Free Will? Is it an illusion?

After thousands of years of philosophy, theology, argument and meditation on the riddle of free will, I'm not about to solve it for you in this column (sorry). But what I can do is tell you about some thought-provoking experiments by psychologists, which suggest that, regardless of whether we have free will or not, whether we believe we do can have a profound impact on how we behave.

The issue is simple: we all make choices, but could those choices be made otherwise? From a religious perspective it might seem as if a divine being knows all, including knowing in advance what you will choose (so your choices could not be otherwise). Or we can take a physics-based perspective. Everything in the universe has physical causes, and as you are part of the universe, your choices must be caused (so your choices could not be otherwise). In either case, our experience of choosing collides with our faith in a world which makes sense because things have causes.

You might find that determinists, who believe free will is an illusion and that we are all cogs in a godless universe, behave worse than those who believe we are free to make choices. But you wouldn't know whether this was simply because people who like to cheat and lie become determinists (the "Yes, I lied, but I couldn't help it" excuse).

What we really need is a way of changing people’s beliefs about free will, so that we can track the effects of doing so on their behaviour. Fortunately, in recent years researchers have developed a standard method of doing this. It involves asking subjects to read sections from Francis Crick's book The Astonishing Hypothesis.

And the results are striking. One study reported that participants who had their belief in free will diminished were more likely to cheat in a maths test. In another, US psychologists reported that people who read Crick’s thoughts on free will said they were less likely to help others.

[T]here has been a 100 plus years of efforts among the evolutionists, Scientists and any number of new age religions and educators to convince people that they have NO FREE WILL.
I believe you have that completely backwards. Free will is a very cornerstone.

The belief in fee will is the cornerstone. This goes right back to the garden of Eden, the knowledge of good and evil where We get to decide what us right and wrong.

But the reality is free will is subject to God, there is a higher authority! Remember our humble national beginnings, our rights (and responsibility) come from God.

Liberals (and other humans) will pervert this to make free will subject to them, but give the illusion of free will.

Now, you might argue that God is giving us the illusion also and that is not fair. But the truth is, God is God, and we are not. A reading of Job will remind us of this.

Now back to thinking about God. After much passing of time, I have finally understood, that LEFT IN MY FREE WILL, I WOULD NEVER CHOOSE GOD. He chose me.......................

I think it is unreasonable to suggest that there is some conspiracy among liberals to convince us that we don't have free will.

There are lots of scientists and philosophers and theologians who have good (though not compelling) reasons to believe that we don't have free will.

Pretty much everyone agrees that our free will is not absolute, i.e. that we are more likely to do things we will later wish we hadn't when we are tired, angry, amped up, etc.

Most people, liberals and conservatives, have inconsistent views with regard to free will. Free will is a very difficult topic that most people think is real easy.

It's similar to our naive view of reality. We all know that tables are solid. We can see with our own eyes that tables are solid. And by solid most people mean filled up with stuff. But it turns out that tables are mostly empty space, and they only appear solid due to the interactions of photons with the fields set up by the atomic nuclei and electrons.

What we see is not necessarily what we get. What makes "sense" is not necessarily what is the case.

If peoples' beliefs about free will affect their behavior then that seems like an interesting scientific fact in favor of there actually being free will. However, I think the best that can be argued for in that case is the sort of free will described by Dennett, i.e. we're adaptive robots.

Pretty much everyone agrees that our free will is not absolute, i.e. that we are more likely to do things we will later wish we hadn't when we are tired, angry, amped up, etc.

Someone can "want" to quit smoking, and yet "want" another cigarette. Choices are sometimes difficult, and we make them moment by moment. We have competing urges and drives in us. Something in us decides moment by moment which way we will go. This might be a purely mechanical process, and if you are a materialist, you would have to expect it was. But the evidence weighs against this strongly I think. Neuroscience has progressed far, and yet can not explain the "hard problem of consciousness" even when it should have by now. Its not all there in our brains. For example, the visual processes have been mapped out...and yet there is no place in our brain where shapes and colors are combined into the concept of an object with both color and shape. Something beyond our brain seems to be doing it. Of course, this would mean something that is not material that can experience things. Which of course makes a lot of sense to people who believe in a spiritual world beyond the material one, or immortal soul. But these beliefs are much older than the research...which is just more conformation. The experience of what it is to be something that can experience, and the view of a universe of contingent things with an obvious missing first cause has convinced smart thinkers from ancient times until now that there are things beyond these contingent material, and even space and time. We now live in an age where these thinkers are shown to be right about much of this.

