“god” and the Concept of Free Will
As you few readers (if there are any out there) can see below, my first ever real post was commented not once but three times by a blogger who goes by the name of “god”. While I won’t go in to questioning his choice of name given that he is a professed atheist (does he admit that he himself does not exist? lol), he raised some very interesting questions. I can see from his few comments (and from a visit to his blog, which is very interesting if the topics happen to strike your fancy) that his is an opinion and a viewpoint that I admire and respect, and will most likely continue to do so if he should choose to comment again. “God”, if you are reading this, thank you so much for your comments and your intriguing thoughts and questions.
The comments to my first post have continued to fuel my desire finally to begin my personal quest for true understanding. I don’t know if I well ever be an atheist, but ideas presented by “god” and by his friends on his blog have given me a better idea of the path I want to take with my initial research.
Being a deeply personal and experiential phenomenon, as “god” so eloquently put it, religion or spirituality is not necessarily a thing that can be defined, nor will I attempt to do so in this post. All my life I was taught that there is a God and that he is a loving entity who happens to have the power to destroy utterly those who defy him. As a young child I didn’t object to this, and though neither my family nor I were particularly devout, we did go to church on a more or less regular basis, and I had many Christian friends. Only recently have I come to discover that that is not religion or spirituality in essence, but simply a physical ramification of society’s perspective of those things. The doctrine and dogma of the Christian church is not my idea of the true belief and worship of God, or as I am coming to think of it as, the belief in a Cosmic Force that is outside of complete comprehension. “God” brought up the point that it is often the dogma of faith that turns atheists away, such as the rigid belief in a creation myth despite obvious scientific proof otherwise, that homosexuality is wrong, that animal sacrifices are necessary to ‘appease’ a deity, or that male dominance is the way the world was designed. I believe the Bible and other such books were written by men (and women of course), not by God himself, and that they are discussions of religion and belief much like books written today on the subject, or even like blogs such as the one “god” runs. If you look at the history of the Bible, for example, you can find copious examples for the reasoning behind many of the laws of Leviticus and why there is a mundane, worldly background to a supposedly supernatural law. On the flip side, I am beginning to believe that religious texts can give insight into the nature of this Cosmic Force that I am just beginning to theorize. As such, I am currently researching books that discuss the similarities between religions, and the ideas they profess. While I have seen many atheists site this as conclusive reason for the invalidity of a particular religion and fundamentally the invalidity of all religions, I see it as evidence for possible basic truths about both the nature of the cosmos and of the Cosmic Force that is its core.
On a different strand, “god” in his second comment brought up the idea of probability. He is right in saying that the God explanation merely shifts the explanation for the complexity of the universe while doing nothing to explain it in real terms. But he goes on to ask the question, “Who made God?” That intrigues me, and I confess I do not have the answer to that question. Maybe God is a human creation brought about by a base yearning for there to be something else out there other than the mundane lives we know on earth. Maybe he is a delusion we have outgrown, as so many like to say. Or maybe our perception of God isn’t necessarily wrong, only misinterpreted and carelessly personified into human terms. We refer to God as “he”, “she”, or “it” sometimes, and speak of him/her experiencing love and rage, in some cases desire and happiness. But these are tools to try to help humans grasp an inkling of what an omniscient or cosmic being may be like. I do not hope to completely understand the Cosmic Force that may be out there, but I do hope to develop an idea of its complexity.
This brings me to the final point that “god” raised, and one that have been thinking about since I last posted. He wrote that is God made all, then it follows that he must be both omniscient and omnipotent. However, according to him, these two qualities are mutually exclusive, as God is powerless to change his knowledge (meaning he can’t unknow what he knows). This is a gray area that I don’t think I have the ability to delve into just yet. But I’m alright with that. As a psychology student you learn to accept gray areas, so I can live with this one for a while.
Finally, I reach the concept of Free Will that is mentioned in the title of this post. As I have been writing for a while, I will keep this part short. On “god’s” suggestion, I visited his blog and discovered a discussion about sexual selection and natural selection and how it can related to Free Will. I strongly urge the readers out there to visit this blog and begin to expand your perceptions of the universe. While I have read all the comments, nor do I remember everything about this post, what sticks with me now is someone’s comment about Free Will and its near impossibility. The poster (who goes by the name of Mangawitch if I remember correctly–you should look her up), claims that what we consider free will is actually environmental programming done by society (our parents included) since birth. Since it’s short, here’s most of what she said:
“Where we live, how we live and who we live with influences us to a massive degree before we even learn to talk. Why do I like the music I do? Cos it was always playing when I was young - I associate it with good times - therefore it is good.My parents taught me to be open-minded and to explore everything. To question everything and not to be afraid of being different. I could choose what to wear, where to go, what to believe.But that wasn’t my free will - I was just doing what my parents had programmed me to do. You see, we think we’ve made the decisions using our own free will - but we haven’t. We’ve made them based on the influences around us.Even our dreams are created by what happens around us during the day.”
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Liridon
Once again, your blog is irresistably thought provoking. And thankyou for giving such thorough consideration to the points I raised in my previous comments. I further elaborated, in a fourth comment, on probability.
I’m far less eloquent or methodic as you in a coherent response - so bear with me. As to Cosmic Force, bluntly put - show me your theory with the evidence and I’ll consider it. There are four primary forces; the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, the electromagnetic force and gravity. We have yet to see gravity directly but the theory of it provides such incredible prediction that it can be considered a physical entity. At the outset of the nascent universe, these forces were unified. These are the fundamental forces that I hold as cosmic. Vaccuum energy is a tantilizing phenonema that may be the cause of acceleration in cosmic expansion but no, even that, or dark matter or dark energy, would I consider the kind of Cosmic Force you allude to. Mangawitch may have a different opinion.
As to Scout’s suggestion that atheism, itself, is a belief in that it must believe god does not exist since it cannot prove its non-existance is a very weak and old argument. Although, he is correct in a limited way - but even then, it’s very weak. The range of belief from fundamental theist, deist, to agnostic, to %100 certain atheist is a spectrum. Not a 50-50 deal. I agree with Scout. Technically, I am a de facto atheist ( one for discussion sake ) as I cannot prove the non-existance of god. But any theist cannot sit on their laurels about that.
I cannot disprove the existance of god no more than I can disprove a claim that a teapot is orbiting earth or that pixies live in my garden or that god exists. That is why Scout’s argument is weak… the burden of proof lies not with me, but with those who postulate such truths without evidence and whose logic ( a priorii ) is unsound. I simply say I do not believe the claims of theists or deists or liberal agnostics because they offer no sound reasons.
This does not negate aesthetic experiences of beauty or intuitive experiences of empathy and compassion because they make no claim to truth but seek only to express what they make of their experience and in doing so, inform us of the experience of other minds.
As to free will, I disagree with both you and Mangwitch. Free will is illusory and does not exist. Free will is of the mind and as such is an extension of matter. Matter is theoretically predicable rendering our sense of free will a misperception. A necessary misperception but a misperception nevertheless.
Impressed,
god