Do we think we have a choice but its just an illusion?

[I_am_learning]

Regardless of whether you believe that an omniscient God, living outside of time, exists, or whether you *don’t *believe this, if you believe that our lives unfold and are played out in a dimension that we call “time”, then you already believe in free will. We witness it, utilize it, are victims or beneficiaries of it everyday.

Very good insight! Thank you!

 

[Bradski]

Just riffing a little here. I don’t yet have a fixed position on this. However…

We are definitely restricted as to what we can choose. To use a trite example, I chose to have cereal this morning as opposed to eggs. I could not have chosen to have roast chicken because I don’t have any available.

You can extrapolate that quite simple argument to include the choices you make as the person you are. That is, if I were someone else, I would have made different choices in life. And I am who I am due to two things. My genetic make-up and my experiences. I can’t change who my parents were, so that’s fixed.

You could say that my experiences are the result of choices I made. But you could also say that the choices I make are the result of my experiences. Kinda chicken and egg scenario.

 

[fhansen]

Just riffing a little here. I don’t yet have a fixed position on this. However…

We are definitely restricted as to what we can choose. To use a trite example, I chose to have cereal this morning as opposed to eggs. I could not have chosen to have roast chicken because I don’t have any available.

You can extrapolate that quite simple argument to include the choices you make as the person you are. That is, if I were someone else, I would have made different choices in life. And I am who I am due to two things. My genetic make-up and my experiences. I can’t change who my parents were, so that’s fixed.

You could say that my experiences are the result of choices I made. But you could also say that the choices I make are the result of my experiences. Kinda chicken and egg scenario.

Both are true. Some things are chosen for us, and some we choose. Our legal systems hold people accountable for their actions simply because it’s acknowledged that people are moral agents, those with sound minds aren’t drawn, like some sort of automatons, to commit some wrong act or another. We can’t generally say that mama, daddy, God, or the devil made me do it.

 

[Bradski]

Both are true. Some things are chosen for us, and some we choose. Our legal systems hold people accountable for their actions simply because it’s acknowledged that people are moral agents, those with sound minds aren’t drawn, like some sort of automatons, to commit some wrong act or another. We can’t generally say that mama, daddy, God, or the devil made me do it.

Sam Harris makes the argument that a psychopath may not have the choice to do what he does. Just as a good person cannot make a choice to do evil, then a psychopath is in the same position as regards his choices.

If someone had a medical condition that made them want to choose to do evil then could we blame them for it? They wouldn’t have chosen to have that condition. Similarly, if a person has the mental state of a psychopath then he didn’t make an active choice to have that state. Yet that state of mind may well compel him to do evil. It could be looked on as a sickness.

We can’t punish people for choices they didn’t make. And being a psycopath is not a choice someone makes. Yes, you could say that acting on psychopathic tendencies is a choice, but I’m not sure. I could not make a free will choice to kill someone. It isn’t in my nature. And my nature wasn’t chosen by me. As I said, it’s a product of genes and circumstances. So can a psycopath make a free will choice NOT to kill? Where is the difference?

 

[Aloysium]

We experience our lives in the moment, at positions along the course of our lives, and not as one total happening over time.
Each moment exists with its fixed past, its now where things happen, and a future of possibilities.
This ontological structure reflects our having a spiritual nature enabling us to participate in our own creation through our actions under successive conditions through life.
We become who we are for all eternity in the present where once the choice is made, act and actor are set in stone.

This present is alive, the past is dead and the future unknown but imagined through our hopes and fears.

Being Life itself, God is the Source of our existence. As each moment is alive to our soul, all our moments are in His eternal present.
So He is right here, now, as He was at our conception, and as He will be at our death bed.
God being One and simple knows the totality of who we are from His seat outside of time.

As our eternal Father, He knows us totally, including the outcome of His efforts to guide us to Himself.

God has given us the capacity to love, to give of ourselves to what is other.
We can be doctors, lawyers, trades people, merchants, criminals, and so on in this world.
When we die, it is the end of that journey, and all that remains is our relationship with God, Love.
What is real behind the trappings of life is the degree to which we are loving persons.

