[net.religion] Free will and predestination make no sense

tim (04/13/83)

Choice. What is choice? An entity can be said to choose when we see
that it has chosen only one of a plurality of possible courses of
action. Thus, any active entity, sentient or not, can be said to
choose. (I am establishing this definition for purposes of this
discussion; there are other possible definitions.)

The idea of "free will" is ill-defined, but it usually means
that there is an agent which chooses in such a way that its
choice is not determined in advance. The choice is in some sense
"free", that is, its source is not definable. We can thus distinguish
between the deterministic choice of a computer executing a branch-on-
logical-condition operation and the free choice of a human.

Now let's postulate God, that is, an omnipotent and omniscient being
with full foreknowledge of the consequences of any choice It makes.
The first fact to be noted is that this being can only make one free
choice. Given full foreknowledge, the choices that will be made by the
being in the future are entirely determined once the first choice
is made. By any action, this being negates Its own free will in the
future; It is instantly bound forever to the path It takes, or else
It doesn't have true foreknowledge. Another way to look at this is that
It makes all Its choices at once.

The concept of "responsibility for one's actions" is, I am sure, familiar
enough to require no definition. God is responsible for Its single action,
which our Xian friends will tell us was creating the Universe and binding
Itself to a predetermined sequence of actions with respect to that Universe.
(If God's actions weren't predetermined, than neither are any of ours.)
Every consequence of that action is Its responsibility, since It knew each
and every tiny consequence before acting. God is responsible for sin, as
surely as if It had Itself committed every crime, because It did! When
It acted, It knew exactly what would happen! It knew that It was creating
Charles Manson, knew that Sharon Tate would be brutally murdered, and knew
that It could just as easily (given omnipotence) have made the Universe
differently so that it didn't happen, yet It went ahead and killed her.

(Sorry, I've strayed a bit.)

The ideas of free choice and predestination are incompatible because
if it is free it can't be predicted -- if it can be predicted, it is
determined by some combination of factors, and therefore is not free.
For Xians, you can have God knowing everything in advance, OR you can
have free will; it is impossible to reconcile the two. (It is also, if
not impossible, then at least beyond human power to reconcile omni-
benevolence with predestination, but then God wouldn't have made Hell
if he was omnibenevolent anyway.)

Tim

dje (04/14/83)

Tim defined a "free" choice as one that cannot be predicted.  This definition
puts the notions of free will and predetermination at odds with one another.

There is a different way of looking at things.  Can we not consider a choice
to be free even if God has foreknowledge?  The apparent contradiction is not
so bothersome if we are not privy to God's knowledge.  Because WE do not
know in advance how we will choose until we make the choice, our choice is
not predicated upon God's foreknowledge.  As such, I consider my choices to
be free despite my belief in an omniscient God.  I don't feel myself to be a
puppet, and perhaps it is my attitude that makes me more than a puppet.

Of course, somebody with a different point of view can say that I am still a
puppet.  But from my point of view -- my reality, so to speak -- I make my
own choices rather than God making them for me.  

It might be interesting to take the software engineering concept of
information hiding and place it in the framework of religious philosophy.
(just an offhand thought...)

			Dave Ellis / Bell Labs, Piscataway NJ
			...!harpo!npoiv!npois!houxm!5941ux!dje
			...!ariel!houti!hogpc!houxm!5941ux!dje

tim (04/16/83)

The real issue is not of free will vs. determinism, but of responsibility.
If God created us knowing what we would do, and could have changed any or
all of it freely, then It, not we, are responsible for all our actions.
Thus, we shouldn't be judged for them by It. It is the one who "really"
did them. It should go straight to Hell, not we poor preordained sinners.

Here's a new issue on this topic. Since God could make the universe any
way It wanted to, why did It make the universe one that would require
intervention? The only reason I can think of is that It wanted some
entertainment...

Tim Maroney

dje (04/19/83)

Tim Maroney writes that if God created us knowing what we would do, then God,
not we, are responsible for all our actions.

Philosophically, I disagree.  If we have free will (which I believe we do,
since our choices are made on a basis independent from what God knows will
happen), then we retain responsibility.

(Is a philosophy in which we are responsible for our actions preferable to
a philosophy in which we are not responsible?)

Tim also raises an interesting point on God's INTERVENTION in the universe.
Couldn't we say that is is possible to view any event over which we have no
control as being God's "intervention" into our lives?  (My personal belief
in God includes the inaccessibility of God's motives to human scrutiny, so
I can't even guess at why God intervenes, if we view God's actions as
intervention).

			Dave Ellis / Bell Labs, Piscataway NJ
			...!harpo!npoiv!npois!houxm!5941ux!dje
			...!{lime,ariel}!houti!hogpc!houxm!5941ux!dje

tim (04/20/83)

In "Letters From the Earth", Mark Twain makes a statement to the
effect of "Although each of them believes that their God has
given them an intellect, there is not one of them that uses
this gift in matters of religion." This is the feeling I get
from looking at people trying to reconcile free will with
predestination (in order that their creator God may be truly
omniscient and omnipotent, yet our actions still free).

