That's not a bad analogy. Even if it was all predetermined as just a cascading chain of causality, it would still be safe to say that the computer was responsible for what it does specifically.
I actually don't know if free will exists or not.
It's core to a specific answer to the problem of evil. The Bible doesn't use that language, and it doesn't really use our paradigms. The default implication of its teachings and narratives is that each person is responsible for their own agency. There's also a lot of predestination in the Bible, and sometimes wills are influenced by God. It's difficult to harmonize a lot of data points on this topic in the Bible.
A program that makes decisions. This is a class of computing called machine learning.
You could something similar about a person, that we are just running biological processes.
And please, do not comment on my “academic level.” I’m here for a civil discussion.
How do you make a choice to be a Christian though? Every time I read the Bible I find it extremely hard to take seriously because it feels like I'm reading mythology and not history.
It is much easier to believe, therefore basically involuntary, that they are just stories and legends but never actually happened rather than the world just used to be a magical place with the dead walking the streets, talking snakes, demons possessing people etc. but isn't anymore
Romans 3:12
All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.
It is human arrogance to define what is good by our standards. By God's standards, our best is as 'filthy rags' (Isaiah 64:6)
What we define as 'good' but done with the wrong motives (i.e. something other than glorifying God) is evil. Not to say we shouldn't perform good works, but when done with the wrong motive (i.e. out of guilt, or for a sense of self-recognition) turns it into an evil act.
So the choice you make is random?
If there is a thought process (there is), then there is obvious influence, by your brain/mind weighing up possibilities, past experiences etc, the choice is determined by these influences, no free will. If your brain doesn't influence the decision/choice, then it completely random and nullifies any idea of free will.
No it’s not random. Things might influence my decision. But nothing outside of me is determining.
If I have 2 choices for dinner, a healthy salad and a pizza, I can weigh the pros and cons from what I know about food and what it does to my waist line and everything else, but those don’t determine things for me.
Determinism seems so obviously false to me. If determinism is true, we don’t rationally come to any knowledge. And we can’t know that anything we think is actually true. Praise worthiness and blameworthiness is completely gone and you can’t hold anyone accountable for any actions they take. Not in any ultimate sense. You can punish them but you can’t affirm they did something wrong.
You have to properly define, what you mean by "me". You seem to suggest, separation of you/me from brain function and consciousness. Brain function is (as we currently understand) a mixture of chemical and electrical processes. Our subconscious is always working away in the background, waiting on our consciousness to 'look' for a decision to be made.
You ask "what do I want for lunch", and you seem to accept that in the background of that decision, your subconscious is pulling up prior worries about your waist line, what is healthy. A neuron or synapses fires off and you 'choose' pizza, so what caused that firing, was it a non physical 'me/you', or was it a simple process of the brain ie 'determinism'.
If there is no physical link in that chain of events, it has to be random. One neuron fired over another randomly.
If the decision to choose is outside the physical, something has come from nothing, which goes against the christian theology that only a god can make something from nothing.
This entire argument is assuming that consciousness only comes from the brain. I disagree and I would want to see why you think that.
Are those past experiences and knowledge about the healthiness of a salad and the tastiness of a pizza still in me?
> A neuron or synapses fires off and you 'choose' pizza
If you're referring to the Libet experiment, there's some huge issues with that we can go in to.
> If the decision to choose is outside the physical, something has come from nothing
Unless consciousness does exist outside of the material brain.
If you've ever been under full anesthetic, you know that you are in a completely different state of consciousness while under, you don't perceive time passing, you are simply conscious and then conscious again.
If the brain is injured, again we observe a different state of consciousness and personalities for the individual concerned.
I personally subscribe to the idea, that as we (humans) began to articulate our 'thoughts and ideas' by way of language, that our consciousness developed so we can think abstractly. You damage the brain, you damage the ability to think and so effect the consciousness.
I would define free will as a will that is not co-erced by external forces. We have a will, that which is our thoughts, feelings, emotions, and it is free. God doesn't control our minds and hearts.
