Free Choice:!!!!!!! Post #1
Only since I’ve started blogging have I been aware of the special importance of free will to many Christians and Muslims, where it takes the form of “free choice” in matters pertaining to religion. It seems to me that free will is impossible to prove or disprove.
!!!!!!!! I can always claim that I was free to choose to refrain from adding those gratuitous exclamation points to the start of this sentence. In fact I have a strong feeling that I really could have refrained from doing so; or that I could have deleted them rather than chosen to post them. Yet how can I ever really know? I can never go back to that moment in time for a re-try in order to find out for sure...
Note that having a strong feeling that something is true doesn’t necessarily mean that it is. When I was maybe six years old, I remember one time when we had spinach at dinner. I had the feeling that if I tried, I could lift the corner of the house. I watched a lot of Popeye. It didn’t work out.
When I’ve heard people discuss free will in a religious context, it’s usually been one or the other of two ideas.
1. Choosing Belief: It’s up to us whether to freely choose to accept, say, Jesus Christ as our personal savior; or, for example, Mohammed as Seal of the Prophets and the Koran as the divinely dictated last best Word of God to humankind. (Actually, these aren’t just examples. In fact, it’s Christians and Muslims, in particular, that I’ve heard use the idea of choice in this manner.)
2. Choosing the Good: God allows evil to exist - even though, being all-powerful, he doesn’t have to - because this is the only way that he was able to create real human beings. We would all be “zombies” or “automatons” if we weren’t free to choose between good and evil.
To me, each of these ideas has problems. Maybe we can save that for next post.
What It’s Been Like for Me: Belief
In my own spiritual life, the more consequential the matter, the less choice I’ve felt I’ve had. For example, in my teens through early twenties, I had trouble with the Christian beliefs I’d grown up with, and was in despair over this. I wanted to believe, but couldn’t. The beliefs didn’t make sense to me. And as far as people who claimed to know or have special insight that they were true – well, that didn’t make sense to me either. I’ll spare you the details, but in sum: in all honesty I wanted to believe, but couldn’t.
I wasn't "choosing" unbelief. I was dragged into it kicking and screaming. For me, the Catholic Church might as well have been saying, “2+2=5,” or, “Women are bald despite the appearance of having hair.”
Then, at age 23, I had an experience that was the major turning point of my life. It was diametrically opposed to the negative world view I’d developed. I couldn’t deny that it had happened. I found myself revising my perspective on life. Despair ended. Again, to whatever extent choice was involved, it sure wasn’t the prime mover.
What It’s Been Like for Me: Good v. Evil
As far as choosing good vs. evil goes, again, the major impetus behind my acts has never been a sense of free choice. Whenever I’ve been highly conscious that one way is better or right, and another way of proceeding is a way of doing harm or wrong, I’ve done the right thing. It’s been at times of ignorance and unconsciousness that I’ve been at my worst.
In other words, I can’t recall ever clearly recognizing a course of action as harmful to others and thus to myself, in at least a spiritual sense, then taking it anyway. Why would I do that?
So you could say that when it comes to matters of the spirit, I’ve been the opposite of a “free thinker” and “free chooser.” I’ve never been able to believe as I pleased, but only what has been compelling. I’ve never acted badly except when I really didn’t know what I was doing; didn’t fully understand or appreciate the implications.
Where I have the feeling of having the most choice is with the least significant things. What will I decide to have for lunch today, or which brand of light bulb will I pick out at the store? Will I use those exclamation points or not? It really feels like I could go either way on matters of small consequence – just flip a coin if I wanted to.
What’s It Been Like for You?
What’s it been like for you? Have you moved forward in spiritual and moral matters mainly by way of clear and conscious free choices?
If, say, you’re a Christian, did you inform yourself about religions like Islam, Judaism, Taoism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, so that you chose Christianity with full conscious deliberation, having weighed the alternatives? Or did you carefully examine criticisms of your beliefs, find your beliefs implausible, and then choose to believe them anyway, even though you think they’re probably not true? That would sound to me like a real choice, although I don’t understand how it could be done. On the other hand, if you hold your religious beliefs because they make a great deal of sense, then I don’t understand what role choice plays. We all believe things that make a lot of sense, and whether we wish to or not.
If you’re an atheist, do you ever recall saying to yourself: “Hmm… I could choose to believe in God and receive his divine love and eternal mercy, but I’d rather pass on that...” So whatever were you thinking?!? If you’re an agnostic, have you chosen to be undecided and confused? Why?
And when you were a kid, and, say, stole that candy, did you really know what you were doing? Are you still stealing candy? If not, why did you stop? Free choice, or better understanding?
!!!!!!!! I can always claim that I was free to choose to refrain from adding those gratuitous exclamation points to the start of this sentence. In fact I have a strong feeling that I really could have refrained from doing so; or that I could have deleted them rather than chosen to post them. Yet how can I ever really know? I can never go back to that moment in time for a re-try in order to find out for sure...
Note that having a strong feeling that something is true doesn’t necessarily mean that it is. When I was maybe six years old, I remember one time when we had spinach at dinner. I had the feeling that if I tried, I could lift the corner of the house. I watched a lot of Popeye. It didn’t work out.
When I’ve heard people discuss free will in a religious context, it’s usually been one or the other of two ideas.
1. Choosing Belief: It’s up to us whether to freely choose to accept, say, Jesus Christ as our personal savior; or, for example, Mohammed as Seal of the Prophets and the Koran as the divinely dictated last best Word of God to humankind. (Actually, these aren’t just examples. In fact, it’s Christians and Muslims, in particular, that I’ve heard use the idea of choice in this manner.)
2. Choosing the Good: God allows evil to exist - even though, being all-powerful, he doesn’t have to - because this is the only way that he was able to create real human beings. We would all be “zombies” or “automatons” if we weren’t free to choose between good and evil.
To me, each of these ideas has problems. Maybe we can save that for next post.
What It’s Been Like for Me: Belief
In my own spiritual life, the more consequential the matter, the less choice I’ve felt I’ve had. For example, in my teens through early twenties, I had trouble with the Christian beliefs I’d grown up with, and was in despair over this. I wanted to believe, but couldn’t. The beliefs didn’t make sense to me. And as far as people who claimed to know or have special insight that they were true – well, that didn’t make sense to me either. I’ll spare you the details, but in sum: in all honesty I wanted to believe, but couldn’t.
I wasn't "choosing" unbelief. I was dragged into it kicking and screaming. For me, the Catholic Church might as well have been saying, “2+2=5,” or, “Women are bald despite the appearance of having hair.”
Then, at age 23, I had an experience that was the major turning point of my life. It was diametrically opposed to the negative world view I’d developed. I couldn’t deny that it had happened. I found myself revising my perspective on life. Despair ended. Again, to whatever extent choice was involved, it sure wasn’t the prime mover.
What It’s Been Like for Me: Good v. Evil
As far as choosing good vs. evil goes, again, the major impetus behind my acts has never been a sense of free choice. Whenever I’ve been highly conscious that one way is better or right, and another way of proceeding is a way of doing harm or wrong, I’ve done the right thing. It’s been at times of ignorance and unconsciousness that I’ve been at my worst.
In other words, I can’t recall ever clearly recognizing a course of action as harmful to others and thus to myself, in at least a spiritual sense, then taking it anyway. Why would I do that?
So you could say that when it comes to matters of the spirit, I’ve been the opposite of a “free thinker” and “free chooser.” I’ve never been able to believe as I pleased, but only what has been compelling. I’ve never acted badly except when I really didn’t know what I was doing; didn’t fully understand or appreciate the implications.
Where I have the feeling of having the most choice is with the least significant things. What will I decide to have for lunch today, or which brand of light bulb will I pick out at the store? Will I use those exclamation points or not? It really feels like I could go either way on matters of small consequence – just flip a coin if I wanted to.
What’s It Been Like for You?
What’s it been like for you? Have you moved forward in spiritual and moral matters mainly by way of clear and conscious free choices?
If, say, you’re a Christian, did you inform yourself about religions like Islam, Judaism, Taoism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, so that you chose Christianity with full conscious deliberation, having weighed the alternatives? Or did you carefully examine criticisms of your beliefs, find your beliefs implausible, and then choose to believe them anyway, even though you think they’re probably not true? That would sound to me like a real choice, although I don’t understand how it could be done. On the other hand, if you hold your religious beliefs because they make a great deal of sense, then I don’t understand what role choice plays. We all believe things that make a lot of sense, and whether we wish to or not.
If you’re an atheist, do you ever recall saying to yourself: “Hmm… I could choose to believe in God and receive his divine love and eternal mercy, but I’d rather pass on that...” So whatever were you thinking?!? If you’re an agnostic, have you chosen to be undecided and confused? Why?
And when you were a kid, and, say, stole that candy, did you really know what you were doing? Are you still stealing candy? If not, why did you stop? Free choice, or better understanding?
posted by Paul @ 11:19 AM
89 Comments:
Hmmm, part of me gets what you're talking about, but part of me is also scratching its head and wondering what you really mean.
On what else would we base what we do and what we decide on, except on observations, experiences and similar factors which compel us toward the direction we take? When we base our actions or decisions on such stimuli which "compel," does that mean we aren't acting out of free will? I believe that would still qualify as free will, though somewhat tainted when you come to think of it. But we aren't perfect beings, or at least we aren't all Krishnamurtis to really care about the subtle distinction.
We don't live, feel or think without interacting with outside forces, and without being influenced to some degree by those forces or stimuli. We don't live in a vaccuum. Our decisions and choices are influenced by experiences and observations, and conclusions (right or wrong) based on those.
Your last sentence struck me: Free choice, or better understanding? You made it sound like these two are polar opposites. Choice is a product of better understanding, isn't it, at least most of the time?
Or maybe I just don't get it because I badly need to sleep right now?
I am not sure I agree completely.
If free will is impossible to prove or disprove, then it could equally be said that the same is true for the existence of God, pre-determination, etc.
Ultimately, does it really make a difference if these factors can be proven or not? Are beliefs more important than the concepts themselves? Just a thought.
I have done things with the certainty that they were bad. Not terribly destructive, certainly, but quite clearly creating more unhappiness for myself and for others.
But I think I don't believe in free will, at that level, either. I can self-importantly say that I decided this or that, and give my reasons, but what actually happens is that I do something and then make up the decision afterward. I think if you watch your mind closely, you won't find those momentous decisions anywhere -- those moments of trembling on the brink. I like to talk about my own decisions as much as anyone, but really I think they're all bogus. Did I decide not to meditate this morning? How did I decide whether to decide? And how did I decide whether to decide whether to decide? When you look closely at it, the whole business of "choosing" starts to look like a cover-up.
Where I think freedom lies, if anywhere, is in the tiny interstices between stimulus and response, those fleeting moments before the machinery of habitual interpretation and reaction is well underway. Which is why I "decided" to become a Buddhist and practice meditation -- to open those little spaces a little wider. (You're quite right, I never "decided" to be a Buddhist at all. I looked up from a book of Buddhist teachins and said "I think I'm a Buddhist" and was surprised to hear myself say it. The most important decision of my life, and I'm pretty sure I never made it :->)
Wonderful post -- thank you!
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
I wasn't raised in any religion. In high school, I got interested in Hinduism, read Autobiography of a Yogi. In college, it was back to disbelief and Philosophy. Later I got interested in new age stuff. After that, zen meditation. My sister is still a Buddhist :-)
I finally ended up choosing catholicism. Not because I thought it was 100% true but because it spoke of love and relationship and hope ... also I had an experience that made me think it might work for me.
Yes, I've chosen to do bad things. There have been times when I've hurt people because the thing I wanted was more important to me than not hurting them.
Hi Paul,
For me, spiritual beliefs are unimportant.
They are unreal...they are only my limited thoughts or perceptions.
What IS real?
Spiritual EXPERIENCE. \o/
I always read this and smile, "Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum." I have always been unable to do the "wrong" thing. It doesn't hurt anyone, but I can't bluff at poker and I can't tell a lie and I'm not good at doing prank phone calls because I crack up - I can't go through with it. This won't get me into heaven. But it's probably why I'm not a bank robber either :)
MJ: I agree. To me it just doesn't make sense to make whether or not we "freely choose" to believe, say, in Jesus as the Christ, an ultimate test of how religious or spiritual someone is. But there are definitely Christians (and their Muslim counterparts) who feel otherwise.
Re. free choice v. better understanding: The reason I find an opposition between them is that in my personal experience, whenever I've had a high degree of insight into what makes a good choice good or a bad one wrong, then that insight powerfully influences or dictates what I do. I act in accord with the insight.
And I've never experienced freely choosing an insight...
BARBARA: I'm pretty sure free will is impossible to prove or disprove - even though I'm inclined to believe it exists, for reasons that would take another post. I just haven't found that choice has played the driving or primary role in my own religious and moral life, and wonder what it's like for others.
Sure - belief in God (I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "predetermination") also falls in the category as something that can't be proven. If it could, we'd speak of our knowledge of God, not belief in God.
And as beliefs go, belief in God is far from being one for which the evidence is particularly strong. People are very much divided. I'm not aware that a preponderance of intelligent or highly educated people believe in God.
Not sure what you mean by, "Are beliefs more important than the concepts themselves?"
DALE: Glad I chose to read your comment... You articulated that so creatively that it kind of made my mind reel while I was reading it...
CRYSTAL: Sounds like you did much more looking at alternatives than the average Catholic.
When you finally found that Catholicism particularly resonated with you, did you choose the resonance? After you felt the resonance, did you consider saying, "Aw heck, I think I'll ignore this even though it feels right..." Or did that resonance predispose you strongly toward "choosing" Catholicism?
When you speak of looking back at times when you went after something you wanted even though it hurt someone else, I get the feeling you're speaking of decisions you now feel were wrong.
If my feeling is correct, I also have the feeling that if placed in similar circumstances again, you'd behave differently. "Free choice" - or do you know something now you didn't then, so that it's more like, "greater enlightenment..."
HOLYINHERITANCE - The question then becomes: at what point does one's account of a spiritual experience cross over from a description of it into an interpretation of it that's actually a - belief...?
ZAHIRAH: As a kid I could do the prank calls, but other than that, me too...
As to bank robbers, I wonder what fraction are enlightened to a high degree concerning how what they're doing is wrong - but then freely choose to do it anyway.
What sense do we make then, of "reformed criminals?"
Some good thoughts here, and I hear your own struggle in trying to come terms with what free choice is and what its implications are.
My concern is that we may be fixated on a rational orientation when considering free will. You asked: "Have you moved forward in spiritual and moral matters mainly by way of clear and conscious free choices?" I doubt that most of our choices are made with clarity and deliberate consciousness.
From my perspective, free choice is less about rational decision making, and more about openess to the future. It comes down to a whether we believe, feel and intuit that we are in a closed or open system. Religions tend to lean towards closed system as they formalize. In many ways, spirituality is about living in the realm of purposeful openess.
