It is possible that every choice we make is freely made at the moment we make it. This isn’t to say that our choices aren’t influenced by our biological make-up and our present physical conditions, our past experiences and knowledge, our perceptions, our psychological and emotional states, our beliefs and our relationships with others who are involved in the choice; but all those things are simply data we use in making a determination about our choices, not the choices themselves. And the degree of influence any one factor may exert at any moment will certainly vary. In the end, though, we choose, and the choice is ours to make.
Another possibility is that our choices aren’t choices at all, but are predetermined by the path set for us by a deity or deities. In that case, we are simply puppets of the divine, who is working out some plan beyond our influence or understanding. All the influences that may affect a free will choice would be part of the overall experience, but wouldn’t change the choice itself. We may ask ourselves why we chose as we did and what plan the divine is using us for, or why the divine has directed others to behave as they do; but the responsibility for the choice itself isn’t ours or anyone else’s. We also have to consider whether everything is predetermined: every triumph, every tragedy, every disaster and every celebration.
The third possibility is that our choices are biologically predetermined; we are genetically pre-programmed to behave in certain ways. In this case, there may be a certain randomness in the universe itself; the movements of the cosmos, for example, are events which may affect us, as are all the influences under free will, but our specific response to those influences at any one moment is predetermined by our biology and the biology of all our evolutionary and ancestral history. As with divine predestination, we have no personal responsibility for our choices, nor does anyone else; we are simply leaves tossed on the wind, vulnerable to the forces of nature, but unable to make a deliberate choice about what is happening to us. We can, if our biological make-up predisposes us to it, question how those forces led us to this place, but the questions and any answers we arrive at would simply be an extension of our biological predetermination.
It is also possible that we have some free choice, but it is limited. Either the divine or our biological nature gives us the ability to make choices, but only with regard to the details of the trajectory, not the trajectory itself. We have freedom to choose, but only within predetermined limits set for us according to our biological make-up or our assigned place in god’s plan.
In any event, the larger question, for me anyway, is “so what?” Does it really matter whether all this is “real” or not? If I walk out the door and decide to turn left rather than right, does it really matter in any practical way whether that choice was an event in the moment or a predestined action. I will, in any case, experience the action according to what I believe to be the reality. If I believe I am making the choice I will experience the process of consideration, weighing the relevant influences, thinking about the possible consequences, deciding on my course of action and acting. And while the discussion of the possibilities makes for a wonderful philosophical exercise, and is certainly useful as a way to try to understand what it means to be human, unless I am able to separate myself from my perceptions, it makes no difference.
In other words, there is really no practical sense in which the reality of free will or predestination changes my responsibility in this life for my actions.
Suppose I believe that everything I choose is predetermined. Then that belief would also be predetermined. If I then use that belief as a reason to leave my life to whatever happens, without trying to deliberately choose a course of action, telling myself that nothing I do is in my control, then I have a dilemma. The rest of the world may still assign credit or blame to me for my actions, and generate consequences based on that. I may not like the consequences, but really have no complaint, because all of this would have to be part of the same predetermined reality that I claim to believe in. If I believe that I have a choice, on the other hand, then I can certainly examine my choices to see if they fit some standard of ethics, morals, or logic; and use that to argue for their rightness.
In the same way, debate about god’s existence can make for an interesting exercise in trying to understand the nature of the universe and the place of humans in that universe, but my beliefs will be part of what creates my experience, and they will help to shape my choices, the consequences of those choices, and the direction of my path. I cannot, of course, no matter how devoutly I might wish it, impose my belief wholly onto anyone else and make them see the world as I see it, or expect them to act in the world according to my perceptions.
In other words, either god exists or does not. There are no other possibilities. The differences between beliefs are only in how we define god. Our beliefs are in our definitions and vice-versa. There are a great many ideas of god in which I do not believe; and I suspect that a great many people would not believe in my ideas of god. So what? We are all human beings, limited by our humanness to flawed perceptions of any god that might exist. And since our definitions and perceptions are limited and flawed, so are the choices we might make based on those perceptions. We can use our idea of god to explain our actions, but we cannot expect others to see things our way just because our beliefs are sincere.