This is where we are fully in control of our choices, where our will is completely free - to love or not.

 

[fhansen]

Sam Harris makes the argument that a psychopath may not have the choice to do what he does. Just as a good person cannot make a choice to do evil, then a psychopath is in the same position as regards his choices.

If someone had a medical condition that made them want to choose to do evil then could we blame them for it? They wouldn’t have chosen to have that condition. Similarly, if a person has the mental state of a psychopath then he didn’t make an active choice to have that state. Yet that state of mind may well compel him to do evil. It could be looked on as a sickness.

We can’t punish people for choices they didn’t make. And being a psycopath is not a choice someone makes. Yes, you could say that acting on psychopathic tendencies is a choice, but I’m not sure. I could not make a free will choice to kill someone. It isn’t in my nature. And my nature wasn’t chosen by me. As I said, it’s a product of genes and circumstances. So can a psycopath make a free will choice NOT to kill? Where is the difference?

I don’t know about psychopaths-and I certainly don’t believe that every killer is a psychopath. Either way, do you really think that every ISIS beheading is unavoidable-the person couldn’t have a change of heart, for example? Should we free every prisoner-they had absolutely no choice in the matter of their crimes? Are moral outrage/righteous indignation at some injustice always just affected, just shams or overactive emotions rather than issuing from genuine understanding -that the act didn’t have to happen? I think we know better already.

 

[Bradski]

I don’t know about psychopaths-and I certainly don’t believe that every killer is a psychopath. Either way, do you really think that every ISIS beheading is unavoidable-the person couldn’t have a change of heart, for example? Should we free every prisoner-they had absolutely no choice in the matter of their crimes? Are moral outrage/righteous indignation at some injustice always just affected, just shams or overactive emotions rather than issuing from genuine understanding -that the act didn’t have to happen? I think we know better already.

But we do make allowances already for ‘mitigating circumstances’. That circumstances dictate, to a certain extent, the punishment that is given for a crime. That circumstances are, in other words, partly responsible.

In Fance, a crime passionelle is still a valid defence for murder. The defence is effectively saying: He had no free will.

How far we can extrapolate this is the bone of contention.

 

[fhansen]

But we do make allowances already for ‘mitigating circumstances’. That circumstances dictate, to a certain extent, the punishment that is given for a crime. That circumstances are, in other words, partly responsible.

In Fance, a crime passionelle is still a valid defence for murder. The defence is effectively saying: He had no free will.

How far we can extrapolate this is the bone of contention.

Ok, but that only says that some may be less free, and less culpable, due to circumstances. The point is that we still have free will; we’re often sufficiently free to make us responsible to the fullest extent.

 

[Aloysium]

But we do make allowances already for ‘mitigating circumstances’. That circumstances dictate, to a certain extent, the punishment that is given for a crime. That circumstances are, in other words, partly responsible.

In Fance, a crime passionelle is still a valid defence for murder. The defence is effectively saying: He had no free will.

How far we can extrapolate this is the bone of contention.

This is all accounted for in the Catholic understanding of sin.
In the end it is God, knowing more than we ourselves about our circumstances and what is in our hearts, merciful and compassionate, who in Christ died that we might all be saved, He is our judge.

 

[Bradski]

Ok, but that only says that some may be less free, and less culpable, due to circumstances. The point is that we still have free will; we’re often sufficiently free to make us responsible to the fullest extent.

What I’m suggesting is that the obvious examples of circumstances ruling our decisions are just that: obvious. But it could be that we are simply not aware of the myriad of subtle circumstances that may well act on us in just the same way.

Maybe we can only see them in retrospect. And maybe we discount then them because individually they seem inconsequential.

And as I said, I’m not promoting these ideas as a being correct. I’m just tossing a few ideas around.

 

[ericc]

Hi Ericc!,

It seems to me that, in general, it would not be necessary to demonstrate that the act of knowing something causes it. Obviously, our human knowledge (less we are kantian) causes nothing. It is just a re-presentation of objects. However, whenever we are able to predict the evolution of a process, we don’t say it is a free process, but a deterministic one. So, if one of us were able to predict in detail the behavior of a given individual, we would tend to think that “he is entirely subject to physical laws”. So, no causal relationship would be implied nor required to conclude that he is not free.

