Do We Have Free Will? (video)

In the external, or physical, world, we're all aware of standard cause and effect. You know, "Object A acts upon Object B with Force X." We all get that, because it applies to just about everything -- from electrons to athletes.

But now consider events in your internal, or mental, world. What causes your thoughts?

Some of our thoughts have external causes, like when we touch something and suddenly realize it's hot. We don't deliberate whether or not to pull our hand away. Our brain has already fired the instruction to do so -- involuntarily. In some strange sense, "we" didn't really pull our hand away at all -- because "we" didn't choose to do it. Our brain did it before consulting us.

A second cause of our thoughts is internal. Say you're thinking about giving a big presentation and as you do so, you get increasingly nervous, and your blood pressure and your heart rate jump up. Now, nothing external is acting upon you. You're doing all the "causing" internally, right? Your anxious thoughts are causing your brain to send signals to your heart, and we get that.

But now, I want you to consider a third category of your thoughts -- it's your conscious choices -- something as simple as choosing where to go for lunch.

Now when you introspect, when you think about your thinking, do you believe that you are the active agent in charge of the process, or that you are just a passive recipient of the instruction -- that you have no choice in the matter, it's all external forces -- be they environmental, genetic, chemical, biological, or neurological? In other words, do you think all your thoughts have external causes beyond your control, or do you think that you control some, if not most, of your thoughts?

Now let's stay with our lunch example for a second... back to the question...I ask you "Where do you want to go for lunch today?"

Now, if all you are is a brain, an exhaustively physical system of neurons and synapses, then there's no "you" that's gonna be making a "choice" at all. Your thought processes are basically just a complex series of colliding electron-dominos crashing into one another. It's just physical cause and effect, right -- something that can be exhaustively understood in terms of physics and chemistry? There's no "you" that's an agent that's deliberating, or choosing, or exercising free will.

And that's why, if you are just a brain, you cannot have free will. You would just be a physical machine -- a very complex but programmed computer.

But, if you're something more than your brain -- if you're the thing that has the brain -- then, when I ask you "Where do you want to go for lunch?," you're going to start deliberating -- you're going to be weighing your taste preferences, the commute time, perhaps even counting calories. You'd be weighing various reasons to choose one place over another. You wouldn't be caused to think about any of these things. You would choose to think about these things, and you could stop anytime you wanted to.

So, what we have here, therefore, are two different types of things: an immaterial mind and the material brain. You are the thing that has the brain -- you are not your brain.

Now look, even if you were the world's foremost brain expert, and you knew what was happening with every electron in someone's brain at a specific, particular moment, you still wouldn't have a clue about what's going on inside that person's mind. Surgeons can have access to my brain, but only I have access to my mind. This is what makes you human and not a machine.

Psychology, the study of the mind, is not reducible to physics, and biology, and chemistry. Yet, there are many materialists -- people who believe that physical matter is all that exists, that the only reality -- including every thought, every feeling, every mind, every will, all of this is totally explained in terms of matter in motion, simply physical phenomena. These materialists believe that we're no more than robots and that free will is an illusion, a myth.

Now, why do they believe this? Because they understand that the moment they acknowledge that free will exists, that there really is an immaterial you beyond the physical realm, that there really is a mind, not just a brain, then there has to be something non-physical that accounts for our non-physical minds.

Now when you exercise your freewill and you choose to think about all of this -- you're gonna probably reason -- just like I did -- that there is a Great Mind that accounts for the origin of your mind.

There is an intricate balance between the set of things classically emphasized in evangelical thought as Arminian and those emphasized as Calvinist. A serious believer versed in the scripture will eventually recognize that either school of thought is too simple to stand alone, and this universe serves a God who provides for both/and. The Gordian knot of the paradox is cut by realizing the divine perspective makes distinctions in reality that man cannot even see. If we try to factor God according to our own perspective, it is like a fish trying to imagine how a human can live while being dry.

"For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth." Here are some things I have learned as a Christian from listening to various, Spirit-filled, excellent preachers of the Gospel: Pharaohs were worshipped as gods (probably their ultimate 'god'), just as they worshipped many other gods. Our Almighty God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was furiously angry and grieved at the Hebrews, His People, being subjected to the horrors of slavery and torture at the hands of Pharaoh's (presumably Ramesses II) taskmasters. The Lord God went about destroying Pharaoh's 'godhood', his name, his rule, and wiped out his entire army as the Hebrews shook the dust off their feet and their children probably compared the beautiful seashells they found on their trek across the Red Sea. When Moses cast down his staff before Pharaoh and it turned into a snake, Pharaoh's sorcerers and magicians threw down their staffs and they became snakes as well. But Moses' snake swallowed the sorcerers' snakes--showing that the God of Moses, the "I AM", was the one and only God. Ramesses II likely got a migraine and cracked some teeth from clenching his jaw in anger that day! The Ten Plagues that God struck the Egyptians with were to destroy any belief that these people (and Pharaoh) had in their specific, false gods, and to show that the God of Moses, the "I AM", was GOD:

Re: “There are occasions in which a range of choices are possible that are not a sin. Absent special circumstances, the Lord does not command whether you should have apple or cherry pie. This should be obvious. Sometimes men reason from the divine prerogatives to the absurd. Being omnipotent does not prescribe how the omnipotence is used.”

Agreed. I like how you put it in your last two sentences. In other words, being soverereign doesn’t necessarily mean God exercises that sovereignty in every single event, act, thought, etc.. Not only are men held responsible for their deeds, they ARE responsible for them, too.

because when we see Him, our only response will rightly BE praise and adoration - not because it is forced, but simply because God is so awesome.
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So why did Satan not see God like you describe? He was an angel forced out of heaven, no?

This is the theme of the complex story related in scripture. The humility of the Lord is just so much philosophical words until you see with the eyes of your heart how it gets lived out. It means God doing things in favor of humanity that He had every right not to do and yet a very strong desire to do. Arguing about destiny ironically tends to put men’s thoughts ahead of God’s.

The parameters and consequences of the ability to choose evil are not the same for angels who are not made in God’s image and humans who are thus made. The scripture treats them differently. Angels who sin are lost forever. Men who sin can be saved. There are not (at least in evangelical thought) any unfallen men, beyond the special case of Jesus which was sinless God condensing Himself into the form of a human. There are unfallen angels.

Re: “So why did Satan not see God like you describe? He was an angel forced out of heaven, no?”

An interesting question. For one thing, we are not angelic beings - Satan is, and a very powerful being as well. Why he chose to rebel against God’s Lordship, even though he saw God in His glory, I can’t say. But apparently God gave angels the ability to serve Him or not. Satan chose not to and he was defeated and ultimately thrown out of Heaven, and will also ultimately be thrown into the Lake of Fire mentioned in Revelation.

The difference between Satan’s response and Believers in Christ? I guess I would say that Believers are/will be in Heaven because they freely acknowledged their sin, acknowledged Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection, and acknowledged His Lordship in their lives. They WANT God’s presence in their lives - they not only see God in His glory, but they also see God’ mercy, forgiveness, and love.

Angels would not be able to appreciate the dynamics that are present in what men know as being forgiven.

The scripture says that angels long to look into this. They can only see a semblance of it, vicariously (and presumably this is only the righteous angels, the wicked ones having lost even that capability).

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