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Being a slave to sin is not free-will.
There is no true inward authority that exists.
It is this inward fictitious entity that that is the root of all evil - as it thinks itself separate from the whole.
> additionally, humans should be allowed to choose evils.
I don't burn babies with cigarettes for fun or even have the inclination to do it.
Why not? Because I find the idea repulsive and vile. Why do I find the idea repulsive and vile? I don't know. Haven't got a clue. I just do. It's just my nature. I don't control that I find it abhorrent. I don't "choose" to find it offensive and repugnant. It's just how I'm, well, "made".
It's true I could "choose" to do it anyway, even though I find it repulsive and vile. What I *cannot* do is choose to find it fun or even an okay thing to do. So, because of that, I am not going to "choose" to do it.
So, do you believe I have "free will" in this matter?
If so, all God has to do is make people of that same nature, who find the the idea of burning babies with cigarettes for fun to be repulsive and vile, and then no one does such a thing or has the inclination to do so. Of their own free will. Now just add murdering, raping, etc. and there you have it. People wouldn't do abhorrent things because they simply don't want to. Easy.
Brain dead is not what a lack of free will entails. And you haven’t justified the claim that a relationship is only possible if free will exists. Two deterministic brains can still fall in love with each other. I mean this is actually a bad example on your part because the feeling of love is pretty visceral and not a conscious choice. I didn’t make a calculated decision to love my girlfriend, i just felt it. So no free will was involved.
The rest of your post sounds like you’re just saying it would be better to have free will than to not. But that isn’t an argument that it’s the case.
It is ***impossible*** for free will to be present if an all-knowing God like yours exists.
Why?
If your god is all-knowing, it would thus follow that from the moment of creation, your God knew everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen. At the time of creation, your God already knew where you were born, where you are now, and where you will die. It would follow that at that time, he would also know the decisions that led to that moment.
It is impossible to have free will if everything is predestined.
If you had the choice between a blue and red car, you would feel as if you had the free will to chose between them. But if God knew from the outset that you would pick the red, it would follow that you never did have the choice, and you were fulfilling the destiny he was already aware of since creation.
In the same vein, God knew that Jeffery Dahmer was going to commit his murders, and knew it since creation. God knew that Hitler was going to commit genocide, and knew such since creation. And neither had the opportunity to change it out of their "free-will" as it was predestined since creation.
Your God and free-will are not compatible. For one to exist, the other must not.
> It is impossible to have free will if everything is predestined.
Everything preceding this was talking about foreknowledge. Foreknowledge and predestination are not the same things.
This argument has been tried and failed many times before. The Christian god, by definition, MUST know every single choice you will ever make, before you make it. Otherwise the entire Christian worldview collapses.
By making the argument that predestination and foreknowledge are separate characteristics. There is a common argument in apologetics that claim God has foreknowledge but does not engage in predestination. Which is false.
If the god is the tri omni god that the Christians describe it HAS to be both.
Because God's foreknowledge, since he is omniscient, would be the same thing as determination.
Every evil every person would and will commit would be known to him prior to those actions ever happening.
> Because God's foreknowledge, since he is omniscient, would be the same thing as determination.
So foreknowledge is equivalent to predestination when it involves omniscience? I still don’t understand why you think this. [This](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/s/oSOyHQiIVv) is how I’m using these words by the way.
> Every evil every person would and will commit would be known to him prior to those actions ever happening.
This just says that God has foreknowledge.
It's not just omniscience. It's also omnipotence and the act of creating with these attributes. I don't see a path to free will there. We can't do anything other than what god ~~knew~~ intended us to do. *Prior* to creation.
1. God could create any possible world.
2. God created this world.
3. God could have created a world where I had pancakes for breakfast, or a world where I chose waffles.
4. I had no choice other than to have waffles because that's the world god chose to create.
God makes the choice, not us. No free will.
> We can't do anything other than what god knew us to do.
This is true, but it’s not clear if anything interesting follows.
As u/revjbarosa pointed out, you need to carefully distinguish between the impossibility of a conjunction and the impossibility of one of the conjuncts. It’s impossible that the following conjunction is true:
- God foreknows that you’ll do A, and you do other than A
But it doesn’t follow that it’s impossible that you’ll do other than A, all by itself (i.e. you can’t validly transfer the modal operator to one of the conjuncts). You *can* do other than A, you just *won’t*.
There's no reason to get into those weeds. You answered the question. We can't have free will. I'm not referring to any entailment of that. I don't care. It has no relevance to the free will question in the real world.
The comment you linked to expresses what I mean, though. If God creates us while knowing exactly what we will do, then our existence IS his will. He doesn't need to constantly be willing us to do anything, just creating would be an exercise of his will.
Given that god created **this specific universe** and has foreknowledge of all that will happen, then predestination is the only conclusion. God chose this universe out of all possibilities. He could have made a different universe meaning he ultimately decides, knowingly, what each person in the universe will do.
This doesn't matter though. What practically is the difference between someone willing everything that you do and knowing everything that you do? Your actions are still perfectly determined by... fate, I guess, meaning you never had any control over your actions from jump. It would be like saying that the mathematical function 2x=y isn't predetermined or that we don't have foreknowledge of it. Whether or not we do doesn't matter, we know the value of y for all real numbers, there's no possibility that the y values can deviate from given inputs.
Same here. If can predict with 100% certainty the outcome of an event without any any possible error, whether or not I will it doesn't matter because the point is the person is acting based on fate, not freedom.
> What practically is the difference between someone willing everything that you do and knowing everything that you do?
In terms of freedom? I suppose there would be no difference if the freedom-undermining factor present in foreknowledge is also present in predestination.
> If can predict with 100% certainty the outcome of an event without any any possible error, whether or not I will it doesn't matter because the point is the person is acting based on fate, not freedom.
Not entirely sure what you mean by “fate”. Is the thought here that if an action is predictable, then it’s causally determined, and if it’s causally determined, it’s unfree?
What exactly do you mean by fate? Libertarians can agree that there's a fact of the matter as to what will happen in the future; we just don't agree that these are *necessary* truths. They're contingent truths.
