Sunday, December 7, 2014
Free will in relation to justice
I do not agree with the idea that free will is related to justice. We did not take into account temptation and trickery when we discussed this in class. Why is Eve punished so harshly when she was tricked by the serpent? In turn, does that not mean that humans were punished before they were even born? Evil was unleashed in the world because of Adam and Eve's actions, which would later affect every single human being born into the world. Evil affects the good just as much as it affects the bad. Also, what about the people who are born into this world by God's hand as handicapped? If they are unable to speak, eat, or think on their own then how would they be capable of having free will and being rewarded or punished for their actions on Earth? This means that not every person has free will, but rather it is a privilege that it decided for us before our birth.
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I totally agree with you because free will cannot be planned out. By this I mean that if God has a plan for us, then we are not freely making decisions. Instead we are just following what he had planned for us. Free will is making our own decision which will effect of destiny, however if God know everything that we are going to do, then how do we have the freedom to make our decisions. We just believe we have free will, but I don't believe so.
ReplyDeleteObviously nobody would be able to explain why free will exists, or why it does at all. I understand your views because it is really a difficult concept to grasp; an all-knowing entity that does not know what will happen next. Now that I think of it, it's kind of an oxymoron. That's why I think that the only word to explain free will is faith. We can't prove that God is "watching over us" because we can't see him. in turn, we can't explain free will. I guess the only reason I believe in free will is because I don't think that God crated all of us and just placed us here. There has to be a bigger picture.
Delete"There has to be a bigger picture." The last line of your post is interesting, as it illustrates the Platonic impulse that runs through so much of the ancient works we study. Virtually all the great classical thinkers share this philosophical inclination for the "Absolute", the "Sublime", the transcendentally perfect concept, abstract object, or idea. Such early philosophy can be summed up as pretty much the pursuit of Truth with a capital T. But this is merely an intuition, a temptation that arises in certain contexts. Nothing more. As human thought progressed across the ages, as our intellectual culture were enriched by advances in innumerable fields of study, something incredible began to happen: we secularized. We slowly but surely broke from the theological trappings which inhibited so much of our knowledge. Philosophy is probably the last discipline to remain entranced by the specter of absolutism. We still look for the final vocabulary, the ultimate argument, the necessary conditions of the accidental and trivial. We still look for the "foundations". The Bigger Picture. That's all well and good, but it's merely one pursuit among many, and an increasingly outdated one at that. Rather than dispute the existence of God, a transcendental reality, or "Truth" with you, I would simply suggest an alternative. Just stop. Abandon the picture which has tempted Western thought for so long, and just accept contingency. Don't bother with convoluted philosophic-theological theory, and embrace the fuzziness of human thought. We can keep spinning yarns about the necessary or sufficient conditions, the "meaning of life", and divine knowledge to the end of time. But we don't need to. Nothing is necessary, and anything is possible.
DeleteI agree with this. One would think that the serpent, logically, would be the one receiving the punishment because it deceived Eve, thus being the first one to commit a wrongdoing. Despite all of the questions we've been raising, I find it interesting how, in contrast, Augustine steadfastly defends his idea of God. However, he writes: "Man in Eden lived in the enjoyment of God and he was good by a communication of the goodness of God" (XIV, Ch. 26). The way I read this, it justifies the idea that the "free will" given by God is not really free (like Melissa said). This is because the goodness of man was a result of the goodness given by God, i.e. he controls everything (good or not) that would affect man, thus diminishing the idea of free will.
ReplyDeleteSo free will is the ability to make decisions on our own and fate is that all of our actions have been predetermined, though these two ideas are seemingly contradictory, there is a way that they might be able to coexist. Suppose god knows the final outcome of where a person will end up, however, there are several pathways in which we could end up there. In this case, god knows where we will end up and all the different paths we can take to get there, but not which pathway we choose to get there until we choose it. This way, god is not omnipotent in the sense that he knows every decision we make, but that he knows the outcome at the end of every choice. In talking about Adam and Eve, I think it might be important to remember that this is still an inexperienced god and that he saw two outcomes: one where his creation would obey him (leading to heaven on earth in the form of the garden of Eden) and one where they would betray him (leading to heaven on earth after a long series of events involving Christ and the book of Revelation), both having many pathways, however, the latter possibility had a much less lower probability than the first, so god denied it, unknowing (because he is inexperienced) that an outside force (the serpent) would intervene. Of course, this idea heavily relies on an inexperienced god who then gains almost complete omnipotence in that he knows all paths, just not the one we will pick, but this is a way that free will and fate can coexist.