I bet that very few people really thought about what they mean by "free will". Free from what or whom? If you do something that is caused by something else you are not free to do it - you simply "react" to the causes. If you do something that is uncaused by anything than we would expect you to be acting completely independently from your environment, that is to say "random", which is clearly a contradiction to everything we know about the world. Therefore, if "free will" is defined as "something that is uncaused" it is demonstrably false. There is no such thing as "free" in absolute sense of that word, which is what most people seem to mean when they talk about "free will". There is no such thing as "free will" in common everyday understanding (or should I say misunderstanding) of that concept.
But then we have these:
We have to believe in free will. We’ve got no choice.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer
and
Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you is determinism; the way you play it is free will.
-- Jawaharlal Nehru
The illusion of "free will" is built into us biologically. We have no choice but to act "as if" we are independent agents in this world. This of course has its benefits for our survival as well as some very serious downsides, like the prevalent and misguided belief that we are not one with everything...
i believe we have free will. free choices. yes, sometimes the choices are more hidden than others, because the side pushing you in one direction is so great, you feel that you have no choice. it is your logic and common sense that has no choice, because it tells you: this makes sense, if you look the other way, you are a fool. thus you chooose not to be a fool.
doing what is right, yes alot of times it comes automatically, but that is because this is just an implication of a general choice: i want to do the right thing. it is important for me. thus all you do is in that direction. but there are situations that you can be put in, where your righteousness is on one hand and your "apparent" welfare is on the other, this is when you choose. like if you are caught late at work, and you can get in t trouble, the quickest thing to come to mind: a lie, a flat tire, a family emergency. here the choice is more tough, because you are very tempted to go the other way. at times i would go the other way, and later regret it. and decide next time this happens, i will not do this.
and maybe for a person whose belief does not affect their life, except their spiritual state, yes it would be as simple as you say. but this is not always so.
i know of people who do not like to dwell on details of islamic teachings for example much (muslims and non muslims), for fear of not wanting to withstand the changes that come with it.
this is the major reason Islam was fought in the arabian peninsula in the first place. it was terribly fought for years. though some men secretly acknowledged the Prophet (PBUH) as true, they would not want to admit it. some for pride: there was a terrible competition between tribes, and some thought this would be too much of an honour for Mohamed's tribe, making it more honorable than theirs, so for them it was better to deny him.
for most of meccans, the choice not to beleive was for financial gain, their most prized source of income was people who came to mecca to worship statues of stone. to worship God alone, meant the loss of their main commercial gains, thus it was bitterly fought.
my point is, sometimes, when another important thing pulls you, that is where you are most aware of your choice. you can feel the difficulty going either way.
and to talk about common sense; it doesn't make sense to me that everyone who kills or steals or harms someone has no choice in it. if indeed they have no choice, then it would be wrong to punish them for it, right? or hold them accountable. and similarly, people who do good in this world are the same as the ones who do evil. if none of them have the will to do any of it. does that make sense to your soul? it does not seem right to me.
if so, it means that we are but puppets in a play. thus our lives and deaths are worthless. then why are we alive? why are we here on this earth? to eat and drink and reproduce then die? no higher meaning to it? I do not believe God creates life in vain. We are created to worship him out of our own free will.
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
Paul, about doing wrong things ... nope, not all in the past - I still do things that I think are wrong at the time I'm doing them. I'm bad :-(
About choosing to be a catholic ... I think if we look at free choice from your perspective, then really there are no free choices - every act will be a result of past experience and programming and other unfree choices. There will never be a real fork in the road :-).
But most people talking about free will when it comes to religion don't mean freedom as in an act that has no cause, but mean the difference between choosing what you want to do as opposed to being "compelled" by God in your choices.
LLOYD: We'd have to talk a lot longer to know for sure, but from your comment, I suspect that our perspectives on free will are similar.
It isn't an issue for me personally, but I've raised it because I've run into it on so many religious blogs.
You mention the concept of "purpose." There's something that's really meaningful to me, not as any abstract or theoretical issue, but as something that can be known and lived to real effect.
SH: Mmmm... "Absolutely free" would mean not influenced by anything... would mean random... Yeah...
I think that sharpens the point. If people are going to talk about free will, it's pretty clear that it's not some absolutely free choice - and like you, that's the implication I get from many people who bring free will into religious discussions.
The idea is that we're faced with this momentous choice as to whether or not to "accept the Lord Jesus Christ as our personal Savior." What makes it so momentous is there's often an implicit warning that if we don't choose Christ (or Islam), we're headed for hell.
So the implication is very much that the choice is completely ours and ours alone to make - absolutely free. So much so that God ultimately judges our souls according to this choice.
"As if..." Maybe. On the other hand, could it be that we really do have some degree of choice, but is isn't absolutely free, or even nearly so?
DOSHAR: That's what I think too - I happen to have just said so in the paragraph immediately above: my best guess is also that we have some degree of choice, but it doesn't occur in a vacuum. There are influences, sometimes very heavy ones. I guess I would subscribe to maybe what I'd call the idea of "influenced choice" -often powerfully influenced.
For example, I don't think it's a coincidence that most Muslims, Christians, and Jews grew up with their respective traditions. To be raised in a Christian family increases the odds that you will "choose Christ."
It's true that before we act, we almost always go through a decision making process of some kind, and that we may be aware of particular elements within that process.
Our consciousness of them doesn't mean that the elements in that process, or the process as a whole, was more chosen than influenced. Being conscious of our thoughts doesn't necessitate our complete or near complete responsibility for how those thoughts got in our heads. Our awareness of the process doesn't mean the process was freely chosen.
However, it's true that once we make a decision, freely or not, that decision impacts our subsequent actions. You give a good example - what you term the "general choice" of wanting to be a good person.
It could also be termed a "general decision." Either way, how did we end up arriving at that very important and influential decision?
Did we freely choose it?
Maybe God would say, to paraphrase a verse from Job: "Where were you when I laid the foundations of your mind?"
Criminal justice - don't get me started! It would be a series of posts...
With respect to your last paragraph, to me it seems that we are here to do our best toward helping to fulfill a purpose greater than our own. In so far as we participate in our own ways in God's purpose, we are more than puppets and more than hollow egos.
Thanks for another of your thoughtful and thought provoking comments.
CRYSTAL: I hear what you're saying and I experience that too - doing something, and in the moment I'm doing it, it bothers me that I'm doing it. I'd rather be doing it the other way.
But for me, until I feel and experience my greater passion for the good in some particular area, until I become powerfully conscious of it, I still have a tendency to do things in that area of my activity that at bottom, I don't want to do. It's like I do them grudgingly.
What makes me become more conscious of my greater passion for the good now and then, and make a little progress?
I don't know. But it doesn't feel like "free choice."
But like most people commenting, I do have the feeling there's some degree of choice - what I'd call "influenced choice." To me it doesn't seem like the driving force behind spiritual growth, but it can give an important nudge here or there...
In your last paragraph... I haven't come across that one as often. Sounds like maybe you're saying you've heard people debating whether we freely choose to believe or whether it's a grace from God?
So many ways I could respond.... As an atheist, I did not ever say to myself, I could choose to bask in imaginary love from my imaginary friend and fit into the waiting arms of all those people who would accept me because I believed the same things that they believed and have a much simpler and socially acceptaqble life. If I had thought any of that, I would have had to add, 'all I need is a lobotomy!'
I cannot "unknow" what I know. I might not be able to prove my case to you, because you would have to take it on faith in some places that I know what I know. Even though I think that this is a tiny leap of faith compared to the gulf the Christians present (and demand I cross), I am not too surprised when there are no takers. My reality is very plain as compared to the sugar-candy vistas of angels and heaven and infinite sources of love that just happen to be hiding right now.
The premise of my philosophy is simple: If there is a logical, non-supernatural explanation that covers the known facts, why is the supernatural explanation necessary or preferable?
There is an answer to that: our brains have been bred selectively to respond to the supernatural and/or to all the emotional mummery that is used when presenting that case.
I have a "spiritual" component, like most other people, I simply abstain from situations wherein some dick in a frock gets to play with it. Or to put that more correctly, gets to play me like a violin by tweaking it.
The subject of free will/choice is interesting. Basically, it doesn't exist by virtue of the fact that it is an oversimplification of life, consciousness, and the concept of the present moment. For example, I am hungry, and this causes me to seek food in my larder. I can choose to eat oatmeal, a banana, or a hot fudge sundae. The basis of my decision might be anything from choosing the first thing that I see to self-loathing, but there is a behavioral component from my past experiences that will come into play and ultimately effect the outcome.
View this from a different angle (slightly askew), using the sci-fi theoretical pseudoscience of temporal physics. If I were to go back in time, and have no memory of events subsequent to my re-insertion into the time stream (back in any place in my life, knowing what I knew then and nothing more), no matter how much I might want to change something in my past NOW, I would do exactly the same things I did then.
Free will is in reality a series of decisions, made on a basis of too many variables to adequately calculate. Ever take a slug of bad orange juice and have it ruin your whole day?
Like that. Cause and effect, but the magnitude of the effect is not always knowable because the cause is not always singular.
I'm with Holyinheritance. To me, beliefs are kind of irrelevant. I used to be an atheist, raised in a very Catholic family. I went to Catholic school. I always questioned the nuns, I refused to be confirmed. I tried to believe, but couldn't.
I thought God was either a case of the emperor's new clothes or that He just didn't choose to communicate with losers like me.
I always felt a deep connection to nature. I felt more alive when outside, in the woods, alone. I talked to the trees, the grass the wind. To me, these were all alive, each had a voice. I didn't think it was spirituality, because I wasn't brought up to think of it that way. Later I learned that many people feel God in this way.
So many things contributed to my sense of what God is now. William Blake was a big influence.
Rereading the Bible as an adult made me realize that Jesus has always been a hero of mine and I do believe He is the voice of God to us humans. He didn't like dogma or "beliefs" either, BTW.
I have to say I did learn a lot from my Catholic upbringing, but I'll never go back to being a Catholic. I'm not really a "pagan" either. I just feel God in my heart and in the world around me, esp in nature. It's not a belief so much as an experience.
As for free will, like Crystal, I have made "bad" choices and still do at times. I don't always chose to do what I know would be the best thing. Sometimes I'm lazy, selfish, etc. But the difference is, I don't let my "beliefs" about my goodness or badness get in the way of experienceing God. I used to, but now I don't.
Does that make any sense?
Free will may be an artifact of man's
consciousness. I wonder if other higher-
order animals have some similar (albeit attenuated) self-awareness. Even if the
compulsion to choose between one course of action and an alternative could be boiled
down to a simple autonomic response, we still are faced with questions like "how?"
and "why?", barring some mental trauma.
Obviously, your style and syntax would make short work of a million monkeys, all
pounding away randomly on keyboards. To a
monkey, the simple act of pounding keys
might be more amusing than scratching
themselves, but on the odd chance that a
coherent message was produced by their efforts, I would still strongly doubt that
the message (whatever its content) represented a conscious effort to convey
a specific thought, rather than a mere
statistical oddity.
Mans ability to synthesize a predictable outcome from a sequence of
cause and effect events is truly a marvel,
but however complicated, they are outcomes
based on a series of decisions made or ignored. To the extent that we recognize
these mandatory sequences unfold, we can
make pretty good guesses about the cumulative outcomes. But there are still
other phenomena (quite a few, I imagine)
which, through negligence, ignorance, or indifference, never seem to make it into
the playlist of consciousness. We notice
the outcome only as a hitherto unexplained
miracle, arriving out of some unknown set
of prerequisite coincidences. Absent free
will, we would be left to accept such occurences as acts of God, and ignore
things like possibility or probability of their having happened at all.
Quite the can of worms... good post!
Discussions like this make me want to throw my hands up in the air in frustration and head to Sephora and not tax my free will with anything more strenuous than exerting it to choose a new shade of lipstick...lol!
I think that, while you can't not think about this kind of stuff, you can overthink it, too, and the result is we end up trying too hard.
We try too hard to prove to the world around us that what we believe is the result of our free will and not some outside influence, or, heaven forfend, the result of God's hand.
"Be still and know that I am God..."
Maybe we shouldn't work so hard at choosing God. Maybe we should relax and let God choose us -- whether that's at a formal church service or through disciplined meditation or through a quiet day at the shore.
Maybe the way that free will works is that we choose to let go of control, which, I think, is what a lot of these discussions are ultimately about, albeit sub-consciously.
Not that I know anything about anything. I freely admit I'm much more about the lipstick than actively thinking about this kind of stuff, and I'm sure it shows.
BREAKERSLION: As far as free will goes, I guess I'm more of an "agnostic" on whether it exists. But like you, I don't see how its existence can be proven.
Basically, you have a universe unfolding in space and time. Each of us is part of that event. And it's a single occurence. We can't go back to how things were a moment ago to learn for sure whether we could have done anything different than what we did.
It's great that you're aware of yourself as having a spiritual dimension - a dimension of seriously impassioned inner life. Atheists, in my experience, are especially passionate about trying to get at what looks true, regardless of "where the chips fall." To me, a passionate interest in knowing truth is a spiritual thing.
But you also remind me of how atheists and religious people often simplify/exaggerate their notions of each other. For example, some religious people assume atheists have no morals, which is ridiculous. I see no evidence whatsoever for that. Atheists function in civil society as well as anyone. If anyone wants to try and judge whether their coworkers are atheists or believers based on how they treat others - good luck!
At the same time, I see atheists as often stating or implying that believers are stupid.(For example, you mention that you'd need a "lobotomy" to believe, "sugar candy vistas" etc).
I'd just say that from what I've seen, immorality and stupidity are pretty evenly distributed throughout the human race. I went to one of our better divinity schools. Harvard and Yale also have divinity schools. Most of the faculty at these places are ministers. They're sure not stupid...
Or just look at the comments to this blog. Most are from believers, and to me, they show a greater ability to make distinctions and ask good questions than I usually find in comments to blogs.
KATE: To me experience is primary too.
"I don't always choose to do what I know would be the best thing." I've had the same experience, but don't know as I'd call it a free choice. "Knowing" can be pretty superficial sometimes. Also, spiritual learning, like any form of learing, is a process. I've known times of transition and struggle in which the force of my, say, "inner demons" or compulsions, was about equal to that of my consciousness of a desire to change. Under these conditions, my behavior was inconsistent, but gradually became consistent.
The inconsistent periods didn't necessarily mean I was exercising free choice. To me, it was more like my motives for different kinds of behavior passed through a phase where I experienced them with approximately equal power. One would edge out the other because in that moment, I felt it more keenly.
G-FISH: Sounds like you also tend to see free will as something that exists - and that it becomes more free with greater consciousness? But I'm not positive that's what you're saying...