If my actions lead to consequences that are harmful to others, it is unreasonable to assume that my religious beliefs and convictions are exculpatory. I am still responsible for my own actions in any practical interpretation of what that responsibility is. To come to any other conclusion would be to treat my religious beliefs as a form of mental illness (a conclusion to which far too many evangelical atheists are willing to leap), in which I would claim that I am not responsible for my actions because my god made it impossible for me to understand them, to make rational choices about them, to understand their consequences, and to choose to act any differently.
A belief in free will, the ability of humans to make choices as independent individuals, is necessary for any sense of morality, personal responsibility, ethics, and judgment. It is also, of course, the foundation of guilt, blame, shame, and regret. But it can be used, as well, for conscious change, for correction, for discipline, for redemption. Absent free will apology is just a mindless exercise, an illusion. Without free will, punishment is simply cruel and pointless. Without free will, we do not affect our existence, it affects us.
It doesn’t matter at all whether all of this is an illusion. It is within the illusion that we must live, by the very nature of the illusion itself and our limited ability as humans to perceive it (as opposed to theorize about it) or to act outside of it.
Posts Tagged ‘god’
God, Biology and Choice: Perhaps I Simply Had to Write This
In No Particular Path on November 13, 2018 at 12:04 pmGod with a Lowercase “g”
In A God of Infinite Possibility on October 14, 2017 at 8:18 amIn our grammar and composition classes we are told that “god” is supposed to be written with a capital “g.” When I type on my phone, autocorrect tries to do that for me. If, however, we write “a god” then the lowercase “g” is acceptable.
In English, we capitalize proper names, the major words in titles, the letters in acronyms, and the pronoun “I.” The only one of these that would apply to the word “God” would be the first. It is a proper name.
So, when one is referring to the god named “God” one should definitely capitalize the word; just as one would capitalize the name Allah, or Hera, or Krishna, or Diana, or any of several other names for one god or another. I mostly try to do that.
There are two reasons that I mostly, however, do not capitalize the word “god” when I am writing about matters of belief, particularly my own beliefs, or about religion.
The first is that I am usually not talking about the specific god named God. That is, more specifically, recognized as the name used by the Judeo/Christian religious traditions for the god they worship, the God of Abraham. So, when a Christian or a Jew refers to God, they are using the formal name, and it is, therefore, proper to capitalize it. They also, of course, capitalize every use of a pronoun or any alternative word such as Almighty that refers to this same God. This has less to do with grammar, however, and more to do with the particular rules and customs of their faith.
Second, I’m a Deist. I believe that there is, at the core of everything, god. In my personal creed I state that I believe that “Everything that is, is god.” Since that is a significantly different concept and definition of god than the Judeo/Christian God, and since I don’t consider god to be a being, I don’t capitalize the word. I also avoid pronouns for god as much as possible, since I believe that god transcends gender (and other human-like characteristics). I could use “it,” I suppose, but that sounds awkward in the writing and the speaking.
Of course, an accurate reading of the Bible will reveal that “God” is not actually God’s name. His name, using the masculine pronoun most common in Christianity, is also not Yahweh, or Jehovah. Those last two names (which are actually the same name) come from the story of the burning bush. When Moses encounters the burning bush, he asks the name of the god who is speaking from it. The voice replies, “Yahweh,” which seems to mean, “I am.” Note that it isn’t “I am ‘called,’ or My name is ‘I Am.’” Some Biblical scholars take this to mean that God was deliberately not giving Moses a name. This would be consistent with a general belief at the time that if a god told you its name, it gave you control over it.
The only purpose and consequence of having to capitalize “god” every time we use it is to perpetuate two flawed ideas: first, that we are always talking about god as defined and worshipped by those who follow the God of Abraham; and second that use of the word is always intended as a formal name.