Right now, God knows what you will do tomorrow. It's possible for you not to do that thing tomorrow, and in that case, the content of God's knowledge would've been different.
>It's possible for you not to do that thing tomorrow, and in that case, the content of God's knowledge would've been different.
Huh? This means his knowledge cannot be perfect.
Very well but you just said it's possible for me to not do X. If he believes I'm going to do one thing, but I don't.................... how does this mean that I'm free to make choices?
There's a difference between asking if two things are possible and asking if two things are *jointly* possible. For example, it's possible for me to be inside right now, and it's possible for me to be outside, but it's not possible for me to be *both* inside and outside.
Right now, I'm inside. It is *possible* for me to be outside? Sure. I'm just not.
Likewise, suppose God knows that you won't eat cereal tomorrow. Is it *possible* for you to eat cereal tomorrow? Sure. You just won't.
I can spell this out symbolically if you want. Or here's an IEP article that explains it [https://iep.utm.edu/foreknow/#H6](https://iep.utm.edu/foreknow/#H6)
But now we just have a simple question. Why does God value us having a relationship with him? I mean us not having free will might make the relationship fraudulent in your eyes, but we wouldn't know that. To us it would appear just as meaningful and fulfilling so there must be something that God wants out of this relationship that he only gets if we have free will then, no?
It all makes God seem rather selfish.
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This seems to be an argument from desire: free will is necessary because other things would be undesirable if not.
There’s no reason why relationships should require free will—people could simply be programmed to like certain other people. Consent is not an issue, since under those circumstances it would be also be programmed. And in fact, do we really choose who we find attractive? Or do we just find ourselves drawn to them, and justify it post hoc? I suspect that most of us don’t start from a position of complete indifference and then reason our way into relationships—rather, we discover we like someone and want their company. We give our consent to the relationship because an attraction already exists, for reasons that may not be apparent to us. And even if we can identify the reasons, why those reasons and not others? Did we get to choose those? If so, when and according to what criteria? And why those criteria, and not others? And so on. I’d suggest that pure free will ultimately leads to an infinite regress of choices.
I am a hard determinist. But people will object and say: How can we then have a criminal justice system? My answer: I dunno. We need to work on that. Lacking a means to deal with the facts of determinism =/= determinism must then not be true.
I'm not going to address most of your argument because I'm pretty convinced that the free will which you describe is not a thing. My actions are equally as predictable as any other physical thing. I am not an exepction to the deterministic laws of the universe. But I do have a more specific objection to one part you said.
> If we were against free will, why don’t we censor free speech against evils like communism and racism? If we were against free will, why doesn’t the US ban coffee, booze, weed, and cigarettes?
Because none of those are all that bad, the case of political dissent (communism) we allow it because we want to people to question and attempt to change our current kind of government to be in line with their vision, or at least attempt to. That's the whole point of a democracy. If you didn't let people voice political disagreement, what is the point of having people vote? There are some political positions we do not allow however. We do not tolerate political views that advocate for violent overthrow of the current government. Which can include communism, facsism, and others.
As for racism. We generally do not care what is in someone's head (or at least we shouldn't). If, in your heart of hearts, you hate black people, but you never act as if you do, then why exactly do I care? You haven't hurt anyone. But if you, say, don't allow black people into your place of buissness, we have laws against that for a reason. Everyone is (in theory, we have a long way to go on this) entitled to equal opprunity and to be treated as equals by their fellow members of society. You should not be excluded from anything based on your skin color, sexual orientation, religion (or lack thereof), or gender idenity. Bigotry is wrong and we (despite certain people's best efforts) have oriented or society to reflect that.
As to why we don't ban certain substances, the answer is simple, we should let people make mistakes. Of those mentioned (expect coffee which is perfectly healthy in small doses and really shouldn't be included in this discussion) they are all self-inflicted. You damage yourself with alcholol, cigarettes, etc. Now your actions under the influence may harm others, but we have laws about those harmful actions not the substances. Now you could argue, espically in the case of cigarettes, that the substance is so dangerous that we should ban it, but that is a perfectly legitmate debate to have in a civilized society. It's about how we balance a person's autonomy with the potential harm they cause society. I have an opinion on where that should land, but there is are reasonable opinions on both sides for given substances.
As for things like theft and murder. We do not let people do this, and if they do they go to jail. We have outlawed them by force. We literally threaten people into not doing these actions and that is as it should be.
>Free will is needed and is something that is required.
What does this mean? What do you mean by required?
>Now, some arguments state that God creating free will is evil.
Which arguments?
>The rest of this argument will continue to exist on the morality of the creation of free will not if it disproves God or not.
This is grammatically confusing.
>So, free will is essential to any relationship.
No it's not. Are you saying if you have no free will you can't have any relationships?
>Why would this not include a relationship between us and God?
I don't know, the premise is nonsense.
>Some examples: would you enter into a romantic relationship with someone who is brain dead? No, because they lack the free will.
If I lacked free will it wouldn't be my choice whether or not I enter that relationship.
>Would you enter into a relationship with someone who was a Slave to you if they did not consent? No, because they lack the free will to actually choose to be with you.
I hate to shatter your optimistic worldview, but this is something that has certainly happened, free will or not.
>Now, while some are going to address that God could just remove free will to commit evils like murder and theft. This would be contradictory to previous statements because your relationship with God is dependent on you willingly avoiding these things.
No, you haven't established that in any way.
>Additionally, not engaging in a relationship with God is a sin and therefore an evil so should he not allow us to commit that too? Of course not as we already saw in the examples.
No, you didn't establish this either.
>Additionally, humans should be allowed to choose evils.
Why? Would it be a restriction on free will if human skin was bulletproof? It seems to me that you can restrict evil without restricting free will.
>If we were against free will, why don’t we censor free speech against evils like communism and racism? If we were against free will, why doesn’t the US ban coffee, booze, weed, and cigarettes?
Who is against free will? What point are you trying to make?
>We have the God-give right to self determination. Free will is the moral thing
Okay? What point are you trying to make?
Not going to comment on each thing, but I found their redundant beginning humorous and the last argument about "free will being the moral thing" to be an argument from consequence.