Now, we know something that is already existent. In other words, first the thing exists and then we might know it, that is to say, we might have a re-presentation of it. This includes our prediction of the evolution of deterministic processes, because what we are doing in a prediction is to re-present a regularity that pre-exists in front of us. On the other hand, nothing of this is applicable to God’s knowledge, whatever it means. God’s knowledge cannot be a re-presentation of objects, because God is our Creator. But then, some people pretend to have such a penetrating intellect that they feel authorized to affirm that the propositions “God knows this object” and “God creates this object” are equivalent. But in fact, our intellectual faculties do not have such a penetrating power. We simply don’t know what “God knows” mean, and this is not a way to avoid attributing responsibilities to our Lord (I cannot imagine what could it mean either: “Our Lord has partial responsibility on this!”. Such “thought” seems so childish to me that…). Whoever feels that he has enough intellectual power to deduce infallible consequences about God’s nature on the basis of what his poor senses present to him, should spend just a little time on mathematics: with such incredible capacities to elaborate divine truths starting from clay, surely he would discover all what we are still missing.

If we are not free, or not free enough, it is not because God “knows” us, but because we don’t know Him enough.

Since it is obvious that we don’t know what God knows, we can safely leave Him out of our dilemma, (unless he tells us beforehand and that is where prophets come in.) From our observations, we can deduced that God usually doesn’t interfere with the daily operations of the world i.e. laws of nature. The decisions that you made are yours so to speak and not decided by a puppeteer. And from theologians, we understand that God intend for us to freely choose our actions. He doesn’t compel us to act against our will, even though he may know ahead of time. We can’t “blame” him for knowing because that is his nature to transcend time. So we can safely conclude that he won’t be compelling us to make decisions and that our free will will be intact and that our choices have consequences which we can not offload the blame to someone else and that he is not pulling strings although he may be rooting for a particular behaviour from us.

Arguing that God knows everything and determines everything and therefore I don’t have to do anything or I can’t help it because you made me that way is the worse possible reasoning one can use. One doesn’t pass an exam that way, or gain knowledge and work for a living using that reasoning. An atheist boss won’t hire you for sure. Who would? I behave that way because I am determined by my genes or someone determined my destiny? God would put up both hands and say “Don’t look at me!”. He has given us the SOP and it is up to us to follow them or not. If he already predetermined everything, then tasking his apostles to spread the word is a meaningless exercise. We can therefore deduced that the actions of the apostles can have an effect on the hearers and the actions of the hearers can have an impact on their lives/souls.

 

[JuanFlorencio]

I see your point, I don’t exactly have anything new to share, if you simply mean our discussion, I guess I can send a few things.
By Trent I mean Trent Horn, he will be a guest on Friday for Catholic Answers Live, the topic will be “why arent you a Christian?” I’m assuming you did not know this site had a radio station, check out their podcasts of previous shows if you click radio on a tab above. They also have a youtube, Catholic Answers Live.
I think it would be great for him to call in to discuss his concerns on Friday.

Yes! I meant Trent Horn too, and yes again, I meant your discussion, which is not a simple one. If you think Trent knows what “God knows” mean, what is “Free will” and the logical demonstration that there is no incompatibility between the two notions, you should ask him yourself (I don’t think I will have the chance to attend the event). I would value the demonstration as a real treasure. It is true that it wouldn’t change anything in my life, because it doesn’t depend on demonstrations, but I would keep it as a jewel of logic. I can’t wait for the moment you will bring the argument!

Perhaps I am a simple man in this matters. When I was instructed in the Christian doctrine during my childhood, I never requested demonstrations nor miracles; and I have never done that afterwards. It was my Grandfather who taught me first. He was a wonderful man; respectful, caring, judicious… Through his good example I learnt to appreciate the Christian doctrine much more than I will appreciate your demonstrations.

