Theism Supports Free Will Better than Materialism Does

David Stockhoff · 11 Oct 2014, 17:35 · from 2014-October.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2014 13:35:20 -0400
Subject: (urth) Theism Supports Free Will Better than Materialism Does
In-Reply-To: <54389857.1070200 at clueland.com>
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	<54389857.1070200 at clueland.com>
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On 10/10/2014 10:39 PM, Jeffery Wilson clueland.com wrote:
> On 10/10/2014 8:27 AM, Norwood, Frederick Hudson wrote:
>> Of course God has free will.  But not Moses, as far as I can tell.
>
> I believe this is somewhat backwards. God's omnipotent, omniscient, 
> and eternal character exclude any process of decision or choice-making 
> on His part. He is changeless and perfect, so there is no change of 
> mind possible or necessary, and being eternal this is always the case.
>
> Ironically, this also means that people *do* have free will, as my 
> friend Bill Stoddard explains it:
>
> "Now, if physical reality is essentially deterministic?if each 
> fundamental physical entity, based on its nature, state, and 
> relationships, is capable of only one specific next state and one 
> specific action?then human mental processes are deterministic too, and 
> we don't have free will. But if physical reality is essentially 
> indeterministic?if there are occasions when an entity can enter one of 
> two or more next states, or perform one of two or more actions, and 
> which comes next is not merely unpredictable but truly random?then 
> that doesn't give us any more free will, either. Having our actions 
> changed from time to time by the throw of a set of cosmic dice does 
> not equate to our being free to choose among different actions, or to 
> determine our own destiny; it amounts to our being at the mercy of 
> chance. So in a physicalistic view, genuine free will doesn't seem to 
> make much sense. It's hard even to describe what it would consist in.

Interesting, but crude. Human decisions are not always either 
deterministic or random. I suppose you could make a case for either if 
you limit the decisions under study to either crucial moral problems 
(will I kill my wife in a fit of rage? No, because I'm not insane; yes, 
because I'm insane) or routine, habitual decisions (should I eat that 
bag of potato chips at lunch? 40% gleefully; 40% guiltily; 20% no). But 
you'd need a general theory to predict it, and no such theory exists. 
However, I happily concede that 100% free will as philosophy frames it 
is a pernicious myth, and biology presents all sorts of arguments 
against it.

>
> "In theism, on the other hand, we have a model where God knows all of 
> our actions, past, present, and future, in a single timeless instant 
> of comprehension. In effect, the entire history of the cosmos is a 
> vast simulation model that God is running?except that God has infinite 
> computational capacity and does not need time to run the simulation. 
> But God is also able to interpret the thoughts and feelings and 
> choices that the simulated particles constitute, and thus to 
> simultaneously know the cosmos as a story. And as an author, God can 
> enter into the story and identify with its characters. The capacity to 
> do so is, in Christian terms, the Holy Spirit. But every author has 
> the experience of characters saying, 'No, I wouldn't do that thing, I 
> would do the other thing.' And God, having complete control over the 
> whole narrative, can rewrite it instantaneously to conform to our 
> saying that?rewrite it not on the basis of physical determinism, but 
> on the basis of the content of our thoughts and feelings and desires. 
> God can, if necessary, look back to the big bang and adjust the place 
> where one specific quark appears to give rise to a cosmic history in 
> which we choose salvation or damnation; or, if you prefer 
> indeterminism, God can decide which random particle motions will occur 
> in our brains instant to instant for the same purpose. What we want 
> miraculously but subtly changes the whole cosmos to enable us to be 
> more fully the characters we are. Free will is the gift of the Holy 
> Spirit."
>
Not only is this not an argument for free will---rather, it argues for 
supernatural puppetry and goes to bizarre lengths to do so---it 
completely ignores biology (see above). Unless we're to believe God 
automatically adjusts that too.

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