Re: The Delusion of "Free Will"

Post by Kurieuo »

Philip wrote:
JustHuman: The only way to have free will in a theistic God universe is if God doesn't interfere in what He created. Any interference nullifies our free will.
That's poor logic.
Indeed!
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Re: The Delusion of "Free Will"

Post by Justhuman »

Suppose I'm writing a computergame, a world full with characters that can freely think and act for themselves. Most likely it will run out of control somewhere/sometime, so I then make some adjustments. Most probably I would have to make several times an adjustment to get the result I want. A free running, self-correcting world.

Now I'm omnipotent, omniscient, infallible. I know the past as well as the future. The moment I create such a world I know the endresult and because I'm infallible it is first-time-right. It doesn't need adjustment, nor intervention.

The point is that in both situations I've controlled the free will of the inhabitants to my needs. I've created/steered/guided them into the course I think it should be. The inhabitants might think they possess free will, but it is an engineered free will.
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Re: The Delusion of "Free Will"

Post by Kenny »

Justhuman wrote:Suppose I'm writing a computergame, a world full with characters that can freely think and act for themselves. Most likely it will run out of control somewhere/sometime, so I then make some adjustments. Most probably I would have to make several times an adjustment to get the result I want. A free running, self-correcting world.

Now I'm omnipotent, omniscient, infallible. I know the past as well as the future. The moment I create such a world I know the endresult and because I'm infallible it is first-time-right. It doesn't need adjustment, nor intervention.

The point is that in both situations I've controlled the free will of the inhabitants to my needs. I've created/steered/guided them into the course I think it should be. The inhabitants might think they possess free will, but it is an engineered free will.
If you don't believe free will exists, how do you think things would be different if it did?

K
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Re: The Delusion of "Free Will"

Post by Justhuman »

Kenny wrote:
Justhuman wrote:Suppose I'm writing a computergame, a world full with characters that can freely think and act for themselves. Most likely it will run out of control somewhere/sometime, so I then make some adjustments. Most probably I would have to make several times an adjustment to get the result I want. A free running, self-correcting world.

Now I'm omnipotent, omniscient, infallible. I know the past as well as the future. The moment I create such a world I know the endresult and because I'm infallible it is first-time-right. It doesn't need adjustment, nor intervention.

The point is that in both situations I've controlled the free will of the inhabitants to my needs. I've created/steered/guided them into the course I think it should be. The inhabitants might think they possess free will, but it is an engineered free will.
If you don't believe free will exists, how do you think things would be different if it did?

K
I do think free will exists, but in a created universe with an 'engineered' free will, it doesn't feel right. God has created us and planned everything from A to Z. The moment He created A He knew the outcome Z. Thus, He even created the outcome Z!

Free will demands no outside control or influence. And a choice that leaves a 'balanced' choice. If I have a free will, but shall be damned if I make the 'wrong choice', then how free am I really? I'm more or less forced to make the 'right' choice.

Of course 'free' is always bound to some sort of rules, be it physically or socially. No one is truly free. Also in my materialistic universe.
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Re: The Delusion of "Free Will"

Post by Philip »

