Freedom and free will

[Cartoonist]

A lot of theists talk about free will as though they own it. They don't. What they have is actually duress. A certain behavior is required else eternal damnation awaits.

What about freedom? Suppose I give up my freedom and toe God's laws in order to get to Heaven? Will I get my freedom back?

Here in secular America, I can call our president the most insulting names I can think of. I can even promote his removal from office. Could I do that in heaven? Could I disparage God? Could I call for his impeachment? Just ask Lucifer.

Moral of this post: I have more freedom as an American here on Earth than I could ever have in Heaven.

[yallerdawg]

1. I think I've heard this story somewhere before - SMH?

Funny you should mention Lucifer.

[Voltaire2]

2. The evidence currently supports

the theory that “free will” is an illusion, an after the fact explanatory narrative in our noggins.

[marylandblue]

3. I choose not to believe that

[Voltaire2]

7. Faith based beliefs are difficult to overcome.

[marylandblue]

4. "The earth is the Lord's and everything in it."

I'd say that violates the emoluments clause right there, so you'd have a great impeachment case. But where in heaven are you going to find a lawyer?

[nil desperandum]

55. I see what you did there....NT

[MineralMan]

5. "Free Will" is defined differently by different groups

For Christians, it means that we choose to act according to our "sinful nature."

For others, it simply means that we are able to choose paths and actions based on reason.

We atheists don't choose to "sin." We choose our life journeys.

Free Will is not what makes humans sinful. It is what makes us free.

Two definitions, diametrically opposed.

[PJMcK]

28. Not quite correct, sir

For Christians, "Free Will" means that a person can choose between "sinful nature" OR "godly nature."

Since I'm an atheist, I don't really care about this distinction, but I felt compelled to make it.

[edhopper]

6. "Free will"

is as agreed on as "consciousness".

A term regularly used but not defined.

[Pendrench]

8. Hi Cartoonist - Thank you for starting this interesting discussion.

I have a few thoughts on this topic –

I believe that God offers Heaven to everyone – regardless of their beliefs or non-belief – so if anyone enters Heaven, it will be based on how we lived our lives, not whether we believe in God or not.

To me, this is what the concept of free will means – it’s not a question if one believes in God or not – but rather freely choosing to show love and compassion to the needs and concerns of others:

For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me – for whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.

By the same token, those who did not feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit those in prison, etc. have the free will to chose not to – so even if they believe that God exists, they will lose Heaven based on their own actions or inaction.

On side note, when I read that passage, I’m always struck by the fact that those who do not reach out to help or offer comfort say: When did I see you hungry, thirsty, sick, etc.?? , the implication being Hey, if I’d known that it was YOU, I would have done something!

Which to me misses the point.

Our desire to help others should not be predicated on how it may or may not benefit us. We shouldn’t care for others so that we are rewarded later – or to avoid punishment.

Our actions should be motivated by love.

It reminds me of an Islamic prayer that I came across a few years ago:

O Allah! If I worship You for fear of Hell, burn me in Hell, and if I worship You in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise. But if I worship You for Your Own sake, grudge me not Your everlasting Beauty.

Anyway, those are just a few of my thoughts.

Thank you again for posting this topic 😊

I wish you well and peace!

Tim

[Cartoonist]

9. You're welcome

For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me – for whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.

So just to get it clear, if I do all this, but I am an atheist, do I still get into Heaven? I have no problem with that. Some people here, including someone who posted today, gets a delight in telling others they are going to Hell for choosing not to believe, regardless of their conduct.

[Pendrench]

21. Thank you for taking the time to reply to my post!

As to your question about whether I think you will get into Heaven, it made me think of a quote from Bishop Fulton Sheen's autobiography "Treasure in Clay':


"When I get to Heaven, there will be three surprises: The first surprise is that there are some people there, who I NEVER expected to see there. The second surprise is that there are some people missing, not there, who I felt absolutely certain WOULD be there. And the third surprise is that I am there.”


I think that sums things up for me

I see Heaven as a gift for everyone - no exceptions - so it doesn't matter if you are an Atheist, Buddhist, Muslim, Pagan, Baptist, Catholic or whatever your belief or non-belief.

Thank you again for the opportunity to discuss this with you - I imagine that there are probably many religious issues that we see differently, but I also believe that there are issues outside the purview of religion on which we would find common ground.

Best to you!

Tim

[guillaumeb]

10. An enormous straw man, followed by personal beliefs.

[Cartoonist]

11. A nothing response

Why do you make them?

[Lordquinton]

12. I love the satarical posts

Where you just describe what you would post instead of the actual content. Makes for a good chuckle.

[trotsky]

40. LMAO

Perfect.

[guillaumeb]

13. I tried to tailor it to the orginal post.

So as to fit in, so to speak.

[Cartoonist]

14. Again

You got nothing.