Yep, the simple view of reality that we project with our senses is not the real reality. My suspicion is though, it is why people who are materialists believe in materialism. Even as we think of the "solid" as being mostly empty, our instinct is to think in terms of smaller little pellets of "solid" matter floating about in some matrix..or some other mental picture that stops short of reality. It is this naive horse-sense I think that is at the core of materialist philosophy...that there is nothing beyond this "matter" picture. No spirit. No free-will. Nothing that can be outside of space itself. Nothing that can be outside of time itself. However science has not been friendly to such a picture of reality of late. Its something that our senses can not really grasp...that our picture thinking is not really good at understanding.

The reasons to believe in free-will I think has been helped by science of late. The main reason to doubt it I think was really just a bias toward the naive horse-sense materialist projection of our senses. The reasons had to do with something like "free-will" or a soul not being allowed because the idea was the universe and brain and all was just material and well understood and these things were beyond it. Without that bias, I can't find any reason to doubt free-will and that I am a soul. Certainly I can't accept that being something that can observe is an illusion...since an illusion is something that can fool an audience, not create an audience.

If peoples' beliefs about free will affect their behavior then that seems like an interesting scientific fact in favor of there actually being free will.

I don't think this necessarily follows. If there was a positive effect of believing in free-will from an evolutionary point of view, it would be at most weak evidence suggesting that free-will might just be a useful illusion rather than real. Although I suppose if believing in free-will had a negative evolutionary impact it might be weak evidence suggesting that its real thing that is perceived despite the fact that the perception is detrimental to evolutionary forces.

A deeper understanding of ‘free will’ may be gleaned after more advanced study of Bible doctrine.

It is hardly the case that advocates for or against free will or determinism become any more or less ethical.

Some of the strongest willed people are agnostic and some are atheist. Satan himself was cursed upon his declaration of his five “I wills” as recorded in Isaiah 14.

Conversely, the plans of Satan are often thwarted, not by believing zealots, but by unbelievers who have volition and still sin. Even the best laid plans of strong willed persons are brought to failure by those who fail to obey plans, even those plans independent of God. It’s been said that while Satan may be an Adversary to God, he hates man, not so much because man was created in God’s image, but because Satan can’t control the volition of man, especially when man sins and impedes the diabolical plans of the Adversary.

Studies in Reformed theologies, advancing beyond the anthropology of the created man as having body, soul, and spirit, the topic of ‘free will’ can become quite impressive.

When we accept all mankind today is born with a body and soul, but without a living spirit one with God, yet it is available per the Gospel message, we then must consider the issue of free will and its role in salvation and sanctification. Since spiritual things can’t be understood by unbelievers who lack a human spirit until it is created for them at salvation, and yet salvation is by grace through faith and not by works, lest any man should boast, some are led to believe salvation is only by a preordained selection, rather than by election.

The beauty of God’s Plan is that it excludes Arrogance from eternal life in heaven. We are condemned before we are saved. That salvation involves a thinking process, which re are responsible for our thinking, but still involves predestination in regards to logistical grace and when and where the divine call is made.

Doctrines of efficacious and common grace, as well as predestination, and volitional accountability are all key to the Divine Plan.

I’m not suggesting any kind of liberal conspiracy.

They are on auto-pilot.

They don’t actually know what they are advancing.

Relativism, starting with Multi-culturalism to today’s Political correctness gone mad.

Their efforts are in the destruction of logic whether they realize it or not.

Logic is immaterial and they are materialists.

It runs in any number of circles in American colleges and finds its way into virtually every aspect of their belief system.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxz84kS8k4U

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