JustHuman: because I'm infallible it is first-time-right. It doesn't need adjustment, nor intervention.
Ah - as most non-theists, they suggest a true God would "get it right the first time, every time." And so what THEY would have created instead would have been an automated world in which men are robots and have no will of their own - their only will would be the perfect will of their creator. Such robots could not rebel or go against their creator's programming. God did not create THIS world or the humans He allows to rebel to be perfect in their own power. But that was the price of giving them free will - a period of difficulty and struggle that those reaching to God will be rewarded with perfection delayed. God sees value in our struggles - many of which draw us to Him.
JustHuman: The point is that in both situations I've controlled the free will of the inhabitants to my needs. I've created/steered/guided them into the course I think it should be. The inhabitants might think they possess free will, but it is an engineered free will.
You are confusing the ability to freely make decisions with some desired ability to also control all of the parameters, consequences, and outcomes. Mercifully, God has built consequences into the world. He wants us to seek, desire and to love Him - NOT just because He has FORCED us to. Freely being able to choose to love God necessitates the ability to also choose not to - otherwise, it is not our choice.
JustHuman: Free will demands no outside control or influence. And a choice that leaves a 'balanced' choice. If I have a free will, but shall be damned if I make the 'wrong choice', then how free am I really? I'm more or less forced to make the 'right' choice.
Free will does not mean the right to choose consequences or to avoid them. God knows one cannot truly love Him without His influence, guidance and drawing us. Mercifully, He gives us an astounding choice - to be with Him and His glory in a magnificent Heaven FOREVER. And to make that possible, as He demands perfection for all that enter His presence - as He is perfect and Holy - that our transgressions which stain us must be cleansed before entering His Heaven. So, He not only offers us a beautiful eternity of bliss, but He also came to earth and died a horrific, brutal death to make that possible. So, God provided what we cannot, and is our only way to be perfect and acceptable to Him. Not only that, but to reject all that God offers us, He views as hideously evil. And evil actions are a rebellion and rejection of God's ways and desires - a desire to serve the creature as opposed to the Creator. Rejecting God is the ultimate narcissism - why would anyone not desire what He offers us???!!!

Thus, God frames our free will choices with consequences, but here and in the next life. JustHuman, your comment: "I'm more or less forced to make the 'right' choice." If God forced His love, beauty and eternal bliss upon you - would you be upset about that? Or would you rather choose Him? Why would you NOT choose Him? To rebel and get your own way! You see, rebellion against God - He will not tolerate but for a season (your lifetime). Rebelling against God is why the world is one big trainwreck. And He will not allow rebels into Heaven, along with the infection that would quickly gain hold - replicating this world's trainwreck in the next one.
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Re: The Delusion of "Free Will"

Post by patrick »

Justhuman wrote:
Kenny wrote:
Justhuman wrote:Suppose I'm writing a computergame, a world full with characters that can freely think and act for themselves. Most likely it will run out of control somewhere/sometime, so I then make some adjustments. Most probably I would have to make several times an adjustment to get the result I want. A free running, self-correcting world.

Now I'm omnipotent, omniscient, infallible. I know the past as well as the future. The moment I create such a world I know the endresult and because I'm infallible it is first-time-right. It doesn't need adjustment, nor intervention.

The point is that in both situations I've controlled the free will of the inhabitants to my needs. I've created/steered/guided them into the course I think it should be. The inhabitants might think they possess free will, but it is an engineered free will.
If you don't believe free will exists, how do you think things would be different if it did?

K
I do think free will exists, but in a created universe with an 'engineered' free will, it doesn't feel right. God has created us and planned everything from A to Z. The moment He created A He knew the outcome Z. Thus, He even created the outcome Z!

Free will demands no outside control or influence. And a choice that leaves a 'balanced' choice. If I have a free will, but shall be damned if I make the 'wrong choice', then how free am I really? I'm more or less forced to make the 'right' choice.

Of course 'free' is always bound to some sort of rules, be it physically or socially. No one is truly free. Also in my materialistic universe.
I suppose my biggest question would be, how would you propose it to be instead? Because I'm not really hearing logical contradictions in what you're contesting so much as difficult facts. That is, they're like the other half of the stick you must pick up to even allow for the highest good to be possible.

God knowing everything does not mean he used such knowledge to force a given outcome. He just forces everything to follow principles, that is, to lead to the highest good possible in spite of the bad choices any given person makes. And people are not truly "free" in the sense you speak of, but why on earth would that be a good thing? Yes, you are damned for making the ultimate wrong choice, but God allows you to make wrong choices and not be damned. Where the choice matters enough that you will be damned, it is necessarily so, for there are things that would conflict with God's having dominion in heaven.
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Re: The Delusion of "Free Will"

Post by Justhuman »

So, then free will is no illusion! It either is God givven, or a materialistic by-product.
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Re: The Delusion of "Free Will"