[guillaumeb]

15. Speaking of nothing,

Moral of this post: I have more freedom as an American here on Earth than I could ever have in Heaven.

An opinion. Nothing more.

[Cartoonist]

16. What, I can't have an opinion?

Or maybe I just can't have one different than yours.

[guillaumeb]

17. Free will seems to be a concept that is problematic for some few here.

As to heaven, how do you define heaven?

[Cartoonist]

18. How I define Heaven

noun
An imaginary place

[guillaumeb]

19. I understand.

[Cartoonist]

20. I doubt it

[MineralMan]

22. Nothing to say, then, on the topic?

Why bother?

[marylandblue]

23. To grace you with his opinion, his understanding and his incisive commentary.

[Mariana]

24. I don't think he's doing it for our benefit. nt.

[MineralMan]

25. Feeble retorts...

[guillaumeb]

27. Like the original post?

[marylandblue]

32. No.

[guillaumeb]

26. I did.

[Act_of_Reparation]

39. HOW ENORMOUS WAS IT?

I sense jokes coming.

[trotsky]

41. You claim you want dialog.

Why don't you ever engage in it? Why do you insist on dictating not only the topics in this group, but what kind of responses are acceptable?

[guillaumeb]

42. I gave my view of the post.

As to the rest of your response, that also is a straw man.

[trotsky]

43. DIALOG,gil.

Either start doing it, or stop whining that you wish it would happen.

Otherwise you just end up looking like a giant hypocrite.

[Mariana]

44. "Otherwise you just end up looking like a giant hypocrite."

That ship sailed a long, long time ago.

[trotsky]

45. More of a warning to newbies at this point, I guess.

All the regulars have him figured out, and deal with him accordingly. But the guy sticks to his script, I'll give him that.

[guillaumeb]

47. More insult posing as dialogue?

I understand.

[Mariana]

48. Not at all.

I'm having a lovely dialogue with Trotsky in this thread. You could do so, too, if you weren't so busy chewing up the scenery for your army of fans.

[guillaumeb]

49. As I said.

So in your view, dialogue is reserved for one side only?

[guillaumeb]

46. Doalogue takes 2 sides that are willing to discuss rather than engage

in name calling and endless straw man argumentation.

When one sector insists on finding the bad in every positive post about religion, that sector is, in my view, showing how much interest they have in actual dialogue.

[Lordquinton]

50. Let us know when you want to discauss

rather than the second part.

[trotsky]

54. I have made MULTIPLE attempts to dialog with you.

You have refused EVERY SINGLE TIME.

I'm offering here once again.

You'll refuse and likely smear me again.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Any reader of this forum is free to judge how sincere you are.

[guillaumeb]

58. You have engaged in a consistent pattern of behavior.

I could cite examples going back to 2012, but there is no reason to do so.

And yes, all of the readers can indeed judge.

[trotsky]

59. No, of course you won't provide evidence of your claims.

You never do.

[guillaumeb]

60. No, I never do. Except, when I do.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/121814648

[trotsky]

61. So you're saying you're rug?

Wow. OK, reporting to admins.

[guillaumeb]

62. You amaze me.

But I understand.

[trotsky]

63. Yes, I point out religious hypocrites.

I've confirmed this dozens of times.

I love to point out their hypocrisy.

Guilty as charged!

No wonder I bother you so much.

[guillaumeb]

64. Read the cited post.

Look at the pattern of negative responses.

I could cite others, but the pattern persists.

But speaking of hypocrisy, do you turn your view other places?

[trotsky]

65. I understand that hypocrites find it "negative" to point out their hypocrisy.

I'm very sorry they feel that way.

Perhaps they should quit being hypocrites.

[guillaumeb]

66. I understand your viewpoint.

And what it reveals.

[trotsky]

67. Congratulations on figuring out I don't like hypocrites - especially religious ones!

Well done, gil.

[trotsky]

56. And speaking of straw man argumentation...

When one sector insists on finding the bad in every positive post about religion

THAT'S A FUCKING STRAW MAN, GIL.

KNOCK IT THE FUCK OFF.

[elocs]

29. Free will may be nothing more than an illusion to the individual.

[link:https://www.livescience.com/46411-free-will-is-background-noise.html|

"Now, a new study suggests that free will may arise from a hidden signal buried in the "background noise" of chaotic electrical activity in the brain, and that this activity occurs almost a second before people consciously decide to do something."

So what we believe is our own personal choice, our own "free will" of the moment is really a result of who we already are as a person.

[marylandblue]

34. That doesn't mean it's not free will

It could just means the part that is free is bigger than the conscious mind.

[elocs]

38. The "conscious mind" is the whole point of it being free "will".

The entire point of claiming to have free will is that one is making a conscious choice to do something or not do something, to choose something or not to choose it.