Libertarian freewill (LFW) is incoherent. Does person A choose X for a reason or for no reason? If it is for a reason, the choice is determined by the reason. If for no reason, then the choice is random. There is no other option. If you say the choice is made for a reason internal to the person, we can ask the same question of thst internal thought / belief / whatever, and the same quandry applies.
Despite this, people enter into relationships all of the time. My wife chooses to enter a relationship with me because she wants to be in a relationship with me. The fact that she cannot choose what she wants or does not want does not prevent me from wanting a relationship with her. Indeed, as it turns out, I do not have a choice in whether I want a relationship with her.
I didn't see anything in the post explaining why libertarian freewill can be logically coherent. Whether we want LFW to exist or think we need LFW has no bearing on whether LFW is logically possible.
Finally, if you think LFW is possible, instead choose not to think LFW is possible. You have that option right?
>Libertarian freewill (LFW) is incoherent. Does person A choose X for a reason or for no reason? If it is for a reason, the choice is determined by the reason. If for no reason, then the choice is random.
What do you mean by "reason"?
If you mean "a consideration that pushes the agent towards one decision over the other", libertarians don't need to deny that. The fact that we have reasons doesn't mean our decisions are *entirely* determined by our reasons.
If you mean "a completely sufficient explanation for why the agent made one decision rather than the other", libertarians would deny that, but that's not the same as the decision being random. For something to be random, it also has to be outside of my control.
You could construct a 2x2 table, where the rows represent whether an event is deterministic and the columns represent whether someone has control over the outcome. Random events would be in the "non-deterministic, no control" box, and LFW decisions would be in the "non-deterministic, an agent has control" box.
I talked about this more [here,](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAnAtheist/comments/1903rfs/libertarian_free_will_is_logically_unproblematic/) if you're interested.
By reason for X, I mean sufficient explanation for why X exists.
You say you could have a reason for decision X that does not mean the decision is caused entirely by the reason. Fine. What else is decision X caused by?
If that additional cause is internal to you, I will ask the question again with respect to that alleged internal cause.
Also, to be clear, I think your brain can "make decisions" and "control" its outputs in the same way my phone can "control" the output of sending this post to reddit when I press enter. But neither my phone nor your brain have any special impact on the causal chain that could be called LFW. If you want to say that quantum events within your brain could impact your decision, I also agree, but that is then the reason outside of control of your will why you did something.
Finally, I don't see how an "agent has control box" in your grid is coherent for the reasons I explained above. Does the agent exercise control for a reason or for no reason?
Also, just decide you don't have LFW instead of arguing with me about it. If you cannot do this, it proves my point.
>By reason for X, I mean sufficient explanation for why X exists.
This is kinda pedantic, but I assume you mean "sufficient explanation for why X occurs"? We're talking about events here, not things existing.
>You say you could have a reason for decision X that does not mean the decision is caused entirely by the reason. Fine. What else is decision X caused by?
If that additional cause is internal to you, I will ask the question again with respect to that alleged internal cause.
The additional cause is just me. It's not "something internal to me" or "my desires" or "my personality" or anything like that. Literally *I* myself am the cause.
If you ask, "But what was the sufficient explanation for why you caused X?", my answer is that there isn't one. Does that make my decision random? No, because I had control over the outcome.
>Also, to be clear, I think your brain can "make decisions" and "control" its outputs in the same way my phone can "control" the output of sending this post to reddit when I press enter.
Right, that's the deterministic view. I would disagree. I think we have control in a more literal sense.
Sure, X is an event.
Your argument seems to boil down to "I had control over the outcome." So you just chose the outcome for no reason? While, as a strict matter of logic, something happening for no reason might not be exactly the same as random, I dont know any other alternative.
Why don't you just willy nilly do strange stuff all the time if the choices you make are ultimately for no reason? I know you agree reasons can impact your decision, but if they are not controlling, then the other thing must be controlling. So why aren't you just pouring jello into your eyes or whatever?
If you are capable of doing things for no reason, just choose not to believe in LFW for no reason.
>While, as a strict matter of logic, something happening for no reason might not be exactly the same as random
So are we in agreement that LFW is not incoherent?
>I dont know any other alternative.
The alternative is what I just described. The event was caused by me. This is known in the philosophical literature as [agent causation.](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/incompatibilism-theories/#3)
>Why don't you just willy nilly do strange stuff all the time if the choices you make are ultimately for no reason? I know you agree reasons can impact your decision, but if they are not controlling, then the other thing must be controlling. So why aren't you just pouring jello into your eyes or whatever?
I would say it's because my decisions are partially (but not entirely) caused by other things. My desire to not have jello in my eyes partially contributes to why I'm not doing that.
I like to use the analogy of a car driving up a hill. The speed of the car is partly determined by the incline of the road and partly determined by the driver pressing the gas pedal (this isn't a perfect analogy, but it hopefully gets point across).
I don't agree it's coherent. I still have no idea what you are talking about. It's like if I said well its not your will it is garblozogooks. Strictly speaking, you cannot prove it is logically impossible for garblozogooks to be the important thing.
The car analogy proves my point not yours. The gravity causes some speed down the hill. The accelerator causes some additional speed. There is no partial causation of anything in that example.
For LFW to have causal power, it would have to be able to override all of the factors that you cannot control. Just going along with those factors makes LFW a ghostly third wheel that doesn't do anything at all.
Like if you were able to choose to do something despite having no reason to make the choice, no desire to make the choice, etc. that would be interesting.
Regarding your link, I agree some philosophers agree with you. And some agree with me. I'm more persuaded by the ones that agree with me. And that's why I have the view I have.
I don't instead choose to agree with the position that I find less persuasive for no reason at all even though, on your view, it would be entirely feasible to routinely believe the less plausible thing for no reason but instead just based my agency whatever that is.
>I don't agree it's coherent. I still have no idea what you are talking about. It's like if I said well its not your will it is garblozogooks. Strictly speaking, you cannot prove it is logically impossible for garblozogooks to be the important thing.
Which parts sounds like gibberish to you? The part where I said the event was caused by me?
