ATTEMPTS TO FUSE GOD AND THE NEED FOR FREE WILL TOGETHER ALL FAIL

CAN ONLY GOD GIVE US FREE WILL?

If you want free will as the power to freely create an action good or evil out of nothing then you need God it seems.  You are asking for quite the miracle.

Some think that if there is no God then there is no free will for it is such a conundrum and mystery that only God can give it and facilitate it.  Free will would have to be a miracle but the problem is it is a miracle that cannot be shown to be real.  It is assumed.  If God has to do hidden miracles to run the universe that is a bad sign. It shows that he is unable to think of another way.  He cannot make free will natural.  How can it be for it is like creating an action or choice out of nothing? It makes us the creators of our behaviour and deeds.

They are definitely right.

God may give us the power to create from nothing.  But that amounts to him creating our sins from nothing for strictly speaking only God can have the power.  If Padre Pio raises up Friar Tuck from the grave as God alone is master of life and death it follows that God is doing it and Pio is only the instrument.

So the doctrine of free will inherently implies there is a God and inherently implies that he is evil. 

If God gives me freedom am I responsible to him and myself? If God alone matters then free will is all about being responsible to him for doing his will or otherwise.  If God matters most then there is not much difference.  But our instinct is what we want free will to be for us not for him. We want it for our society.

Hypothetically, what happens if we are indeed free agents but there is no God?

Free will really means creation of an action from nothing.  Freedom without God seems to be not freedom but random as in something just popping into existence uncreated. Such freedom is grounded in nothing but itself. This puts freedom and choice in a void and makes them meaningless and valueless.

It is assumed that God avoids this problem. But the fact remains we do not know what freedom is – we just have the sensation of freedom. But that is not the same as understanding what it is and how it works and if it works.

One thing is clear: We cannot really know God if we are programmed to know him. That is not knowing. There is no difference between being programmed to know that this year is the current year or that it is 1911.  When you are programmed what you know can be false so it is not really knowing.  So it is fundamentally and essentiality in our freedom that we find God and learn something about him and experiencing a relationship with him. So the big question is not, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” But, “What is free will and does it come from God and teach me personally something about God?”

You may be forced to kill a mental patient to save his victim.  What forces you?  The principle of protecting the innocent.  So you have the free will to kill him under the circumstances.  It doesn't look very free but you are free under the circumstances.  Psychologists and philosophers feel that even if you have to kill somebody and it's totally unavoidable you are still damaged by what you have done. You are damaged by what you did and damaged because the situation was so evil that you had to do it.  The damage arises from how we don’t see animal deaths the same way as they are not one of us but in a sense to hurt a human is to degrade yourself. It hurts a being you identify with and thus in some way it hurts you as well. This argument is the reason why those who have abortions or who administer them or those who assist in euthanasia are believed to be forever damaged by their involvement. You see abortion and euthanasia as hurting something or somebody that is like you or could be you. That sense of identity has to be erased or watered down for you to carry out the abortion or euthanasia. They say, "As life is of huge importance it follows the damage sets in with only one abortion or euthanasia."   The damage punishes you even if you had to kill or if you didn't have to but did it anyway.  Is that justice?  Far from it!  If it is like trying to damage God the only supremely good being then that is more damage on top of the damage already wreaked.

Free will then is nothing to be celebrated.  Why you would want the doctrine and see it as honouring God is a mystery!

TWO CREATIONS

God if he makes all from nothing means that we do not choose anything in spite of him but because of him. Christians say that free will can try to break with God but cannot really do it.  So strictly speaking I cannot create my evil act, God does it for me.  None of this makes any sense or is what people want from free will.

FREE WILL IS DELIBERATELY MISDEFINED BY GOD BELIEVERS

Believers argue that God is good so evil and suffering have nothing to do with him.  Human free will typically gets the blame.  Blaming humanity not God is the free will defence. 

The free will defence cares about you being free from external forces bigger than you and does not care if you have no freedom to overcome what gets in the way of you making a rational and responsible decision. Make no mistake. Believers argue God causes your will to be left to its own devices. But what if you want to make a proper decision based on good information? You get no help there and in the important things you poke around in a mixture of light and dark. You don’t know if the light is the light or a trick or if you are seeing the right things you need to base the decision on. If there is a choice does being free as in faculty matter or being free as in properly knowing what you are doing? Both matter equally one way but the latter matters most another.  If doing the right thing for the right reasons matters then you need free will as in faculty so that way they are equally important. The faculty is only important as a means to being able to make the right decisions so in a sense the latter is more important.  The eye and seeing are both equally important for one cannot be had without the other but when you consider than an eye is for seeing it follows the seeing is more important.  Same idea.

It is clear that the free will defence is evil for it would prefer a decision to a proper decision and refuses to care enough about what a decision making faculty is for. It is evil for it refuses to admit our right to truth from God so we can make decisions right. In fact it mistakes real freedom for wantonness, doing what you want not what you need (what you need to do means you must be informed about what you need to know in order to make a choice) and wantonness for true freedom. It is evil in principle and evil because of the consequences of what we think is free will - humanity's inhumanity to humanity.  To try to defend an evil free will in the face of so much evil is unforgiveable.

Free will being an evil means that a world where people can do extreme harm to each other is an evil world.  God should limit the harm people do.

Free will being put down as gift from God would imply you don't know how to find a good version of God.  To worship him would be an evil.

It is because they want to avoid saying God is responsible for evil that they work out a doctrine of free will to get out of admitting it.  The real definition of free will for religion is, "Whatever gets God off the hook or seems to."

GOD DOES NOT EXPLAIN FREE WILL THAT CAN CHOOSE EVIL
 
If we have free will, it does not prove we should be allowed by God to abuse it.
 
Free will that gives us no ability to wilfully choose evil will do. You could say that if you choose evil it is because you perceive it as good and so are still meaning well. Such free will allows rewards but not punishment. People believe an alcoholic who loses his free will to do evil but who saves a life should be rewarded as much as if he were free and sober. And would you be really a good person if you wanted to believe in free will in the traditional sense of choosing good or evil just for the sake of endorsing punishment?
 
The idea is not as useful as we are led to believe.

FINALLY

The notion of creating your choice from nothing does not fit the notion that God is creator for it has you creating as well.  And creation says that God makes all things including our choices. This incoherence shows that God and free will only look like they belong together.  They do not.

The absurd consequences of saying that God gives us free will and the desire to abuse it ruins the alleged connection too.

BOOKS CONSULTED

A CATECHISM OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE, CTS, London, 1985
A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, VOL 6, PART II, KANT, Frederick Copleston SJ, Doubleday/Image, New York 1964
AQUINAS, FC Copleston, Penguin Books, London, 1991
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL, Friedrich Nietzsche, Penguin, London, 1990
BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER, Association for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, Dublin, 1960
CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, Veritas, London, 1995
CHARITY, MEDITATIONS FOR A MONTH, Richard F Clarke SJ, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1973
CHRISTIANITY FOR THE TOUGH-MINDED, Edited by John Warwick Montgomery, Bethany Fellowship, Minnesota, 1973
CRISIS OF MORAL AUTHORITY, Don Cupitt, SCM Press, London, 1995
EVIDENCE THAT DEMANDS A VERDICT, VOL 1, Josh McDowell, Alpha, Scripture Press Foundation, Bucks, 1995
ECUMENICAL JIHAD, Peter Kreeft, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1996
GOD IS NOT GREAT, THE CASE AGAINST RELIGION, Christopher Hitchens, Atlantic Books, London, 2007
THE GREAT MEANS OF SALVATION AND OF PERFECTION, St Alphonsus De Ligouri, Redemptorist Fathers, Brooklyn, 1988
HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS, Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, Monarch, East Sussex, 1995
HONEST TO GOD, John AT Robinson, SCM, London, 1963
HOW DOES GOD LOVE ME? Radio Bible Class, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1986
IN DEFENCE OF THE FAITH, Dave Hunt, Harvest House, Eugene, Oregon, 1996
MADAME GUYON, MARTYR OF THE HOLY SPIRIT, Phyllis Thompson, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1986
MORAL PHILOSOPHY, Joseph Rickaby SJ, Stonyhurst Philosophy Series, Longmans Green and Co, London, 1912
OXFORD DICTIONARY OF PHILOSOPHY, Simon Blackburn, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996
PRACTICAL ETHICS, Peter Singer, Cambridge University Press, England, 1994
PSYCHOLOGY, George A Miller, Penguin, London, 1991
RADIO REPLIES, 1, Frs Rumble & Carty, Radio Replies Press, St Paul, Minnesota, 1938
RADIO REPLIES, 2, Frs Rumble & Carty, Radio Replies Press, St Paul, Minnesota, 1940
RADIO REPLIES, 3, Frs Rumble & Carty, Radio Replies Press, St Paul, Minnesota, 1942
REASON AND BELIEF, Brand Blanschard, George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1974
REASONS FOR HOPE, Ed Jeffrey A Mirus, Christendom College Press, Virginia, 1982
THE ATONEMENT: MYSTERY OF RECONCILIATION, Kevin McNamara, Archbishop of Dublin, Veritas, Dublin, 1987
SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD, Jonathan Edwards, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, undated
THE BIBLE TELLS US SO, R B Kuiper, The Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh, 1978
THE BRIEF OF ST ANTHONY OF PADUA (Vol 44, No 4)
THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE MORAL DILEMMA, G R Evans, Lion Books, Oxford, 2007
THE GREAT MEANS OF SALVATION AND OF PERFECTION, St Alphonsus De Ligouri, Redemptorist Fathers, Brooklyn, 1988
THE IMITATION OF CHRIST, Thomas A Kempis, Translated by Ronald Knox and Michael Oakley, Universe, Burns & Oates, London, 1963
THE LIFE OF ALL LIVING, Fulton J Sheen, Image Books, New York, 1979
THE NEW WALK, Captain Reginald Wallis, The Christian Press, Pembridge Villas, England, undated
THE PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD, Brother Lawrence, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1981
THE PROBLEM OF PAIN, CS Lewis, Fontana, London, 1972
THE PUZZLE OF GOD, Peter Vardy, Collins, London, 1990
THE SATANIC BIBLE, Anton Szandor LaVey, Avon Books, New York, 1969
THE SPIRITUAL GUIDE, Michael Molinos, Christian Books, Gardiner Maine, 1982
THE STUDENT’S CATHOLIC DOCTRINE, Rev Charles Hart BA, Burns & Oates, London, 1961
UNBLIND FAITH, Michael J Langford, SCM, London, 1982