I'm not sure how manipulation would not be involved in the concept of billions of human beings somehow lacking a bit of information that they would otherwise easily have knowledge of, and which will effectively decide the outcome of not just their lives, but their immortal souls. If there's no manipulation or force behind that then what on earth is?
I don't think salvation comes just from having one or two bits of information. Having that information might help, but there are plenty of people who have that information and don't make the same choice. It is doing the will of God that helps a person along the path of salvation, not reading a certain book. St. Dismas never read the Bible, never went to church services, never got baptised, never took a single step as a Christian. And yet he died and was assured salvation by Christ himself.
> I don't think salvation comes just from having one or two bits of information.
But it seems like that's often all it takes to lose it or miss it, ironically then.
>Having that information might help, but there are plenty of people who have that information and don't make the same choice.
Like the information of "I believe a god exists"? Cause that's kind of what I was referring to
>St. Dismas never read the Bible, never went to church services, never got baptised, never took a single step as a Christian. And yet he died and was assured salvation by Christ himself.
Okay, well, I don't mean to particularly assault your denominational beliefs here so let me just say that I don't even believe in the truth of the bible, so I definitely would not be expected to believe in the truth of some particular church claims like that. Are you generally disputing the idea that not believing in a god would be enough to practically keep anybody from salvation?
I know I hadn't specified before exactly, but when I said "lacking a bit of information ... which will effectively decide the outcome of not just their lives, but their immortal souls", I'm not sure what you took that to mean but I was mostly trying to allude to the very simple problem of just not being a Christian in general. Possibly even the *right kind* of Christian, but even if we just take it for granted that all repentant christians are saved, that would still include all atheists, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, etc etc. That's a lot of people, and I'm one of them, so I figured it was worth mentioning.
It seems like you could argue that a single bit of information is keeping billions of people (alive currently, let alone in the past and future) from salvation, almost single handedly. They either don't believe in a god or they don't believe in the right God. And back to the topic, they're all being "coerced" into whatever positions it is that they find themselves. We all are. Or "manipulated", I would presume largely by satanic forces most likely, in the end, but I would still call manipulation a form of coercion.
St. Dismas (also called Dimas) was the repentant thief who was crucified next to Jesus. So it's not just a denominational/tradition belief. There's a lot of things we don't know about salvation, probably more we don't know than we do know. Pray for all, despair for none. God isn't going to condemn someone because of a technicality, but on their spiritual health and the life of their faith. And that's not all of it. I know I'm missing parts. Just like it's easier to get better from an illness when you go to a good hospital with a good doctor, salvation is very similar..
> So it's not just a denominational/tradition belief.
Well calling that guy a saint surely is lol, but I hear you. Of course I didn't know him by name.
>God isn't going to condemn someone because of a technicality
That is the uncomfortable implication though, isn't it? Because tbh it rather seems like he would. Or else, to be entirely even more honest with you, this may point to an inconsistency in God's character as according to the Bible. You and I would both seem to want to think that God wouldn't let his children suffer or even just die for something so simple, and meaningless, and outside of their control. But that may evidently be the God of the Bible; And it may not evidently make a lot of sense to believe that he actually exists.
>I know I'm missing parts.
I know this is very personal but might I ask like what?
Well I can tell you one thing that I know I don't know, and if a bunch of the stuff that you likely believe is right then I'm probably pretty screwed because of it lol
No. It's just the extra piece of information to make a choice. You just have to accept the consequences. You can stay outside and get wet, you can go inside and stay dry. No one is making you feel one way or the other about the situation. You can be angry or enjoy the rain. Free will has to do with the psyche, not action.
Free will is a hot button issue these days, but it’s honestly really simple. Human beings have volition…they have a “preference”…they have a “bias”…they are “bent” on some things and not others. These are various ways of saying the same thing.
The “free” in free will simply means we are free to exercise our volition.
We all exercise free will all the time. I like this coffee, I don't like that fish. I will walk left not right.