Concerning people who don’t share our Christian beliefs, I tend to think they have not been as fortunate as I have been. And when some of them adopt adversarial postures against those beliefs (I always wonder what is it that bothers them), I tend to ask them questions, because I want to know to the last foundation what they pretend to know so well. At first they pretend to accept only what is accessible to their senses, what can be measured, and what can be demonstrated. They say they reject what is called “arguments of authority”, and faith. However, I have found that they don’t go too deeply into their first premises. They are not as purely rationalistic or as scientific as they pretended to be. It is disappointing because they start talking big words at the beginning and they end with non-rational responses.

I agree with St. Thomas Aquinas when he says that we should not offer weak arguments to others, because they will think we base our faith on them. However, I have never been afraid to say that I was not educated in the Christian doctrine by angels, among the continuous splendor of great wonders; nor by great prophets and notorious theologians; but by my Grandfather, who in the simplicity of his life repeated to me what he was taught by his elders. And I do the same with my children.

I certainly have received since my early youth the indirect influence of great philosophers, but the truth is that the influence of my Grandfather plays the role of my main foundation.

No demonstrations at the base of my life, no miracles either, but my decision to acknowledge Jesus Christ as my Lord, just as my Grandfather did. I can tell Him: “where shall I go? You have words of eternal life, and I have decided to follow you”.

Do you think it is demonstrations what your friend the atheist needs? I think he needs your prayers.

 

[I_am_learning]

Oh surely, I do pray for all who struggle with this, and many other things.
However, it is always good to try to have a conversation, because although some may not go well, you may impact others.

 

[JuanFlorencio]

Oh surely, I do pray for all who struggle with this, and many other things.
However, it is always good to try to have a conversation, because although some may not go well, you may impact others.

God Bless you, I_am_learning!

 

[I_am_learning]

God bless you too!

I decided to make another thread just for general discussion, specifically about the conversation i’m having with that person. Check this section soon!

 

[Vico]

"If anything in the universe is omniscient then free will is impossible. If something knows whether or not we are going to follow god then we dont really have the choice to follow god because that choice was predetermined to happen. We might think we have free will, but we dont. We are talking about the same definition, but if the choice youre about to “make” was already guarenteed to happen because of fate/destiny then you dont really have that choice, it only seems like you do."

Hello all! The above is what an atheist sent me, because we have been discussing God and his concerns about God. Specifically free will, at least recently.
Anyway, yes, as you can see he talks about predestination, the concept we do not believe, although I have explained that. I told him that its not the same since God does not decide for us or force us, He only knows what will happen, which is not causing. But I can see why he still has concerns for it all as a whole. He thinks Gods omniscience contradicts free will, saying that our choices are not really ours, its just an illusion, we just think we do have those choices.

Not sure if this specific conversation will be a dead end, but i’m at least trying to explain our beliefs about God. Any advice on where to take this conversation?

Note: he thinks a lot of analogies are strawmans, so careful with the ones you use.

Thank you!

That is not the only possibility with omniscient being. Knowledge does not make guarantee that actions be determined, they may be destined instead. Have you studied the Theory-B of time? The eternal is in another order than time so knowledge does not imply a time series of events.

 

[Aloysium]

God brings me into existence.
As the Source of my being, He makes it possible for me to type on my phone.
All the intricacies of how I am capable of doing this are too complex to comprehend.
I am tired and I am wondering if it is worth continuing or whether I should stop writing.
I continue because It is important to share with one another the relationship we have with God.
God can be said to have foreseen that I would do so when He was with me in the past.
He “foresaw” because, as He was with me then, He is with me now - He is outside time creating time.
It is always fresh and new, here and now, when He brings me into existence in each moment.
Here I am because He creates me. He is One, always with me wherever and whenever I am.
I am always free to do what I will because He has created me so.
No predestination.
I think this isn’t as clear as I would like but I don’t want to do any editing because I have determined that I am too tired to do a good job.
Again, it is my assessment, my motivations, and my choice which determine who I will be through my actions.
This is clearly known by God, bringing me into existence, with me as I type, with me at my conception and with me on my death bed.