ONLY EVIL PEOPLE TELL ME I’VE FREE WILL

 
Free will is the notion that what we do comes from us and is not down to some programming or factor that makes us choose what we choose. It is the view that when we choose we really choose and it is not some kind of illusion. Some believers in free will hold that not all of us have complete free will though some do. Some believe that all of us have enough free will to be reasonably accountable even if not fully accountable for what we do.

Free will believers say that we should never class a person as selfish for it is only their behaviour that can be selfish. That is urging us to be insane in our intentions and reasoning. The end result is that if we have free will, it is suppressed by our insane doctrine. If we look beyond the person to blame sin as if it were not part of them this makes love impossible if sin is actually part of them. You need to face the reality before you can help them.

INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY?

 

People who believe in free will should not be going as far as to believe it. At best they should deny it and at worst they should be saying they are open and claim that nobody knows if we have free will or not. In the latter case it would be safer to act as if we do not have it.

 

Believers in free will say

 

* you can misuse your free will and become very bad

 

You need to prove that the person is potentially very bad. That is an accusation that needs to be taken seriously and not made lightly.

 

* you do misuse your free will and hurt people and yourself

 

This is even worse. It accuses you of freely being bad. No innocent until proven guilty here.

 

A person who can do or who does evil should not be accused of being the free cause of this evil unless you can prove he or she has free will.

 

If belief in free will slanders and depends on slander, then free will is not about choosing to love. It is only about choosing different ways to sin or to do wrong to others. That is no use for the Christian believer who wants to see free will as a gift from God through which he calls us to love.

 

The person who is not sure if we have free will or not but who will still act as if she is sure, is a hypocrite. Even unbelievers in free will tend to act as if they believe in it. This is not an argument for free will. We also tend to act as if we will live forever. It is a terrible thing to say a person can freely do evil things if they have no free will at all. The believers in free will slander this person. And the unbelievers also slander him or her but not to the same extent. The unbelievers slander him or her by treating him or her as a free agent.

 

To believe in free will because we treat people as if they have it is not logical. If we have to be illogical to believe in free will then having the free will to be logical is not possible. Free will is constrained and so is not really free at all.

 

Free will cannot be proven scientifically - ie by experimentation. We think about doing a or b and come up with reasons for doing one or the other. Then we act. But that does not prove we have free will. We could still be programmed by something in us or outside us or both. A computer can be programmed to give you reasons for why it does a or b. We feel free when we are drunk though all agree we have given up our freedom in drink. We feel more free than ever when we drink loads of alcohol. So there is no validity in the thought that because we experience ourselves as free, then we are free. Unbelievers in free will, cease to sense they are free.

 
Scientific truth is what has been carefully checked out to see if it really is true. The most important truths are scientific ones. That is for the same reason that facts rise above beliefs and opinions and assumptions merely by virtue of their being facts. What we are sure of matters more than what we are less sure of. The notion of free will claims that belief in free will has supreme importance. That is untrue.
 
Some people say that many or most of the things we do are caused by the conditioning we have got. We tend to be conditioned by fashion and religion and other things. Religion by the way should disappear for there is enough to condition us without it making a contribution! So some or most of the time we only imagine that we have made free choices. Those people say we make real choices sometimes. To this I say that we are left with no way of knowing if what we choose is really our choice or not. You may as well engage in a round rejection of free will.
 
People want to believe that we can do good just because it is good and not just to fulfil a desire. But they only imagine they want to believe that. If people do good because they like doing it - that is because it fulfils their desire - and not because it is good, life on earth will improve immeasurably. Who - especially very young people and those mature people who feel they have little time left - wants to do good because it is good? You want do do maths if you find enjoyment in it. Nobody wants to do maths just because its maths.
 