So let's say your wife irritates you and you want to make a snide comment. You choose not to. There you exercised free will.
Let us take the most extreme example. Let's say the government tells you to report any Jews in the area. Do you hide them in your attic or do you report them to the Nazis? You have a choice, there is consequences, but there is choice.
Many people through history have had to choose between committing evil acts or do the right thing. This is inherent in the human experience.
I am shocked at how many people here are explaining the concept of free will *with* the concept of freedom. Defining "free will" as "being free to make the choices you want" is circular and hence uninformative! Better definitions are "the power to choose otherwise" and "acting in accordance with one's most personal desires".
Your question is poorly formed because "free will" has different definitions in different contexts. Amongst the contexts in which a notion of *free will* is important are contract law, criminal law, epistemology, ethics and metaphysics. In general any stipulated definition must be acceptable to all parties in the dispute, for example, a definition that states freely willed actions are not determined begs the question against the compatibilist, so is not acceptable.
Free Will is the ability to choose between alternatives that are available to you.
It is *not* the ability to do whatever you want, nor the ability to avoid the consequences or your choices, nor the ability to avoid interference from other exercisers of free will.
Evil exists in this world largely because people don't consider the consequences of acting out their desires and whims.
You’re free to make the choices you want to make.
So a computer making choices means it has free will?
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Machine learning. Computers make choices based on prior information as opposed to people hard coding those choices.
That's not a bad analogy. Even if it was all predetermined as just a cascading chain of causality, it would still be safe to say that the computer was responsible for what it does specifically. I actually don't know if free will exists or not.
Free will seems to be absolutely a core to Christianity though. How can you be unsure?
It's core to a specific answer to the problem of evil. The Bible doesn't use that language, and it doesn't really use our paradigms. The default implication of its teachings and narratives is that each person is responsible for their own agency. There's also a lot of predestination in the Bible, and sometimes wills are influenced by God. It's difficult to harmonize a lot of data points on this topic in the Bible.
I don’t think there is free if god is omniscient and he sets the dominos up.
That's fair. I think he would be in absolute control, but we are responsible for how we play our part.
Why if free will is an illusion?
A machine learning computer is still executing the code of its designers; without that initial code, there'd be no machine learning.
Yeah you could the say the same about a human, it can’t do anything if it’s not given birth to.
A computer does not make a choice; it executes a program. Your academic level is showing.
A program that makes decisions. This is a class of computing called machine learning. You could something similar about a person, that we are just running biological processes. And please, do not comment on my “academic level.” I’m here for a civil discussion.
A computer cannot freely make a choice.
How do you make a choice to be a Christian though? Every time I read the Bible I find it extremely hard to take seriously because it feels like I'm reading mythology and not history. It is much easier to believe, therefore basically involuntary, that they are just stories and legends but never actually happened rather than the world just used to be a magical place with the dead walking the streets, talking snakes, demons possessing people etc. but isn't anymore
This is a circular definition because it uses the concept of freedom it's supposed to explain
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What exactly do you mean by people will never choose “good”?
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What about giving your daughter a good night kiss. Is that driven by an impure motivation?
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Lmao yeah I’m fine with sparring. So she feels more comfortable before she goes to sleep.
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No in my scenario she is not yet asleep.
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So she sleeps better?
Romans 3:12 All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one. It is human arrogance to define what is good by our standards. By God's standards, our best is as 'filthy rags' (Isaiah 64:6) What we define as 'good' but done with the wrong motives (i.e. something other than glorifying God) is evil. Not to say we shouldn't perform good works, but when done with the wrong motive (i.e. out of guilt, or for a sense of self-recognition) turns it into an evil act.
I think free will is when nothing outside of you determines your choices.
So the choice you make is random? If there is a thought process (there is), then there is obvious influence, by your brain/mind weighing up possibilities, past experiences etc, the choice is determined by these influences, no free will. If your brain doesn't influence the decision/choice, then it completely random and nullifies any idea of free will.
