One sunny day our cat was lumbering across the driveway in the direction of some cool shade shrubs. I clicked my fingers and the cat stopped, and then walked off in another direction. Three things happened: I clicked my fingers, the cat stopped, then changed direction. Was the cat’s original intention so robotic that a finger click could alter it’s original intent.
Are the choices we make free choices, or are we automatons doing what is programmed in us by millions of years of evolution?
Was I free to ask that question or was it inevitable - determined? When Richard Dawkins, (atheist evolutionist, better known for his blunt anti Christian rhetoric than for scientific expertise), says to his first, second, or third wife: “Honey, I love you” – what does he mean. Is he saying to his spouse: “You XX cause my oxytocin levers to spike in my XY brain.” And does she reply: “My oxytocin just took a dip.”
I have read of court cases where the accused was acquitted because he/she claimed that the crime was no fault of their own because of their social/cultural/home circumstances – they could not do otherwise. And the crimes committed were not minor, all it needed was a finger click. Determinism.
Great tomes can and have been written on the subject of free will and determinism. I am just going to take it as simply as I know how. Particularly because there are many technical words used in this subject, and very often they are words that differ by a fine line, and that fine line can cover many chapters. For example some theorists differentiate between free will and free choice.
The atheist asks: “How, according to the Bible and Christian Theists, do we have free will if God in his omniscience (Having total knowledge; knowing everything) knows everything about us. He creates us knowing everything we will do. Since we cannot surprise him by our actions we have no free will. Our choices have been predetermined and God’s judgment is therefor completely immoral because he knows what we are going to do.”
However, the same tension between free will and determinism exists within naturalism (Naturalism is the view of the world that takes account only of natural elements and forces, and excluding the supernatural or spiritual). We, according to naturalistic world view, have inclinations and longings that spring out of our biology, our history or out of our genetics. We may think that we're free. This sense of ‘freeness’ say scientists is an illusion. After all if we are simply biomechanical machines (automatons) how do you know that a question that pops up in your brain about free will and determinism is not a result of a long chain of chemical reactions and processes - even to the point of compelling you to agree or disagree with the answer that is given.
The claim by the naturalist (which necessarily includes the evolutionist) is that any free will that we humans imagine that we may have is an illusion. All it is is chemical reactions and electrical pulses. If we apply logic to this naturalistic claim, then this claim made by naturalists is likewise an illusion and therefor null and void.
To what extent do we as Humans have foreknowledge? Can anyone have foreknowledge if people are free? An illustration can be helpful. If I give you the option of having pizza or a rat to eat I will be confident that you would choose the pizza. Perhaps in another culture, say aboriginal, you would not know what a pizza is and rats would be part of your normal diet – I would be confident that you would choose the rat. You are going to choose freely and I have not in any way causally determined your action, but I would know enough about you to know what your choices would be. A mother, while watching over her toddler, knows exactly what the toddler would do next in a given circumstance – without causing the action of the toddler.
God knows each one of us so intimately that. Like us, he can have foreknowledge of how we would act freely. More on omniscience later.
What the atheist/naturalist is wrestling with is not uncommon. The problem is that they misposition between determinism and free will. Stephen Hawking (world's leading physicist) concluded on the subject of determinism and freedom that scientifically and materialistically we are not free - we are totally determined – we are automatons. Therefor the accusation that theists’ belief in an omniscient God means we are determined does not hold – because it also apples the atheists/naturalists.
Is the atheist determined in questioning God’s omniscience (or any other religious question) or is he/she free to ask this question. Made up of past experiences and millions of years of genetic mutilations is the atheist a machine automaton, an automaton asking questions and making truth claims (about determinism and free will) We have to point out: if the atheist naturalist is making a truth claim then they are rising above the bondage of total subjectivity and the moment you claim a truth claim you are violating determinism laid down by millions of years of evolution..
Freewill and Love
An illustrative story was told of a concentration camp guard watching over a Jewish prisoner digging his own grave, and also that God would be watching as the guard pulled his rifle trigger. If God was watching why didn't he make that trigger malfunction or have the prisoner pass out while he was digging his grave. Following that, God would be watching as the prisoner was bludgeoned to death or buried alive. Rather than putting a halt to the atrocity, according to Christian doctrine, God would bring some sort of judgment on the guard. Such atrocities have happened in their millions. How is it that a moral God would permit this.
The implication in this illustration is that God is either immoral, or non-existent.
God has given to us the supreme ethic of love. It is the uttermost of all intellectual and emotional life. This thing we call love, which places value of worth upon the other person as something to be protected.
You can never have love without intrinsically weaving into it the freedom of the will. If you are compelled like an automaton to a certain decision and action you can never love. You can comply but you will never be choosing to express that sentiment and the reality of love is that love is a supreme ethic, and freedom is indispensable to love. And God's supreme goal for you and for me is that we will love Him with all of our hearts and love our neighbours as ourselves. For God to violate our free will would be to violate that which is a necessary component so that love can flourish and love can be expressed. If you're asking for God to always stop the trigger why not stop everything else – make the knife blunt as you are about to accidently cut yourself, or switching the power off when you are about to touch a dangerous electrical cable, or vaporizing that excessively high carbohydrate meal you are about to eat. What is being asked for is a different thing than humanity – an automaton. In stopping a certain event you may think He is protecting you from that which is destructive. The greatest denial is in asking for the freedom of your will - to be able to choose and to love – but simultaneously to be a supervised automaton.
To choose to love God with all your heart and all your soul when you've got love as a supreme ethic and the freedom of the will to choose that love, all of the other contingencies come into play. If you want compliance and a mechanical response then disbelieving questions will self-destruct. Questions are asked because we are free to ask and if we are free to ask it is because we are free to love and when we love God in spite of all of the contraries that we see around us, we are trusting him for having the supreme wisdom and the knowledge to ultimately bring a pattern out of it all.