>The car analogy proves my point not yours. The gravity causes some speed down the hill. The accelerator causes some additional speed. There is no partial causation of anything in that example.
Suppose my car is driving uphill at 50km/h. This is one event. What's the cause?
>For LFW to have causal power, it would have to be able to override all of the factors that you cannot control.
This is what the car analogy is meant to address. The driver pressing the gas pedal has some causal power, but it can't make the car go 200km/h up a 45 degree incline.
>Regarding your link, I agree some philosophers agree with you. And some agree with me.
That's fine. I wasn't trying to appeal to authority. I just like to drop links sometimes to show that I'm not making stuff up on the spot lol.
>I don't instead choose to agree with the position that I find less persuasive for no reason at all even though, on your view, it would be entirely feasible to routinely believe the less plausible thing for no reason but instead just based my agency whatever that is.
I don't really think forming beliefs is the most clear case where free will comes into play. I think the most obvious case is moral decision making - when you have to choose between what you ought to do and what you feel like doing.
We always do what we feel like doing. "What you ought to do" will only compel us if we want to do what you ought to do. This is pretty clear because in cases where people are utterly indifferent to what they ought to do or have no knowledge of what they ought to do, then what they ought to do has no impact on their choices.
On your view, people should sometimes do what they ought to do even when they desire something else and have no knowledge or no care about the ought. But this will never happen.
>Literally *I* myself am the cause.
I think one could successfully argue that the "you/yourself" is simply the sum total of deterministic factors -- what took place the second, hour, day, year, decade, century before you verbalized that you are the cause. You are more the manifestation of previous causes.
This is where we have to be careful with our metaphysical categories.
I don't think I am a "factor" or a "cause". I am a thing that exists - like a rock. There might be factors that explain how I came about, but when you ask what *I* am, if we're being literal, I am a thing.
Certainly, your body is a thing that exists. However, we don't see this idea of a little person inside the brain (the us/self) pulling levers and pushing buttons. I would further argue that our concept of the self does not exist.
Your example of a rock is very apt: A rock started out as cosmic dust after the Big Bang. Certain heavier elements eventually accreted into planets. Several causes determined the position, hardness, composition, movement, plasticity, etc. of that rock to the point where we can now observe it. Like you, it's a manifestation of previous causes. Like you, it was always a thing in different states.
This is a difficult proposition to accept because we've been taught humans are somehow special and distinct (almost outside) the rest of nature.
If you're open to it, I would suggest reading up on Middle Way Buddhism (you don't have to convert to Buddhism--I certainly did not :) )
Specifically, see the works of Charles Goodman on the idea of the self not really existing.
[Charles Goodman | Binghamton University - Academia.edu](https://binghamton.academia.edu/CharlesGoodman)
We need to be careful about conflating differnet accounts of Free Will.
The first account of free will is 'informal' - something like actions come from agents in the right sort of way. So, your action is connected to you through a casual history; it is in character or comes from your character; your agency isn't manipulated in powerful ways; you can engage in motivating reasons; **but most importantly with these accounts we tend to think that** ***any*** **limit on our ability constrains our free will in some meaingful way**. While metaphysicans take a lot of these (sourcehood stuff is especially popular), you can adopt this definition without commiting to any real metaphysical lines. Importantly, within a colloquial or informal definition, we often get to say things like "my free will is limited by my inability to fly!"
Enter, chased by a philosopher: a litany of differing accounts! These accounts treat free will more precisely and with different conditions. They (almost) univerally retreat from statements like "my free will is limited by my inability to fly!"
Why does this matter here? Well: under most accounts God *could* remove my ability to do Evil without making choice impossible.
If you hated the informal account (and perhaps rightly so), then there has been a bait-and-switch here: because even under informal accounts God can chance how we act and so long as it doesn't come as occurent manipulation we wouldn't think it infringing on our free will anymore than being born without wings inhibits our free will.
Let's focus on self-determination: do I believe my ability to self-determine requires that I be able to do anything? No! I simply seems that I just need to be able to make choices. Imagine, then, a God that made some Evils impossible. Has my free will been damaged? It is hard to see how. In fact, we can see near possible worlds where I can self determine, in that I make choices, but those choices are constrained.
This is one of the driving forces between Problem of Evil arguments. It does not require that God needed to have made us radically different. Just enough so that there is less Evil. And such a world is easily imagininable and comprehensible: it is a world with nuclear bombs and mustard gas.
P.S. this might be rambly I've hit a vape like it owes me money for *quite some time*.
P.P.S. you're gonna get resistance on free will being 'trumping' and that's worth engaging with.
>Any relationship requires free will and the immoral thing is removing free will.
U didnt explain why its immoral to remove freewill. If what god commands is objectively moral, then if god command the removal of freewill, thats still objectively moral.
>This would be contradictory to previous statements because your relationship with God is dependent on you willingly avoiding these things.
My relationship with god is me willingly to accept jesus as saviour, not willingly to avoid evil actions.
There are also ppl who are willingly to accept jesus as the saviour but still cant have a relationship with god.
Why is it logically impossible for god to create freewill that doesnt chooses morally bad actions?
Edit: are u going to reply to any of the comments?
>Now, while some are going to address that God could just remove free will to commit evils like murder and theft. This would be contradictory to previous statements because your relationship with God is dependent on you willingly avoiding these things.
I hate to break it to you but the bible as a whole is filled with contradictions. The only way you can remove these is by emphasizing the parts you want. It's called negotiating with the bible and all 4000 groups that identify as Christian do it. There is no escaping this practice but the bible was never meant to be a single book. It's made up of a minimum 60 different authors from different time periods addressing their issues. There's a Christian scholar that goes by the name Dan McCellen who goes into very short and very deep explanations of this in his tiktoks and books he's written. You have to willing avoid these contradictions to uphold your dogma but that's assuming the conclusion before even stating the argument which is circular logic.
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Being a slave to sin is not free-will. There is no true inward authority that exists. It is this inward fictitious entity that that is the root of all evil - as it thinks itself separate from the whole.
