What If I just Believe in My Own Freedom?
What if I believe that I alone have free will and that others are just
biological computers with consciousness and feelings? Well then I will believe
that others will do what they do and that makes me accept whatever they do and
be free from hate and needing anything from them so it quickens the journey to
happiness for me and that improves how I make others feel and makes them better
people. I’ll believe that it is up to me alone to improve the world for I alone
have free will and can use it to make changes for the better wilfully instead of
leaving it to the unpredictable forces of chance to make improvements.
Even if I do believe all people have free will, I believe that that I should
worry only about what I do with my free will for I have no control over what
others do with theirs. Others are going to do what they want so why should I
worry? Worry does no good. I should protect myself and toughen myself up to
survive the evil they do me and move on with doing good. So I have no reason to
believe that others have free will. It does me good and them good not to even if
they have it. Anyway even if it were bad to deny the freedom of others that
would not mean I should deny it for bad things can be true! So having
established then that if we have free will, then only my personal free will is
my concern. I should still encourage people to use what I think is their free
will constructively. It follows that if the lie told by religion that without
belief in free will you will not be motivated to change believing that whatever
will happen will happen is true then you only need believe in your own free
will. You have no need to believe in anybody else’s and therefore no right to
tell them to believe in free will or to delude them into believing in it. You
have no right to desire to punish them. The lie is bad because it is changing
our feelings through learning and intelligence that encourages us not belief in
free will and learning always changes us forever. To believe that I alone can be
sure I have free will and that others may not have it and should be treated as
unfree beings by me will have the same results and advantages. The God belief
and the Bible forbid me to do others the favour of thinking they do not have
free will and it doing so they forbid me to love myself and so they don’t care
about free will after all (for how could they when I can’t love myself?) and God
only gave it to me to torment me.
If I see a need for the dogma of free will that need is my concern only. I
cannot make others believe in free will so I just explain what free will is and
it is up to them to decide if they have it or not. I should believe that I am
free but nobody else is in order to avoid the bad effects and side effects of
believing in free will and retain the advantages for myself.
It is crazy to be dogmatic about free will when it is up to each individual to
decide if they agree with the doctrine that we have free will or not. What
matters is the motive that is behind your actions not if your action was free or
not as long as something like schizophrenia or some other mental disorder is not
warping your brain. We know from experience that good motives make you a better
person for they draw you towards goodness in the future by making you learn a
habit even if the habit is just to be a bit nicer. Free willists themselves pay
attention on motives but not enough. Ultimately, it is because they want to say
the motives are controlled by us and not us by them that the idea of free will
even takes their fancy.