Do we really have free will? Why doesn't God stop evil?

[truthseeker32]

I want to begin my discussion of the question above by focusing on Mother Teresa. She was a wonderful woman who did great things for the poor. Her decision to act in such a way likely owed a great deal to the external environment to which she was exposed. I don’t know much about her life, but I do know that she was born into the Catholic faith, and was likely raised to see helping the less fortunate members of society as a good thing.

This, for me, raises the question of how much of her life we can attribute to her exercising her will. After all, it is likely that if she had been born to secular parents she would have lived a different life, and we never would have known of her great example. Do we have free will, or are we restricted by the environment in which we are born and raised?

If our environment does play a significant role in our development, why did God not alter the environment of Hitler, Stalin, or any other person who commits atrocity? We can put it even more simply:

Why does God allow children to be raped or murdered? What makes preserving one’s free will superior to a child’s well-being?

If we don’t have free will, why did God create a world in which we are determined to act wickedly?

 

[Robert_Sock]

I want to begin my discussion of the question above by focusing on Mother Teresa. She was a wonderful woman who did great things for the poor. Her decision to act in such a way likely owed a great deal to the external environment to which she was exposed. I don’t know much about her life, but I do know that she was born into the Catholic faith, and was likely raised to see helping the less fortunate members of society as a good thing.

This, for me, raises the question of how much of her life we can attribute to her exercising her will. After all, it is likely that if she had been born to secular parents she would have lived a different life, and we never would have known of her great example. Do we have free will, or are we restricted by the environment in which we are born and raised?

If our environment does play a significant role in our development, why did God not alter the environment of Hitler, Stalin, or any other person who commits atrocity? We can put it even more simply:

Why does God allow children to be raped or murdered? What makes preserving one’s free will superior to a child’s well-being?

If we don’t have free will, why did God create a world in which we are determined to act wickedly?

I believe we get to follow good or evil. In following good we are following the promptings of the Holy Spirit. In following evil we are prompted by Satan. The choice is ours to make.

 

[truthseeker32]

I believe we get to follow good or evil. In following good we are following the promptings of the Holy Spirit. In following evil we are prompted by Satan. The choice is ours to make.

So the child who is born to a herion addict mother, and also becomes a heroin addict chooses to follow evil?

 

[mommy_k]

We all have the free will to pray and do God’s will. God created us for love and that should be our focus during prayer. Mother Theresa a great example of this.

 

[TimothyH]

This, for me, raises the question of how much of her life we can attribute to her exercising her will.

Mother Teresa, like Christ, exercised God’s will, not her own.

She told people that she wasn’t a social worker, that her life was Jesus. She said that she could not love her neighbor, that she could never pick up dying children without the power of God working in her life and that meant the Eucharist.

It has nothing to do with how she was raised, and every single one of us are capable of everything she did and more. Every single one of us are capable of being saints.

It isn’t free-will, but a negation of self-will, of living out “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven” not as an abstract idea applied to society as a whole, but as a concrete plan for how we deal with the mundane details of our every day life.

…not my will, but thine, be done. (Luke 22:42)

Mother Teresa lived those words in every act of her life, and was able to do so because of Jesus.

-Tim-

 

[Giants]

I want to begin my discussion of the question above by focusing on Mother Teresa. She was a wonderful woman who did great things for the poor. Her decision to act in such a way likely owed a great deal to the external environment to which she was exposed. I don’t know much about her life, but I do know that she was born into the Catholic faith, and was likely raised to see helping the less fortunate members of society as a good thing.

This, for me, raises the question of how much of her life we can attribute to her exercising her will. After all, it is likely that if she had been born to secular parents she would have lived a different life, and we never would have known of her great example. Do we have free will, or are we restricted by the environment in which we are born and raised?

If our environment does play a significant role in our development, why did God not alter the environment of Hitler, Stalin, or any other person who commits atrocity? We can put it even more simply:

Why does God allow children to be raped or murdered? What makes preserving one’s free will superior to a child’s well-being?

If we don’t have free will, why did God create a world in which we are determined to act wickedly?

The short answer is that we don’t have free will. It’s not a coherent philosophical concept, nor a neuroscientific one.

It’s taken as self-evident that our having free will is more important than preventing the innocent from suffering at the hands of others. Even if we allow for having free will, I’ve never seen this claim adequately supported, or even how one could conceivably even compare the two things. To me, it all adds up to making the existence of the Christian God an extreme improbability.