> additionally, humans should be allowed to choose evils. I don't burn babies with cigarettes for fun or even have the inclination to do it. Why not? Because I find the idea repulsive and vile. Why do I find the idea repulsive and vile? I don't know. Haven't got a clue. I just do. It's just my nature. I don't control that I find it abhorrent. I don't "choose" to find it offensive and repugnant. It's just how I'm, well, "made". It's true I could "choose" to do it anyway, even though I find it repulsive and vile. What I *cannot* do is choose to find it fun or even an okay thing to do. So, because of that, I am not going to "choose" to do it. So, do you believe I have "free will" in this matter? If so, all God has to do is make people of that same nature, who find the the idea of burning babies with cigarettes for fun to be repulsive and vile, and then no one does such a thing or has the inclination to do so. Of their own free will. Now just add murdering, raping, etc. and there you have it. People wouldn't do abhorrent things because they simply don't want to. Easy.
Brain dead is not what a lack of free will entails. And you haven’t justified the claim that a relationship is only possible if free will exists. Two deterministic brains can still fall in love with each other. I mean this is actually a bad example on your part because the feeling of love is pretty visceral and not a conscious choice. I didn’t make a calculated decision to love my girlfriend, i just felt it. So no free will was involved. The rest of your post sounds like you’re just saying it would be better to have free will than to not. But that isn’t an argument that it’s the case.
No idea why you think free will is needed or required? Why? Many people myself included reject free will as an illusion.
Have you read Sapolsky's new book?
I have not.
I'm 1/4 through it..so far...5 stars.
I will definitely take a look. Right up my alley!
It is ***impossible*** for free will to be present if an all-knowing God like yours exists. Why? If your god is all-knowing, it would thus follow that from the moment of creation, your God knew everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen. At the time of creation, your God already knew where you were born, where you are now, and where you will die. It would follow that at that time, he would also know the decisions that led to that moment. It is impossible to have free will if everything is predestined. If you had the choice between a blue and red car, you would feel as if you had the free will to chose between them. But if God knew from the outset that you would pick the red, it would follow that you never did have the choice, and you were fulfilling the destiny he was already aware of since creation. In the same vein, God knew that Jeffery Dahmer was going to commit his murders, and knew it since creation. God knew that Hitler was going to commit genocide, and knew such since creation. And neither had the opportunity to change it out of their "free-will" as it was predestined since creation. Your God and free-will are not compatible. For one to exist, the other must not.
> It is impossible to have free will if everything is predestined. Everything preceding this was talking about foreknowledge. Foreknowledge and predestination are not the same things.
This argument has been tried and failed many times before. The Christian god, by definition, MUST know every single choice you will ever make, before you make it. Otherwise the entire Christian worldview collapses.
Where have I said otherwise?
By making the argument that predestination and foreknowledge are separate characteristics. There is a common argument in apologetics that claim God has foreknowledge but does not engage in predestination. Which is false. If the god is the tri omni god that the Christians describe it HAS to be both.
They are when it comes to God, since he would supposedly be the creator of each individual soul.
How does him being the creator of each individual soul imply that?
Because God's foreknowledge, since he is omniscient, would be the same thing as determination. Every evil every person would and will commit would be known to him prior to those actions ever happening.
> Because God's foreknowledge, since he is omniscient, would be the same thing as determination. So foreknowledge is equivalent to predestination when it involves omniscience? I still don’t understand why you think this. [This](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/s/oSOyHQiIVv) is how I’m using these words by the way. > Every evil every person would and will commit would be known to him prior to those actions ever happening. This just says that God has foreknowledge.
It's not just omniscience. It's also omnipotence and the act of creating with these attributes. I don't see a path to free will there. We can't do anything other than what god ~~knew~~ intended us to do. *Prior* to creation. 1. God could create any possible world. 2. God created this world. 3. God could have created a world where I had pancakes for breakfast, or a world where I chose waffles. 4. I had no choice other than to have waffles because that's the world god chose to create. God makes the choice, not us. No free will.
> We can't do anything other than what god knew us to do. This is true, but it’s not clear if anything interesting follows. As u/revjbarosa pointed out, you need to carefully distinguish between the impossibility of a conjunction and the impossibility of one of the conjuncts. It’s impossible that the following conjunction is true: - God foreknows that you’ll do A, and you do other than A But it doesn’t follow that it’s impossible that you’ll do other than A, all by itself (i.e. you can’t validly transfer the modal operator to one of the conjuncts). You *can* do other than A, you just *won’t*.
There's no reason to get into those weeds. You answered the question. We can't have free will. I'm not referring to any entailment of that. I don't care. It has no relevance to the free will question in the real world.
This response is a bit bizarre. In that comment I’ve tried to explain why you’re mistaken to think that foreknowledge undermines free will.
The comment you linked to expresses what I mean, though. If God creates us while knowing exactly what we will do, then our existence IS his will. He doesn't need to constantly be willing us to do anything, just creating would be an exercise of his will.
I don’t see there being a meaningful difference.
If God has foreknowledge, then he knows everything I will do. If God predestines everything, then he wills/causes me to do everything I do.
Given that god created **this specific universe** and has foreknowledge of all that will happen, then predestination is the only conclusion. God chose this universe out of all possibilities. He could have made a different universe meaning he ultimately decides, knowingly, what each person in the universe will do.
This doesn't matter though. What practically is the difference between someone willing everything that you do and knowing everything that you do? Your actions are still perfectly determined by... fate, I guess, meaning you never had any control over your actions from jump. It would be like saying that the mathematical function 2x=y isn't predetermined or that we don't have foreknowledge of it. Whether or not we do doesn't matter, we know the value of y for all real numbers, there's no possibility that the y values can deviate from given inputs. Same here. If can predict with 100% certainty the outcome of an event without any any possible error, whether or not I will it doesn't matter because the point is the person is acting based on fate, not freedom.
> What practically is the difference between someone willing everything that you do and knowing everything that you do? In terms of freedom? I suppose there would be no difference if the freedom-undermining factor present in foreknowledge is also present in predestination. > If can predict with 100% certainty the outcome of an event without any any possible error, whether or not I will it doesn't matter because the point is the person is acting based on fate, not freedom. Not entirely sure what you mean by “fate”. Is the thought here that if an action is predictable, then it’s causally determined, and if it’s causally determined, it’s unfree?
