Determinism kills (or makes useless) God
So it turned out that the truffles were a hit. I brought four of them out with me tonight to the bar and gave them to a few friends. They were totally into them. I love being able to provide something that, when given, creates visible delight on peoples’ faces.
Other than that, I wanted to recount a little conversation that Dan and I had at the hobbit hole. It involved free will/determinism in relation to god and religion. It seemed to us that if one stopped to think about the issue of free will and determinism for any amount of time, it really does serious damage to a belief in god, or at least a belief in religion.
(I purposely spell god with a lower case “g” – it’s my somewhat silent protest)
Free will is a foundational belief of any religion that believes there is a heaven and hell and that we are judged by our actions on Earth. It allows us to be held accountable for our actions and makes us realize that we are the controllers of our destiny. If we are to go to hell, it is because we knowingly chose that path rather than the path to heaven. While I have serious issues with the previous statement (let’s think about pluralism for a second), I will work of with it for the sake of being sympathetic to Christian arguments. Determinism in the context of religion can work (Calvinism), but it is generally denied by Enlightenment thought. But there’s the rub.
The other statement that is generally followed by the religious is that god is omniscient (there is also the school of open theism which a very intelligent friend of mine falls into – rightly, I think, considering some bible versus like Gen 6:6 - but eventually I think it is a cop out). If god is omniscient then he must know everything about the future as well as the present. I have heard the exercise of imagining yourself looking down on a timeline in a book. You can see everything on that timeline yet you are objective to it. This is how god views time (again, I have serious problems with this: if god is interventionist then he is a part of the natural world and cannot be separated from time; if god is not interventionist, then he is not caring, just or omnipotent).
I hope you can see that these free will and omnipotent god ideas are confounding. If god is omniscient then he knows exactly how you will act in any given situation. But if you have free will, then god should not know these things. A Christian argument has said that god is omniscient to the present (which works well with open theism), but I don’t think this is a popular opinion in Christianity.
The other problem with god’s omniscience is an Epicurean issue:
"The gods can either take away evil from the world and will not, or, being willing to do so, cannot; or they neither can nor will, or lastly, they are both able and willing. If they have the will to remove evil and cannot, then they are not omnipotent. If they can, but will not, than they are not benevolent. If they are neither able nor willing, then they are neither omnipotent nor benevolent. Lastly, if they are both able and willing to annihilate evil, how does it exist?"
If god knew from the beginning that this is the way it would turn out, then we have to assume that god is not benevolent (or he is determined by some greater force). He was omniscient to the fact that Adam and Eve would eat from the tree, that I would be writing this right now, and that you would be reading it, but he thought it would be a good idea to do it anyway. If god is omniscient then we have to accept determinism as true and we are left with the idea that god is some freak with a chemistry set predicting the worst and greatest moments in human history with 100% percent accuracy. Frankly, I don’t think the good outweighs the bad.
The other Christian argument is simply that god knows us so well that he knows every decision we will make for ourselves in advance. I hate to say it, but I am guilty of using this. It is a horrid argument and an epic copout. By saying this you are tacitly admitting determinism. Just think about it for a minute. It shouldn’t take you that long to realize that you are saying that, given a situation and all facts about a person you can predict an outcome. Thank you for defining determinism.
I have a really hard time arguing for free will. I just don’t see how one can solidly believe it. Dan actually said last night that he feels like to be an atheist you also have to be a determinist. I somewhat agree. I think he would revise his statement to say that most atheists are determinists, but it is obviously not required. A random decision making process just isn’t something that sounds reasonable, and I think it is actually something to be feared. Think how much more often we would make the wrong decision given two options if it were random (50:50) than if we had informed decisions and how devastating that would be to any life circumstance. It would also remove any authority a person had since they are exactly as likely to choose the wrong choice as we are.
I can here people arguing that free will can still be an informed decision making process. Again, this is a tacit admission of determinism. You are still saying then, that given the options and the information the person will make the correct decision. And again, that is all that soft determinism is stating.