If God created the Universe, and knew exactly what would happen
as a result, AND COULD HAVE MADE THINGS COME OUT DIFFERENTLY,
then we have no responsibility for our actions. God made all
our choices for us before creating the Universe. The fact that
we don't know in advance what we'll do has nothing to do with it.
It has already been decided, and we are powerless to do anything
else but what God decided we would do.

Use a bit of common sense. If something is decided before it
happens, there is no freedom in its occurrence. To say "We
have free will because we don't know in advance what we will
do" is to confuse blindness for freedom.

I write a computer program. It does no input or random value
generation, so I know exactly what it will do before running it.
It so happens that this program moves a puppet around on
a graphic display device, and causes human speech to come out
of a speaker. By changing parameters of the program, I can cause
the puppet to say or do anything I want. Who is responsible for
the actions of the puppet? Me, obviously. Suppose further
that the program never predicts certain choices that it makes.
Does that make the choices its responsibility? No, they're
obviously still mine. The program hasn't a bit of freedom.

If people would just think about these things as they think about
things in real life, instead of just shuffling words in such a way
that all prejudices seem to be satisfied, this would be obvious. You
cannot have both free will and predestination. The two are mutually
exclusive opposites. If you decide that your religion requires both,
then you have decided that your religion is logically inconsistent.
If you cannot embrace a logically inconsistent religion, then you
must drop the requirement that both free will and predestination
exist. It's as simple and as inescapable as that.

Tim Maroney

dje (04/22/83)

Tim Maroney makes several points I wish to address.  First, those who
try to reconcile free will with predestination are not using their God-given
intellect in matters of religion.  Second, if there is an omniscient and
omnipotent God, then He has made all our choices for us in advance and we are
powerless to do anything else since everything has already been decided.

The notion of an omnipotent God means that God is capable of anything (well,
anything that is not self-contradictory).  It does not mean that anything
that takes place has been performed or decided by God.  If we take our
choices as being decided and performed ourselves and not by God (i.e. free
will), this does not go against the notion of omnipotence.  An omnipotent God
CAN decide things, but that doesn't mean He necessarily DOES decide everything.

The notion of an omniscient God with foreknowledge of future events presents
the difficulty Tim points out.  If God knows what we will choose before we
choose it, then has the choice been decided for us?  The knowledge and the
decision-making are NOT THE SAME.  Free will and foreknowledge are compatible
if the decision making process (in ourselves) is not prejudiced by God's
knowledge of how we will decide.  In all my experience, I haven't heard any
voices rumbling out of the sky telling me what I will wind up doing.  From my
point of view, God has kept His foreknowledge to Himself.  He may know what I 
will do, but He hasn't made the decision for me.  At least in a relative sense,
I seem to be free.

Maybe there is no God.  I certainly can't PROVE God exists.  It's a matter of
pure, individual faith for me, and my faith doesn't impede my free will.

In summary, God may know what will happen, but that doesn't mean He is the
one who decides it.  Whether or not there is such a God, I retain free will
and my beliefs are self-consistent (even if they are counterfactual, which
can never be logically established either way).  Nobody else HAS to believe
as I do; all I'm saying is that my beliefs hold together internally just
as much as the beliefs of atheists that there is no God.

Dave Ellis / Bell Labs, Piscataway NJ
...!harpo!npoiv!npois!houxm!5941ux!dje
...!{ariel,lime}!houti!hogpc!houxm!5941ux!dje

tim (04/23/83)

At the risk of repeating myself: In the Christian cosmos, predestination
must imply determinism. The system consists of the physical world,
our souls, Heaven, Hell, Satan, God, and angels. These are all mixed
up causally, with events in one domain able to cause effects in
any of the other domains. None of these systems is closed, that is,
causally isolated. Therefore, since there exists in the system a rule
by which the next state of the system can be predicted absolutely (God
uses this rule, which is "ask myself"), the system is deterministic.

If you don't buy that all the systems are causally connected, you must
have read a different set of Gospels from the one I did. Our souls
influence the world, which was influenced by Jesus (God), who went
to Hell (as did some angels and souls), and so on. Nowhere in the
Bible is there any suggestion that these worlds are causally separate--
in fact, their interconnection is frequently stressed. I am willing to
answer any claim that there exists in the Christian cosmology a plurality
of causally distinct domains, and I need only the Bible to do so. Use
the net or personal mail.

Finally, and again at the risk of repeating myself, it doesn't matter
whether or not you know in advance what God knows you will do. It still
isn't free. God made you. God made the situation in which you are making
the decision. God made the circumstances that contribute to your decision,
and He made your personality such that your decision would be a certain
way. You have no say in it. If He'd wanted to, He could have made you so
that you would decide differently. Your appearance of freedom is an
illusion created by ignorance. (Since I don't believe in a precognizant
Creator God, I don't believe this, but if you do, then you must be
prepared to accept the logical consequences of your beliefs.)

Tim Maroney