 

[davidv]

So the child who is born to a herion addict mother, and also becomes a heroin addict chooses to follow evil?

We all have a will, no matter how deploreable our beginning. Many have overcome the horrible childhoods to become fine upstanding citizens.

I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live, 20 loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice, and cleaving to him; for that means life to you and length of days, that you may dwell in the land which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them." (Deuteronomy (RSV) 30)

 

[truthseeker32]

The short answer is that we don’t have free will. It’s not a coherent philosophical concept, nor a neuroscientific one.

When you state that we don’t have free will I am assuming you mean contra-causal, libertarian free will, since plenty of philosophers believe in free will in a looser, soft-determinist way. Is this correct?

 

[Giants]

When you state that we don’t have free will I am assuming you mean contra-causal, libertarian free will, since plenty of philosophers believe in free will in a looser, soft-determinist way. Is this correct?

I don’t believe we are the ultimate authors of our actions, so however that translates.

 

[FaithInTheLord]

The two things that impact a persons life the most and how they turn out are
1 - environment
2 - genetics

That said - you will see twins turn out completely different. We do have complete free will. We are influenced and God knows that.

No one answered your question though. Why is evil allowed to continue in the world? Our Lord was merciful enough to answer that question for us.
Matthew 13:24-30

New International Version (NIV)
The Parable of the Weeds

24 Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. 25 But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. 26 When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.

27 “The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’

28 “‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.

“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’

29 “‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’”

I hit google for that you should read it out of a parish edition. It is that simple though - our Lord has told us to uproot the evil would be to uproot the good that we are to produce as well.

IDK why people don’t talk about these 3 parables more

1. The parable of the sewer
2. parable of the wheat
3. parable of the lost sheep

It answers the 3 most common questions but no one ever mentions them .

 

[FaithInTheLord]

BTW the harvesters are the angels…

There is a lot about the harvest in the Bible. I suggest reading a Gospel at least… seriously read a Gospel the whole way through don’t just go off what people teach you. Our Lord is the best teacher.

edit; btw we are tempted by demons all the time. This is (IMHO) the equivalent of a training ground. We are to be made like god’s that is His Word.

 

[MPat]

I want to begin my discussion of the question above by focusing on Mother Teresa. She was a wonderful woman who did great things for the poor. Her decision to act in such a way likely owed a great deal to the external environment to which she was exposed. I don’t know much about her life, but I do know that she was born into the Catholic faith, and was likely raised to see helping the less fortunate members of society as a good thing.

This, for me, raises the question of how much of her life we can attribute to her exercising her will. After all, it is likely that if she had been born to secular parents she would have lived a different life, and we never would have known of her great example. Do we have free will, or are we restricted by the environment in which we are born and raised?

If our environment does play a significant role in our development, why did God not alter the environment of Hitler, Stalin, or any other person who commits atrocity? We can put it even more simply:

Why does God allow children to be raped or murdered? What makes preserving one’s free will superior to a child’s well-being?

If we don’t have free will, why did God create a world in which we are determined to act wickedly?

First of all, you cannot start with an assumption “A lot depends on the environment.” and instantly reach the conclusion “Everything depends on the environment, nothing depends on the free will.”. There is the component that depends on genes, there is a component that depends on the environment, there is also a component that depends on free will.

Second, you write “If our environment does play a significant role in our development, why did God not alter the environment of Hitler, Stalin, or any other person who commits atrocity?”. Well, how do you know that He didn’t? After all, Stalin was studying to become an Eastern Orthodox priest. Hitler was close to becoming a good professional artist. Are you completely sure that they didn’t waste those chances by their own free will…?

Third, “What makes preserving one’s free will superior to a child’s well-being?”… It’s not “one’s” free will that would have to be taken away, but free will of everyone - including the child himself. Is the reformulated question still that hard to answer?

Fourth, there are many children who have good Catholic parents, but do all of them end up canonised? Maybe there is something more than the environment itself that matters…?

 

[fredms3]

Free will? ---- Yes we all have it
Why can’t God stop evil? — in the proper time He will

 

[Peter_Plato]

The short answer is that we don’t have free will. It’s not a coherent philosophical concept, nor a neuroscientific one.

This is an interesting point. Entertaining philosophical concepts (whether coherent or incoherent) presupposes a capacity to “think about” them and make choices based upon that process of thinking.