Other than that, I wanted to recount a little conversation that Dan and I had at the hobbit hole. It involved free will/determinism in relation to god and religion. It seemed to us that if one stopped to think about the issue of free will and determinism for any amount of time, it really does serious damage to a belief in god, or at least a belief in religion.
(I purposely spell god with a lower case “g” – it’s my somewhat silent protest)
Free will is a foundational belief of any religion that believes there is a heaven and hell and that we are judged by our actions on Earth. It allows us to be held accountable for our actions and makes us realize that we are the controllers of our destiny. If we are to go to hell, it is because we knowingly chose that path rather than the path to heaven. While I have serious issues with the previous statement (let’s think about pluralism for a second), I will work of with it for the sake of being sympathetic to Christian arguments. Determinism in the context of religion can work (Calvinism), but it is generally denied by Enlightenment thought. But there’s the rub.
The other statement that is generally followed by the religious is that god is omniscient (there is also the school of open theism which a very intelligent friend of mine falls into – rightly, I think, considering some bible versus like Gen 6:6 - but eventually I think it is a cop out). If god is omniscient then he must know everything about the future as well as the present. I have heard the exercise of imagining yourself looking down on a timeline in a book. You can see everything on that timeline yet you are objective to it. This is how god views time (again, I have serious problems with this: if god is interventionist then he is a part of the natural world and cannot be separated from time; if god is not interventionist, then he is not caring, just or omnipotent).
I hope you can see that these free will and omnipotent god ideas are confounding. If god is omniscient then he knows exactly how you will act in any given situation. But if you have free will, then god should not know these things. A Christian argument has said that god is omniscient to the present (which works well with open theism), but I don’t think this is a popular opinion in Christianity.
The other problem with god’s omniscience is an Epicurean issue:
"The gods can either take away evil from the world and will not, or, being willing to do so, cannot; or they neither can nor will, or lastly, they are both able and willing. If they have the will to remove evil and cannot, then they are not omnipotent. If they can, but will not, than they are not benevolent. If they are neither able nor willing, then they are neither omnipotent nor benevolent. Lastly, if they are both able and willing to annihilate evil, how does it exist?"
If god knew from the beginning that this is the way it would turn out, then we have to assume that god is not benevolent (or he is determined by some greater force). He was omniscient to the fact that Adam and Eve would eat from the tree, that I would be writing this right now, and that you would be reading it, but he thought it would be a good idea to do it anyway. If god is omniscient then we have to accept determinism as true and we are left with the idea that god is some freak with a chemistry set predicting the worst and greatest moments in human history with 100% percent accuracy. Frankly, I don’t think the good outweighs the bad.
The other Christian argument is simply that god knows us so well that he knows every decision we will make for ourselves in advance. I hate to say it, but I am guilty of using this. It is a horrid argument and an epic copout. By saying this you are tacitly admitting determinism. Just think about it for a minute. It shouldn’t take you that long to realize that you are saying that, given a situation and all facts about a person you can predict an outcome. Thank you for defining determinism.
I have a really hard time arguing for free will. I just don’t see how one can solidly believe it. Dan actually said last night that he feels like to be an atheist you also have to be a determinist. I somewhat agree. I think he would revise his statement to say that most atheists are determinists, but it is obviously not required. A random decision making process just isn’t something that sounds reasonable, and I think it is actually something to be feared. Think how much more often we would make the wrong decision given two options if it were random (50:50) than if we had informed decisions and how devastating that would be to any life circumstance. It would also remove any authority a person had since they are exactly as likely to choose the wrong choice as we are.
I can here people arguing that free will can still be an informed decision making process. Again, this is a tacit admission of determinism. You are still saying then, that given the options and the information the person will make the correct decision. And again, that is all that soft determinism is stating.
Labels: Freethought
posted by W.P. Martin at
9:15 PM
7 Comments:
It seems that a lot of people have become atheists or agnostics based on this argument. It certainly does bring up some questions that religious apologists haven't answered - always resorting to their "just have faith" line.