To me, the more conscious I am, the less free my will seems. If I'm highly aware of how and why a course of action is right, then the odds of me going the other way are basically zero.
On the other hand, you mentioned other species, so I think your point may have been that at a species-level, the more conscious a species is, then the more that free will becomes operative...
ANONYMOUS: You say, "Maybe the way that free will works is that we choose to let go of control."
Sure sounds like you think about more than lipstick to me...
I think you've touched on something central to spiritual growth and development - that is, that it involves a sense in which we surrender our will.
And I agree that this sort of abstract discussion about whether will is "free" isn't where the real action is...
If you post again, maybe you could pick a moniker - "Lipstick??" - just to know it's you. Sometimes there's been more than one "anonymous," and it can get confusing...
I admire reflection and acadamia, sound soul-searching. But, as I age, I find that the body of theology that operated in my 'family of origin' still influences a lot of my thinking, even if I wish to distance myself from organized religion. It organically permeates every part of me. Choosing to be vitally involved in the activities of the religion is quite secondary - my thinking is a mix, whether I like it or not.
My view only.
No free will. If there was there would not be a rebirth. Free will thinking ends that and I am one that believes in a rebirth until we get it right.
Our ego minds tell up we have free will. We have a right to choose.
WE THINK we do. But in "my Reality" we do not.
How are you Paul? Hope everyone here is doing well.
BONITA: That's true for a lot of people, that's for sure - the shaping role of our "religions of origin," so to speak.
SHYLOH: Your rebirth belief is making me wonder if I should do another post about belief, and why we believe the things we believe...
Paul: You said: "Knowing" can be pretty superficial sometimes.
Well, yes, but honestly, haven't you ever indulged in doing something bad, KNOWING very well (not superficially) that it is bad? If not, you are a much better person than I am. Sometimes, the knowledge that it is the wrong choice almost makes it more enjoyable. A little guilt adds flavor, so to speak (or "Stolen waters are sweet, And bread eaten in secret is pleasant." -Proverbs).
You said: "Also, spiritual learning, like any form of learing, is a process. I've known times of transition and struggle in which the force of my, say, "inner demons" or compulsions, was about equal to that of my consciousness of a desire to change. Under these conditions, my behavior was inconsistent, but gradually became consistent."
Again, I think you must be a better person than I am. I know very well that sometimes my compulsions are strong, but I COULD use a force of will to oppose them. But I don't. It's not a question of learning.
I know very well that I should make a better choice, but I don't.
You've never done this? You must be a saint!
For example: I'm supposed to be working right now. I could be doing what I'm paid to do and get off this blog. But see, I like the sensation of goofing off. I like getting away with something. I like being "lazy" sometimes. I know this is wrong, but I also know I can get away with it.
I've learned time and time again that procrastination will bite me in the ass. "Hard work pays off over time but procrastination pays off right now". LOL. Plus there's the aspect that my employer pays me for this time so I'm basically stealing. And, many in the world are suffering, and I could be using my efforts for something more purposeful to make the world a better place, but I prefer to sit here engaging in a discussion about the nature of God and free will. Kind of ironic, eh?
I guess the point I was trying to make was, I feel that God accepts me even though I'm imperfect. I could be wrong about this, but it doesn't seem to me that I am. I'm able to feel God's presence even though I'm not perfect, and I'm not even trying to be perfect. I could care less about being perfect.
Weird, huh?
I was thinking somewhat along these lines the other day too... strange. But for me, I came to the conclusion that I make the little choices, which then lead me to the right place in my life where the decisions seem made for me. Here's an example, pulled straight from my ass to help illustrate ;) : I exercise "free will" by choosing to wear a funny t-shirt to work. While at lunch, somebody sees my shirt and comes over to talk to me and tell me how funny my shirt is. We end up having a conversation and discussing his unusual, but very intriguing spiritual beliefs. Because of that I start researching something I didn't even know existed and find that based on this new knowledge, I no longer believe something that I used to. In a very roundabout way, my spiritual beliefs were changed because I exercised free will and wore a funny t-shirt. Everything is cause and effect, even if it's terribly convoluted. And once I got all that information, the spiritual choice seemed very clear. I couldn't deceive myself and keep believing the same old thing in the face of new evidence, but it WAS all a result of my free will being exercised.
Free choice, or better understanding? I agree with mj, they're not opposites, we're all influenced by our surroundings, but keep in mind that we all have the option of allowing new information to penetrate, make a difference and lead to better understanding, or we can just assume that everyone else with a different opinion is stupid because they don't have the same opinion we do. And that IS a choice we are free to make. This also agrees with Dale in that our major source of "choice" is in how we react.
Someday I may have to explain my view of "God". I think you'd find it interesting.
SHYLOH: Your rebirth belief is making me wonder if I should do another post about belief, and why we believe the things we believe...
Paul perhaps using the word "believe" is wrong. Because "believe" is not a sure thing. And My understand or knowledge of rebirth is for me. Of course some not just myself understand this. It is just a knowing but I cannot cause you or anyone else to know this. It comes within.
There is no right or wrong. Life just is.. You are where you need to be at this point and time in your life. Everyone is.
i have heard others say that one thing your will cannot refuse is a fact. maybe that needs to be unpacked, as i think i saw you attempting in your post. a fact "once made plain" is something you find that one cannot refuse (be it negative, neutral, or positive).
the old analogy of fact, faith, and experience comes to my mind here.
fact, faith, and experience were once walking along a high wire. faith did fine as long as she kept here eyes on fact, but when she turned to look at experience ... she stumbled and fell. and experience tumbled following after her.
or simply put in the words of an old stevie nix song, "these feelings follow me wherever I go."
speaking from the christian perspective, i see the message of the gospel - the "rhema of Jesus Christ" as paul put it - to be the news posited as pointing to an objective reality.
or put more simply (and stripped of religious jargon or context) facts are the content of the message which points to truth. i define truth quite simply as, "truth = what is."
faith, or belief, has two parts (or kinds): one knowing that something is. two acting on or responding to that knowledge.
what we experience as a result of our actions based upon truths made known - determines our experiences in relation to that truth.
anyway, somewhere between truth and our experiences with that truth lies our faith.
not all, but some of our questions concerning "free will" have much to do with what we do with truths made plain vs our experiences in following that truth. like a hiker on a path - we can look at the trail markers or the map and compass (or in the best case scenario - follow our trail guide) and we'll do fine. or we can look at the terrain, the rain, the slip and fall which still aches, the time we became lost, fear of the hill before us, the ledge we might be walking upon, how well we're doing, or even the path we're on, etc. and we'll have our eyes off the guide and our experiences will certainly follow suit.
in this, narrow slice, look at free will - it appears that where we place our faith determines a great deal of what we're going to experience. in this sense, our wills certainly in most people's lives have shown themselves to be capable of choosing to follow the truth or to follow one's experiences.
life's three big motivators seem to come into play here:
1) pain and harm avoidance
2) being soundly convinced
3) compulsion - external or internal
i may have those wrong... this is already too long. what was the topic :-).
seriously, this is one slice i see in the "free will" issue when it comes to faith. another two right off the top of my head would be:
1) no free will does not mean no choices.
2) thinking distortions as a hindrance to the freedom of the will.
sorry if i wandered afar.
peac3d.
amos dettonville
KATE: Maybe you're doing the best you can - and that's all anyone's doing.
For me, when I said knowing can be superficial, I think, for example, of things like how creative I can be at rationalizing; and also how it's been possible for me to have a feeling or idea of how something's wrong, but at such a low level of consciousness that I'd do the wrong thing anyway. You could say I wasn't fully convinced.
For myself, before willpower is of much use, I have to have a lot of insight and feeling for the rightness/wrongness of a matter.
Nobody's perfect. And much of the theology created around the Bible involves accepting our sinfulness and relying on Jesus Christ to pay up our account with God, so to speak.
Nobody's perfect. But for me, the verses in the Bible that are most meaningful are the ones that bear on seeking perfection. I know I won't get there, but I also know that over the course of most of my adult life, I've been moving in a positive direction.
MIRIAM: That's more or less my sense of it too. Even though I don't see any way of proving free will's existence, and even though I don't see my conscious choices as providing the primary material, so to speak, or doing the heavy lifting, in my spiritual development; and even though I see my choices as influenced and never perfectly or absolutely free, still: my feeling is that conscious volition does provide important touches that help keep me on track.
I'd definitely be interested in your view of God. Your blog or mine? I guess the question there is whether you can weave it into the subject of knitting...
SHYLOH: Rebirth - meaning the same as reincarnation, right? - is something that you claim to know occurs.
You've had an experience, or some experiences, on which you've placed the interpretation: "This is knowledge of the reality of reincarnation."
You're right that no one can prove that you don't have such knowledge. And I'd also add that no one can prove that those who would tell you that they have the same knowledge really don't.
No one can disprove things we say that we know directly through our minds.
However, there are many grounds for skepticism about claims of knowledge about how the wider world works that are based on our feelings, visions, intuitions - things we "see" with our eyes closed.
Accepting that someone else has had an experience that has been significant for them can coexist with questioning their interpretation of that experience.
AMOS: Thanks for your comment, I've got to run and want to give it more attention - it may be tomorrow before I get back here...
my head hurts with all this thinking :) one of the reasons i enjoy your blog so much is reading all the different views that are expressed in here.
I'm with Holyinheritance too.
So what is spiritual experience??? thats the question for me. i think its realizing that everything in nature is connected. Gods and devils sound like these supernatural beings...but "if" they are there, they too have to be part of nature and not supernatural! because we all came out of nature. when it comes to good and bad,for example when i do bad (and i have done bad things in my life) i feel bad and when i do good i feel good. but wheather its good or bad is only coming from my own perception of what good and bad is. humans are the only creatures (i think...i don't know) who think about this good and bad. does it even exist outside our brains? i don't know? these are the kind questions i ask myself.
Free choice? For me the question depends on if I am a)interested in doing what I want, instead of what I know is right, b)making the choice because of obligation to do the right thing, and c)doing whatever I want regardless of the consequenses. First, I always have a choice. But if I bring obligation into it, if I remember the covenant, or contract, or promise that I've made with God, I have a responsibilty to be obediant to what He says about any given circumstance. In other words He's promised me "all the fullness of Christ" and "sonship", if I will do two things. Hear His voice and obey His commandments. In other words, I always have a choice, but not if I take my responsibilty to be obediant seriously. I won't give myself a choice between what I know is required and any other option. It is very much your perspective that gives you choice.. a person can feel like they have no other option, even though another person looking at the circumstance can name five other options. And one other respons. Perfection.. God wouldn't ask it, if we weren't able to do. Certainly we could never achieve that on our own, but with God all things are possible, including that. Perfection can be defined as walking without sin. That's possible when we hear and obey and don't deviate from that course. I wouldn't claim to be there... I don't think anyone with much sense would, but I do believe that it is within my grasp if I want it badly enough to obey every word from the mouth of God. I have just used a lot of cliches but I don't apologize for them, since the describe what I am trying to get across. I have free will until I give it up. Hmm... good topic.
AMOS: I think I'd need to hear more on some of your points to feel I really understood them. It sounds like you may be touching on a number of things you've given a lot of thought to.
So I'll try to zone in on the part relating most to free will.
Going by the links you gave and the way you contrast "guide" to "experience" in your hiker analogy, it sounds like your faith is in the guide. The guide would be Jesus as the Christ - expressing your belief that Jesus was the incarnation of God and Savior. In contrast, our own direct experiences, in your opinion, are likely to be confusing and misleading.
You say that most people are capable of choosing to follow the truth - by which I assume that you mean believe in Jesus as the Christ - or to follow the misleading route of direct experience. I guess I'm not sure what gives you that conviction:
All's right with the world; justice will prevail; we'll be reunited with our loved ones; our sins will be forgiven through the intercession of Jesus Christ...
For a person to find this wonderful news believable, then somehow choose not to believe it - I just don't understand. First, I don't know how a person finds something believable, then chooses not to believe it. For me, to find something believable IS to believe it. Second, I can't imagine why anyone would desire not to believe in such absolutely wonderful news.
KATHY: Thanks, and good question - your, "What is spiritual experience?" I've touted this book before, and will take the opportunity to mention it again: William James' "Varieties of Religious Experience" tries to answer your exact question. Though written in the nineteenth century, it's considered a classic in the field of religious studies, and was on the required reading list when I was at the U of Chicago divinity school (in the latter 20th century...).
Hmm... You're making me channel the nineteenth century. Basically you're rhetorically asking, "What in the world ISN'T natural?" John Stuart Mill wrote a great essay, I think with the word "nature" or "natural" in the title, making exactly your point and going on to show that all arguments for or against anything as being "natural" or "unatural" are meaningless.
So you're in good company! (Your good and bad question would just take too darn long to try and answer in a comment box.)
YANELLY: Gotta go, I'll get back to your comment asap... Ya know, you guys are giving me LOOONG comments here (but I don't mind...)
YANELLY: So you’re saying that if you accept what you see as your responsibility or obligation, this does away with choice.
A few thoughts:
First, I see what you mean: if we consider ourselves obligated to do something, then this diminishes or eradicates our freedom of choice in that matter. But it seems to me that this only pushes the question of free choice back one step. In other words, through what kind of processes do people come to consider themselves obligated – in your case, obligated to adhere to your understanding of Christian faith?
Second: You describe your obedience in terms of “hearing His voice” and “obeying His commandments.” In order to obey, you’ve had to come to a particular understanding of what these phrases mean. For example, you might take “obeying the commandments” to refer to the Ten Commandments. Or you might have said to yourself: well, those are pretty basic. Most fairly moral people live up to them. They don’t go far enough. Instead I’ll concentrate on what Jesus calls the two greatest commandments: love God, and love your neighbor as yourself.
“Hearing His voice” is even more subject to interpretation. So the question becomes: did you freely choose your understanding of what it is that you are to obey?
Third: If person A perceives person B as having certain options that person B doesn’t recognize, it seems to me that this doesn’t add to person B’s real-life options…
Lots of questions there. Someone once told me that I was blindly following the prophet. I told him that we choose to follow the prophet. There is a big difference there. (WE are Mormon) I was raised Baptist and I knew that Jesus Christ was my Savior, but I couldn't seem to get the answers I was looking for in that church. My husband and I looked for the right church to go to and after carefull study CHOOSE the church we currently go to. It was the best decidion (choice) I have ever made.
We make choices every day. WE make good choices and we make bad choices. I remember a wise man telling me once that "God is pulling for us, Satin is pulling against us and we make the deciding vote (choice). Do we follow God and his plan or do we choose not to?
Thanks for your post.
Paul said:
"To me, the more conscious I am, the less free my will seems. If I'm highly aware of how and why a course of action is right, then the odds of me going the other way are basically zero."