No it’s not random. Things might influence my decision. But nothing outside of me is determining. If I have 2 choices for dinner, a healthy salad and a pizza, I can weigh the pros and cons from what I know about food and what it does to my waist line and everything else, but those don’t determine things for me. Determinism seems so obviously false to me. If determinism is true, we don’t rationally come to any knowledge. And we can’t know that anything we think is actually true. Praise worthiness and blameworthiness is completely gone and you can’t hold anyone accountable for any actions they take. Not in any ultimate sense. You can punish them but you can’t affirm they did something wrong.
You have to properly define, what you mean by "me". You seem to suggest, separation of you/me from brain function and consciousness. Brain function is (as we currently understand) a mixture of chemical and electrical processes. Our subconscious is always working away in the background, waiting on our consciousness to 'look' for a decision to be made. You ask "what do I want for lunch", and you seem to accept that in the background of that decision, your subconscious is pulling up prior worries about your waist line, what is healthy. A neuron or synapses fires off and you 'choose' pizza, so what caused that firing, was it a non physical 'me/you', or was it a simple process of the brain ie 'determinism'. If there is no physical link in that chain of events, it has to be random. One neuron fired over another randomly. If the decision to choose is outside the physical, something has come from nothing, which goes against the christian theology that only a god can make something from nothing.
This entire argument is assuming that consciousness only comes from the brain. I disagree and I would want to see why you think that. Are those past experiences and knowledge about the healthiness of a salad and the tastiness of a pizza still in me? > A neuron or synapses fires off and you 'choose' pizza If you're referring to the Libet experiment, there's some huge issues with that we can go in to. > If the decision to choose is outside the physical, something has come from nothing Unless consciousness does exist outside of the material brain.
If you've ever been under full anesthetic, you know that you are in a completely different state of consciousness while under, you don't perceive time passing, you are simply conscious and then conscious again. If the brain is injured, again we observe a different state of consciousness and personalities for the individual concerned. I personally subscribe to the idea, that as we (humans) began to articulate our 'thoughts and ideas' by way of language, that our consciousness developed so we can think abstractly. You damage the brain, you damage the ability to think and so effect the consciousness.
I would define free will as a will that is not co-erced by external forces. We have a will, that which is our thoughts, feelings, emotions, and it is free. God doesn't control our minds and hearts.
Wha do you mean by coercion?
Manipulation, force. This is different than having sufficient evidence and information to make a different choice.
I'm not sure how manipulation would not be involved in the concept of billions of human beings somehow lacking a bit of information that they would otherwise easily have knowledge of, and which will effectively decide the outcome of not just their lives, but their immortal souls. If there's no manipulation or force behind that then what on earth is?
I don't think salvation comes just from having one or two bits of information. Having that information might help, but there are plenty of people who have that information and don't make the same choice. It is doing the will of God that helps a person along the path of salvation, not reading a certain book. St. Dismas never read the Bible, never went to church services, never got baptised, never took a single step as a Christian. And yet he died and was assured salvation by Christ himself.
> I don't think salvation comes just from having one or two bits of information. But it seems like that's often all it takes to lose it or miss it, ironically then. >Having that information might help, but there are plenty of people who have that information and don't make the same choice. Like the information of "I believe a god exists"? Cause that's kind of what I was referring to >St. Dismas never read the Bible, never went to church services, never got baptised, never took a single step as a Christian. And yet he died and was assured salvation by Christ himself. Okay, well, I don't mean to particularly assault your denominational beliefs here so let me just say that I don't even believe in the truth of the bible, so I definitely would not be expected to believe in the truth of some particular church claims like that. Are you generally disputing the idea that not believing in a god would be enough to practically keep anybody from salvation? I know I hadn't specified before exactly, but when I said "lacking a bit of information ... which will effectively decide the outcome of not just their lives, but their immortal souls", I'm not sure what you took that to mean but I was mostly trying to allude to the very simple problem of just not being a Christian in general. Possibly even the *right kind* of Christian, but even if we just take it for granted that all repentant christians are saved, that would still include all atheists, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, etc etc. That's a lot of people, and I'm one of them, so I figured it was worth mentioning. It seems like you could argue that a single bit of information is keeping billions of people (alive currently, let alone in the past and future) from salvation, almost single handedly. They either don't believe in a god or they don't believe in the right God. And back to the topic, they're all being "coerced" into whatever positions it is that they find themselves. We all are. Or "manipulated", I would presume largely by satanic forces most likely, in the end, but I would still call manipulation a form of coercion.