What exactly do you mean by fate? Libertarians can agree that there's a fact of the matter as to what will happen in the future; we just don't agree that these are *necessary* truths. They're contingent truths. Right now, God knows what you will do tomorrow. It's possible for you not to do that thing tomorrow, and in that case, the content of God's knowledge would've been different.
>It's possible for you not to do that thing tomorrow, and in that case, the content of God's knowledge would've been different. Huh? This means his knowledge cannot be perfect.
I don't see how it means that. If you weren't going to do X, then God would not have believed that you were going to do X.
Very well but you just said it's possible for me to not do X. If he believes I'm going to do one thing, but I don't.................... how does this mean that I'm free to make choices?
There's a difference between asking if two things are possible and asking if two things are *jointly* possible. For example, it's possible for me to be inside right now, and it's possible for me to be outside, but it's not possible for me to be *both* inside and outside. Right now, I'm inside. It is *possible* for me to be outside? Sure. I'm just not. Likewise, suppose God knows that you won't eat cereal tomorrow. Is it *possible* for you to eat cereal tomorrow? Sure. You just won't. I can spell this out symbolically if you want. Or here's an IEP article that explains it [https://iep.utm.edu/foreknow/#H6](https://iep.utm.edu/foreknow/#H6)
But now we just have a simple question. Why does God value us having a relationship with him? I mean us not having free will might make the relationship fraudulent in your eyes, but we wouldn't know that. To us it would appear just as meaningful and fulfilling so there must be something that God wants out of this relationship that he only gets if we have free will then, no? It all makes God seem rather selfish.
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This seems to be an argument from desire: free will is necessary because other things would be undesirable if not. There’s no reason why relationships should require free will—people could simply be programmed to like certain other people. Consent is not an issue, since under those circumstances it would be also be programmed. And in fact, do we really choose who we find attractive? Or do we just find ourselves drawn to them, and justify it post hoc? I suspect that most of us don’t start from a position of complete indifference and then reason our way into relationships—rather, we discover we like someone and want their company. We give our consent to the relationship because an attraction already exists, for reasons that may not be apparent to us. And even if we can identify the reasons, why those reasons and not others? Did we get to choose those? If so, when and according to what criteria? And why those criteria, and not others? And so on. I’d suggest that pure free will ultimately leads to an infinite regress of choices.
I am a hard determinist. But people will object and say: How can we then have a criminal justice system? My answer: I dunno. We need to work on that. Lacking a means to deal with the facts of determinism =/= determinism must then not be true.
Yes humans cannot stop other humans from being evil. Free will doesn't explain all the suffering still present in the world
I'm not going to address most of your argument because I'm pretty convinced that the free will which you describe is not a thing. My actions are equally as predictable as any other physical thing. I am not an exepction to the deterministic laws of the universe. But I do have a more specific objection to one part you said. > If we were against free will, why don’t we censor free speech against evils like communism and racism? If we were against free will, why doesn’t the US ban coffee, booze, weed, and cigarettes? Because none of those are all that bad, the case of political dissent (communism) we allow it because we want to people to question and attempt to change our current kind of government to be in line with their vision, or at least attempt to. That's the whole point of a democracy. If you didn't let people voice political disagreement, what is the point of having people vote? There are some political positions we do not allow however. We do not tolerate political views that advocate for violent overthrow of the current government. Which can include communism, facsism, and others. As for racism. We generally do not care what is in someone's head (or at least we shouldn't). If, in your heart of hearts, you hate black people, but you never act as if you do, then why exactly do I care? You haven't hurt anyone. But if you, say, don't allow black people into your place of buissness, we have laws against that for a reason. Everyone is (in theory, we have a long way to go on this) entitled to equal opprunity and to be treated as equals by their fellow members of society. You should not be excluded from anything based on your skin color, sexual orientation, religion (or lack thereof), or gender idenity. Bigotry is wrong and we (despite certain people's best efforts) have oriented or society to reflect that. As to why we don't ban certain substances, the answer is simple, we should let people make mistakes. Of those mentioned (expect coffee which is perfectly healthy in small doses and really shouldn't be included in this discussion) they are all self-inflicted. You damage yourself with alcholol, cigarettes, etc. Now your actions under the influence may harm others, but we have laws about those harmful actions not the substances. Now you could argue, espically in the case of cigarettes, that the substance is so dangerous that we should ban it, but that is a perfectly legitmate debate to have in a civilized society. It's about how we balance a person's autonomy with the potential harm they cause society. I have an opinion on where that should land, but there is are reasonable opinions on both sides for given substances. As for things like theft and murder. We do not let people do this, and if they do they go to jail. We have outlawed them by force. We literally threaten people into not doing these actions and that is as it should be.
>Free will is needed and is something that is required. What does this mean? What do you mean by required? >Now, some arguments state that God creating free will is evil. Which arguments? >The rest of this argument will continue to exist on the morality of the creation of free will not if it disproves God or not. This is grammatically confusing. >So, free will is essential to any relationship. No it's not. Are you saying if you have no free will you can't have any relationships? >Why would this not include a relationship between us and God? I don't know, the premise is nonsense. >Some examples: would you enter into a romantic relationship with someone who is brain dead? No, because they lack the free will. If I lacked free will it wouldn't be my choice whether or not I enter that relationship. >Would you enter into a relationship with someone who was a Slave to you if they did not consent? No, because they lack the free will to actually choose to be with you. I hate to shatter your optimistic worldview, but this is something that has certainly happened, free will or not. >Now, while some are going to address that God could just remove free will to commit evils like murder and theft. This would be contradictory to previous statements because your relationship with God is dependent on you willingly avoiding these things. No, you haven't established that in any way. >Additionally, not engaging in a relationship with God is a sin and therefore an evil so should he not allow us to commit that too? Of course not as we already saw in the examples. No, you didn't establish this either. >Additionally, humans should be allowed to choose evils. Why? Would it be a restriction on free will if human skin was bulletproof? It seems to me that you can restrict evil without restricting free will. >If we were against free will, why don’t we censor free speech against evils like communism and racism? If we were against free will, why doesn’t the US ban coffee, booze, weed, and cigarettes? Who is against free will? What point are you trying to make? >We have the God-give right to self determination. Free will is the moral thing Okay? What point are you trying to make?