That's exactly how a successful self-healing system would respond. The notions of "right" or "wrong" seem pretty meaningless where there are no means of choosing a course of action. Nature has
countless examples of everyday brutality,
but we rarely assign guilt or innocence
to other creatures. At the risk of opening a can of worms, I think the principle reason for a devil, demon, Satan, or Lucifer is to serve as a constant reminder that we can't give up free will (which
would be like taking our hands off of the steering wheel) nor fail to learn from our experiences, even if we feel out of control. It's a gift that cannot be returned, now that we have it.
PAUL
All's right with the world; justice will prevail; we'll be reunited with our loved ones; our sins will be forgiven through the intercession of Jesus Christ...
AMOS
i wonder, "All's right with the world, justice prevails...." if that is the experience most people find when following Jesus as The Christ, Lord, and Savior.
certainly the original 12 (11 if you want to be ticky) found some rough going. james was killed right out of the box. traditionally, we understand that all but john were killed for their faith. john spending possibly his final days on an island prison. paul was in beaten, shipwrecked, stoned, spent the years before his beheading in prison (or house arrest).
without making this too long, i think it's easy to see how walking out one's faith can be a tug of war upon one's faith between the Truth and one's Experiences in following that Truth.
the lash of the whip might (at least at the moment) seem a bit more real than the story of Jesus being raised from the dead.
Paul continued...
For a person to find this wonderful news believable, then somehow choose not to believe it - I just don't understand.
First, I don't know how a person finds something believable, then chooses not to believe it. For me, to find something believable IS to believe it.
Second, I can't imagine why anyone would desire not to believe in such absolutely wonderful news.
AMOS
i've heard an old saying that goes something like, "you live what you believe, everything else is just talk."
and being a disciple of the risen Christ is more than a mental ascent in believing he is the Christ, risen, the Savior, or any other part of the faith claims made by followers of Jesus.
belief or faith in action is more than knowing something is. that's the beginning when we speak of religion. the next part is coming to grips with how one's faith lays certain claims upon one's life.
the text i linked in my last comment:
Hebrews 11:6
6 And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
there's two knees of belief which drop in the christian faith:
1) God is.
2) there is a God you can know (for what is the reward of one who seeks something? it is that something. if one seeks gold, the reward is gold. if one seeks God, the reward is God).
was there one day when i suddenly believed? in a way, yes. but, in walking that out - there have been many counter claims which have competed for my faith (on both levels - or against both knee drops of belief).
above i gave some examples from the original followers - who experienced external pressures and conflicts.
but, we also face internal pressures and conflicts.
i think of the rcc'er looking at the crucifix and seeing the bloody Christ - who died for that person's sins. or the protestant who beholds the neat white and nicely trimmed cross and thinks of the words of Christ, "be perfect." and when we try to walk this out - what do we tend to find in ourselves - but people who struggle with sin and people who are not exactly perfect. we find in our experiences a story which can gain such credibility that it can eclipse our perception of the promises and faith claims of the good news.
there's many more ways to write this out - but external and internal experiences can become great contestors to be the object of our faith.
and there sits our will - between what we believe and our experiences. little do we think about the power which is in our faith. instead, we question the object of our faith - due to pain, harm avoidance, counter claims, our own contrary nature, etc.
if we become tempted and give in to the temptation to watch our performance or our experiences and they become our guide. thus determining our path - thus determining our experiences.
obviously, i am speaking as a christian and not from the perspective of a skeptic. but, we grow in our walk through following and discovering more and more what we have believed in is true.
at first God's will for our lives might seem good - but as we follow we begin to see that it is acceptable or pleasing to follow. as we progress we find that it is perfect (romans 12:1-2)
the scripture ref. above speaks to this tension between what we experience in life (Do not be conformed to this world) and following the object of our faith (but be transformed by the renewal of your mind).
peac4d.
amos dettonville
Hi Paul & folks.
I agree, to a certain extent, with what anonomus posted, that we can over think this. Nonetheless it is fun.
I see that we have limited free will. Some things we are capable of doing with will, and other things we are not.
I did not attend church or a mosque as a child. Only a little at first, and then some sort of political thing happened at the church and my father stopped going. while my parents were open about things, we didn't really speak much about belief systems, rather they raised us just to be "good" people and to think.
I early on developed a philosophy that a creator exists, and that there was some sort of unity present. How I came to this I can't really say. It was just there and deniable. I carried no guilt or idea of sin or redemsion either.
Eventually, after certain trevails I came to Islam and became a sufi. Philosophically speaking, it required no adjustment, I already experienced Oneness. It was mearly a confirmation. The adjustment, for me personally, was in the realization of the ever present reality and what this implied.
So, to be direct. NO, i had no choice in experiencing unity. and yet, YES, I had the option of surrendering to the implications of what that experience asked of me personally.
Paul: you wrote: "Maybe you're doing the best you can - and that's all anyone's doing..."
But what if I'm not doing the best I can? Do you really give 100% to any task at all times? The point I was trying to make is: I don't, in fact do "the best I can". I slack off. I'm aware of it. I could do better, I choose not to.
The thing is, I think our society is sick in that people feel compelled to strive, strive, strive every minute. We always feel as though we should "improve ourselves" or... what? What if we didn't? What if we just accepted ourselves as we are, warts and all?
Then maybe we could accept others too. Maybe then God would come to rest on us, since we weren't ASKING for something all the time, or begging forgiveness, or wanting more.
If we have a choice at all, maybe that's it: to *be* or not to be, that is the question. :-)
10/19/2005
Very interesting points, Paul and others. Causes one to think.
I believe that the body has a small amount of free will. It usually follows the prompting of the soul, which has as much free will as it can handle and is the real decision maker. The soul is the one in the learning process and uses the body to do so in the third dimension. The soul is continually being stimulated by Spirit, which is the Truth and as such has no need of free will because IT IS. This is best summarized by a line from my wife’s blog : In my decisions is a cause and effect. I neither analyze nor defend them, for I Am.
***
Why did I stop stealing candy? Now that is a though one. I am sure it has something to do with a better understanding ... or maybe just the ability to afford to buy it now?
;-)
For me, my spirituality has evolved ever since Catholic high school, where I first learned about all (well, some anyway) of the intricacies of Catholic beliefs. This directly conflicted with my feminism (mainly), and I began to explore other options. I had friends who were Unitarian-Universalits and I attended a service at their church and found it to be much more accepting of diversity, homosexuality, and differences in opinion/beliefs. This made sense for me. At that point the things I really believed in were reincarnation and fate and I felt I could believe those things and still maintain a religion and have a church community. I kept having strong reactions to different authors and the best way I could interpret that was I was those people in another life (I now realize how silly that is :D). I used to have a theory about reincarnation, that since energy can neither be created nor destroyed, and our souls are made of energy and thus can never really die, that the soul will continue to live on in other ways after the death of the body. Kind of makes sense right? But at the same time, I now see that my choosing to believe in reincarnation was a direct rebellion against Catholocism, I wanted to believe something that was decidedly anti-Catholic.
During college, I became much more self-reliant and started to re-assess my beliefs again, decided reincarnation was silly and I felt that fate was a cop-out, you really control your own destiny and it didn't make sense to me to even believe that there's something that's destined to happen, because you have choice.
In the past few years I've dropped any sort of theory (fate, reincarnation) about spirituality/how to live my life. I feel like some people need structure and direction in their spirituality, and for those people, religion is a good option. But for me, I feel that all of my strength comes from within (not to say that people with religion don't have inner strength, but I think they choose to gain strength from a god as well), and I would rather go it alone I guess. I want to be a good person because I AM a good person, not because there's some sort of motivating factor (like religion or heaven).
But as far as choice, I COULD choose to believe in a god (and sometimes I almost do out of habit just because of my Catholic upbringing), but I do choose not to, because of various experiences I've had, science, etc. I think to an extent, my choice about not having a religion, about being an athiest, is about having a clean slate to work with, I want to build my spirituality from the ground up instead of having it handed to me. It bothers me that so many people are born into a religion and just willingly accept it without:
a) learning about it at all or
b)exploring other options that may be more suitable for them.
I feel I've often been aware of my behavior in the past, both good and bad. And I was definitely choosing it, even when I was little. I remember once I did steal candy from a grocery store. I knew exactly what I was doing then. And fortunately, I got caught and got that concept straightened out in my mind. I've done other bad things too, and every time I was quite aware of the choice I was making.
Personally, I don't consider harm that is done from ignorance to truly be harm. If it was done innocently, then you can't really consider it 'badness.' To me badness/evil is only that which truly chooses to be bad.
I have a strong belief in and relationship with God. I did not choose a particular religion, because I don't believe in any of them. I only believe in God - you can define that really anyway you like, but I feel that God and human beings and everything else are one. So it makes no sense to try to hammer the greatness of God into the confines of one particular religion or another. And look where doing that has led us... we are today closer than ever to blowing ourselves to smithereens... and over what? Religion. There are many who think the next great war will be between the Christians and Muslims, and it will have been inspired from each thinking their way is the best. Try to tell me that that was what God intended when he created us. Religions are stupid, and nothing more than a human instrument for control and power.
My spirituality was undefined as a younger person, but looking back, I feel it was always there. There was never a time when I doubted the existence of God. It was more a question of maturity in my own spiritual life. For me, I reached full maturity spritually after my divorce and in the therapy I did. That's when my beliefs began to take a clearer shape and when I began to have a more regular relationship with God. I forget to be aware of God's presence often, and even more importantly, to talk to God... but
when I do, I feel so much better.
LUCY: Thanks for presenting this angle on the discussion.
The question, from a free choice standpoint, is: Did any factors in your backgrounds tend to lead you and your husband to be at a point in life where you were selecting among religions and ended up choosing Mormonism? Or did you choose to be “selectors” and end up Mormons in some perfectly free manner?
You refer to your belief in God’s plan (there are some recent posts on this), Satan, and what I’m guessing is a distinct-entity God –a God existing as a totally Other reality alongside, so to speak, the realm of nature that He created; a Creator as a second object existing in addition to nature in the complete realm of all-that-is.
Again the question would be: How did you come to these beliefs? A perfectly free choice, or a process involving influences on you of some kind, and perhaps strong ones?
G-Fish: Sounds like you’re seeing the very essence of distinguishing right from wrong as a matter of choice? You also mention “learning from our experiences,” which is another way of putting what I was talking about in the part that you quoted: the more conscious that I am of right from wrong, the more certain it becomes that I’ll behave well.
To me, this makes it sound like learning – which, in a spiritual/moral context, could be described as the diminishment of ignorance – is what’s really central. An example: Do we freely choose not to put our hands on hot stoves?
AMOS: For sure bad things have happened to Christians in this world - along with a lot of other people. It depends a lot on what time and place you look at. There isn’t much by way of violent persecution of Christians in the US these days, for example.
My point was only that what the Gospel says is indeed “good news." It tells us that justice ultimately prevails, sins are forgiven, good triumphs over evil, all’s finally right with the world – we’re ultimately saved.
I didn’t mean to suggest that Christians believe that nothing bad can ever happen to them in the meantime!
Yes – I stated my inability to understand either how or why anyone could find such wonderful news believable, and then choose not to believe it. The fact that I was discussing belief and choice, and not belief and action, didn’t imply that I think belief has no relation to action. Not talking about a subject doesn’t usually imply anything concerning one's views about it.
I agree with you about the strong relationship of belief to action, and not only in Christianity. I’m not aware of any religion that teaches, “Believe these things, but do not act upon them.”
Regarding the rest of your comment, as you mention, you’re speaking as a believing Christian –and, I would add, one who has a particular view of the Christian message and the Bible. So you believe that your understanding of what the Bible says is the truth; and that anything in a person's experience that conflicts with this understanding is necessarily misguided.
KEVIN: That’s how I’m leaning too –that we have, as you say, limited free will in the face of strong influences. Maybe it’s like we’re a kind of boat. We don’t choose either the wind or the presence of our sail, but maybe we have some very limited steering ability – just enough to avoid a huge rock now and then.
But I honesty don’t know and can’t prove that I really do have any such steering ability.
KATE: By “doing the best we can” I don’t mean constantly exercising effort at a 100% level. I don’t think anyone’s designed to do that – or, hopefully, has a life where it’s necessary! They sure would burn out fast! To me, effort is just one aspect, and not the be all/end all, of engaging in a way of life that conduces toward greater sanity.
My view is that anyone’s behavior in any given moment or day reflects less their “free choice” –or, for that matter, their level of effort - than their level of consciousness/unconsciousness concerning what makes for true peace and happiness. Or, you might say: their degree of awareness of their spiritual nature and their relationship to God.
When this awareness is very low, the best the person can do is very bad by the standards of those whose awareness is greater.
For me, thinking that others may be doing the best they can rather than freely choosing evil, is precisely a way to help me with, as you put it, “accepting others warts and all.”
MATT: Hmm… To me, I have to say that it sounds like you’ve done quite a bit of analyzing, and that this has led you to a belief system whose elements include, as you mention, the soul, body, how free will is involved with each, a third dimension, Spirit, Truth…
I’m guessing that your belief system consists of interpretations you’ve placed on certain contemplative or meditative experiences?
Just to toss my hat in the ring: my experience of the world compels me to believe that we do make choices. We are not radically free to make these choices, but we do choose.
Please note that this is a different statement than "my experience of the world compels me to believe that salvation or liberation or enlightenment hinges on right belief or right action".
Also, and perhaps more interestingly: I suspect that all philosophical questions can be reduced to a game of "six degrees from free will vs. determinism". I will leave this game as an exercise for the reader.
I'm sorry to keep harping on this Paul, but this is such an interesting discussion.
You said: "For me, thinking that others may be doing the best they can rather than freely choosing evil, is precisely a way to help me with, as you put it, “accepting others warts and all.”
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, can you accept people if their "warts" are not just ignorance, but sometimes a conscious choice to do the wrong thing? Can you accept that part of yourself?
Do you think God will accept you, even though you've made some bad choices, (and by bad, I mean "bad" not "just didn't know any better or couldn't help myself".) Or would He send you to hell?
And I wouldn't assume that "knowing what I know now I wouldn't do that again..." Because how do you know? Maybe you would do it again, even knowing you shouldn't and you'll be sorry later on. You know? There is a part of us that is human that is just plain perverse. We dont' always want to be "good" all the time. I think this aspect of our humanity is being left out of this discussion.
Or maybe it's just me?
Again, you can just indicate if you want me to let this point go. LOL.
Reading over this wonderful comment-stream -- which I can't say I've done as completely or as attentively as it deserves -- I'm struck by how often the question of "is there free choice" veers into "should there be free choice?" or "is free choice proveable?"
I'm not really interested in either of the latter two questions, which is good, because I'm quite sure I can't answer either of them. But the first can be answered, though not proven, by experience. Just observe your mind carefully and watch what it does.