Post by Philip »

JustHuman: So, then free will is no illusion! It either is God givven, or a materialistic by-product.
OK, as there is a Creator God, then ALL material things and life itself, comes for God. Free will is an ABILITY for a lifeform to utilize his or its own mind and inherent capabilities per whatever desires that creature may have. And just because the desire for doing a particular thing is present, doesn't mean a man actually has the capability to enact or achieve it. I want to fly - but can't, etc. The alternative to not being able to desire or act within one's physical capabilities would be that the being has not ability whatsoever to choose independent of the otherwise necessary programming per the Creator.
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Re: The Delusion of "Free Will"

Post by Kurieuo »

Logically, God's planning A to Z could be based upon our decisions freely made, rather than our decisions being based upon God's planning alone. Indeed, this is what Molinist Christians like Bill Craig believe. So, your game analogy where the coder plans everything has it back to front.

When it also comes to God's planning, all that is required for free will would be for God to withhold defining everything Himself what must be. Put another way, God allows for an emptiness or void that He purposefully chooses not to color in. Certainly, there might be boundaries in place by the laws of the world God created, but working within those boundaries there is freedom. Consider a color-in picture, the lines are there which form a picture, yet how we color it in is entirely up to us. We wouldn't say our freedom is overrun simply because someone else created the lines of the picture.
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Re: The Delusion of "Free Will"

Post by Justhuman »

Many talk about God's plan, that He has some sort of plan for us humans, to which we are (ultimately?) 'bred' into this world. How about God wants that desired result by an evolutionary process? He lets our will roam freely (in our void) until it reaches itself to the desired result. Maybe sometimes with a little push or hint into the right direction.
But what result does He want? If one has the power to do everything, why let something evolve into something which you could have created directly? Why not create the end-result directly?
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Re: The Delusion of "Free Will"

Post by Nessa »

Part of it is a learning process which cant be achieved if God just creates the end product.

The bible even says that Christ learnt obedience from all he suffered.

I think people are attracted to free will being a delusion because it avoids personal responsibiliy. Even harris arrives at that conclusion saying we are no more responsible than animals for our behaviour.

But do you really want to go down that path?
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Re: The Delusion of "Free Will"

Post by Philip »

JustHuman: How about God wants that desired result by an evolutionary process? He lets our will roam freely (in our void) until it reaches itself to the desired result.
If speaking of a philosophical evolution - well, God does allow us to roam freely, to whatever point He so desires. Again, he sets the parameters. Even the "mere" parameters of God placing people in a certain geographic location, time, and specific familial birth are all powerful determining and influential parameters. So, full freedom, limits per abilities and defined parameters built in per what God ultimately desires of us, intervening as HE wishes, whenever and however He does so.
JustHuman: Maybe sometimes with a little push or hint into the right direction. But what result does He want?
We mostly don't know what precisely results God wants. We do know His instructions for rightful living, and a basic understanding that the world as we know it will one day conclude, that Christ will return.
JustHuman: If one has the power to do everything, why let something evolve into something which you could have created directly? Why not create the end-result directly?
First of all, whenever we think about the all-powerful, all-knowing God, and then say, "Why didn't He do things like this or that?" Well, we humans are limited in what we can know and understand - it's like an ant looking up at us and asking some absurd, insinuating question of us. Orchestrating the end results does not mean God has to force our choices and actions. Influence us, yes - but He does not take away our free will. Again, of no crime or sin could any man be accused by God if we did not have free will. If a man loved God - what is that - as our love would have been projected upon us and inescapable. But that's not love! Think of all the hideous ending of world if left only to mankind's devices? Even the evil amongst us has parameters that God uses for good. The Crucifixion alone was one of those incredible events - great evil intended against a sinless God/man, fully embraced and submitted to out of unfathomable love. God knew all that would happen and when - and those evil ones who rushed to kill Jesus? They freely chose to do so, from their own evil motivations. And yet, a glorious eternity is offered to all people who will turn to Jesus in faith - yet without the Crucifixion, the sacrifice of the only perfect Being to also be a man, our promised Heaven would not be achievable for anyone!
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Re: The Delusion of "Free Will"