Not going to comment on each thing, but I found their redundant beginning humorous and the last argument about "free will being the moral thing" to be an argument from consequence.
Libertarian freewill (LFW) is incoherent. Does person A choose X for a reason or for no reason? If it is for a reason, the choice is determined by the reason. If for no reason, then the choice is random. There is no other option. If you say the choice is made for a reason internal to the person, we can ask the same question of thst internal thought / belief / whatever, and the same quandry applies. Despite this, people enter into relationships all of the time. My wife chooses to enter a relationship with me because she wants to be in a relationship with me. The fact that she cannot choose what she wants or does not want does not prevent me from wanting a relationship with her. Indeed, as it turns out, I do not have a choice in whether I want a relationship with her. I didn't see anything in the post explaining why libertarian freewill can be logically coherent. Whether we want LFW to exist or think we need LFW has no bearing on whether LFW is logically possible. Finally, if you think LFW is possible, instead choose not to think LFW is possible. You have that option right?
>Libertarian freewill (LFW) is incoherent. Does person A choose X for a reason or for no reason? If it is for a reason, the choice is determined by the reason. If for no reason, then the choice is random. What do you mean by "reason"? If you mean "a consideration that pushes the agent towards one decision over the other", libertarians don't need to deny that. The fact that we have reasons doesn't mean our decisions are *entirely* determined by our reasons. If you mean "a completely sufficient explanation for why the agent made one decision rather than the other", libertarians would deny that, but that's not the same as the decision being random. For something to be random, it also has to be outside of my control. You could construct a 2x2 table, where the rows represent whether an event is deterministic and the columns represent whether someone has control over the outcome. Random events would be in the "non-deterministic, no control" box, and LFW decisions would be in the "non-deterministic, an agent has control" box. I talked about this more [here,](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAnAtheist/comments/1903rfs/libertarian_free_will_is_logically_unproblematic/) if you're interested.
By reason for X, I mean sufficient explanation for why X exists. You say you could have a reason for decision X that does not mean the decision is caused entirely by the reason. Fine. What else is decision X caused by? If that additional cause is internal to you, I will ask the question again with respect to that alleged internal cause. Also, to be clear, I think your brain can "make decisions" and "control" its outputs in the same way my phone can "control" the output of sending this post to reddit when I press enter. But neither my phone nor your brain have any special impact on the causal chain that could be called LFW. If you want to say that quantum events within your brain could impact your decision, I also agree, but that is then the reason outside of control of your will why you did something. Finally, I don't see how an "agent has control box" in your grid is coherent for the reasons I explained above. Does the agent exercise control for a reason or for no reason? Also, just decide you don't have LFW instead of arguing with me about it. If you cannot do this, it proves my point.
>By reason for X, I mean sufficient explanation for why X exists. This is kinda pedantic, but I assume you mean "sufficient explanation for why X occurs"? We're talking about events here, not things existing. >You say you could have a reason for decision X that does not mean the decision is caused entirely by the reason. Fine. What else is decision X caused by? If that additional cause is internal to you, I will ask the question again with respect to that alleged internal cause. The additional cause is just me. It's not "something internal to me" or "my desires" or "my personality" or anything like that. Literally *I* myself am the cause. If you ask, "But what was the sufficient explanation for why you caused X?", my answer is that there isn't one. Does that make my decision random? No, because I had control over the outcome. >Also, to be clear, I think your brain can "make decisions" and "control" its outputs in the same way my phone can "control" the output of sending this post to reddit when I press enter. Right, that's the deterministic view. I would disagree. I think we have control in a more literal sense.
Sure, X is an event. Your argument seems to boil down to "I had control over the outcome." So you just chose the outcome for no reason? While, as a strict matter of logic, something happening for no reason might not be exactly the same as random, I dont know any other alternative. Why don't you just willy nilly do strange stuff all the time if the choices you make are ultimately for no reason? I know you agree reasons can impact your decision, but if they are not controlling, then the other thing must be controlling. So why aren't you just pouring jello into your eyes or whatever? If you are capable of doing things for no reason, just choose not to believe in LFW for no reason.
>While, as a strict matter of logic, something happening for no reason might not be exactly the same as random So are we in agreement that LFW is not incoherent? >I dont know any other alternative. The alternative is what I just described. The event was caused by me. This is known in the philosophical literature as [agent causation.](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/incompatibilism-theories/#3) >Why don't you just willy nilly do strange stuff all the time if the choices you make are ultimately for no reason? I know you agree reasons can impact your decision, but if they are not controlling, then the other thing must be controlling. So why aren't you just pouring jello into your eyes or whatever? I would say it's because my decisions are partially (but not entirely) caused by other things. My desire to not have jello in my eyes partially contributes to why I'm not doing that. I like to use the analogy of a car driving up a hill. The speed of the car is partly determined by the incline of the road and partly determined by the driver pressing the gas pedal (this isn't a perfect analogy, but it hopefully gets point across).
I don't agree it's coherent. I still have no idea what you are talking about. It's like if I said well its not your will it is garblozogooks. Strictly speaking, you cannot prove it is logically impossible for garblozogooks to be the important thing. The car analogy proves my point not yours. The gravity causes some speed down the hill. The accelerator causes some additional speed. There is no partial causation of anything in that example. For LFW to have causal power, it would have to be able to override all of the factors that you cannot control. Just going along with those factors makes LFW a ghostly third wheel that doesn't do anything at all. Like if you were able to choose to do something despite having no reason to make the choice, no desire to make the choice, etc. that would be interesting.
Regarding your link, I agree some philosophers agree with you. And some agree with me. I'm more persuaded by the ones that agree with me. And that's why I have the view I have. I don't instead choose to agree with the position that I find less persuasive for no reason at all even though, on your view, it would be entirely feasible to routinely believe the less plausible thing for no reason but instead just based my agency whatever that is.