I hope that someone can come up with a third alternative to the free will/determinism debate, or better yet, change the way we think about it entirely. The big problem with free will is that once you grasp what it it, it's gone, replaced by determinism. The problem with determinism is that it is unfalsifiable and circular. Obviously everything that happens has a cause. One could talk about soft determinism vs. hard determinism, but ultimately it's all the same thing. I think psychologists need to start thinking outside the box when it comes to free will vs determinism.
This comment has been removed by the author.
"Free will is a foundational belief of any religion that believes there is a heaven and hell and that we are judged by our actions on Earth." The Bible doesn't even mention free will let alone say that we should blame someone when they do wrong because they have free will. The concept of free will came from Greek and other heathen thinking. It was a foreign concept to the Hebrews. The Bible tell us who to blame: it says blame the sinner! A sin is an offense to God. People who cause offense to God are sinners. The Bible tells us that it is under God's determination that people cause offense to him. And God is not the author of evil. When the bible talks about authors of evil it is talking about sinners. People who try to use this term to suggest the Hebrews believed in free will are forcing a foreign concept upon this expression. "author of evil" just means sinner. God did not sin, that is to say, God did not offend himself. God made others to offend him that he might destroy them in his wrath.
"What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! For he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion."It does not, therefore, depend on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: "I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth."Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden." (Romans 9:14-18)
This was Paul interpreting Hebrew scripture. Pharaoh by the way is seen as the symbol of evil and oppression. So the Bible is telling us that God raised evil up for his own purpose. Namely that he might destroy it and show his power. Remember, according to the bible Pharaoh did not harden his own heart, it is God that hardened Pharaoh's heart!
And God is not all-loving! "As it is written, "Jacob I loved, but Esau I have hated" (9:13). God is love, but just because God is love doesn't mean he will love everyone.
"God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear down to this very day" (11:8) Their stupor was not a result of their own "freewill", God gave it to them!
God has raised up evil and shown it to his bride (the Church) but she could not overcome it. In breaking evil and destroying it God will show his power. The day is already appointed when he will cast all the wicked into the flames. But the name of the lord is a strong tower, those he has made righteous will run into it and be saved.
"What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction." (9:22)
God created them as vessels of his mighty wrath. Their purpose in existence is their own destruction. That is why they were prepared.
"Esau I have hated." Amen.
To those who are reading this, you have been called upon to repent and believe. Put simply that means, turn away from all your sin and commit your life to following Jesus Christ, your God. Pray!
Whoa, Anonymous. You need to clarify. Your first paragraph says contradicting things.
"The Bible tells us that it is under God's determination that people cause offense to him. And God is not the author of evil."
and
"God made others to offend him that he might destroy them in his wrath."
If god is not the "author of evil" then why did he "[make] others to offend him?"
And if evil is then determined by god, shouldn't hell dissipate into nothingness since god should understand that evil was of his will?
You have many circular arguments in your post, I can't sort them all out. Many of your beliefs seem to be confounding - I encourage you to think about one belief in context of another. Like I said above, if god is determining who is evil (like the case of him hardening the Pharaoh's heart) what does that mean for his ultimate punishment (eternal hell) of those he made act evilly? Is it still just for god to punish the Pharaoh so?
Thank you for your response. I will try to explain but you must understand that the Hebrews, the ancient Israelites had a completely different way of looking at morality to the way our society looks at it. Our society is heavily influenced by so called "Christian" teaching. However this 'Christian' teaching comes mainly from early Christian thinkers, who came from Pegan backgrounds, not Jewish ones'. Thinkers such as St. Augustine, probably the most influential theologian in Christian history (after the canonical writers: Paul, John, Peter etc...), came to Christianity with a mindset that was influenced by the Greeks: Aristotle, Plato. He didn't realize where the ancient Hebrews were coming from. For the last millennia Ancient Greek Philosophy has been the introductory course at Christian universities. At the time of the reformation (about 500 years ago) you couldn't even study Christian theology unless you had first studied the ancient Greeks. So it's very important you understand it is Athens that has really shaped our understanding of morality, not Jerusalem. Even though it came in the guise of Christian theology and is the teaching in the Roman Catholic church and most mainline Protestant churches today, the common understanding of morality in society is not from the Bible. We really need to be snapped out of it.