In the moment, not afterwards. Afterwards of course it will look like a decision -- that's how we describe such things; our language requires subjects to exercise volition, even when it's clearly silly. ("The wind is blowing," for example. Exactly what is this "wind" that is blowing? And what was it, where was it, before it decided to blow?) But if you go to steal a piece of candy today and try to watch carefully and observe exactly when the decision is made -- I bet you won't be able to find it. (You'll probably get caught, too, since you'll be paying attention to your thoughts rather than to the theft. Maybe some other test-case would be better :->)
No matter how closely I look, I find the "decision" has always already been made. I simply don't see the decisions. Possibly that's because they're invisible, for some reason, but it seems more likely -- Occam's razor -- that they're simply not there.
it's really, REALLY impossible for me to know sometimes, about the whole "stealing candy" dilemma
A: Ha-ha... So practical minded for a poet...
Marissa: The process you're going through, in its general outlines, is so much like things I've been through that it's uncanny. You'd almost think we'd have to be related or something.
I do think - I know - that the route of first-hand experience, questioning, and understanding, is the only authentic way forward for some of us.
As far as women go: I've yet to notice that men are in general spiritually superior to women. Until that day comes, it just boggles my mind that women are not accorded full and equal status to men in every church, temple, and mosque in the world.
I know there's this and that line in the Bible and Koran that can be used to say only men can be priests. But there are plenty of aspects to life thousands of years ago that are mentioned in scripture that we don't practise today.
When you say that you could "choose" to believe in God, I wonder if it's that, or if you're at a point in your process where although you're inclined to doubt God's existence, and have moved away from that belief, there's still a bit of vacillation and/or a strong memory of having believed in God that makes you have moments of semi-belief.
Am I overthinking this?
MATTHEW: Me too - a degree of choice, but not perfectly free, is also my gut feeling. Like you, I feel like trying to figure it out is a game-like activity, although the thoughtfulness of the comments to this post is almost enough for me to choose to believe otherwise...
LA COLORATURA: Awareness or consciousness that we are making a decision doesn’t demonstrate that the decision is being made freely. Choosing between alternatives is a cognitive activity everyone experiences. The question is: to what if any degree is the alternative we end up selecting selected freely.
And there are levels of knowledge/ignorance. For example, a young child stealing candy may really know little more than that grownups say it’s wrong. That may be the extent of the “insight.”
“So it makes no sense to try to hammer the greatness of God into the confines of one particular religion or another.” I totally agree, which is why I’m doing this blog this way. I can honestly say I have equal respect for all the world’s religions, and also for all persons who are seekers in this area. I certainly don’t believe in a provincial God who embraces only one people or one nation. To me, God is global and working by way of the whole world.
I don’t think religion is stupid; but I think many people who think of themselves as religious can’t tell their ego from their God - possibly because the spelling is so similar? This can lead “religious” people to do wrong and even horrible things supposedly in the name of God.
For me too, going further along in spirituality has been a matter of becoming aware of something already there…
"TENACIOUS KATE": Gotta go, but see another comment from you and have to restrain myself from looking at it now... I'll be back...
there is a religion which includes some disciplines and some practices to follow. often it comes with some blind faith and superstition
but what i believe is in the religion of truth and universal brotherhood. it crosses all barriers and is free from any blind faith or superstition. it is based upon the understanding of our original nature that i am peaceful pure being and the world is my family.
and most importantly about God, if we say that He is our Father, then why are we afraid of him. why don't we talk to Him and talk about Him.
as we start having right understanding about our own selves that i am also by my nature pure and peaceful, i start loving Him also. this link of love is the way of getting all, which a child should get from his Father.
Paul said: "When you say that you could "choose" to believe in God, I wonder if it's that, or if you're at a point in your process where although you're inclined to doubt God's existence, and have moved away from that belief, there's still a bit of vacillation and/or a strong memory of having believed in God that makes you have moments of semi-belief."
I definitely hear you about that. Prior to leaving Catholocism, I had really made an effort to be a good Catholic, to try to adhere to that dogma, and tried to pray every night and whatnot. Of course, a lot of this "prayer" was that of a selfish child ("Please God, let me win this game of Uno..." No I'm not kidding :D). But nonetheless it became habit. And every now and then when I'm in a bind (and I don't mean games of Uno nowadays, real binds :D), I find myself wishing for some sort of guidance from a god or higher being, and then having to stop and remind myself, "wait a sec, I don't believe in that." I think a lot of that is just my being extroverted though, needing to get things out, talk to someone about them, in order to process them. And when there's no one around and I'm stressed out, I lapse into prayer mode. When I'm relaxed, I don't lapse back into those habits, I'll write in a journal or email (or blog, but not as often) to sort through a problem.
The environmental side of me sometimes wonders about a Mother Nature type of higher power, but generally I like to think in terms of energy (still haven't completely given up on that)- that there is a shared energy in all living things and human beings. But I don't see that as a higher power, more like an equal power, an energy that connects all living things and the earth. That belief is more based in science than spirituality though, so to me it's entirely different from a god. But in the same sense, I think that kind of energy could be interpreted by religious people as a god.
KATE: Okay, NOW I think I see what you're trying to say, and we've sort of been talking past each other.
First, you're bringing a mindset to this that's different from mine. This is going to sound crazy to a lot of readers, but it's possible to find yourself at a place where you've lost interest in the question of your personal mortality and salvation, so that issues like, "Do I have enough credits to get into heaven," or, alternatively, "Are my sins forgiven so that I'll get in anyway?" no longer have a place in your spiritual outlook or aspirations.
Second, a "conscious choice" doesn't have to be free, which I think you may be assuming? A conscious decision might be a free choice; or a highly influence choice; or even, though this isn't my own thinking, viewed as a completely determined one.
In other words, being conscious of the process of making a decision doesn't exclude the possibility that your decision-making process, and your consciousness of it, may have been heavily influenced or even determined by factors outside yourself. Your stream of consciousness and the resulting decision may have been set into eventual motion by whatever force first created the universe.
I think there's a lot to suggest that we have a limited degree of choice, but I don't see how you prove or disprove even this much. You can't ever "replicate the experiment." The universe we know is a one-time event. We can't have a "do-over" to see if in fact we really could have made another decision.
Speaking personally, which I think is what you're finally asking, I've definitely done wrong in the sense of having some kind of feeling or idea that what I was doing was wrong and doing it anyway. But when I've looked back at these times, I've always found that my feelings and ideas about the situation were faulty or distorted in some manner.
I've never clearly known, felt, and understood that something was very wrong and how very wrong it was, then gone ahead and done it anyway. But I've had, for example, the experience of a bad and yet not clearly understood feeling that what I was about to do was wrong and done it anyway. Or given myself a lame rationalization whose lameness I sensed, yet gone ahead and acted badly anyway.
Are you saying that in contrast, you've behaved badly - in some significant way, not talking, say, about being mischievous or maybe going a little too far with a joke... Are you saying you've made significant wrong choices with what, at the time, was a high level of insight into what made it wrong?
So I guess you're more of a sinner than me; or maybe less insightful?
I didn't really want to say that, it wasn't a free choice. But you're kind of backing me into a corner here Kate, ha ha.
Okay: What about Bin Laden, if I spelled his name right. Do you think that in his own mind he's choosing evil? What about your regular secular murderer: Does he tell himself, "I am the incarnation of evil and personal lousiness"; or does he say to himself, "I've got my reasons..."
And if that's what he says to himself, isn't he fooling himself, kidding himself? Isn't he more of an immensely ignorant human being than a free and deliberate chooser of evil?
I’ve just spent four hours in a dentist’s chair, and I am shot full of Novocain (that is wearing off), so this is not likely to be my best effort.
First, I would like to say that I did not intend to infer that I thought religious people were stupid. Paul, you have read more into my ‘lobotomy’ comment than I intended, but I can see why you might. I meant only what I said, and that is, that I would require a lobotomy to remove a body of knowledge from my own head. I would no more think that a religious person was stupid based on the fact that he or she was religious, than I would make the same snap judgment if someone had Turret’s Syndrome, for example. If you are thinking that I infer that I believe that susceptibility to religious influence is in some ways similar to Turret’s you are right. I can place electrodes into your brain and by electric stimulus, make you believe that you have had a religious experience. Apologists can explain this away in any number of ways (e.g. That’s where the Giant Spaghetti Monster touched me with his noodly appendage), but the fact remains. Something even harder to get out of my head: how very convenient and self-serving is the dogma propounded by any given religious institution. Even harder than that: the fever pitch at which the idea of religion is sold and resold. It has all of the aspects of an infomercial combined with a form of hypnosis. Religious ceremony uses all of the sneaky tactics of emotional persuasion and repeats them at a frequency that parallels the reinforcement of hypnotic suggestion used in hypnotherapy. Then, there is the scope in which the idea of heaven/hell, god/satan, angel/demon, ghosts, or other supernatural beings are constantly repackaged and resold, reinforcing the idea of greater powers, magic, and supernatural beings. We are barraged with messages to “believe!” If this was really self-evident, why all the hype?
Lucy, you believe your god has a plan. On some days, I envy you. To me however, that statement means that you believe the authority figures that told you that “God has a plan”. They have set themselves up as surrogates to the Emperor, the invisible Emperor that is not only not naked and not invisible, he is also simply “not”.
Paul, in response to my hypothetical time-travel scenario said, “We can't go back to how things were a moment ago to learn for sure whether we could have done anything different than what we did.”
True, but we can make some deductions that will bring us to a degree of confidence with our conclusions that either approaches certainty, or reveals something about our beliefs (or both).
Given: One can’t change the past.
Given: The present moment is a tiny instant between past and future and becomes the past.
Postulate: If one were to repeat a moment in the past, in which all of the elements (variables) of that moment remained exactly the same, the moment would be repeated in exactly the same way.
Logical analysis of postulate: If nothing has changed, what could one possibly expect to change?
Theoretical proof: There are too many variables to quantify, and time travel is impossible and would not necessarily contain the theoretical constraint of loss of awareness of subsequent events. The variables can, however, be viewed as a gestalt, the sum total of their effect.
Example: if I gaze into a crystal ball, I see a distorted image of my surroundings, caused by the lens effect of the specific dimension of the ball, and all of the imperfections within. I can observe the distortions and measure them much more easily than I can identify and map all of the imperfections that caused those distortions.
If one can create a situation wherein all of the variables are measurable, and the number of variables is limited, one should be able to prove one’s point conceptually to a high degree of certainty. Take a pair of dice. One cannot predict the outcome of a throw because of all the variables. Customarily, the dice are randomized by shaking, thrown with a variable amount of force, impact a felt-covered table in a range of trajectories, spins, and positions effecting the amount of friction (drag) that the contact causes. They then tumble, bounce off a wall, tumble some more, then come to rest. Say an experimenter were to reduce the variables by throwing the dice at the exact same trajectory, from the same starting position, in a pneumatic device using the same force each time. Furthermore, the influence of atmosphere was removed by throwing them in a vacuum chamber, and the landing table was made of a hard smooth material, and friction was further minimized by doing this in extremely low gravity. The influence of the remaining variables (drag, spin) is measured each time the dice are thrown. If, on two subsequent throws, all of the individual values of the variables are accounted for and are equal, the dice will land in the exact same position. If you believe otherwise, then you believe in magic. If event A = event B, then event B = event A.
This is what I am saying about free will and/or free choice. At any given moment, you make a decision that will have a trivial/momentous/anything-in-between effect on the rest of your life. That decision is not made in a vacuum, it is not even made in one’s best judgment (drunk driving?) necessarily. It is made based on the experiential/emotional/physical state of the decision-maker. Whether the logic that goes into that decision is precise, (believed to be) divinely inspired, or perverse, it represents a “personal best” for that situation and moment. If nothing that led up to that decision can change, then the decision won’t change. In fact, if all of the stressors of personality and mental state of the individual were known, the decision would be predictable. This is the imprecise science of profiling, and why it is imprecise. This is why I say that “free will” is a conceptual oversimplification.
Dale: In my opinion, if you are acting impulsively and have no knowledge of the point of decision, you have already made a decision (value judgment) in the past that "green lights" that behavior.
'The question is: to what if any degree is the alternative we end up selecting selected freely.'
I think we are always selecting freely with the possible exception of those people who are being coerced in some way or another. Whether you are conscious about it or not, YOU are the one choosing, you are always choosing. The question for me is: how can I become and stay conscious so that I can choose (freely) that which will lead by soul continuously down the path towards the greatest version of myself that I can dream of?
And there are levels of knowledge/ignorance. For example, a young child stealing candy may really know little more than that grownups say it’s wrong. That may be the extent of the “insight.”
I disagree strongly with your example here. Children are not credited for being half as intelligent or aware as they really art. I'm not saying that some don't fall into the category you mention above, but many, if not most, are quite aware of right/wrong and good/bad at a very early age. And I can assure that when I stole the candy when I was 5, I knew exactly what I was going. I just did it anyway. I wanted that candy and I knew my mother wouldn't buy it, so I stole it.
My point is really though, that we are all aware and are choosing freely from the moment we are born - just in varying degrees of consciousness. And actually, I believe that our souls choose whether to be born - so that we can have the experience of becoming that which we were always meant to be: the greatest version of ourselves that we can dream of.
In case any of this sounds familiar to anyone, yes, a lot of it is from the 'Conversations with God' series... do I think that guy really spoke with God? Who's to say? However, of all the things I've ever read about religion, what I found in those books is the closest to anything that ever really made any sense for me.
Well Scott, in fact if what you say is true, I have been more of a sinner than you are. But I think this might actually give me MORE (not less) insight into the concept of "free will".
Yes, what I'm trying to say is, I have made free choices to do bad things and been aware, at the time I was choosing, that they were wrong.
Now you may argue that there is no way for me to know for sure that I was free to make those choices, I was influenced by XYZ factors, etc. But I just disagree. It's a subjective thing, so of course it can't be proven, but you are asking a question here, and I'm just giving you the benefit of my (different) experience.
You say that you haven't actually done this, and thus, you speculate that it's not possible for anyone to do this.
I'm here to tell ya, it's possible.
Maybe I'm unique in this. But given the state of the world, I don't think I'm the only true sinner. :-) People don't like to admit to this kind of thing, I think I'm just more honest about it.
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
DALE: Wow... You sure have a way with expressing this stuff...
RHEIN: Me too. See Dale's comment right above yours for a more detailed look at possibly why you don't know...
BKDIVAM: I also have trouble with the whole angry/vengeful/jealous Father-God - also, frankly, with a God obsessed with being adored and praised.
To me, it makes God sound a bit too much like a regular member of the pantheon - you know, those anthropomorphized Greek and Roman gods with their all-too-human attributes...
MARISSA: I guess that whole idea of a "vital energy" goes way back. But like you say, it also brings scientific concepts to mind - in my case vaguely. But my impression is that scientists would like to find some kind of underlying theory that would unite and explain the entire universe...