When I am most sure I exist nothing outside of me, nobody other than me, has any business judging my motives and if we cannot judge one another's motives there is no point in believing in free will. I must judge myself which is another reason why it is so important to have a fully rational basis for the chief things like God and right conduct in our lives and why religion must be fought for it is drivel. People can and should judge my actions which is not the same as judging me or my motives unless they believe that there is such a thing as free will which makes it impossible to love the sinner and hate the sin. So, nobody outside of me has any business telling me I have free will for that accuses me of being sinful or of having been. I know I can do bad but nobody knows if I meant it or not for nobody can be me but me. They can judge my actions but not me - they can say I was wrong but they cannot say I meant to be wrong. Thus unless I can prove by my own individual experience that I have free will and can sin or be immoral (that is, do what I believe to be wrong of my own free will) I should not believe in it. (And experience does not prove it or even give evidence of it. It gives the opposites for I see how feelings and thoughts work up to the thought and desire that causes me to act. But that's not relevant here.) So for an apparition, religion teacher, minister or priest, Bible or anybody else to tell me that I am a sinner or have been immoral or have free will is for them to degrade me and endeavour to trample upon me. They might not realise it and seem to be very good people but it remains true.

When I am told as a child to believe I have free will and moral responsibility I am being told to become sick. I am being told to be blind to the evidence that I am not free or may not be free. I am told to be blind to the fact, and evidence, that feeling free does not mean I am free. Belief in God is related to free will so it is a mental disorder and delusion too. It is child abuse to tell a child that it is bad or evil or sinful or needs baptism for the forgiveness of sins. It is better to tell the child that it is sick for it will understand that better and it will see stopping the fault as a challenge for children like getting better and they will not like the feeling that that are sick for they cherish their feeling of freedom too much. We have a will and it is free in the sense that it is our will and we like carrying it out but it is programmed. I am not responsible for any good or evil I do for I was programmed.

Most people agree that Church and state are a bad combination and should be kept separate. But as long as the state accepts free will or free choice as a real thing they are fused in so far as this principle is accepted for free will or free choice is a religious concept. It is religious for the state does not need it and reason does not need it and life does not need it so it is a superstition - it makes something explicable out to be inexplicable and so one of the major goals of my Humanism is the abolition of free will in the law. Our activists will labour for it. The law should be taking its gospel from psychology and psychiatry and real philosophy and not spiritual mumbo-jumbo and certainly not from any system that is teaching unnecessary doctrines. As long as the assumption of free will and free choice is peddled, incitement to hatred prohibitions cannot sustain any credibility for to assume a person is free when they did wrong and to assume it without need is plainly to hate that person and to want to smear that person. The person is accused of creating evil when in fact evil took control of the person and came out through him which is a different thing.
 
What do people do when they realise the things they try to control are going against them? They blame. Blame is about wanting to see punishment happen. It is about condemnation. We are so fond of blaming that we even blame the cooker for burning our dinner. It leads to magical thinking. It makes us treat the cooker as something to be scolded and punished by our ill feelings towards it. If I blame my car for breaking down, that shows that I would far more easily blame others for my problems with them. It is still more natural and easier to blame people than inanimate things.
 
People believe in free will principally because they like to feel they are in control. But even if you have free will, your freedom is still very curtailed. You like the illusion that it is not that restricted. People want to believe in free will for they want to control others and what happens in their lives. It is our selfishness and wish to gain even at the expense of taking the freedom of others that makes the notion of free will desirable. But many people are careful not to trample on the freedom of others. But they feel they have the freedom to do this and so they still feel in control. They give others permission as it were to be free - so they still intend to be in control and feel they are. Their motive is still selfish.
 
If we are inherently sinful then how can we have free will to be good and saintly and holy? Christians say we cannot. We do not have free will to earn the right to a relationship with God. We only have free will to let Jesus earn it for us which means we simply let him become our saviour. Those doctrines are terrible for they imply that human suffering is worth it for a minority of Christians. And if we only have free will for the sake of repenting sin then how can we sin in the first place? So we are programmed to sin and still blamed for it! It is a very serious accusation to say that the reason we have free will is not so that we can help dying babies but that we can turn to Jesus. It is religious extremism.
 
Conclusion
 
Belief in free will is encouraged by many people and even by the great religions. That encouragement is really a maltreatment.