The problem with even bringing this point up (if you are making a claim - implied by your denial of free will - that all mental activity is reducible to biochemical processes) is that making judgements about coherency is meaningless because such judgements make no difference. What difference does it make to decide that something is true or false if that decision itself is simply determined, not by the actual truth or falsity of what is being judged, but by predetermined causal factors? Your judgement is superfluous and provides no “additional” information on which to act because any such mental activity is not really anything but a shadow cast from fixed molecular processes.

It seems to me that consciousness itself, given your view, is superfluous. Why do we have the ability to observe the causal order from a position “outside” or transcendent to that order if our actions cannot change or affect the order at all? Why have humans not (if you deny God) simply evolved to respond, and much more efficiently, to the external world rather than waste physiological resources and energy throwing up this “shadow” of consciousness if it is redundant and makes absolutely no difference to our actions? In your view, conscious deliberations about things make no difference because we cannot initiate new courses of action or change the causal sequence using thought, so why bother wasting time deliberating?

In short, your position of denying free will by reductionist metaphysics is self-defeating.
Meaningful thought does not change physical reality because human free will does not exist and therefore humans cannot make use of thought to affect change in the causal order. To claim any idea is coherent or incoherent makes no difference because all thought “about things” is fatuous.

 

[FaithInTheLord]

Free will? ---- Yes we all have it
Why can’t God stop evil? — in the proper time He will

God can stop the evil one and will not until every soul is harvested. The reason for that is in the parable I posted…

I do not like the way you worded that.

 

[Giants]

This is an interesting point. Entertaining philosophical concepts (whether coherent or incoherent) presupposes a capacity to “think about” them and make choices based upon that process of thinking.

The problem with even bringing this point up (if you are making a claim - implied by your denial of free will - that all mental activity is reducible to biochemical processes) is that making judgements about coherency is meaningless because such judgements make no difference. What difference does it make to decide that something is true or false if that decision itself is simply determined, not by the actual truth or falsity of what is being judged, but by predetermined causal factors? Your judgement is superfluous and provides no “additional” information on which to act because any such mental activity is not really anything but a shadow cast from fixed molecular processes.

It seems to me that consciousness itself, given your view, is superfluous. Why do we have the ability to observe the causal order from a position “outside” or transcendent to that order if our actions cannot change or affect the order at all? Why have humans not (if you deny God) simply evolved to respond, and much more efficiently, to the external world rather than waste physiological resources and energy throwing up this “shadow” of consciousness if it is redundant and makes absolutely no difference to our actions? In your view, conscious deliberations about things make no difference because we cannot initiate new courses of action or change the causal sequence using thought, so why bother wasting time deliberating?

In short, your position of denying free will by reductionist metaphysics is self-defeating.
Meaningful thought does not change physical reality because human free will does not exist and therefore humans cannot make use of thought to affect change in the causal order. To claim any idea is coherent or incoherent makes no difference because all thought “about things” is fatuous.

Consciousness is not, in the least bit, superfluous. In fact, when you boil it down, consciousness is all there is. Literally nothing matters if there isn’t a conscious system present and capable of experiencing the difference between one state of the Universe and another.

This is somewhat analogus to the argument I hear pretty often, that without a God offering us a shot at eternal life, that our lives now are meaningless. There are many reasons why this argument fails to run through, but it can revert to the same point as before: Even if I wanted to concede that our lives are meaningless, it wouldn’t change the fact that we have to experience every moment between now and when we’re dead. Our consciousness doesn’t go away now just because it’s going to go away at some point in the future.

Choices aren’t meaningless just because they are determined. Our actions, whether determined or not, will result in consequences to be experienced by conscious systems. My judgments, my opinions, and my thoughts effect my future conscious states. That alone makes them meaningful.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Consciousness is not, in the least bit, superfluous. In fact, when you boil it down, consciousness is all there is. Literally nothing matters if there isn’t a conscious system present and capable of experiencing the difference between one state of the Universe and another.

This is all very inspiring, but it doesn’t coherently work with your other posts where you claimed,

I don’t believe we are the ultimate authors of our actions, so however that translates.

And

The short answer is that we don’t have free will. It’s not a coherent philosophical concept, nor a neuroscientific one.

It’s nice to have platitudinous assertions, but they have to function reasonably together. I am not clear how you engaged my points at all other than that you just don’t agree.