Cultures and cultural norms are established by how we communicate about ourselves and the world around us. They change when people begin to consciously reject the cultural messages and challenge the culturally prescribed norms. And when it comes to culture, even small things matter. The “Christian Right” in this country continues to insist that the United States is a Christian nation. The insistence that every reference to god is a reference to “God” reinforces that inaccurate belief.
When, for instance, we argue that the word “God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, or the phrase “so help me God” in a public oath are neutral expressions and not religious, we are reinforcing the idea that “god” and “God” are the same thing. They aren’t. (This leaves aside, for the moment, the obvious point that neither “god” nor “God” is a neutral term for an atheist. Constant use of the term also reinforces the idea that belief in any god at all can be assumed.)
Those who would promote this idea that “God” can be a neutral concept should also, perhaps, consider the consequence of that claim for their God. Overuse of any word or set of words weakens their power. Push God into public life as a neutral term, throw it up everywhere, and it becomes less and less meaningful. You may think that everyone knows what you mean when you use it, but you would be mistaken. Eventually, it becomes background noise, just another word that is part of the common lexicon, with a meaning that seems quaint and anachronistic, but whose purpose is more connotative than denotative. It comes to mean “sincerely,” perhaps, or “good fortune,” or any of a thousand different ways of indicating a kind of general importance. Notice how often people already say “for God’s sake” or “God damn” or “oh my God” without any sense that they are actually talking about God at all.
If you want to preserve the specialness, the particular divinity, you want your God to have, the best thing you could do would be to get it out of the secular realm. Stop insisting that every use of the word needs to be capitalized. Stop telling people that its meaning is neutral. Start insisting that every time someone refers to “God” that they must mean specifically the god you believe in. Copyright the name. Make it your brand. Make people pay a royalty if they wish to use it anywhere except in the context of your churches, your prayers, your sacred texts. Insist that it should only be used in respectful and reverent ways. If someone writes the word “God” in any publication and capitalizes the word they must be ready to certify that it references the God of your faith and no others.
Sometimes I will use the lowercase even when it seems clear that the discussion does, in fact, have something to do with Christian beliefs or dogma. When I do that it may be because I am trying to expand the discussion to include all such beliefs, rather than saying that the issue is only about Christians. It may also signal that I do not agree that the issue accurately depicts what Christian tradition teaches, and I don’t want to dignify these flawed claims by reinforcing the idea that they represent “God.” (I have read the Bible and other Christian texts, and was raised in a Christian church.)
So, if you read something I have written and notice that I have not used the capital “g.” there is no need for you to correct me. You may assume that the usage was deliberate and purposeful.
The Question of Evil — Part 2
In A God of Infinite Possibility on October 12, 2012 at 5:20 pmIf everything that is, is God, then what is evil? Is it part of God? Did God create it? What is the purpose of evil?
What if there were no “evil” in the world? What if everything was equally “good?” No matter what you chose, the consequences would be equally happy, equally beneficial. How would you choose? Even simple choices would have no meaning, no significance, no basis for evaluation. Should I have coffee or tea? Should I wear the blue shirt or the red? Should I turn left or right? What do I prefer? And on what basis do I prefer it? When all is good, judgment becomes impossible. Now the same would be true if there were only evil, of course. If we could not perceive both good and evil, then choice would be arbitrary and meaningless.
It is interesting to note that the thing that is forbidden in the Garden of Eden is knowledge; specifically, the knowledge of good and evil. This makes sense only if Adam and Eve are ignorant of both. They cannot know evil without knowing good, or good without evil, because one is necessary to the other. Something is good to the extent that it is not evil and vice-versa. Something is better to the extent that it is less evil and more good; it is worse to the extent that it is less good and more evil. Now, if it seems I am using evil almost synonymously with “bad,” it’s because I am. If we believe that there are degrees of evil , or if we simply believe that an evil thing is extremely bad, then we can talk about good and evil as directions rather than places. And we can see that our ability to understand great good requires us to imagine great evil to compare it with. Our ability to believe in the Devil as perfect evil requires us to believe in God as perfect good. Otherwise, what does any of it mean?