[guillaumeb]

30. How "interesting".

That you would say:

Moral of this post: I have more freedom as an American here on Earth than I could ever have in Heaven.

An unprovable assertion that follows other unproven assertions.

Points for consistency.

[Major Nikon]

51. Interesting you'd take exception to an unproven assertion about an accepted unproven assertion

I think Orwell referred to this as doublethink.

[guillaumeb]

57. An accepted unproven assertion?

Bizarre answer. If it is unproven, how is it accepted? Except perhaps by the original speaker.

[Major Nikon]

68. Excellent question

[Cartoonist]

52. Unproven assertion

God

[Major Nikon]

69. Not everyone gets irony

[Binkie The Clown]

31. If the universe is deterministic in the strict Newtonian sense, then there is no free will. But...

if the universe is subject to truly random fluctuations due to some quantum phenomenon, then there is also no free will, only random choices made for no reason at all.

Either way, free will is an illusion.

[marylandblue]

33. Emergent properties are ones that certain arrangements of matter exhibit

that are not properties of their components. Consciousness is such a property. Your brain is conscious, but no individual neuron in it is. Free will could be such a property. Free will could be a property of our brains rather than any individual part of it. It also does not have to be a property of the conscious part of our brains.

[Binkie The Clown]

35. Emergent properties are not magical. They emerge for well-defined reasons.

The hypothesis that "consciousness" is emergent is just that; an hypothesis, so any "conclusions" derived from that hypothesis are equally hypothetical.

A transistor, on its own, or a capacitor, on its own, lack the fundamental properties of a radio receiver. That does not mean that the property of being capable of receiving radio signals "emerged" as if by magic when those parts were assembled. The properties of the components, combined with the properties of the arrangement (circuit diagram), along with the laws of physics can predict the emergent property without invoking anything remotely mystical. That the properties in question do not exists in the separate components in no way implies that the emergent properties cannot be predicted from the applicable laws. Your use of "emergent property" as if it creates something out of thin air that cannot be predicted or understood is fallacious.

In point of fact, we may find it difficult to predict emergent properties, HOWEVER, once we have observed an emergent property in a mechanistic system we CAN, retroactively, explain the cause of that emergent property. The use of "emergent property" to "explain" consciousness is a cop-out used by people who like to pretend that evoking those words "explains" anything, which it does not. Dennet is a big fan of waving his arms while (metaphorically) explaining the details of how a movie projector works and then proclaiming, à propos of nothing at all, that "therefore, the audience in the theater does not exist." It's all smoke an mirrors and explains nothing.

"Free will" implies results that are un-caused, which violates the whole assumption of a mechanistic universe. Thus if the universe is mechanistic then free will does not exist. And if results are not caused, in the mechanistic sense, then they are random in the quantum sense, and again, free will does not exist.

You only have two choices. Either you are a pre-preogrammed automaton, or you are mostly pre-programmed but subject to sporadic random mental events that have no mechanistic cause. I don't see how having random brain farts qualifies as "free will".

Being conscious does not mean you have the ability to make choices. It only implies that you have the ability to be conscious of choices that were made, whether deterministically or randomly, at some deeper, inaccessible, level of your brain.

Or perhaps what we think of as "our life" is really just the replay of a virtual reality drama that was scripted long before we began to experience it. We have no more free will than a character in a movie has when he gives the impression of "making a decision" at a critical point in the script. No matter how many times you watch the movie, the character on the screen will never make a different choice. No matter how many "souls" replay the life drama you are replaying right now, the character you are replaying will never make different choices than those that were written into the script by the immutable laws of physics before the beginning of time.

(Given an infinitely large universe and an infinite length of time over an infinite number of big bangs, it is inevitable that an infinite number of different consciousnesses will experience "your life" exact in every detail, and making every "free will" choice you "made" (or, rather experienced) . That much is a mathematical certainty. )

[marylandblue]

36. I don't mean to imply anything mystical about free will

It's just a property of your brain, really your body and the stimulus you receive, as a whole. I actually don't think it has anything to do with consciousness directly, but has to do with self-regulating goal directed activities in the brain. I think the trouble we run into is we think our little teeny consciousnesses are who we are. They are not. We are lot more than that, and it is that entire system that does the "deciding." It's sufficient for me to perceive we have free will, as I perceive other internal processes like thoughts and emotions whose underlying mechanisms I don't perceive. Not knowing where those thoughts come from doesn't mean I don't have those thoughts.

Alternatively, if I am preprogrammed to believe I have free will, then so be it, I still believe it. If you are preprogrammed to believe you don't, then that's your programming.

[Binkie The Clown]

37. And "the system that does the deciding" is either determinisitic or random.

Neither alternative leaves room for free will.

[uriel1972]

53. It strikes me...

that "choice" is governed by inbuilt proclivities and potential mediated by environmental factors... limitations which make "Free Will" untenable.
No free will... no sin... eh, no problem for me.