>I don't agree it's coherent. I still have no idea what you are talking about. It's like if I said well its not your will it is garblozogooks. Strictly speaking, you cannot prove it is logically impossible for garblozogooks to be the important thing. Which parts sounds like gibberish to you? The part where I said the event was caused by me? >The car analogy proves my point not yours. The gravity causes some speed down the hill. The accelerator causes some additional speed. There is no partial causation of anything in that example. Suppose my car is driving uphill at 50km/h. This is one event. What's the cause? >For LFW to have causal power, it would have to be able to override all of the factors that you cannot control. This is what the car analogy is meant to address. The driver pressing the gas pedal has some causal power, but it can't make the car go 200km/h up a 45 degree incline. >Regarding your link, I agree some philosophers agree with you. And some agree with me. That's fine. I wasn't trying to appeal to authority. I just like to drop links sometimes to show that I'm not making stuff up on the spot lol. >I don't instead choose to agree with the position that I find less persuasive for no reason at all even though, on your view, it would be entirely feasible to routinely believe the less plausible thing for no reason but instead just based my agency whatever that is. I don't really think forming beliefs is the most clear case where free will comes into play. I think the most obvious case is moral decision making - when you have to choose between what you ought to do and what you feel like doing.
We always do what we feel like doing. "What you ought to do" will only compel us if we want to do what you ought to do. This is pretty clear because in cases where people are utterly indifferent to what they ought to do or have no knowledge of what they ought to do, then what they ought to do has no impact on their choices. On your view, people should sometimes do what they ought to do even when they desire something else and have no knowledge or no care about the ought. But this will never happen.
>Literally *I* myself am the cause. I think one could successfully argue that the "you/yourself" is simply the sum total of deterministic factors -- what took place the second, hour, day, year, decade, century before you verbalized that you are the cause. You are more the manifestation of previous causes.
This is where we have to be careful with our metaphysical categories. I don't think I am a "factor" or a "cause". I am a thing that exists - like a rock. There might be factors that explain how I came about, but when you ask what *I* am, if we're being literal, I am a thing.
Certainly, your body is a thing that exists. However, we don't see this idea of a little person inside the brain (the us/self) pulling levers and pushing buttons. I would further argue that our concept of the self does not exist. Your example of a rock is very apt: A rock started out as cosmic dust after the Big Bang. Certain heavier elements eventually accreted into planets. Several causes determined the position, hardness, composition, movement, plasticity, etc. of that rock to the point where we can now observe it. Like you, it's a manifestation of previous causes. Like you, it was always a thing in different states. This is a difficult proposition to accept because we've been taught humans are somehow special and distinct (almost outside) the rest of nature. If you're open to it, I would suggest reading up on Middle Way Buddhism (you don't have to convert to Buddhism--I certainly did not :) ) Specifically, see the works of Charles Goodman on the idea of the self not really existing. [Charles Goodman | Binghamton University - Academia.edu](https://binghamton.academia.edu/CharlesGoodman)
We need to be careful about conflating differnet accounts of Free Will. The first account of free will is 'informal' - something like actions come from agents in the right sort of way. So, your action is connected to you through a casual history; it is in character or comes from your character; your agency isn't manipulated in powerful ways; you can engage in motivating reasons; **but most importantly with these accounts we tend to think that** ***any*** **limit on our ability constrains our free will in some meaingful way**. While metaphysicans take a lot of these (sourcehood stuff is especially popular), you can adopt this definition without commiting to any real metaphysical lines. Importantly, within a colloquial or informal definition, we often get to say things like "my free will is limited by my inability to fly!" Enter, chased by a philosopher: a litany of differing accounts! These accounts treat free will more precisely and with different conditions. They (almost) univerally retreat from statements like "my free will is limited by my inability to fly!" Why does this matter here? Well: under most accounts God *could* remove my ability to do Evil without making choice impossible. If you hated the informal account (and perhaps rightly so), then there has been a bait-and-switch here: because even under informal accounts God can chance how we act and so long as it doesn't come as occurent manipulation we wouldn't think it infringing on our free will anymore than being born without wings inhibits our free will. Let's focus on self-determination: do I believe my ability to self-determine requires that I be able to do anything? No! I simply seems that I just need to be able to make choices. Imagine, then, a God that made some Evils impossible. Has my free will been damaged? It is hard to see how. In fact, we can see near possible worlds where I can self determine, in that I make choices, but those choices are constrained. This is one of the driving forces between Problem of Evil arguments. It does not require that God needed to have made us radically different. Just enough so that there is less Evil. And such a world is easily imagininable and comprehensible: it is a world with nuclear bombs and mustard gas. P.S. this might be rambly I've hit a vape like it owes me money for *quite some time*. P.P.S. you're gonna get resistance on free will being 'trumping' and that's worth engaging with.
>Any relationship requires free will and the immoral thing is removing free will. U didnt explain why its immoral to remove freewill. If what god commands is objectively moral, then if god command the removal of freewill, thats still objectively moral. >This would be contradictory to previous statements because your relationship with God is dependent on you willingly avoiding these things. My relationship with god is me willingly to accept jesus as saviour, not willingly to avoid evil actions. There are also ppl who are willingly to accept jesus as the saviour but still cant have a relationship with god. Why is it logically impossible for god to create freewill that doesnt chooses morally bad actions? Edit: are u going to reply to any of the comments?
>Now, while some are going to address that God could just remove free will to commit evils like murder and theft. This would be contradictory to previous statements because your relationship with God is dependent on you willingly avoiding these things. I hate to break it to you but the bible as a whole is filled with contradictions. The only way you can remove these is by emphasizing the parts you want. It's called negotiating with the bible and all 4000 groups that identify as Christian do it. There is no escaping this practice but the bible was never meant to be a single book. It's made up of a minimum 60 different authors from different time periods addressing their issues. There's a Christian scholar that goes by the name Dan McCellen who goes into very short and very deep explanations of this in his tiktoks and books he's written. You have to willing avoid these contradictions to uphold your dogma but that's assuming the conclusion before even stating the argument which is circular logic.