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God and "Free Will"

bruto said:
My first simplistic dumb reply to that is "why not?"

If you imagine a god that can create anything at all, why not create a creature whose behavior is undeterministic, or "free"? I'm not saying it's actually possible to create such a creature, by why is this a theological problem?
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Can you give me an example of any action in the history of the universe that clearly demonstrates the presence of free will?

Nick
 
There's no conflict or contradiction. Free will in humans would mean that there IS No future because it's truly undetermined. Thus, God's not knowing it isn't an issue because there isn't anything there yet to know. He only has to possess all of the knowledge that actually exists, and things that are inherently undetermined don't yet.
 
I read something about it like this.

God is good. Therefore he didn't want to create robot (non free) creatures, he wanted to create free creatures, because being free is a (the highest) form of good. I can't explain the next bit in my own words so I'll copy from a internet source:

The free will defense can be viewed as an attempt to show that there some kinds of good that even an all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing God can't bring about without permitting evil. The version below is modeled (loosely) on what Alvin Plantinga says.

1. Creatures who are significantly free cannot be causally determined to do only what is right.
2. Thus, if God creates creatures who are significantly free, He cannot causally determine them to do only what is right. (from 1)
3. Thus, if God creates creatures who are significantly free, he must create creatures who are capable of moral evil. (from 2)
4. Thus, if God creates a world containing creatures who are significantly free, it will contain creatures who are capable of moral evil. (from 3)
5. If God creates a world containing creatures who are capable of moral evil, He cannot guarantee that there will not be evil in that world.
6. Thus, if God creates a world containing creatures who are significantly free, He cannot guarantee that there will not be evil in that world. (from 4 and 5)
7. A world containing creatures who are significantly free (and freely perform more morally good than evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all.
8. Thus, God has good reason to create a world containing creatures who are significantly free. (from 7)
9. Thus, God has good reason to create a world, which He cannot guarantee will not contain evil. (from 6 and 8)
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Legend said:
Meaningless phrase? Could you explain?
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No. I can't explain. Because I don't know what it means.

Nobody has been able to tell us what "free will" means.

Do you know what it means?

If so please tell us.

If not then it is, so far as anybody knows, a meaningless phrase.
 
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Delvo said:
There's no conflict or contradiction. Free will in humans would mean that there IS No future because it's truly undetermined. Thus, God's not knowing it isn't an issue because there isn't anything there yet to know. He only has to possess all of the knowledge that actually exists, and things that are inherently undetermined don't yet.
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Except that all the major theologians of Christianity would completely disagree with you.
 
"Free will" is, as I've understood it, to be a free ability to choose to think and want whatever we wish.

Alex.
 
But what do you mean by the free ability - free from what? And when you say "think and want whatever we wish" what exactly do you mean by that. Because I might in some sense be free to do those things in that no external agency forces me to think anything, but what I "decide" to do think or do is based on my genetic make up, my experiences, the cuerrent situation etc and the interaction between these factors. Perhaps we might be able to understand better with an example?
 
Legend said:
"Free will" is, as I've understood it, to be a free ability to choose to think and want whatever we wish.

Alex.
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Trouble is, to justify that statement you need to be able to state just who or what it is that is doing this choosing...and it needs to be doing this choosing without being constrained by any internal deterministic process. Do you see the issue?

Even if you follow a popular religious, dualistic line that there exists a "soul" that is making the choices, it would still require that this soul has no internal deterministic process of itself. Not easy to conceive of. I don't see how free will can withstand any meaningful level of reductionist analysis.

At the end of the day, as I see it, "God" is for people who don't want to face up to these simple logical issues.

Nick
 
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Nick227 said:
Can you give me an example of any action in the history of the universe that clearly demonstrates the presence of free will?

Nick
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Nothing clearly demonstrates free will, but that is not my point. The question is "how can any god" create a being capable of free will (I don't think it could be said properly to be creating free will itself). The discussion of such a god presupposes that there is some dimension to creation and mankind that is not physical, I think, so arguments from physics and the like need not apply. Whether there is actually such a god, such a thing as "soul" and its related phenomena, and whether or not he created us that way is irrelevant. I don't see anything in the idea of free will that would make it beyond the ability of the sort of god we're discussing here, assuming that such a god did or could exist.