ReplyDeleteI think that Jainita makes an interesting point here, and it reminded me of something we read for today's class. St. Augustine says that "God foresaw the fall, the disregard of His law, the desertion from Good, yet He left man's free choice unchecked because He also foresaw to what good He would turn man's evil." So he seems to be suggesting that if God had not ultimately foreseen good in the future, he may have intervened and not given man free will, at least in the garden of Eden. On the other hand, St. Augustine points out that good would not exist without the evils of men. So in a way, God depends on man making bad choices, because without unjust people, righteous people would not exist.
ReplyDeleteI think that free will is related to justice. I think that when people have free will, nowadays, they know the difference between right and wrong. It is not like in this day and age people are still trying to figure out that. So I believe that it is up to the individual to create justice. God has no control over that, he can't control all of our decisions. Those people who were born handicapped, God did not make them handicapped. It is clear science, something is different in their genes, or their mother was doing something she should have done while she was pregnant. There are so many other reasons why people are handicapped, rather than God made them that way. Free will is something that everybody has, and it is up to them to decide if they want to throw it away and do something bad and suffer the consequences, which could very well mean having it taken away, or use it for good and justice.
ReplyDeleteI think Giffin’s argument runs into some issues when you relate free will to science or genetics. While there are multiple ways science can run into religion, creationism doesn’t really allow for random genetic mutation because everything is foreseen and controlled by God. It could be accepted that genetics applies and cells divide and multiply, but the random cellular mutation that comes that process couldn’t truly been seen as random because it was in God’s plan. In that logic, wouldn’t a handicap be seen as a test from God? Like the ones mentioned in class the other day. This reasoning would also speak to this life being insignificant when compared to the afterlife. If the physical body is temporary, wouldn’t it be reasonable for God to test someone using their body to see if they gave more attention to their physical predicament or if they focused on their faith in God and their salvation in heaven over the transient pain they are in for now.
ReplyDeleteBut is the concept of randomness comparable to that of free will? The latter requires not only the conditions to chose without external control, but also the agency to perform one's own actions. If everything is grounded purely in chance, we cannot speak of any free will since the whole idea of rational, intentional choices and actions becomes meaningless unless there are outstanding patterns or trends in the universe which are not merely spontaneous or merely "random mutations".
DeleteFrom saying that fate is something that is predetermined by God and that we as people have no control over our ultimate fate, it doesn't seem like humans have any sort of free will at all. That would make it so that humans think that they have free will, but the choices that they make "on their own" are actually planned by God and they will end up making those choices no matter what. I also agree that the argument of science poses an issue in this case of "fate and free will." Considering that there is the concept of fate as predetermined it might be assumed that any "scientific evidence" that there is that God does not control everything is actually due to God's will. I think that when trying to differentiate between fate and free will, science doesn't really play a role in that.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the idea that science does not play into the ideas regarding fate and free will. Augustine's viewpoint, as a devout Christian, likely also does not take into consideration so many aspects of science. Additionally, City of God was written in the 5th century so I would not say that there was extensive scientific knowledge that could be easily used to refute the ideas of God and the power he possessed. Personally, I believe that one of the faster conclusions to be drawn to about fate and free will would be in relation to one's moral compass and God's control over that.
DeleteFree will is not a privilege, though it does relate to certain basic human capacities. Towards the end of your post you mentioned how people disabled in various ways could not possibly have free will. I would agree that person lacking the ability to think "on their own" cannot be said to exercise free will. Regarding the inability to speak or eat independently, I disagree. Free will is tied to cognition. We say that humans have free will, on one level, simply because we have the ability to evalute situations and project alternate courses of actions for ourselves and others. We can make decisions, fulfill our intentions, resist influences, struggle through hardships etc. And all this might plausibly be called the freedom to chose. Such free will necessarily depends on the presence of an exterior world, which of course physically affects us, as we in turn affect it. A comatose person, being immobile and unconscious, may not have "free will", but the disabled certainly do. One is always free to respond to the physical forces of one's situation.
