Free Will ?

[JLHPROF]

I wonder how wickedness is expressed in the animal kingdom.  Do you think birds and bees are free moral agents who can choose to "abuse" their free will.

 

Now THAT is an interesting question.

I would argue that yes animals can be wicked.

Isaiah 11:6 certainly predicts a day when they are less fallen and will change their actions towards each other:

"The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them."

Edited November 24, 2014 by JLHPROF

[LinuxGal]

 

I would argue that yes animals can be wicked.

Isaiah 11:6 certainly predicts a day when they are less fallen and will change their actions towards each other:

"The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them."

 

Everything about a wolf is optimized to predation, leopards are optimized for speed to overtake prey, a lamb is optimized to chew grass, yet when a wolf or a leopard are prophesied to behave like a lamb, they are said to be unfallen, restored to their original state.  And that doesn't make a lick of sense.

[WmLaw]

That really doesn't "clarify" it, it over-simplifies it.  He hears and answers prayers and can interact with us and teach us.  Is that "interference"?

 

When teaching you as a child did your parents "interfere" in your life?  Did you therefore not have "free will"?

 

We believe that choice is real and there is no way to verify that any more than there is a way to verify that abortion or gay marriage is wrong or any other moral question.  Such ideas are not subject to verification in a scientific sense- there is no way to answer that question in that way.

 

It all depends on what you want to believe and what good it does you in your life to believe that way.

 

Why are you asking, and what do you think?   I would wager you have not read much Wittgenstein if you are asking that question- which I think is relevant to understanding my way of thinking.

 

My previous post described a thought model to resolve the silliness about free-will and determinism, which is, I think a linguistic confusion.

 

Religious and moral questions are not about "objective reality" whatever that even means.  All we know is what we can experience as humans and we certainly experience choice.  I leave God's business to God.

I'd like to know what you mean by 'interact'.  Is that beyond anwering prayers with further light and knowledge?  Does it extend to altering the natural course of events? physical interactions, etc

 

As for what I think?  I'm still exploring.  I haven't settled on any conclusions.

[mfbukowski]

I'd like to know what you mean by 'interact'.  Is that beyond anwering prayers with further light and knowledge?  Does it extend to altering the natural course of events? physical interactions, etc

 

As for what I think?  I'm still exploring.  I haven't settled on any conclusions.

Well again the problem is the language of what our practical experience tells us vs some abstract linguistic conundrum which we think is "logical"

 

So traditionally, our Christian linguistic culture has described God as "transcendent"- which causes a conflict with how God can hear and answer prayer.  It mixes a Platonic God as the Form of Goodness with the Biblical God who has a body parts and passions who is our Father who hears and answers prayers and is petitionable - he does things for us.

 

But traditional Christianity is at its core contradictory.  A God who is omnipotent and all knowing and unchanging and transcendent- the Greek Platonic Form of Goodness is not personal, not "our father" and not able to interact with his children.   God is either One or Three, all the silliness about "Being" and "substance" does not make three persons one.

 

He cannot "change his mind".   If God is our father and we need something we do not have, and he gives it to us, that is interaction.   State 1 is us not having what we need, and state 2 is him giving it to us.

 

That means he has gone from state 1 to state 2- a "change" and therefore a linguistic confusion because he is supposedly "unchanging" to be a transcendent omnipotent etc God.

 

That would make him "immanent" and part of the world, not "transcendent" as the Greeks and traditional Christians see him.  But those are incompatible, supposedly you cannot be both "immanent" and "transcendent" at the same time.

 

But that is just lingusitc silliness.  It is like this thread- if God knows everything, then we are not "free".  It is confusing two non-existent category descriptions and therefore

 

But our personal experience of God is as our Father.   I have choices, I can ask God for something in prayer, and he will give it to me.  THAT is my subjective experience, and NOTHING CAN DISPROVE THAT AS "untrue" because it is not falsifiable.

 

There IS no "natural course of events" if we can interact with the world.  It is a non-existent hypothetical to say "Well what would have happened if the Battle of Gettysburg was never fought?"  The results are unknowable and irrelevant to our lives.  So without the "interaction" in the Battle, what would have been the "natural course of events"??   No clue- its an irrelevant abstraction and the results are unknowable.

 

So subjectively , yes, we have choice, and we feel that God hears and answer our prayers, gives us comfort etc.   I personally believe that sometimes that also includes providing means to allow us to do something otherwise impossible- providing funds, putting a key person in our path, helping us to meet our spouses, etc.

 

Does that change the "natural order"??   I don't know what that would even mean.  Does the "natural order" INCLUDE that interaction and change already or not?

 

It depends on how you want to see it, and define it.   It's just one more thing to argue about incessantly.

 

I think it is perfectly justifiable to go with our direct experience since all we have as an alternative is confusion.

 

I experience my own ability to make choices, and I experience God directly and his influence in my life.  That is all that is relevant as far as I am concerned and I can justify it philosophically.

Edited November 24, 2014 by mfbukowski

[cursor]

Every day we can use agency to either build a cage or an estate. Having already built a first estate, I wonder why so many prefer to live in a cage. When we deny ' truth ' , do we not deny ourselves freedom?

 

I did not intend to award a "like" to you comment, strappinglad. I intended to to comment on your post.

Free agency" ... human choice, if you will, can "build a cage," or "build and estate." Your speak of "so many [who] prefer to live in a cage [and who] deny 'truth'" very nearly makes me cringe. The variety of people, and their vary naturally varied capabilities (God-given, by the way) SAYS that variety is good, that all do not start off on the same foot ... and that all will not be judged on the same plane."

 

I'm SO happy that you've already built your "first estate." 

 

SO many can't. How many have no clue what that even means ... much less how to do it?

 

I know SO many people in SO many cages — sometimes selective, based on any number of mental/spiritual elements available to them at any single point in time.

 

"First estate" ... What does that even mean to the male child who was born to a coke-head mom?

 

"First estate" ... What might that mean for the female child of a woman who was raped ... wherever, whenever?

 

"First estates" are tough to come by, and hard to accomplish. "Second estates" are necessarily a derivative of the first.  

[Calm]

I'm SO happy that you've already built your "first estate."

Hasn't everyone who has been born to mortality done so?  I think what strapping lad was referring to was the pre mortal existence:

 

https://www.lds.org/scriptures/nt/jude/1.6?lang=eng#5

 

"6 And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day."

I agree that many are born or raised such that agency is very limited and others have built the cages, but given strappinglad's posting history I highly doubt he was referring to those when he was referring to the "many" but more likely he was referring those who were born in bountiful situations but seem for some reason to have thrown it away. It seems strange to him that our apparently successful experience in the pre mortal existence doesn't influence us more now to also be faithful in following God as all of us (all mortal humans ever born) were then.

Of course, he can clarify if he meant something else.

Edited November 26, 2014 by calmoriah