BREAKERSLION: Sorry that I inferred too much on that. At the same time, it was easy to do because of conditions prevailing in the general blogosphere... Looking at blogs, I've found those to be two very common attitudes (atheists assuming religious people are dumb, religious people assuming atheists are immoral).
What’s Dumb: But it does sound like you come fairly close to thinking religion is stupid? And if that’s what you’re saying, I agree that a lot of what passes for religion is stupid, shallow, self-serving, and hypocritical. “Religious” violence, religious as big business, priest-scandals… It’s easy to go on and on.
What’s Not: To me though, it’s kind of like: So what else is new? That is, much of human behavior is stupid, shallow, self-serving, hypocritical, violent, profiteering, and scandalous. To me the hypocrisy aspect is more noxious when it comes to religion than it is in other human activities – but that’s precisely because religion’s purpose, which I’d be the first to acknowledge that religion has by no means fully lived up to, has a lot to do with turning us into better people… And that purpose is a good thing…
Religion & Authority: Like you, I disagree with many believers on the sense in which scripture and church interpretations of scripture ought to be viewed as authoritative. That’s a big topic. Here I’ll just point out that it’s by no means the case that all believers have the same view of this issue.
Reductionism or “Nothing Buttery”:
“I can place electrodes into your brain and by electric stimulus, make you believe that you have had a religious experience.”
This is also a big topic. I’ll state a few things as briefly as possible:
Religious experience isn’t about belief or any form of language/thought – at least not the form of religious experience that’s widely regarded as most consequential. (I’ve heard of the study you refer to, and I don’t know as it included this form of experience. But let’s assume it did.)
The fact that human experiences, religious or otherwise, may occur in connection with particular patterns of brain wave activity does not reduce them to being nothing but particular patterns of brain wave activity.
Everything that we experience and observe in life is made up of, or appears to depend upon, the existence of subatomic particles. That doesn’t make brain waves “nothing but” subatomic particles. That's why we have those two different phrases - "brain waves" and "subatomic particles."
Similarly love, religious experience, or any other kind of experience, isn’t “nothing but” a pattern of brain waves; or, reduced further, subatomic particles.
This is why we have different words for things. At the dinner table, we don’t say, “Please pass the aggregation of quarks,” or we’d have to keep adding stuff like, “No, no, I mean the yellow ones – the kind you spread… yeah, I meant the butter.”
The meaningfulness of being able to stimulate religious experience with electrodes sounds dubious. I suspect that when I had an experience that turned my life around in my early twenties, the significance had to do with the life-context that occasioned it.
An analogy: mechanical devices can produce orgasm. But the significance of these orgasms isn’t the same as when you make love to your significant other.
Strict Determinism? For the rest, sounds like you believe that the universe is strictly determined, so there’s no free will in any degree. I don’t know a lot of science, but it seems to me that your argument assumes a Newtonian, mechanistic universe. What you say about the dice, for example – seems to me this has to be true. Same for coin flips.
But I’ve heard of something called the indeterminacy principle in physics where the very act of observing a particle changes its… I believe, binary status. So I really don’t know. If there’s uncertainty involved at the level of the physical sciences, it leaves me less than certain that the contents of human consciousness are fully determined…
You do well with Novocain…
paul, i enjoyed reading all this dialog, but after the 50+th post, this poem feels appropriate ... not that anyone here actually sounded like the learned astronomer
when i heard the learn'd astronomer,
when the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me...
...
how soon unaccountable i became tired and sick,
till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
in the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.
(walt whitman)
i wonder, what could be the blogging equivalent of looking up at the stars...
someone said, i cannot unknow what i know. may i say i disagree vehemently?
i've learned that sometimes, unlearning (a bad habit, a false belief, etc.) can be as important as, or maybe more important than learning. which is to say, unlearning or "unknowing" something is a vital part of the broad learning process.
hmmm, Very complex topic. I think you're right about not being able to believe certain things based on their seeming impossibility or inapplicability based on our judgments from experience. e.g. I can't choose not to like the colour blue, or believe that rain doesn't contain water. We can start to categorize our own beliefs as principles of a specific religion but sometimes we just don’t identify with it because its not personal, or our associations with it change. I think perhaps religion is just a form of expression. I'm not sure that religious and non-religious people have any different average amount of beliefs, though one set has been translated into the vernacular language by the possessor of the beliefs, or it surrounds them in their context. We all have biases to label our thoughts, and drives that are self-perpetuated depending on how we react, which means that our REACTIONS are our choice, and may be the determining component if we’re trying to isolate some reflex that is evidence of free will. Maybe what we think we believe and what we actually believe isn't always the same or the 'right' thing based on our knowledge, though we have some observations to direct us at least, yet we may be hindered by an unhealthy spirit, or a depressed one, or an injured one, that seeks to deceive itself, or an amputated body that selectively allows the soul to interact with the physical world, so we can both be wronged, or do wrong, even though we know better. I think accessing your free will starts with believing in yourself, in whatever way that’s understood. Once you know what you’re not capable, you can have better understanding of what you are capable of, and that opens up many possibilities. I'm convinced that even as simple as something like: instead of eating a microwave popcorn bag for breakfast, we have control over our physical bodies, which are controlled by our spirit, and has the capability of enlightening it, by say, choosing to eat a banana instead. Our consciousnesses can be controlling, and in some ways we are limited by what we know, but we are also much more selectively successful in what we try, because our will becomes specialized to achieve what we learn is possible, apart from the things that will knock us flat on our face, and make us feel controlled again because we become superstitiously doubtful that our choices will result in the effects we anticipate.
I'm wondering what a zombie clone of myself would be doing right now in this situation. How can I prove that I'm not one?
LA COLORATURA: Sounds like the idea of free choice is central to your beliefs or thinking about religion and morality.
I'm not completely sure we're all talking about the same thing. For one thing, for myself, and most of those posting, our feeling seems to be that we do have a degree of free choice, but it's not perfectly free. There are influences, some of them strong.
Also, when someone says they don't think that any degree of free will can be proven or known, as I have, that doesn't overturn the fact that personally, my best guess is that it does exist in some measure.
But I don't think there's any doubt about the limitations on choice. The physical coercion you mention would be just one example of a strong influence. Disease, poverty, lack of opportunity - of course there are people who manage to rise above circumstances. Yet the fact that there is such a strong correlation between, say, poverty and education level, means that it exerts a serious force against people's ability to choose higher education.
I'm very unlikely ever to choose Islam as my religion. I had zero exposure to it until age 25. I'm sure that most Muslims had exposure to it early in life. Another powerful influence.
I worked with elementary children as a school counselor for 23 years. I certainly saw their choices as being powerfully influenced, usually by a situation at home.
If you say that we are always making free choices unconsciously, of course no one can disprove that. But someone else could assert that at every moment our behavior is the outcome of unconscious thoughts that were predetermined.
I don't think this myself, just pointing out that you can ascribe pretty much whatever you want to the unconscious mind. I mean, since it's unconscious, any denial of the assertion can just be attributed to unconsciousness. In other words, it's not very compelling as an argument.
However, that said, this line from your comment really resonates with me:
"How can I become and stay conscious so that I can choose (freely) that which will lead by soul continuously down the path towards the greatest version of myself that I can dream of?"
This is called "mindfulness" in Buddhism. And it doesn't have to be related to any theoretical matters about whether or to what degree there is free choice.
It's a form of practice. It involves cultivating an awareness of when one, in my mom's words, is "coming from a place that matters," vs. coming from some selfish and unwell place in ourselves. To practice this sort of self awareness definitely helps shape us into better human beings.
Do those who engage in practices of this kind freely choose them? That's another question, and for me, it doesn't matter much. But if I had to guess, I'd say that big influences are involved in whether we engage in them.
For example, being raised Buddhist probably increases the odds. Being raised Catholic, my church-going experiences never taught me anything like this, and I found out about it through a circuitous route much later in life.
Free will is a gift from God. It means human beings have been given the ability to choose between right and wrong. We do not believe God runs our lives like a puppet show. We are completely free to choose, but are not shielded from the consequences of our actions as they interact with the rest of the humans (also with free will). Some people feel that we do not have free will because God punishes us for the choices he does not happen to like.
Rather than punish, God simply allows people to choose to reject Him. As there is no happiness apart from God, permanent rejection of God results in permanent unhappiness. Without free will, no opportunity for choices between right and wrong exist. Creatures without free will cannot have ethics because they have no choice.
KATE: I described as accurately as possible the frame of mind I'm in when I behave badly. I'm unaware of not admitting to something.
What I described was a mind state in which I'm less than fully aware of the wrongness of my action, even though I usually or always have intimations of its wrongness.
If you're saying you disagree that there have ever been any outside influences on your behavior, that's not just a matter of opinion. That's demonstrably false, not just "a subjective thing."
Everyone, for example, has parents...
It sounds like the idea of "sin" is important in your belief system, and that you believe that to sin is to deliberately choose evil with full consciousness of how and why the choice is evil. This just hasn't been my experience, I'm being as honest as I can, and I'm sure you are too.
Btw, no need for any personal edge to this discussion. It represents a major division in religious thought. Eastern religion, at least Buddhism, sees wrong behavior chiefly in terms of ignorance. Western theology sees it in terms of freely choosing evil, even though there are also scriptural indicators for the ignorance position: for example, Jesus', "Forgive them Lord, for they know not what they do."
And I forgive you for calling me "Scott." I figure it wasn't a free choice...
MJ: I totally agree - I'd rather be doing the blogging equivalent of looking up at the stars!
I have to say first that A) I thought this would be a boring topic and only brought it up because I saw free choice come up a lot on other religious blogs, but B)I'm impressed by how much thought people can put into this, and how many different perspectives there are, and what a diversity of motives may be behind those perpectives.
Being too lazy to find the phrase you mention disagreeing with - "I cannot unknow what I know" - I'm not so sure you're really in disagreement. To use "unknow" as a synonym for "unlearn," meaning retraining oneself as with regard to a bad habit, is probably to attach a different meaning to the word than the person writing the sentence had in mind.
Don't see how anyone could dispute the value of getting rid of habitual thoughts, feelings, and actions that we've come to recognize are counterproductive. "Unknow" in the phrase you quote probably meant something like "forget" or "not see anymore" with regard to something that we continue to think is right, true, or correct.
Paul, I'm sorry about calling you Scott! It was a mistake, which I guess I do see as different than a sin.
I suppose I still have a lot of leftover Catholic in me, as this discussion illustrates. See, I can't help but see those mistakes I've made as "sins", given my strict Catholic upbringing! LOL.
You have really given me a lot to think about.
I'm sorry if I seemed to be attacking you personally, that was not my intention at all. I think there is a certain element of "cognitive dissonance" that occurs when confronted with very different ideas, and that very resistance is sometimes a sign of learning. I've noticed that myself in my students.
What I am trying to get across is: I find it hard to believe that others (such as yourself) really don't have a sense of having done something wrong on purpose, and having had the free will to make that choice.
I felt a bit naked in admitting this when no one else here seemed willing to admit to this. Perhaps I am a much worse person than you all are, but I doubt it. :-)
I'm not saying that my choices have not been influenced by my parents, upbringing, socioeconomic class, nationality etc. Of course it would be silly to assert that.
The point is though, I do think that people do in fact have the ability to make a "right" or "wrong" choice in any given situation. Being coerced, lacking money or education, etc may make it harder or easier for a person to make certain choices, but as Gangadhar said, without some acknowledgement of this factor: "free will" how could there be any ethics?
It would be crazy then, to hold anyone responsible for their good or bad acts. It would make no sense to have prisons, or the educational system for that matter. Everything would be relative. Why not still have slavery? Why shouldn't Hitler rule the world? I know I'm oversimplifying here, but do you see what I mean?
I just can't accept that point of view. But I'm curious to know what you think about that aspect of personal responsibility.
GANGADHAR
KATE
DOSHAR
Good points/questions about how the idea of choice relates to responsibility, morality, and the criminal justice system. Doshar also brought this up.
Too much for a comment. I'll make this the topic for my next post.
SIRBARRETT: Hmm... Very complex comment... I think mostly because you may be speaking from out of a belief-perspective that can't be fully laid out in a comment, so I'm not always sure of the meanings you have in mind for certain words...
Anyway, to pick up on a couple things: to me, a "reaction" sounds closer to the opposite of choice than choice. For me the word connotes something reflexive or even compulsive.
As to your bottom line, I agree. I don't see any way of proving free will vs. determinism, which I guess is why people have debated it since at least the Middle Ages.
GANGADHAR: Just one thing... I'm picking up on the ethics aspect of your comment next post. The "puppet" aspect will have to wait for the post after that, since it's a topic in itself...
paul,
a lot (most of the comments) are not showing up in my browser (on this page - the response page).
i apologize if i gave you the impression that i was slamming your statements beginning with "all is good in the world, justice... etc." that certainly was not my intent.
i rather, was trying to use that line as an example of what i would term as, "external pressures and conflicts" which challenge our belief. that being, one side of the coin, as "internal pressures and conflicts" form another set of challenges to our belief.
in a way, i was simply trying to unpack the idea of "experiences" which tend to call us to look away from the object of our faith. it's an over simplification - but probably two decent categories for "descriptive" purposes concerning the "experiences" which vie for position in our walks of faith.
again, an over simplified analogy would be like: i walk into a bookstore, my experience is a bookstore. i bite into a hotdog, my experience is a hotdog. i step off the empire state building (barring a parachute or great fortune) my experience will be one of falling and then the sudden stop.
is my faith free? sitting at the free discretion of my will? it might be free, in the sense of choice between different directions - but it certainly is not free from the tugs and pulls of inner and outer stressors, conflicts, and pressures.
there's a point in the analogy of fact, faith, and experience walking along on a high wire. faith did fine as long as she looked at fact. but when faith turned to look at experience, she tumbled off the wire and experience followed her.
the moral of the story, is that our experiences follow our faith and not the other way around. it's something which, IMHO, people of faith often missunderstand - because faith choices are known first and initially by the experiences of faith in action.
because walking in belief is like that. one can be convinced of A. yet one can continually meet the outside pressure and conflicts of B and C and E all suggesting that A is going to cause them to experience B,C,and E or worse.
let's say, before that person ever began to believe in A (which at the beginning produced among other things F "serenity" and G "peace")
that person had a long held belief in D ("I don't deserve to be happy and serene" and "peace in life is impossible for me").
and so they believe in A (actively, not merely mental affirmation or acceptance - but a kind of building one's life with a confidence in A) and B,C,E, come from without challenging the veracity of A by making the experience of believing in A painful to hard.
all of this, plus some internal insecurities of personal failings seems to reinforce a long held belief in D from within.
and here you have faith on the wire - looking at A which was believed - and being pulled by B,C,D,E, with such a bombarding presence that faith feels almost compelled to look at B-E and to look away from A.
and so we meet faith mid-journey and ask, "faith, do you believe in A?" i think the answer might be something like, "I want to...." or "I used to...." or "I am trying to...." or "I am not sure anymore...." or "I don't think so...." and there's probably many more theme and variations on that....
anyway, i hope this makes my input a bit more clear.
you got a great discussion going - if you find this blows your blog to pieces - with too many comments for the format - i'd be more than willing to see if i can help with discussion space or learning how tweak this blogger format so it will work with so many comments.