So I'll try to clarify but I'm not sure you'll fully understand because even for those who do end up 'getting it' it usually takes a while to sink in.
I cannot force you to cause offense to me, if I try to get you to offend me then at the back of my mind I'll always be thinking "it was actually me who offended me, not him, since he was not the cause, I was" This is not how God sees things. Paul when he wrote his letters was usually trying to explain to Roman and Greek converts the way the Christians (who, in the early days were mostly Jewish and had been raised with a greater understanding of the scripture) should see morality. Paul tries to explain by getting the Roman Christians to see evil in the same way as they would see things, rather than actions. Paul says God has made people in the same way that people make vessels (like pots made out of clay). You can make an ugly looking pot, or you can make a beautiful looking pot. Ugly pots and beautiful pots are like each other in that they are both pots. But neither are like the potter, the potter isn't a pot at all. God is the potter.
The situation is of course a heck of a lot more complicated with humans than it is with pots, but it's a good analogy to get us into the right mindset. Humans have consciousness and a will (not a free will, but a will none the less, that is to say even if it is God that sets my will, it is still I who have the will). Science tells us that it is because we are biological organisms and because we have consciousness that we may will to do things. Though science confirms that the bible is right and the Greeks are wrong in that our will is fixed, there isn't some sort of metaphysical self that decides our will. Obviously when the bible talks about God creating things, it is saying God brought things about; God brought about the hardness of Pharaoh's heart. When Jacob tricks his brother Esau and pretty much steals his brothers inheritance, the bible says this is God who gave the inheritance to Jacob even though it was completely the result of Jacob's actions that he got the inheritance. Similarly when the enemies of Israel are defeated by the Israelites, the bible says it is by God's hand that their enemies were defeated. This is a totally deterministic picture of reality. Everything that happens in the world is the outworking of God's will. Please don't do what many atheists and some very confused Protestants (usually in the south of America) do and imagine that when the bible says God created something, it means God magically made something appear.
Back to morality, when God sets the will of a human being who then does something because of his will, that human being is considered the author of his action. Not because his will was free, but because the action in an immediate sense proceeded from him. Ultimately of course everything comes from God. The next time some well intentioned but uninformed Christian tells you something like "nothing evil ever comes from God" give them a good dose of 1 Samuel 18:10 "The next day an evil spirit FROM GOD came forcefully upon Saul." You might also want to mention Proverbs 16:4 "The Lord has made all for Himself, Yes, even the wicked for the day of doom." In fact you might just want to tell them to go read their entire bible again (though you would by sinning by doing so because that would harsh in a way that is quite un-necessary; and we are called to be gentle in presenting the gospel since the gospel is harsh enough on it's own).
God does not offend himself you understand, he makes others to offend him. He wills that he be offended so he brings it about that he is. Although God is the author of everything in a sense, it would sound very awkward to an Israelite to say God authors sin because sin is the thing God has made humans do, not something God does himself. This is an important distinction for the Hebrew. Like I say, with our Greek oriented way of thinking (and the way our western languages have evolved as a result of that way of thinking) the meaning of the scripture is quite difficult to capture in a way where it doesn't quickly get confused.
Why would God make his creation to offend him? To demonstrate parts of his own divine nature. Again you have to understand the context here. Humans are created in the image of God. We have hands to manipulate things. Why? Because God manipulates things and so because God in his own way, though he is not a physical thing but is a spirit, has hands. Why do we have the ability to cry? Because God in his own way has the ability to cry. Why do we have the ability to laugh, to get angry, to be sad, to regret? All because we are made in God's image. The bible talks about God's mighty arm, his stomach. You can go on and on, the bible even talks about God's kidney! Why do we want to express ourselves in art and song and poetry? Because God desires to express himself, that is part of who he is.