Of course, we could short circuit the argument by agreeing, as we probably would, that no such god exists, but the discussion of "free will," if we can find any tattered fragments of it to discuss, would not be a theological one.
 
bruto said:
Nothing clearly demonstrates free will, but that is not my point. The question is "how can any god" create a being capable of free will (I don't think it could be said properly to be creating free will itself). The discussion of such a god presupposes that there is some dimension to creation and mankind that is not physical, I think, so arguments from physics and the like need not apply. Whether there is actually such a god, such a thing as "soul" and its related phenomena, and whether or not he created us that way is irrelevant. I don't see anything in the idea of free will that would make it beyond the ability of the sort of god we're discussing here, assuming that such a god did or could exist.

Of course, we could short circuit the argument by agreeing, as we probably would, that no such god exists, but the discussion of "free will," if we can find any tattered fragments of it to discuss, would not be a theological one.
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As I mentioned in a slightly earlier post, it seems to me that the whole notion of "God" is attractive principally to those who simply don't want to look at the real issues.

Your argument seems to be saying "Yes, OK it can't happen in the universe as we understand it. But maybe God could just overcome all the laws of physics and everything we can currently concieve." Well, in a sense, I think that's borderline fair comment. But I would also point out the following...the only reason people conceive of free will is because they believe they have it. They don't have it but the belief that they do arises because they haven't really thought about it. Thus free will is actually inconceivable in reality, but if you don't think about it much then it seems possible. So, in comes God - an agent for people who don't want to think about things much to help them imagine they don't have to.

Nick
 
I am having this discussion with a friend and he defined free will as :

"The ability for a person to make decisions which are not determined - completely - by fundamental processes beyond the control of a consciousness.
IE a lack of free will is where every decision a person makes is either random/probabilistic based on quantum mechanics, or is 'pathed out' as per Newtonian mechanics."
 
Legend said:
My first "new topic"...

I'm really condensing this argument here as I've been writing pages on the matter.

I've recently been looking into the idea of God and him giving humans free will. I initially was thinking, and I came up with the idea that, if he is omniscient, than this contradicts free will because:

Before creating us, he must have known what was going to occur (due to his omniscience). This means that by starting life he has set out what will occur because his knowledge can't be incorrect.

After I looked into it further, this theory was actually thought of way before it crossed my mind. Hell, they even used the same words as me ("omniscient").

In a nutshell, the reply I'm having trouble matching with this theory is that God doesn't actually change what's occuring at all, he merely correctly predicts what will happen, meaning he knows that, "He is going to do this at this particular time" and simply because he knows it, he won't affect it.

Do you have a plausible reply to this, or is this argument on free will flawed?
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I know what my neighbour did yesterday. Does the fact that I now know that he did it mean that his choice was necessarily limited?

A God which lives outside time can be omniscient simply by remembering everything that happened.
 
The only god I could believe in would not be omniscient. Since everyone seems to think he/she is, I simply don't believe. A god that created everything but makes mistakes would explain all the contradictions that abound. Can't god be all powerful but slightly stupid? Like GW?
 
Professor Yaffle said:
What does "fundamental processes beyond the control of a consciousness" mean?
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The laws of physics, basically. He's arguing that all laws are either deterministic, or random. He is claiming that free will cannot arise of of these and so you either don't believe in free will or you believe in something supernatural, beyond the laws of physics.
 
In all seriousness though ....

Just wondering on peoples thoughts - maybe Free Will is a sliding scale - sometimes for some choices and in certain circumstances you're closer to 100% having it and other times you have virtually none (or absolutely none). And for that matter - maybe certain choices (say, maybe, immaterial spiritual choices/ideas or thoughts) may operate in a whole different domain then the material.

And maybe even in the material we have the power to override pure reactions to things.
 
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