AMOS AND EVERYBODY: Is anyone else having Amos' trouble with viewing comments because of the browser? Please let me know. I don't even know what a browser is. I'd need to talk to my webmeister sis...
Amos, I didn't have the impression you were slamming anything.
Reduced to the essentials, it still sounds to me like you're contrasting faith as belief - I'm assuming Christian belief in Jesus as Savior - with our own experiences. And that you equate truth with this belief, and experience as something that tends to confuse and mislead. No?
'I'm not completely sure we're all talking about the same thing. For one thing, for myself, and most of those posting, our feeling seems to be that we do have a degree of free choice, but it's not perfectly free. There are influences, some of them strong.'
Again, I disagree. It's a matter of consciousness. The proof is that there are those that are able to overcome their circumstances (myself included.) There have been wonderful examples of children from ghettos have been aware enough at a very young age to make the right choices to get them (thankfully) the hell out of there. And that's just one example. There are all kinds of examples of people transforming there lives in various ways, at various times and stages in their life... I believe that it comes down to a matter of consciousness. And when we are fully conscious then we are able to fully exploit - in the best sense of the word - the incredible gift of free choice that God has given us all.
There is a real danger in not admitting to ourselves that we are fully in control and that God wants it that way. And that danger is victimization. It's a tough old world out there and just too, too easy lean upon our 'influences' as a way to keep ourselves back - whether we are doing so consciously or not. And I’m not saying those influences aren’t there, but they aren’t the end all: free choice is the end all.
It all comes back to being conscious. I'm not saying that we are always making free choices unconsciously, as you state. I'm saying (or attempted to say) that we are always making choices but when we are truly conscious we can then act on God's greatest gift (other than life itself), which is free choice.
I'm also not saying that all choices made before becoming truly conscious are not free, just perhaps less free, or less of those choices are truly free choices.
But I think I've made my point here (hopefully, this time, anyway)... man, I hope you've got good bandwith 'cuz your email inbox has got to be overloading with these comments every day...!
I love reading this blog, so I hope you keep it up!
P.s. I'm having no trouble reading the 66 comments on here...
As I was reading through these posts, I started thinking about the hundreth monkey syndrome:
Perhaps you are familiar with " the hundredth monkey phenomenon." It relates to critical mass in the world of consciousness, and how an idea, or a learned behavior, shifts from being a private practice to a group, or universal practice.
According to legend, observers noticed that after a certain number of (they picked the number 100 as an example), monkeys living on a Japanese island learned to wash their potatoes before eating them, monkeys on neighboring islands began to alter their behavior and began washing their potatoes also. What made this so remarkable is that there was no direct contact between the monkeys on the islands.
Rupert Sheldrake, the brilliant scientist who developed the theory of morphic resonance, suggests that this is the way new ideas come into being. Enough people (or monkeys, or lab rats, or whatever) began doing something a new way, and then everyone begins to do it that way-without a long, gradual learning curve.
http://www.innerpeacemusic.com/newsletter/2001/jul_2001.html
Most of us tend to put a lot of emphasis on the individual, but if there is such a thing as morphic resonance, free will may not be a matter soley of individual choice. Collective choice may also play a role. Theoretically, it is possible that if enough people choose to act peacefully, with love, a critical mass would be reached and all of humanity would begin to act this way. Theoretically, I suppose the opposite would also be true, but so much violence and hate would most likely wipe out the human race. In terms of spirituality and evolution of the species (not to mention the evolution of spirituality), the latter scenario would not lead to the best form of adaptation.
I suspect there are levels of consciousness most of us don't have access to. We don't know what we don't know, and if we knew, would we frame the free will versus determinism debate differently?
The link didn't print up right. It should end: jul_2001.html
Maybe we shouldn't work so hard at choosing God. Maybe we should relax and let God choose us -- whether that's at a formal church service or through disciplined meditation or through a quiet day at the shore.
This reminded me of the quote from the Bible: we love because He first loved us. I recently discovered that Muslims believe something similar: Allah brings to Him whom he wills (something like that).
Paul, what you said about reactions not being our choice, raises another question. What about the case of yogis, where people learn to control and monitor their reactions, so that they can even deliberately change the way their bodies are reacting to an environment? For example, there are cases of people going into meditation and relaxing their bodies and minds to the point where they can lower their heart-rate, or their temperature deliberately! To me that seems to be an example where someone has trained themselves to react a certain way, and so they have had control of their reactions. Perhaps it is 'compulsive' because people organize their lives into rituals that affect the way they react to the world, but isn't that us choosing to test ourselves, and shape our own behaviour in certain ways? That's just socialization! Whether the values be in order to become a more generous person, a more forgiving person, a more clear-headed person, or a stronger spirit. I think it proves that we have free will for people to go to so much trouble to adopt a routine based on their beliefs and assumptions that SOMETIMES affects them in a positive way. Call that religion, or ideology, or faith, or whatever. Faith is an exercise of the free will not in what it believes, but how it believes. Of course we could debate for hours what beliefs are epistemologically correct, but we don't have time. I'm not one to say what is right or wrong, because it gets political whenever I try to prescribe one lifestyle for everyone, but though we cannot control our entire reality, we may be able to change our perspective on it, and thereby react to it differently than if we were to give up trying to find meaning in anything at all. To me testing your beliefs is an important reason why we should have a feature such as free will that make up our psyche as a species. It's a convincing argument that determinism is just one way of categorizing something that is too phenomenal to try to describe otherwise. I don't think determinism outrules the possibility of free will. What if we were determined to do whatever it was we wanted?
LA COLORATURA: "Fully conscious" to me sounds like "enlightened" or "not ignorant..."
If you're saying that because one person rose above a major adversity all people in the same situation must be able to, it doesn't follow. We are different in how and in what ways we're intelligent and in all sorts of aptitudes and emotional predispositions, and in all kinds of particulars about circumstances that are allegedly "the same." For example, one person living in a ghetto may find a mentor, another may not... I could go on and on.
See today's post... One problem with an extreme "free choice" position is that it can lead us to congratulate ourselves and judge others.
EMILYJANE: I don't know anything about the theory, but couldn't it also be that groups of similar beings living in similar circumstance become ready to develop a new technology at about the same time?
But I definitely follow your "critical mass" idea as far as a group of people goes that do have contact with each other. In that sense, you could say that right now, our species as a whole is in process of making its own habitat unlivable. Hopefully we'll pull back from that brink...
You quote, "Maybe we shouldn't work so hard at choosing God. Maybe we should relax and let God choose us." That's how it's felt to me. Receptiveness, and the attendant lifting of ignorance in some degree, - that's what's made me a better person.
And have I "freely chosen" to be receptive? I don't know, I kind of doubt it, and it doesn't matter in any practical sense.
SIRBARRETT: Oh, I see... We had different things in mind by "react." I was thinking more of what's sometimes called "reactivity" or "the reactive mind" in Buddhism. You were talking about practises for REDUCING that sort of reactivity to the outer world.
I don't think that the ability, stronger in some persons than others, to assume control over their lifestyles, reflect, exert willpower etc. proves free will over determinsm. Did they freely choose to have these abilities? These abilities are great assets when it comes to personal and spiritual growth, great mechanisms, so to speak, for getting and staying on track.
But who knows why some people are better at such things than others?
Well, some people are better at adapting to their goals than others because they choose goals that are easier to accomplish or more difficult. Then they are motivated according to their drives and whether they are desperate to achieve or not. What makes people motivated? Generally, people enjoy doing what they're good at, so the possiblity is there for us only to choose to do things that we are naturally drawn to, but I believe that although there are genetic and environmental factors that affect our decisions without our control, we also have the ability to call attention to our senses or our higher cognitive processes, thus influencing the way we react to our dilemmas. Self-monitoring is a learned ability that takes practice, but like you said, it greatly improves your chances of staying on track. It's like we have an "on" and "off" switch to all our judgements. We might know that certain things will appeal to us and others won't but we have the freedom to choose whether to look at a particular stimuli, or call attention to a certain sense. I believe in willed intelligence just as much as I do in willed ignorance. For example, I think we only gain a taste for a certain kind of music by deliberately listening to it long enough to pass judgement. Many times there may be music playing, but we aren't actively listening to it. I think that's the difference. It has something to do with consciousness, though I'm not sure how we can be sure that we're sure of anything, so consciousness is a mystery. Our will comes about from the decision-making process in the frontal lobe, but maybe that's only the spot where we execute what has already been forwarded by another reflexive mechanism which (I agree with you) may not be under our control. I've heard the stories of identical twins being separated at birth and then reunited only to find that they have both chosen wives with the same name, or use the same brand of toothpaste, or drive the same car. Is this coincedence or predetermination? Maybe based on genetics and the time and place you happen to be in DOES play a large part in how you develop, and as a result, choose, but I think that what makes you you is how you temper yourself to react -how you enjoy choosing the things that make you happy, or the people you love. Though two identical twins might subconsciously choose a wife with the same name, they will treat her differently, and as a result, form a different kind of relationship with her than the other. There is no way to quantify love, though I think loving is on some level an act of free will. It would be depressing to think that we were meant to love only one person uncontrollably. That doesn't give us much of a chance of finding them. Anyway, I'm not looking to solve this problem, but it is interesting discussing it, so thanks for bringing it up.
SIRBARRETT: I think you put your finger on why most of us, me included, do believe that we have a degree of choice. Experiences like directing our attention and self monitoring definitely FEEL as if we could choose or not choose. But since, after we make what feels like a choice, we can never return for a retry to see if we really could have done it differently, it seems to me we can never know or prove that we really had a choice.
'One problem with an extreme "free choice" position is that it can lead us to congratulate ourselves and judge others.'
...not sure why you think that will lead people to judge. I don't think that's a fair assumption. And it is an assumption... Could it happen? Certainly, but that is not to say that it would be the norm. Believing otherwise, however, is yet another way to hold ourselves back. Why is it out of the question that all of us, any of us, can become everything we want to be? Okay, yes, some of us will have certain limitations, etc. But I still think that believing in free will opens up far more doors for ourselves than believing other things does.
Anyway, I think it's clear our views are not at all the same on this... and that is totally okay with me... :P
LA COLORATURA: I know what you mean - it's okay with me too that we disagree, I can tell just looking at your blog that we tend to like and enjoy the same sorts of things - and are both quite moral!
I guess I'm just genuinely puzzled at your train of thought on this particualar issue.
In your previous comments, you seemed to argue for a strong theoretical free choice position - like we're perfectly free to choose at every moment.
But the examples you gave, like the one about the ghetto, all involve the following:
Different people. People are never exactly alike, and tend to vary widely in genetic make up, talent and ability, emotional reactions, levels of intelligence, etc.
People in situations, such as poverty, that are similar in some aspects, but, after all, differ greatly. Even children the same age raised in the same family aren't really in exactly the same circumstances. Their parents won't treat them identically, they'll have a different set of experiences and interactions with the world every day of their lives...
And then, when you find that different people in circumstances with limited similarity behave differently, you take this as proof of free choice.
I just don't get it.
But here, in this comment, you make a practical rather than theoretical argument, saying:
"Believing in free will opens up far more doors for ourselves than believing other things does."
Couldn't you just believe in using one's own degree of free choice - which to me appears real, but limited - to the fullest? Or believe in doing your best, giving your best effort? There are any number of moral and practical reasons for doing that.
I do it myself. It isn't necessary for me to believe that those who aren't as "good as I am" choose to be that way in perfect freedom. In fact, because of the kind of inate individual differences and differences of circumstance that I've pointed to, I don't see how it's possible to conclude that anyone chooses in perfect freedom.
It's even possible we're all doing the best we can - that one's person's "best" can be dismal, even horrible, by someone else's standards.
But who am I to impose my standards and judge a life whose inner details, and circumstantial details, and how the two interacted to help limit and influence his or her choices?
You say this isn't judgment, but I can't think of a better word...
paul wrote...
AMOS: ...Reduced to the essentials, it still sounds to me like you're contrasting faith as belief - I'm assuming Christian belief in Jesus as Savior - with our own experiences. And that you equate truth with this belief, and experience as something that tends to confuse and mislead. No?
AMOS
i think i must have been unclear somewhere along the line?
mostly, i am of this opinion that faith once held produces experiences. faith places it's belief (faith in action) in an object and follows.
i think a part of healthy growth as a human is learning that our experiences do not drive us (the core spiritual us) but our faith does.
fact (any fact - pick the least spiritually sounding one you can think of), faith, and experience were walking along a high wire. faith did fine as long as she kept her eyes on fact, but when she turned to look at experience, she stumbled and fell.
and experience tumbled off after her.
the moral of the story, at first blush, isn't the tension between fact vs experience - or tested thinking vs distorted thinking or whatever...
it's that little faith doesn't recognize how she is having the experiences that she is having. the narrator in the story is quitely saying, "she didn't understand that her experiences were following her and not the other way around."
as they say in the country - "don't be like a dog chasing its tail."
that hind part which naturally follows that front part will only lead you in circles if that front part starts to follow that hind part. though, it looks like dogs enjoy themselves when they chase their tails - doesn't it? :-)
at any rate, MMV, a dog following its nose down a bonafide rabbit trail and another dog chasing his tail (per the analogy) are two dogs having experiences. in the value of a dog's day - both experiences probably are valid and quite on target.
if there is a part or aspect of our lives which could be called free to choose - then i'd suggest that it's our faith in what we will believe.
we live what we believe, everything else is just talk.
peac4d.
amos dettonville
AMOS: I follow what you're saying in part - that having faith has an influence on our experiences. I think that any basic mind-set that we have affects our perceptions and experiences.
But you lost me with, "If there is a part or aspect of our lives which could be called free to choose - then i'd suggest that it's our faith in what we will believe." First, I'm just not sure what you mean by faith and belief here; and so I don't know how freedom of choice relates to what you're calling "faith."
paul wrote...
AMOS: I follow what you're saying in part - that having faith has an influence on our experiences. I think that any basic mind-set that we have affects our perceptions and experiences.
amos
faith has an object (that which is believed - or thought warranted or viable). as someone noted above, of course we do not live in a vacuum where experiences do not shape perceptions and perceptions shape beliefs held or rejected or ignored.
i have faith - that if i reach over in the dark and grab my capped water bottle and drink from it - i will be experiencing the taste of water and in doing so that will be my experience.
if i had a belief that gremlins (or whatever) might be putting capped water bottles of motor oil beside my bed - then i'd switch on the light before reaching and drinking.
in each case above - my perceptions and my beliefs are still pivoting on my faith. in one case i drink water in the dark. in the other, i drink water in the light. it's at that level that i am speaking when i use the term, "experiences."
paul wrote...