ReplyDeleteIn class, we talked about tests. I think that all these tests combined is life. So when the serpent tempted Eve to take the apple, that was her test. Obviously, she failed. When someone is handicapped, maybe it is a test to the parents. Maybe it has significance in some other situation. I'm one of those people who believe that everything exists for a specific reason, and everything happens for a specific reason. So God didn't create a handicapped being as a punishment, but for a different reason. The fact that we don't know what the reason is explains why we are merely humans, not Gods.
ReplyDeleteYou raise an interesting point about humans being tests for other humans. It made me think of Kant, who’s categorical imperative on morality said that using people as a means to an end rather than seeing them as an end in themselves is immoral. If someone is a test for another person, as you suggest a handicapped child would be for a parent, that argues that at least part of that person is put here as a design in someone else’s life. By Kant’s view, that would make God immoral in this situation. This also brings up the question of if God can be immoral, if He is the definer of morals. It is much easier to say that Kant is wrong, or to have a different hypothesis on why people are handicapped, than it is to argue that God can be immoral.
DeleteWhat if, hypothetically, God put different people into different lives and situations to see if they were truly good? For instance, what if Yahweh were to put a person on earth into a horrible situation, whether they were abused, neglected, etc, in order to test them? If a person is abused, it would then be their choice to be a good person or a bad person and to not allow their past to affect their future and the way they treat others. A great example of this is Job, who was essentially abused by God and yet remained faithful, true, and good. This was the ultimate test for Job, and he was rewarded in the end for his efforts, similarly to the way that the Bible says God will reward people for their goodness up in heaven.
DeleteI think it is a very interesting point that we haven’t discussed yet that free will could be tied to cognition. It makes a lot of sense that it goes beyond just being able to function on one’s own and into the ability to process our thoughts, feelings, and actions. However, what would the opinion be, not just on physically handicapped people, but mentally handicapped people as well? Does a person still have free will if they have difficulty processing the world around them? If they cannot perfectly make decisions for themselves and evaluate situations they find themselves in are we to say that they have less ability to know or do good?
ReplyDeleteI think you raise an interesting point about those who are mentally handicapped. Does it then become a test for them to make decisions? I would see this as fairly cruel. I think that in a way, Augustine's defense of God and creationism leaves a lot unanswered because it wasn't meant to be as complicated as we are looking into it. The points he raises are all justifications for the world around him, and perhaps what we've delved into is too far outside the reach of his work to figure out.
DeleteI agree that we are looking pretty far into Augustine’s views and complicating them to the point where it’s hard to keep things straight. I guess that’s a fairly common criticism of religious philosophy, or just religion in general, that it relies on people taking it as simplicity and not questioning it too much. In questioning, sometimes the idea becomes distorted and completely different from its original concept. We could also take into account that our views on religion today, as part of a much more secular culture, are very different than what the normal ideas on faith were back when Augustine wrote his texts.
DeleteI completely agree with the fact that free will is something that you are born with. Some people cannot help that they are born into poverty where as others cannot help that they are born into wealth. I myself am an optimist, but not every poverty stricken person can escape the problems that are thrown at them. As for the wealthy, most start off their life with privileges that are usually taken advantage of, & this is why i believe that free will itself has its limits for every individual person.
ReplyDeleteI see your point of view, Coral, but how could one eve prove that free will exists? It is impossible to know. Hypothetically speaking, humans could potentially have every single action determined by a greater power in advance. Who's to say we are really making our own decisions? What's to say that a higher power, such as the divine, or Yahweh, is not doing this for us? It's a very interesting concept because it can't be proven: it is an argument that can extend on forever, and can be argued indefinitely. It's true that some people are born into poverty and some into wealth, but doesn't this bring us back to the point that Yahweh may be testing our "goodness" by placing us in these situations and seeing if we choose good or evil? It really is something to think about.
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