Believing that we are
not programmed to do what we do but are responsible for what we do is bad news
FREE WILL DEFENCE
People who worship God say he gave us the freedom to spite his will. If he did
then we have the power to create out of nothing and he has nothing to do with
this power. We would have to believe that we enjoy free will because of God and
not in spite of him. He creates our will and our power to sin. We cannot have
free will unless there is no God. God implies that we are always dependent on
him and never independent.
Surely then God would sin when we sin? He is not guilty of our sins for he lets
us commit sin out of respect for us.
But religion defines sin as the worst of all evils so it is a strange form of
respect that we are getting from God! It is not reduced freedom that is the
worst of evils but sin. So God should not give us the free will to torture the
innocent. There should be some boundaries.
The believers say God has to create us and our power to sin to allow us to be
free so he is innocent. He would only be guilty if he had no right to do this.
But surely this would mean that freedom is more important than us?
It is said that if there is no free will then we cannot be considered to possess
supreme dignity. We would be at the mercy of blind forces. If there is no
freedom then it doesn’t matter what we do or don’t do. The person who murders
babies is as good as the person who saves them. It would be right to pity the
killer for he or she is a hapless victim of fate. Study that argument carefully.
See what it is really saying. “I don’t want to say those who do terrible things
are good people because they cannot help it. I want to excoriate and condemn
them.”
If you modify the doctrine to say that a lot of every choice we make is
programmed and the rest isn’t you only make it half as bad. You still want to
condemn.
CASE FOR FREE WILL BEING A GOOD BELIEF:
If we don't have free will, then it follows that if I love you and you love me
we are just like two puppets. If I ask you a question you only seem to give an
answer. In fact you don't, you only say what the programming makes you say. Is
it not an error to think that programming can talk to you or do the talking for
you?
Belief in free will is inbuilt and necessary for our self-esteem. If the belief
causes problems there would be worse problems without it. It would urge you to
treat the person causing harm better than the person causing good. The poor
victim of fate that makes her or him do evil needs pampering for being a victim.
Free will can't be condemned just because we can abuse it. A free being is
better off than a puppet.
If we don’t have free will and kill each other it doesn’t matter because we were
programmed to do it and there was nothing anybody could do to stop the
programming from controlling us. If we cannot control ourselves then fear will
be our only legacy if we truly believe that.
CASE AGAINST FREE WILL BEING A GOOD BELIEF:
Firstly, the case for it being a good belief overlooks the fact that we are
programmed to by-pass the logical conclusions of denial of free will. Denying
free will will not make you worse than a person who affirms it. By the way,
people who do great evil might need pampering for being a victim of fate but
what about people who do great good? They come first. If a person threatens you
with evil and harm, what matters is preventing them not if they have free will
or not. You won't care then.
There is no evidence to refute the view that we are programmed to do what we do.
We could be entirely programmed to feel like free beings. You need proof before
you can accuse anybody of being responsible for evil otherwise what you end up
doing is making a hypocrite of yourself and committing the hate-filled
malevolent act of accusing your neighbour without justification. Even if you
believe in personal responsibility, it may be that you are not fully responsible
for your actions. Even if a psychiatrist cannot find anything wrong with you, it
may be that you are still not wholly to blame. The human mind and how it works
is still largely a mystery. So we have to remember that and not demonise
anybody. If that is the case, then murderers should not be given over to capital
punishment but get a jail sentence for ten years or whatever.
Our will is a feeling itself. The reason we feel free is not because we are free
but because the programming that makes us do what we do works through causing
our feeling of attraction to things. When you break down your actions step by
step you soon see that you only think you felt free. When you look back in
memory you see the events collectively and you think you felt free. If I want
some coffee I am only conscious of one thought per instant and the next thought
comes in unsummoned out of nowhere and not under my control. I don’t really know
what I am doing at each instant for I have only one thought at a time so I am
undoubtedly programmed.
There is no need to believe in personal responsibility at all. People think that
if you deny personal responsibility then you give a bad person no reason to
change their ways for the better for you are telling them it's not their fault
they are bad. But responsible or not, people will not change unless they are
made to see that there is a better way and to feel it. So change has nothing to
do with responsibility. It is because we are programmable that trying to change
people is worthwhile. Believing you don’t have free will and that nobody does
will not make you bad unless it is in you to be bad in the first place. If it is
not your disbelief in free will that makes you bad, it will be something else.
The other big attraction about faith in personal responsibility is that it seems
to justify rewards and punishments. But we do not give rewards because a person
has free will but because that person has made achievements we want to encourage
and acknowledge. As for punishment which is paying back a person for doing wrong
we do not need it. Yes we need to jail people but we can do that without belief
in responsibility for protecting society from evildoing is what is important.
People like the doctrine of free will or personal responsibility because it
seems to induce guilt. But we often feel guilty about things that are not our
fault so we can still have guilt. Anyway we should do right because we like to
and not because of guilt. Guilt is useless.
People say we should believe in free will because we need to feel anger and feel
hurt at evil. but even if you do believe in free will, it doesn’t follow that
you should react that way. If John insults me and I am hurt it does not follow
that John hurt me. Many other people insult me and I am not hurt so John is not
really the reason. I am just programmed to feel hurt by that kind of insult.
This means that even if personal responsibility does exist, it cannot have any
bearing on the way we live our lives so we may as well disbelieve in it. The
reason it is believed in is because people want to blame others for hurting them
- a ruse that does not work.
Our tendency to think we have free will is seized upon by the Church to make us
think it serves a good God. It blames us for evil and exonerates him. Blaming is
vindictive because it implies we need to be punished at least by disapproval and
by being made to feel guilty as long as we are not sorry. To say we are
responsible for sin has the following problem. Declaring a person responsible
without blaming is about telling a person that they can change what is making
them feel bad so it is all about making them feel better without any concern for
God or morality or sin. Declaring that is not a problem for the atheist! To say
we are responsible for evil is ignoring the element of sin. For a believer in
God, sin is the main thing. It cannot be ignored or its seriousness downplayed
and it is unfair to if there is a God. Thus the defence of God is only cosmetic -
it increases the evil. It creates a culture of blame and resentment and fear.
Personal responsibility or free will is a religious superstition and so has no
place in the law of the land. All our actions are caused by our perceptions
which means that free will would have to be a miracle we work to get around
these causes so that we have a choice so it depends on the supernatural which is
the basis of religion. It is used as an excuse for not blaming God for human
evil and that’s why it is popular for if it is wrong then there is no God.
Religious faith and politics have to be separated.
Sin is using your free will to offend God. It is very important that children
not be exposed to nonsense about sin for if God is perfect good then he hates
sin with a ferocity we can never imagine and we are to be like him so we have to
hate the sinner as intensely as possible. You cannot love the sinner and hate
the sin for sin is doing wrong of our free will and so condemning sin is
condemning the person. The person and the sin cannot be separated for sin is not
a thing but what shows you what kind of person this is. If you can love sinner
and hate sin there is no point in believing in free will in the first place for
you are saying that sin is not part of the person but something that comes into
existence through the person. Indeed then you would be denying free will exists!
If you love the sinner and hate the sin then why can’t you trust the sinner but
not trust the sin? See the hypocrisy and double-standard?