It is not, apparently, only the Calvinist, the Reformed, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards and all those given to morbid introspection who question the legitimacy of so-called “free will.” Although for different reasons, and with different results, high-flying materialist thinkers doubt it, too, yet one might question whether they do so willingly…
It is possible to live happily and morally without believing in free will. … When the feeling [of acting with free will] is gone, decisions just happen with no sense of anyone making them … It seems that when people discard the illusion of an inner self who acts … they generally do behave in ways that we think of as moral and good. So perhaps giving up free will is not as dangerous as it sounds — but this too I cannot prove. (Susan Blackmore, in What We Believe but Cannot Prove.)
Giving up free will is certainly not as dangerous as it sounds, notwithstanding vigorous, deterministic protestations of Arminians and Pelagians of every shade and stripe, especially when one considers that utter corruption to which the human self has been subject.
One rightly challenges Blackmore’s assessment that moral good can come of materialistic determinism, but must confirm the conclusion that free selection between all possibilities is false.
Christian determinists become so not because “this body and its genes and memes and the whole universe it lives in” compels it, but because experience and the word of God confirm it: our will is — rather than being “free” — bound by the sin that it so loves. We are “free” to act according to that sin nature — we are, in fact, “determined” to do so — but we are otherwise most assuredly not free of constraint.
Yes. Now they experiment with determinism to supposedly escape the excesses of the lie of free will. People deceived they have free will have less compassion on themselves and their neighbors. They falsely perceive that their neighbor does everything on purpose. Imagined slights ( which are a double deception ) take on huge proportions in that lie of free will. People deceived God doesn’t exist, but that they are themselves just as hapless as their neighbor do less evil –only as they transition from free will theology to ‘deterministic’ theology. Once they have gotten comfortable in both the denial of God and ‘determinism’, any slight deviation from a very arbitrary ‘normal’ is twisted into the same death as the lie of free will as ‘abominations against nature’. They are deceived they have to ‘enforce the determinism’ without God in them and without new creation.
Materialistic determinism is just as dangerous as the lie of free will. In fact it is the same thing. It is a deception to think of what the non-regenerate call ‘determinism’ as the same as God’s predestination and election, though that is the term they will try to use as if it was equivalent. It is further deception to think that ‘free will’ and what is being called ‘determinism’ are opposites. The rhetoric in human speech sets them against each other constantly –as if– they were opposites. But they are not. There is a LOT of theater that goes into deceiving people that free will and determinism are opposites. Awards for great arguments, PhD’s, conferences, grants to ‘study the question’, etc..
The non-regenerate deny new creation in Jesus Christ; deny new creation outright. That denial is the foundation of supposing free will exist –and that ‘determinism’ exists. They need an environment which seems will-neutral and removing new creation is the first step. You obviously don’t have free will when you have new things being created all the time, that are effecting everything else. You obviously don’t have free will when God IS His Word and is Creating Speech and is Speaking all the time AND is not human speech.
Free will and deterministic theology is built on the assumption that human speech is all there is and or ever can be: a non-creating speech; a speech that can never create /interfere-with the environment in which we live and with us personally. If you start out in determinism, you end up in free will and if you start out in free will you end up in determinism. Those two have nothing to do with the on-going new creation in Jesus Christ inherent in predestination and election.
If you start in free will, you then have to acknowledge restraints on the necessities of life and once you have denied new creation, you immediately have a large group of identical creatures competing for those now-limited resources. The behaviors necessary to compete are the determinism. ( in those theologies you are represented as merely physical and have to eat food, drink non-poisonous water and fluids, need shelter, a certain climate, etc. ). If you start out with those qualities and behaviors, after you have idealized new creation to be impossible, you get a supposed ‘choice to compete or not’ within those restraints on behavior. The free will and the determinism are the same path to death masquerading as alternatives to death.
Indeed. Do not be deceived by materialistic determinism or any determinism by pagans. It is the same death as the lie of free will.
Good post.
Jeremiah 9: 3-6 And they bend their tongues like their bow for lies: but they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not me, saith the LORD. Take ye heed every one of his neighbour, and trust ye not in any brother: for every brother will utterly supplant, and every neighbour will walk with slanders. And they will deceive every one his neighbour, and will not speak the truth: they have taught their tongue to speak lies, and weary themselves to commit iniquity. Thine habitation is in the midst of deceit; through deceit they refuse to know me, saith the LORD.
timothy
In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen