Regardless whether there’s an observing god or not, the notion of free will implies that you have a separate “conscience” or other “presence” that observes “from the outside”, and makes decisions on their objective merits. I know of no evidence supporting this, and am more inclined to think that what we call “randomness” or “free will” is the result of extremely complex neurological processes, and everything we think is the result of something we have learned.

A decision may come down to a tiny influence from something we learned long ago, but – if I may use a computer analogy – there is no output without input. If we are to explain the prevalence of war, religion, stupidity, and other irrationality in the world today, well, here’s another computing analogy: “garbage in, garbage out”.

Posted: October 16th 2009

See all questions answered by brian thomson

I believe your disagreement stems from definitions of god being internally inconsistent. There are no end of logical inconsistencies that result from the claim that an “omnimax” being exists.

For example, if an omnimax deity knows what is going to happen, by human choice or natural processes, and does nothing to intervene, She has implicitly endorsed (or at least knowingly allowed) that action or occurrence.

Quite aside from god I think free will is a rather nonsensical idea. What do people even mean by free will? Free from what exactly?

Certainly we have the impression of free will. Our choices are our own and we feel in control of our decisions. So is that enough? This is hardly contraversial, so I would guess people mean something more than this by free-will. Perhaps that our actions have no cause outside ourselves? This seems to be a ridiculous claim as we are all subject to influences, both concious and unconscious.

For what it’s worth I don’t think neurological experiments touted as proving or disproving free will of any relevance.

To my mind, the simplest summary of the free will issue is from Galen Strawson who said, “You cannot make yourself the way you are”. I’ve written more on my blog about free will and I’d be interested to hear your opinions.

Posted: October 16th 2009

See all questions answered by Eshu

If the future is known, by any being, then the future is predetermined. It doesn’t matter whether or not God is imagined to have determined the future or not, the relevant fact is that God is claimed to know the future.

If any being knows the future, then the future is predetermined. If the future is predetermined, then in any given situation an agent could not have 'chosen otherwise’ than the way she did, in fact, choose. If an agent can never 'choose otherwise’ in this sense, then there is no room for interventionist free will (or libertarian free will), which pictures the will as a prime mover, an 'uncaused cause’.

So God is incompatible with free will.

In my opinion, even absent this problem, interventionist free will can’t be satisfactorily defined in the first place.

A couple of questions that I think get to the meat of the problem:

Are the choices of free will caused?

If the choices are caused then we have simple determinism, which free will is imagined to oppose. So that can’t be the answer.

Are the choices of free will uncaused?

If the choices are uncaused then free will is effectively the roll of a dice. An agent has no control over the outcome, rather the outcome 'drives’ the agent. This situation doesn’t seem to agree with our intuitions about the word 'free’ either.

Are the choices of free will the result of both caused and uncaused factors?

Since neither 'caused will’ or 'uncaused will’ are free, it’s not clear how a blend of the two could earn the title 'free will’ either.

Posted: October 15th 2009

See all questions answered by bitbutter