But you lost me with, "If there is a part or aspect of our lives which could be called free to choose - then i'd suggest that it's our faith in what we will believe."
First, I'm just not sure what you mean by faith and belief here; and so I don't know how freedom of choice relates to what you're calling "faith."
amos
faith has an object - it believes something (whether true, false, distorted, etc.). my guy drinking water in the dark who has a belief that gremlins are out and about to put motor oil into his water bottle during the night has chosen to accept that belief. the guy who doesn't believe that anything has changed in his bed side water bottle during the night also has chosen to believe that it is safe to reach over in the dark, take the bottle, remove the cap and drink it.
either belief can be tested and deemed warranted or unwarranted. the dark drinker and the light drinker have both chosen to put their faith in a belief - in this case each has a held belief. we could add those who might reject or ignore either beielf as well.
a belief held, rejected, ignored, ect. is faith. these actions, are choices made, tacitly, explicitly, unconsiously, etc. but, they are choices made concerning what one will put their faith in.
it may take a great show of will for the light drinker to test the warrant of his belief in the motor oil gremlins of the night and to come to a place of being free from having to turn on the light to have a midnight sip of water.
i don't really mean this as a joke. my 20 years of working with children and youth has presented me with many young people who have held incredibly outrageous beliefs and put their faith heavily upon those beliefs - to the point of near starvation, loss of health, loss of life. and that's just the extreme cases - it's a very everyday kind of matter. to accept (reject, et.al) a perception or belief is an act of faith. making those choices is a matter of the will, IMHO.
i have a series of writings - a bit dusty - but i'll post them at my rabit51 blog. if you have time - it should make my position a bit more clear. if not, no big. i have enjoyed the discussion - i'll hop ahead and read the latest now. thank you again for the blog.
peac4d.
amos dettonville
AMOS: Actually I've already got your blog marked as one to keep checking in on -
In a nutshell, you use the word "faith" as a synonym for what I call "belief." So for you, I have faith that a water bottle I leave on the nightstand will remain as I left it after I fell asleep. For me, it's a rational belief based on many past experiences.
The gremlin guy and the young people you mention have what I'd call irrational beliefs.
I'm not sure how the fact that some of us have rational beliefs and some irrational demonstrates that either one or both sets of believers "chooses" their beliefs.
For me, if the evidence is strong, I believe - even if it's something I would prefer choosing not to believe.
There are all kinds of explanations for how people develop superstitions and irrational beliefs that don't require us to suppose that these people freely choose them...
I've enjoyed this discussion too -
well, i wasn't going to keep this thread of comments going. but, you did such an excellent job of capturing the discussion in your last comment...
the reason i split the hair - on faith/belief is that what one believes (or the object of one's faith) in my thinking *is* a component of faith.
my example (the night water drinkers) is an extreme example. others are much less easy to distinquish (when it comes to rational vs. irrational). i'll skip examples - unless you wish them.
so, with the rational or irrational thoughts [or beliefs] do you think we have the power of will to examine those beliefs, to consider them, to choose to hold them, reject them, or ignore them?
in my language, to this point, do we have the power of will to change our faith in what we believe (right or wrong / rational or irrational)?
peac4d.
amos dettonville
AMOS: No problem at all to keep going, I appreciate your thoughts.
If the object of faith/belief is a component of faith/belief... what's the difference? We're still talking about the same two things, only as components.
Are you trying to say that the relationship between belief/faith and its object is especially close in some way? That's why you speak of them as "components?" Does this close relationship obtain for any belief/object pair - or only if it's a religious belief?
What's the nature/significance of the especially close relationship, if my assumptions are correct?
Many people do speak (and write) about the power to choose faith or belief - they're usually talking about a religious belief.
I've truly never understood it. I can only believe what I find compelling on the basis of reason as well as I can exercise it, and experience as honestly as I can look at it. It's impossible for me, once that process has happened, to choose to believe differently.
paul wrote...
Many people do speak (and write) about the power to choose faith or belief - they're usually talking about a religious belief.
I've truly never understood it. I can only believe what I find compelling on the basis of reason as well as I can exercise it, and experience as honestly as I can look at it. It's impossible for me, once that process has happened, to choose to believe differently.
amos
everyone believes what they believe. i'd say that's a sound assumption :-)
and anyone who believes anything believes their "anything believed" to be compelling to their reason and interaction.
what shall we do with my night drinker - who is holding an irrational view of reality? yet, he believes his belief that gremlins are out and about trying to switch his drinking water and replace it with motor oil?
of course, he is an extreme example - the more subtle might be the person who believes that death as a martyr while fighting the infidel is an assurance of paradise and riches in the great beyond - aka a suicide mass murderer. or the person who believes that God is out to get them? or a person that believes that their dead anscestors live in their house with them? or the person who believes that killing a chicken and spitting in a fire while saying something backwards will keep a lion spirit from entering their village at night? or the person who believes a new pair of nikes and a poison cocktail will get them a first class seat on comet kohoutek, etc.?
there are many much more subtle examples than these too :-)
i think it is fundamental that humans tend to place a confidence in the idea that they think true thoughts (the majority of thoughts anyway). i think it is almost a certainty that people who believe something believe it to be true.
i have used the term "faith" as the word for that hinge in our choosing which ushers us into an experience with our held beliefs (and our rejected or ignored beliefs).
i tend to think pastorally - about the care of individuals and their real time journey and steps. if i didn't, i'd be off on some other point either theological (the bondage of the human will) or philosophical (probably how kant changed our thinking on anselm's ontological argument and how that birthed existentialism which has shaded or colored our thinking concerning the veracity of truth or faith claims).
in the realm of religion people have often used a story to explain what i think is one of the main contemporary views of the ideas we get at when we speak of one having "faith" or "belief."
a man goes to sleep and when he awakens he discovers that his lawn has been cut during the night. how did that happen?
i've heard it presented that the possibilities are endless - infinite as to how the grass was cut. these of course ranging from the absurd (maritans came in the night) to the most logical (someone who wishes not to be known has done it).
the infinite possible answers position is one i have literally heard espoused for this scenario.
and let's say we accept that premise for the sake of discussion.
it is here that a leap of reason occurs in the story (though i personally think the first premise is a leap as well).
the leap: therefore, any reasonably sound belief about how the lawn was cut during the night while this man slept is probably as sound as another.
faith is holding to a belief in the abscence of evidence.
faith is choosing to believe which ever explantion comes closest to being believable and rational in the mind and experience of another.
i have a major problem with the reasoning above. largely because reason first tells me that there is one explantion and only one as to how the grass was cut during the night - not an infinite number of answers, not many answers, not a few, not a couple - but one.
the leap of logic was that the assumption of infinite possible answers changed to an infinite number of causes (or ways the night time event happened).
but, i will go even further. a belief in any cause that is not the true cause is untrue.
now, to step back over into religious belief. God or no God. since none of us can see God then there must be an infinite number of choices as to what is out there running in a set from 0 - infinity.
take the same leap as before.
the leap: therefore, any reasonably sound belief about God (or spirituality) is probably as sound as another.
faith is holding to a belief in the abscence of evidence.
faith is choosing to believe which ever explantion comes closest to being believable and rational in the mind and experience of another.
i have the same problem with this - because there is only one answer which can be true. i'm not even positing my personal position at this point as to the nature of the God which might exist. i am logically summarizing that there is only one answer to the question God or no God.
of course, now i have strayed philosophical - and really i am only discussing theism as the object of faith or belief here - and not the whole set which naturally follows.
but, what do we say to the person who believes:
a) there's an infinite number of possibilities as to what is out there (spiritually speaking) ranging from 0 - infinity.
b) any belief therefore (which is reasonable) is as valid as another.
c) faith is holding to a belief in the abscense of evidence (or proof).
i would have to label this as "a spiritually affirming agnosticism." it affirms spirituality and affirms not knowing as well. cognitive dissonance? maybe?
and then i return to what you said:
paul wrote...
Many people do speak (and write) about the power to choose faith or belief - they're usually talking about a religious belief.
I've truly never understood it. I can only believe what I find compelling on the basis of reason as well as I can exercise it, and experience as honestly as I can look at it. It's impossible for me, once that process has happened, to choose to believe differently.
amos
i could have picked an animistic tribe or any other sect for example - but why not pick a thumbnailed version of western thought on faith as espoused by some and held by quite a few.
what are we to say to them - once the process has begun. they too are in a position where choice in changing belief is seemingly impossible?
if we are to suggest - in any of the examples given above - that these people could change or should change - then on what level is that change going to occur? will it not require an act of will to face held beliefs and one's certainty that what they actually believe isn't the case?
peac4d.
amos dettonville
AMOS: Looks like we may be the only ones left out here...!
I'm not saying that people who believe something believe something.
But I would say there's a big difference between the examples of irrational belief you cite, and beliefs that are based on reason and experience.
Most of us look before crossing the street. To navigate the world, that's the sort of believing - based on rational thought processes and widely shared experience - that all of us employ.
Reason and experience are also the basis for science and technology. We land men on the moon with this. It has some truth value for sure.
For these sorts of beliefs, so far as I can tell, the "hinge" isn't choice. It's how compelling the idea is based on the evidence of experience and the thought-processes of reason. I never chose to believe that not looking both ways before I cross the street's likely to get me killed. And I couldn't choose to believe otherwise.
That "leap" of coming to the conclusion that even an improbable belief is as likely to be true as one that's more probable based on reason and experience is something I've personally never been able to do in honesty with myself.
"Faith is holding to a belief in the abscence of evidence." You go on to ask, essentially: What can be the basis for such a belief other than an act of will or choice?
Personally, this isn't a choice I'm capable of making. As to what goes on in other people's minds when they describe themselves as making such a choice - I don't know. And I certainly don't know that if it really is a choice, it's a free or nearly free one - a choice that's basically uninfluenced by internal predispositions, desires, or things the person has been taught concerning what faith is.
I do not tend to think that as muslim we have free Choice. At times I wondr the choices that are available either good or evil. Dose it only stand on this? Some time this choices what ever there are even if there good they for sure are not furnished with roses...Do I mak any sense ?
Nasra
I do not tend to think that as muslim we have free Choice. At times I wondr the choices that are available either good or evil. Dose it only stand on this? Some time this choices what ever there are even if there good they for sure are not furnished with roses...Do I mak any sense ?
Nasra
NASRA: Makes sense to me. There are a lot of options existing between good and "pure evil" so to speak - most of our moral choices day by day are of that kind. And then there are plenty of choices that are morally neutral - what color shirt will I buy, etc.
I think where we are differing here is an interpretation of the phrase 'free will' (or free choice) - it seems to be a sort of ultimatum in your thought. It's not that black and white for me.
I'm not saying there aren't limitations or influences. I'm saying that the closer one is to being truly conscious, the more likely one is able to act upon the gift of free will. And yes, I believe each and everyone one of us, regardless of our circumstances, is able to reach a higher level of consciousness and take our lives to a higher level than that into which we were born. That too is a choice.
I'm not sure how you're getting that believing in free will leads to being judgmental. I don't think in those terms towards other people, and I don't see how believing in free will necessarily leads to that. What other people do with their lives is frankly, none of my business, with the exception of those that are close to me. And even those are on their own path which is separate, although at times quite parallel, to my own.
So it's not about 'well, I'm more conscious and I am doing better because I am able to choose freely, etc.' It's just about our individual journeys, and the choices we make along our individual paths. Because regardless of any circumstances in the end, we all have choices to make. If you are born into a pile of shit, you can choose to stay there or not. There are just too many examples of people choosing to get out of the shit successfully, every day. This is not to say that every person with the misfortune of being born into a pile of shit -will- exercise their free will to get out. But the bottom line is, they -all- have the ability.
While we are all connected in our humanity, we are all individually responsible for the outcomes of our lives and taking ourselves to the highest level we can get to in the time we have been given on this planet. Not believing otherwise, as I've said earlier, can lead one down the path of the victim mentality and not only is that truly dangerous, it's not living in the way God intended for us to live.
COLORATURA:
Free will isn't a black and white issue to me either. Personally, I tend to think we probably do have a degree of free choice, despite strong influences on what we do. I don't think the degree of freedom of choice is the same for every person with regard to every issue.
Personally, I've never had the experience of choosing to have greater spiritual or moral awareness. And the more awareness I've had, the less choice I've had. Making a wrong choice "for some reason - ?" - after I've become highly aware of the desirability of the right choice - well, that would be either impossible or next to impossible for me to make such a choice. I can't imagine why I would.
From what I've experienced and seen, people's decisions in the moral/spiritual area are primarily the outcome of how conscious/ ignorant they are. And for me, increases in consciousness have come about as gifts or graces - nothing I chose, and typically not even something I could have foreseen.
I've never said that believing in free will in a way that minimizes or overlooks the role of influences and circumstances on our lives necessarily leads to judgmentalism. But I've noticed that for many people, it tends to increase that tendency.
"If you are born into a pile of shit, you can choose to stay there or not. There are just too many examples of people choosing to get out of the shit successfully, every day. This is not to say that every person with the misfortune of being born into a pile of shit -will- exercise their free will to get out. But the bottom line is, they -all- have the ability."
I think that may be an example of judgmentalism. Even though you haven't actually said that the person who stays in the pile of shit is a pile of shit, it could certainly be read as judgmental-sounding.
You have person A and person B both born into poverty and negative circumstances.
1. They are two different people.
They're born with different levels and kinds of intelligence, different gifts, aptitudes, emotional predispositions...
2. Their circumstanes are not the same.
Two people may both be described as "born into poverty" and yet have very different experiences. Even children raised within the same family aren't treated identically, and can have different and powerful experiences with, say, a mentor or teacher outside the home. The potential differences in the particulars of what two people both "born into poverty" may encounter are practically endless.
So let's say that person A remains in poverty. Person B doesn't.
You reason that because Person A, who is different from Person B, and has a different set of experiences from Person B, manages to get out of poverty, then Person B necessarily could have done so too.
It doesn't add up.
The question in my mind then becomes: why is it important for someone to believe such a thing?
To see that our choices are not perfectly free in no way requires a "victim mentality." All kinds of people see it this way who lack that mentality. And regardless of our views on free choice, any moral person, however he or she got that way, recognizes the importance of trying to become a better person and helping others do the same when they have the opportunity to help.
I too doubt that God intended us to live with victim mentalities - even though it's not mentioned in the Bible.
But there's a lot in the Bible against judgment. So I'd guess that God may like judgmentalism even less.
Coloratura, thanks for hanging in there... I'm not putting you down for being judgmental. So am I. It's just that I think it's not a good thing, so I try not to be.
Post a Comment
<< Home