As an analogy, consider the idea that if everyone were rich, then no one would be. An understanding of great wealth requires a contrasting understanding of great poverty. But when does one become perfectly wealthy? We have no agreement as to when someone would be so wealthy that no more wealth would be possible or necessary, because we have no contrasting image of someone so poor that greater poverty would be impossible. Would ownership of literally everything make someone perfectly wealthy? What if he owned everything and was owed an equal amount? Or twice as much? Would that make everyone else perfectly poor? Or would some owe more than others? Would we have to adjust our understanding of wealth to mean “less in debt?” At that point would it make any difference? Perhaps we could even argue that at some point being even more in debt might be a form of wealth, because those who owed the most would be worth the most. But what if we were to consider wealth and poverty not as places, but as directions? We would be wealthy to the extent that our choices around wealth moved in a “wealthy” direction; poor to the extent that our wealth choices moved in the direction of “poverty.”
Consider also a bar magnet. One end is “north,” and the other is “south.” Or we might call one end “positive” and the other “negative.” But these distinctions are arbitrary. If the ends aren’t labeled, how do we know which is which? And the “positive” and “negative” qualities are not just at the ends. If we cut the magnet in half, we get two new magnets, each of which has the same qualities of positive and negative. Cut the two magnets into four, or eight, or sixteen, or however many you want, and you will never reach a point where any piece is all one or the other.
This is the nature of good and evil in our choices. All choices are actions, and all actions contain the possibility of both good and evil. Large choices have greater possibilities for good or evil, smaller choices have smaller possibility, but no matter how you slice it, every choice has the potential for either. In choosing, as in magnets, positive and negative aren’t ends, they are directions. We can determine the “north” and “south” ends of the magnet if we can make it into a compass, which would allow us to position the magnet according to known, fixed points – one north and one south. In the same way, we can know the directions our choices might lead us in if we can make magnets of them, orient them to some sort of fixed moral points labeled good and evil.
Morality is our compass. Our particular standards of morality are the fixed points against which we can orient the positive and negative directions of our actions. Morality is a set of judgments based on our perceptions of good and evil, of benefit or harm. Something is evil to the extent that it causes harm, good to the extent that it creates benefit. But these are arbitrary and human determinations. That which benefits me might harm you, for instance. That which I think is good, you might find to be evil. Each of us has her or his own compass, and they do not all point to the same fixed pole. And so we gather into communities of various kinds, both spiritual and secular, where we can be with others who have similar compasses to our own. This doesn’t make the compasses any less arbitrary or human, but it does give us support for our moral judgments.
The Eden Dilemma and the Question of Evil — Part 1
In A God of Infinite Possibility on October 12, 2012 at 5:16 pmTHE EDEN DILEMMA
If we try to imagine life in the Biblical Garden of Eden, we run into a major problem. Adam and Eve are depicted as living in a paradise of Godly perfection. Until the appearance of the serpent, there is no evil: no violence, no corruption, neither illness nor death. The inhabitants can look forward to an eternity of constant goodness. But they are also both ignorant and naïve, and purposeless. Adam is apparently given the task of naming everything in the garden, but why? Is it just busy-work? He is incapable of failing at the task, because there are no standards against which to judge his efforts. Making a mistake is impossible, because a mistake would suggest that there are ”better” or “worse” choices; but this is Eden where there is only good. But what does “good” mean without anything else to compare it to? And what of Eve? Except to provide companionship for Adam, she has no purpose at all. And what sort of companionship can she provide? What will they talk about? There is no point in discussing the names Adam is giving the animals, because there is no basis for discussing them. After Adam says that this animal is a “sheep,” for instance, and Eve acknowledges the name, what more is there to discuss? It is impossible to ask whether it is a good name, because it must be. She can’t even ask “why,” because there is no particular reason for any of it. And if there were reasons they would all be good reasons. It is an endless, eternal cycle of unrelenting “goodness.”
Except for three important details. There is forbidden fruit, there is the ability to make a choice, and there is a possibility of desire.