But God has also made us unlike himself in many ways. We are lower than he is so we are forced to look up to him. We are weak so we are forced to rely on him. God has made us for his own purpose. Perhaps the most important difference between us and God is that we exist not for our own sake (we exist for the sake of God), but God does exist for his own sake. God's anger exists for it's own sake, it is an organ if you like, of almighty God. So is his mercy. God does not love those he loves for their sake, but for his own sake. Because he is loving, that is what he is. In our sentimental Christless-media moulded culture it doesn't even make sense to say vengeance could be the act of a perfect and loving God. To us vengeance is that nasty thing that gives us a guilty feeling inside. Well it should make us guilty because vengeance is not ours to take. God has shared many things with us (such as mercy and kindness) and tells us to share them with others. But he has reserved some things for himself, vengeance is one of them. "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." (Romans 12:19). For us vengeance is wrong because God has commanded us not to take vengeance. But God has not commanded himself not to take vengeance, it is not wrong for him! And it flows from who he is. Because of the way our thinking has been shaped and because it is never said or even conceived of by many in the media and in the world, the idea that anger exists in a perfect state in God seems strange. But it does. All of God is perfect. It is right for him to express all of his nature in his creation. His mighty nature is glorious, in it is victory itself. All sin, all wickedness, all that is vile and disgusting exists for God's thunderous anger, it exists for the flames of hell, where it will stay forever under God's blazing wrath. The bible calls God a consuming fire!
God is just. To understand how the Hebrews conceived of justice you will need to put aside all your notions of justice and try as hard as you can to contemplate the sovereignty of God. It is because he declares it sin that it is sin, because he declares it righteous that it is righteous. These days politicians like to talk about rights, everybody has rights. But the bible says it is God who has the right! It is just that God condemns many to hell because he has made them for that purpose. It is just that he has released some, whom he has elected, from his judgement, to be called his "treasured possession". They are not for ordinary use, but are vessels of his mercy. God took their punishment upon himself in the person of Jesus Christ rather than let them suffer, just as it was prophesied “upon him was the punishment that made us whole,” (Isaiah, 53:5). If Paul was thinking the way we think he would have appealed to some moral law that existed above God to justify God's decision. But for Christians (who understand the bible) God is subject to nothing! Things are good because God makes them good, not because they are good in themselves. Rather than appealing to a moral law Paul appeals to God's sovereignty. Look at how he answers this question:
"You will say to me then, "Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?" But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, "Why have you made me like this?" Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?" (Romans 9:19-21)
The Bible tells us that God has the right to make whatever he likes for his own purpose. Why? Because he is God! There is nothing higher.
God gives commands to humans to do things he has determined them not to do. If we did that we would say we are offending ourselves. But we are not sovereign, we are not God.
I'm sorry I've gone on so long. I hope this answers your question. A man once said that all the objections to Christianity can be found in the bible. His point was that God has not overlooked something in giving us his word. God has answered the questions that need answering, he has felt the pain that humans have felt and knows we are keen to understand. There are some things of course that are not for us to understand but morality isn't one of them. He is just because justice exists in him. Any other way of thinking about justice (such as the way the ancient philosophers thought about it) is but a pitiful attempt by lowly human beings to replace God's sovereignty with their own. That was Lucifer's sin; he wanted to be God. Thanks to modern science and a fuller understanding of how the brain works society is finally starting to wake up (very slowly) to the deterministic picture of how we make decisions. We are finally starting to see that the moral theory of the heathen philosophers (and the misled christian theologians) which is based on a belief in free will, simply cannot be correct. But God's word is eternal, forever it stands firm. Praise be to God, wonderful counselor!
You haven't read it yet but you've just scrolled to the bottom and you're thinking "you've gotta be kidding me!" I know, sorry it's so long.
God is supernatural, outside nature not bound by its constraints. The scripture says that in the beginning there was God and the word was with God and the word was made flesh and dwelt among men. Not a thing was made without the word. Look at the word as a kind of software for his creation (hardware). When you pray to God your prayers go all the way back to creation and if they are in harmoney with God's plan they get incorporated into creation and effect you at the point at which you exsist. The problem of determinism and free will is solved. God's time and man's is not the same. In fact several well known people have said that time is an illusion that serves a purpose.
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