Sunday, October 21, 2012

Free will (part 1)

Something I have been thinking about a lot recently is free will.  I have been reading a lot of books and watching a lot of debates between Christians and atheists concerning whether or not God exists, and something that has been striking to me is that even atheists tend to believe in free will and morality.  To explain why this is strange to me, I will have to back up and first define free will and the Christian basis for it.

To me, free will is the belief that humans have the ability to choose their actions in a manner that is not entirely controlled by their genes and environment.  In other words, humans have the ability to consciously rebel against and transcend their natural desires.  This is why humans are uniquely capable of both good and evil, because we are in conscious control of our actions and their repercussions in a way that other animals are incapable of.

I was recently watching a BBC nature show, where male polar bears were viciously fighting each other to see who would be the alpha male (this behavior is of course not unique to bears but rather ubiquitous in the animal kingdom).  The winner had the freedom to mate with any female he chose (regardless of whether she consents), and would continue to violently maul and even murder any nearby males to prevent them from mating with anybody.  The crucial point here is that nobody I know would consider such behavior between polar bears as immoral: nobody is saying that the polar bears are evil.  The male bear is simply acting according to his instincts (the desire to mate with as many females as possible) and his environment (there are competitors that must be crushed).  It's simply the way polar bears work, morality has nothing to do with it!

Here's the twist: now what if humans did this exact same thing?  For example, let's say that I was walking down the street and noticed a very attractive female holding hands with her boyfriend.  If I allowed myself to operate solely by my biological instincts (which I have just like the polar bear), I could clobber her boyfriend with a baseball bat and forcibly take her away as my conquest.  But of course, like most humans, I transcend any primal instincts I have in such situations out of respect for the well-being of others.  Now it's true that some people avoid bad behavior primarily to avoid legal/social repercussions, but it should be emphasized that I would assuredly avoid such behavior even if I could be assured there would be no punishment for my actions.  In other words, I have chosen to consciously repress my natural instincts for the sake of morality and the greater good.  This is an example of free will, every one of us exercises it every day, and the entire legal system of our country depends on its existence.  After all, why punish people for anything if they didn't have a choice? 

The Biblical explanation of free will is rather simple.  Christians believe that God uniquely created humans in His image, meaning that we all have a supernatural knowledge of good and evil (a.k.a. our soul).  This is where our conscious and consciousness comes from.  By conscious, I mean knowing right from wrong, and by consciousness, I mean having the rational faculty to suppress and transcend biological urges for the sake of loving others and doing the right thing, even at our own personal cost.  Until very recently, the vast majority of western civilization has believed in this supernatural source and justification for free will, and this has been the primary cause of the modern laws and social norms which have shaped modern civilization.

In my next post, I will talk about my perceived difficulty with reconciling naturalism with free will.  Until next time!




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