Without knowledge of good and evil, choice becomes meaningless; and without choice there is no point in knowing about good and evil. So Adam and Eve must have been given the ability to choose. They must have had free will. Otherwise, there would have been no reason for God to deny them access to the Tree of Knowledge, because they could not have chosen to eat from it anyway. But the ability to choose requires that there be a choice to make. What choices did Adam and Eve actually have? They could choose to go to this place or that within Eden, but all places were equally perfect. They could choose to eat any of the fruit from any tree in the garden, but all fruits were equally perfect. They could interact with any of the animals in the garden, but all animals and all interactions were equally perfect. Without the forbidden fruit, without a choice, free will had no meaning. So how could they choose?
In the absence of reason as a basis for choice, we have to have desire. If it is equally good to eat a peach or a fig, then perhaps we simply need to desire one or the other. “I think I would like a peach today,” doesn’t require us to denigrate the choice of a fig, only to recognize a momentary preference. If we do not think about our preferences, but simply respond to them, act on them, then knowledge of good and evil is only necessary if there is the possibility of evil in a choice we might desire. This is the real meaning of the serpent. The serpent doesn’t make Eve aware of the choice – she already knows that the fruit is forbidden – the serpent’s role is to convince Eve that she desires the fruit, so that she has a reason to choose it. And the fact that the fruit is forbidden is an argument in favor of desire, because unless the thing is desirable, there is no reason to choose it, and consequently no reason to forbid the choice.
But there is still a problem. The forbidden fruit gives Adam and Eve the knowledge that there is both good and evil in the world, but it doesn’t give them clear knowledge of which is which. This they have to figure out as they go along. They quickly understand that things have changed; but they have no solid basis for judging those changes. They find that they are naked, and become ashamed by the knowledge. Why? They have been naked all along in Eden, and Eden is perfect, so why should nakedness be shameful? Apparently, it is the knowledge of their nakedness that is shameful, not the nakedness itself. Things get topsy-turvy pretty quickly after that. In Eden, there is no death. The lion and the lamb lie down together and both eat grass. Adam and Eve eat only fruit. But after they eat of the Tree of Knowledge, and know that they are naked, Got clothes them in animal skins. They learn that not only are the animals now killing each other for survival, but that they must also kill in order to survive. Before the fall, God had created a world in which killing was not possible; after the fall, the descendants of Adam and Eve kill each other – beginning with Adam and Eve’s first born sons – in order to have the things they need and desire; and even more than that, they kill other animals, make sacrifices, to honor God. So is killing evil, or good?
Before the fall, Adam and Eve are ignorant of sex. There is no need for sex, because there is no need for procreation. In fact, procreation would be a problem, because there is no death. There is no desire for sex, because there is no knowledge of sex. Knowledge of sex would be a problem in Eden unless procreation was impossible, because if sexual activity is a choice, then desire may lead us to choose it, and in the absence of pregnancy prevention, choosing it would inevitably lead to procreation. But is sex, therefore, evil? Is procreation? Is everything that did not exist in Eden before the fall evil by definition? Note that eating the forbidden fruit doesn’t creategood and evil, it simply allows Adam and Eve to know that they exist. It allows them to see the possibilities for good and evil in the choices they might make, and to consider those possibilities as they choose.
Thus, the lesson of the Garden of Eden becomes not the emergence of evil, or original sin, but the attainment of knowledge, and with it full humanity. It is, after all, our ability to choose and to give meaning to our choices that makes us human. Why would God set it up that way? Perhaps because if good is the direction of God, then maybe God wants us to choose it; to go toward God consciously; to know what it is we are doing. And we cannot always know which choice is the “good” one because life is more complex than that, and because the experience of life is, itself, essential to understanding the choices. If it were easier, it wouldn’t mean so much.
An old folk song praises the day that Eve got Adam to eat the apple, because without that we wouldn’t be here at all. The fruit of the tree of knowledge, in Eden, was the only fruit (other than eternal life) that was not to be eaten. Now it is the only fruit we must eat. We must not go ignorantly or accidently toward God (except of course in the case of children or other innocents), but must eat daily of the fruit of knowledge and then choose.
wholepeace 