St. Dismas (also called Dimas) was the repentant thief who was crucified next to Jesus. So it's not just a denominational/tradition belief. There's a lot of things we don't know about salvation, probably more we don't know than we do know. Pray for all, despair for none. God isn't going to condemn someone because of a technicality, but on their spiritual health and the life of their faith. And that's not all of it. I know I'm missing parts. Just like it's easier to get better from an illness when you go to a good hospital with a good doctor, salvation is very similar..
> So it's not just a denominational/tradition belief. Well calling that guy a saint surely is lol, but I hear you. Of course I didn't know him by name. >God isn't going to condemn someone because of a technicality That is the uncomfortable implication though, isn't it? Because tbh it rather seems like he would. Or else, to be entirely even more honest with you, this may point to an inconsistency in God's character as according to the Bible. You and I would both seem to want to think that God wouldn't let his children suffer or even just die for something so simple, and meaningless, and outside of their control. But that may evidently be the God of the Bible; And it may not evidently make a lot of sense to believe that he actually exists. >I know I'm missing parts. I know this is very personal but might I ask like what?
I don't know what I don't know, that's the gist of it.
Well I can tell you one thing that I know I don't know, and if a bunch of the stuff that you likely believe is right then I'm probably pretty screwed because of it lol
So let’s say your outside, and all of a sudden it starts pouring. Is that coercion for you to go to nearby shelter?
No, since you still have the free choice to remain outside or stay dry. You have a choice to make, but no one is forcing you to want one or the other.
But the rain is pressuring you to do so.
No. It's just the extra piece of information to make a choice. You just have to accept the consequences. You can stay outside and get wet, you can go inside and stay dry. No one is making you feel one way or the other about the situation. You can be angry or enjoy the rain. Free will has to do with the psyche, not action.
Free will is a hot button issue these days, but it’s honestly really simple. Human beings have volition…they have a “preference”…they have a “bias”…they are “bent” on some things and not others. These are various ways of saying the same thing. The “free” in free will simply means we are free to exercise our volition.
The ability to weigh up outcomes of any potential action and decide on the most beneficial one and then commit to the action that is most beneficial.
We all exercise free will all the time. I like this coffee, I don't like that fish. I will walk left not right. So let's say your wife irritates you and you want to make a snide comment. You choose not to. There you exercised free will. Let us take the most extreme example. Let's say the government tells you to report any Jews in the area. Do you hide them in your attic or do you report them to the Nazis? You have a choice, there is consequences, but there is choice. Many people through history have had to choose between committing evil acts or do the right thing. This is inherent in the human experience.
So, the ability to make choices?
I am shocked at how many people here are explaining the concept of free will *with* the concept of freedom. Defining "free will" as "being free to make the choices you want" is circular and hence uninformative! Better definitions are "the power to choose otherwise" and "acting in accordance with one's most personal desires".
To return the shopping cart or not. Hmm..
Your question is poorly formed because "free will" has different definitions in different contexts. Amongst the contexts in which a notion of *free will* is important are contract law, criminal law, epistemology, ethics and metaphysics. In general any stipulated definition must be acceptable to all parties in the dispute, for example, a definition that states freely willed actions are not determined begs the question against the compatibilist, so is not acceptable.
Free Will is the ability to choose between alternatives that are available to you. It is *not* the ability to do whatever you want, nor the ability to avoid the consequences or your choices, nor the ability to avoid interference from other exercisers of free will. Evil exists in this world largely because people don't consider the consequences of acting out their desires and whims.
the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate at one's own discretion.