Post by Kurieuo »

Justhuman wrote:Many talk about God's plan, that He has some sort of plan for us humans, to which we are (ultimately?) 'bred' into this world. How about God wants that desired result by an evolutionary process? He lets our will roam freely (in our void) until it reaches itself to the desired result. Maybe sometimes with a little push or hint into the right direction.
But what result does He want? If one has the power to do everything, why let something evolve into something which you could have created directly? Why not create the end-result directly?
On God's plan, let me introduct a little thinking from Irenaeus (c. 130-c. 202 AD), an early Christian thinker. He saw two stages to God's creation of human beings. In the first stage, Irenaeus saw human beings as being brought into existence as immature intelligent creatures with the capacity for immense moral and spiritual growth and development. The second stage of creation was believed to consist of gradually being transformed through their own free responses from human animals into "children of God." Accordingly, God's purpose in creating this world was not to construct a hedonistic paradise whose inhabitants would experience a maximum of pleasure and minimum of pain. Rather this world is to be viewed as a place of "soul making," where free beings can still enjoy life's pleasures, while having to grapple with life's pitfalls in order to become be furnished into "children of God."

There is an important point to be gleaned here. Spiritual growth and maturing appears to be possible because of pain and suffering. As parents know, there are many cases where allowing pain and suffering to occur in their child's life is beneficial in order to bring about some greater good, or because there is some sufficient reason for allowing it. In James 1:2-4 we are told perseverance through trials matures us and makes us complete. Additionally, 1 Peter 1:6-7 acknowledges some as suffering all sorts of grief, because they are being refined as though by fire, to prove their faith is pure and genuine towards God.

Within Christianity, it is believed this process of maturing and testing will come to an end when this temporary world passes away. Yet, God promises to set up a new world wherein He will dwell with His people, and "He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." (Revelation 21:4)

You're dealing very much in the realm of theology here, and so a good theological is allowed. If we believe in evil, that is evil really exists in the world which makes some actions really wrong even if everyone believed otherwise, then this points to the existence of an ultimate good i.e., foundationally the source of such goodness is found in God. You talk of "God's plan" like you know something of it. BUT, if we believe in a good God, yet evil exists in our world, then there must exist creatures God endowed with a will of their own whom God empowers to act in their own right. If God didn't empower creatures to act according to a will of their own, then I'd expect a good good God who simply "programmed" us like a game you earlier described to only plan everything all roses.

Yet, the one thing missing in such a world, devoid of creatures ability to act freely, is often was we consider to be the greatest good - love. All of us would simply be borg-like, following our programmers instructions. There'd exist no love in such a world. It's impossible without the response of a creature to freely love back. Love can't be forced or coerced. Therefore, if in part of our world, God "planned" for love, then equally to have any such plan successfully had He must allow creatures to freely respond to and choose Him.

Let me tell you something of God's plan which Christ revealed a little about. This whole life we live is about whether we will love God and love others (Matthew 22:37-40). That, is ultimately what Christianity is about, what our life is about here. What other meaning, if we take secular thought, is there for life? For a species to simply survive and carry out towards an ending which ends in eventual oblivion? What is the point? What is the final meaning to such? Does it even really matter? There is no real meaning if God doesn't exist, just enjoy life and live it to the fullest, whatever that means.

Anyway, God's plan to create creatures like us, God's plan to bring about a good world even one with the greatest good (LOVE) requires also allowing creatures to have a will of their own. This means God must also honouring the will of such creatures when they turn against Him in the worst ways. THAT, is part of God's plan, to allow for love. This is something also I'd argue must be had even through a process where we shape ourselves and can freely respond, rather than the "end result" just being created wherein nothing ACTUALLY happened. If nothing actually happened, like the process of life in our world, then any "end result" produced in the beginning would only be one potential outcome and a lie if nothing actually happened that lead to such results.
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