This is somewhat analogus to the argument I hear pretty often, that without a God offering us a shot at eternal life, that our lives now are meaningless. There are many reasons why this argument fails to run through, but it can revert to the same point as before: Even if I wanted to concede that our lives are meaningless, it wouldn’t change the fact that we have to experience every moment between now and when we’re dead. Our consciousness doesn’t go away now just because it’s going to go away at some point in the future.

Choices aren’t meaningless just because they are determined. Our actions, whether determined or not, will result in consequences to be experienced by conscious systems. My judgments, my opinions, and my thoughts effect my future conscious states. That alone makes them meaningful.

They can only affect your future states if they, of their own accord, make a difference, but if they are merely determined by physiology they don’t “really” make any difference except, perhaps, as an illusion.

 

[Giants]

This is all very inspiring, but it doesn’t coherently work with your other posts where you claimed,

I don’t believe we are the ultimate authors of our actions, so however that translates.

And

The short answer is that we don’t have free will. It’s not a coherent philosophical concept, nor a neuroscientific one.

It’s nice to have platitudinous assertions, but they have to function reasonably together. I am not clear how you engaged my points at all other than that you just don’t agree.

They can only affect your future states if they, of their own accord, make a difference, but if they are merely determined by physiology they don’t “really” make any difference except, perhaps, as an illusion.

Sorry, I don’t see what your confusion stems from. We aren’t the authors of our actions, or our intentions. Despite this, we make choices, and the results effect our conscious experience of the world. This would be true whether we had free will, had no free will, or even if we were co-opted by someone else’s free will.

If I don’t appear to be engaging your individual points, it’s because, quite frankly, I don’t understand what you think the implications of determinism are for consciousness. You seem to suggest that there needs to be a “difference” resulting from our actions that’s more than just the change in our conscious experience of the Universe. I don’t see how this is supported.

 

[Portofino]

Sorry, I don’t see what your confusion stems from. We aren’t the authors of our actions, or our intentions. Despite this, we make choices, and the results effect our conscious experience of the world. This would be true whether we had free will, had no free will, or even if we were co-opted by someone else’s free will.

If I don’t appear to be engaging your individual points, it’s because, quite frankly, I don’t understand what you think the implications of determinism are for consciousness. You seem to suggest that there needs to be a “difference” resulting from our actions that’s more than just the change in our conscious experience of the Universe. I don’t see how this is supported.

I think I understand what you’re saying, Giant. If the “illusion” of free will is all we will ever directly experience, then free will is a de facto – that is to say, an experiential – reality.

That we experience ourselves to have free will, few will deny. The difference between the metaphysician and the pragmatist, however, is that the former says that we “cannot” base our lives on the experience of free will, if free will is ultimately illusory. The pragmatist, in contrast, says that our experience of free will cannot be transcended, and that is not necessarily useful to try (likewise, I cannot transcend the experience of thirsting when I lack water, no matter how much I try).

I’m with you – I think – in maintaining that, if the illusion is all we will ever directly experience, then it is the only reality we will ever directly experience, as well.

My one point of divergence is that I do not know whether free will is ultimately illusory, or not; all I know is that it may be illusory, and that its existence would be a great paradox (in the sense that my reasoning tells me that, though “I” cause my behavior, something must – in turn – be causing “I”). Free will would be the gift of the gods, myself as the Uncaused Cause of my behavior.

 

[Giants]

My one point of divergence is that I do not know whether free will is ultimately illusory, or not; all I know is that it may be illusory, and that its existence would be a great paradox (in the sense that my reasoning tells me that, though “I” cause my behavior, something must – in turn – be causing “I”). Free will would be the gift of the gods, myself as the Uncaused Cause of my behavior.

Well, you might agree that we can easily name a few instances in life where it seems like we don’t have free will. If you stick your hand in a pot of boiling water, do you have any real control over as to whether you immediately pull it or not? Certainly, you may be tempted to attribute your inevitable reaction to ‘instinct,’ but I don’t see how this isn’t still a question of free will. For that matter, do you have any choice as to whether you understand the sentence you’re reading right now? Could you choose not to understand that sentence, or this one? What if you read the word “Elephant” right now? Do you have any choice as to whether a picture of an elephant appears in your mind when you do?

It seems apparent to me that, at the very, very least, there are times in life when we don’t have the ability to choose what we choose. So given that, what are the implications for having “free will” in general? What is more likely, that we are gifted by the gods a ‘selective free will,’ applicable at certain times in life, but not others? OR, that even the moments in life where we appear to demonstrate real free will are simply illusory?