Hi Mark --
On Tues, Apr 19, 2011, at 2:06 AM, "118" <[email protected]> wrote:
Free will can be considered a personal choice, although there are
those who claim we have been determined to believe in free will.
On the other hand we are free to choose determinism. The latter
is like electing a ruler who changes the constitution so that he never
leaves power, the other is more like an ever changing democracy,
so long as one side does not take complete control.
Me, I choose free will.
To be "predetermined to believe" in something makes no sense to me, and I'm
amazed at how many MDers resist the idea of man as a free agent. There can
be only two reasons for this, in my opinion: 1) they are persuaded that the
'self' is some form of being, hence must be controlled by the deterministic
laws of the physical universe, and 2) they refuse to accept the principle of
an uncreated source in the belief that it is a throwback to theism which is
"anti-intellectual".
I shall address the first reason in detail at a later time. As for the
second, I should like to quote from an essay I just stumbled upon while
researching Free Will and Determinism. The essay appeared in a 1993 issue
of the American Philosophical Quarterly under the title 'Hiddenness'. In it
Profs. Michael Murray and David E. Taylor of Franklin and Marshall College
argue (brilliantly I think) for the "moral necessity" that God be hidden
from the world. (Should the word 'God' offend anyone, I suggest that the
term "Primary Source", "Essence", or "DQ" be mentally substituted for it by
the reader.)
"Very few people will claim that God's existence is an obvious feature of
reality. Not
only atheists and agnostics, but theists too generally acknowledge that God
is, at least to
some extent, hidden. The psalmist, for example, exclaims in apparent
frustration, using
words later uttered by Jesus on the cross: 'My God, my God, why have you
forsaken me?'
...For theists divine hiddenness can be a source of anxiety or despair.
Some atheists,
on the other hand, view hiddenness as fodder for an argument against the
existence of God. Recently, The Argument (for atheism) from Hiddenness has
taken a new, more rigorous form, most notably in the works of philosopher
John Schellenberg.
"The simplest version of Schellenberg's argument looks like this:
(1) If there is a God, he is perfectly loving.
(2) If a perfectly loving God exists, reasonable non-belief in the existence
of God
does not occur.
(3) Reasonable non-belief in the existence of God does occur.
(4) No perfectly loving God exists.
(5) There is no God (Schellenberg 1993: 83).
"Schellenberg argues that since premise (1) is true by definition and
premises (4) and (5)
follow from the earlier ones, the only controversial claims in the argument
are (2) and (3).
Schellenberg accepts premise (3) because he takes it to be obvious that at
least some
non-belief, his own at any rate, is indeed reasonable.
"What about (2)? Schellenberg claims that theists should be attracted to
this
premise. Most theistic traditions argue that ultimate human fulfillment is
found by
entering into a deep, personal relationship with God. Therefore, if God is
truly loving, it
is reasonable to think that he will seek to do whatever is necessary to
bring his creatures
into a position where such a relationship is possible. There are numerous
conditions that
are necessary to do this, but only one need concern us here, namely that God
make his
existence known to creatures in such a way that they could not reasonably
fail to see it.
For this reason, we should expect that God would reveal himself to us in a
way
that rules out the possibility of reasonable non-belief."
"Some philosophers (Swinburne 1979; Murray 2002) have argued that hiddenness
is
rather a necessary condition for a world containing human creatures that
enjoy morally
significant free choice. Such a world must meet certain conditions: it must
contain
human beings, endowed with the power of free choice, who are presented with
alternative
courses of action between which it is genuinely possible for them to select.
For a world
to meet these conditions, it must be configured in particular ways. Most
relevant among
these ways in this context is this: the world must be set up in such a way
that the free
creatures in it often have genuine incentives for doing both good and bad
actions. In
order for one to be free, one must be able to choose between alternative
courses of action,
and in order to have such an ability, one must possess incentives or desires
for each of the
alternatives.
"We can take a more general lesson from this, namely, that if the world
does not contain incentives for us to choose both good and evil actions,
then we will not
be truly free to choose between them. ...One way would be for God to set up
the world so that we are subjected to coercive threats to behave in
accordance
with the dictates of morality at all times. We can imagine God setting up
the world
in such a way that we are followed around by moral 'highway patrolmen,'
ready to
punish us whenever we make a morally evil choice. In this case, any
incentives fo
doing evil would be eliminated or at least overwhelmed by the presence of
the
moral patrolman, and we would be psychologically unable to choose evil.
"Such freedom-removing conditions could be established in other ways as
well.
For example, if God were to make his existence clearly and powerfully known
to us, the
impact would be no less than the moral patrolmen. If we knew that God was
there,
watching over us continuously, all incentives to choose evil would be lost
along with our
ability to choose between good and evil actions. Our moral free choice
would have been
eliminated. Some have argued that this need to prevent pervasive coercion
is one reason
why God must remain hidden, at least to the extent that his existence is not
as obvious as
a patrol car following us on the highway."
The complete essay can be downloaded in pdf format at
https://edisk.fandm.edu/michael.murray/MURRAY_TAYLOR%20HIDDENNESS.pdf
Valuistically speaking,
Ham
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