Can some beliefs be immoral to believe and what does that imply?

Are some beliefs immoral? Imagine someone who believes that certain people are sub-human. We would react to that person as having an immoral belief.

What about a dictator who believes that people who disagree with him are evildoers opposed to everything good, and that they are comparable to murderers who need to be put in prison?

So it seems that some beliefs can be immoral, and not just true/false.

If some beliefs are immoral, then this shows people have some control over what they believe. It indicates that people are not helplessly tossed here and there by their beliefs. Otherwise how can any belief be immoral? You can't criticise someone for something that they have no control over.

This does not show that people can choose to believe that the moon is made of green cheese, but I think it does show that there is something we can control about our beliefs.

Although it's possible that people can't choose to believe that the moon is made of green cheese because it goes against their self-interest completely. If someone decides that the moon is made of green cheese, then that person is choosing to let go of their sanity to some extent. It's a crazy belief. Maybe we can't choose to believe the moon is green cheese because of a strong desire not to get rid of our sanity?

It might be that we always have a desire for our beliefs to reflect reality and, although we can choose to a degree what we believe, we won't very willingly choose for our beliefs to be insane. So, because we want our beliefs to reflect reality, we won't exercise our power to believe the moon is cheese. But, in theory, we have quite a lot of power to affect what we believe, but this power is hidden, or protected, by our desire to be accurate in our beliefs.

Does free will contradict the laws of physics?

People often say that free will contradicts the laws of physics because free will implies a 'garden of forking paths' where you can do A or B. But the laws of physics imply that either history was fixed at the time of the Big Bang or that where chance exists it is merely randomness and probability. Where does that leave free will?

An interesting way of imagining how free will can be compatible with the laws of physics comes from quantum mechanics. The 'Schroedinger's cat' idea gives a good account of it (from Wikipedia):

Schrödinger's Cat: A cat, along with a flask containing a poison and a radioactive source, is placed in a sealed box shielded against environmentally induced quantum decoherence. If an internal Geiger counter detects radiation, the flask is shattered, releasing the poison that kills the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that after a while, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when we look in the box, we see the cat either alive or dead, not both alive and dead.

This article explains a bit more about why the cat is both alive and dead:

The principle of superposition states that if the world can be in any configuration, any possible arrangement of particles or fields, and if the world could also be in another configuration, then the world can also be in a state which is a superposition of the two, where the amount of each configuration that is in the superposition is specified by a complex number.

There is superposition with regard to the Geiger counter detecting radiation, because it's a subatomic phenomena. Therefore, after a while an atom has in some sense both decayed and not decayed, releasing and not releasing radiation. Thus, after a while the cat is both dead and alive.

In the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, a system stops being a superposition of states and becomes either one or the other when an observation takes place. This experiment makes apparent the fact that the nature of measurement, or observation, is not well-defined in this interpretation. The experiment can be interpreted to mean that while the box is closed, the system simultaneously exists in a superposition of the states "decayed nucleus/dead cat" and "undecayed nucleus/living cat", and that only when the box is opened and an observation performed does the wave function collapse into one of the two states.

Schroedinger's cat illustrates how quantum mechanics seems, at least superficially, to allow for something that sounds like a 'garden of forking paths'. The cat is both alive and dead, two contradictory possibilities exist, and our conscious observation forces reality to 'choose' one. Perhaps our brain has many possible configurations and our consciousness/the soul can make out of them one reality?

But does quantum mechanics apply to the workings of the brain? Some scientists have come up with theories of how it could (link).

So with free will, imagine that until our consciousness/soul affirms a value, e.g., 'I think it's important to be truthful', then the neurons in our brain are simultaneously affirming a 'truthful' brain state and a 'not truthful' brain state. But after the conscious decision is made then the 'truthful' brain state 'resolves' into being - just like the cat is alive or dead only when the scientist looks into the cage and 'forces' an answer.

This type of analysis doesn't explain what free will is, it just indicates how the soul or consciousness might be able to change the brain using free will. (Libertarian) free will's workings would still be beyond our understanding.

I apologise in advance for my scientific ignorance if this idea is fundamentally flawed, but, as others have said, it seems that a genuine free will can be compatible in theory with the laws of physics.

(Edited 5 April 11).

Do we lose ourselves when we go to heaven?

One concern that a lot of people who aren't Christian have about the Christian concept of heaven is that you have to be a certain kind of person to go to heaven. That is, you have to fit a certain set of personality traits; you have to conform to whatever personality God says you need to have. And these traits won't necessarily be ones that you see as really being 'you'.

One response to this is that you can divide personality into two areas: personality and character, and that improvements in character never betray who we really are, and God only changes character.

Personality is like whether you are introverted or extroverted, whether you like reading, sports, horror movies, video games, etc. Character is whether you treat other people in the way you would like to be treated, i.e., your tendency to do the right thing.

An example of why this distinction is important comes from this thought experiment: if you are an introvert, you would probably feel like becoming an extrovert would 'betray' who you really are as a person, and if God imposed extroversion on you, it would seem a bit like mental slavery, perhaps. But think about this: does anyone feel that way when it comes to changes in character?

I would contend that everyone always accepts improvements in character as being consistent with who they really are. For example, suppose you had someone who was really rude to staff at restaurants and other places, and then someone is rude to them one day and they feel bad about it, so they decide not to be rude to staff any more. Nowhere in this process, it seems, would they stop and say, "Hang on, being more empathetic and treating people the way I'd like to be treated is not consistent with my true self!" It seems that if someone has realised that they ought to relate to people differently, there would be no sense of betrayal of one's true self.

These examples illustrate how the problem is resolved when you say that God changes us in character, not in personality. So when God changes us it's more like someone suddenly realising they should e.g. work on being more honest and empathetic, rather than deciding to become an introvert or an extrovert (a personality issue). And in heaven (or rather the new heavens and the new earth) we will be different because our characters will be perfect, but our personality will stay the same (if we want it to).

This verse seems a bit relevant, 1 John 4:7: "Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God."

Why would God allow Satan to do stuff?

One of the reasons why belief in a devil - a malevolent being who tempts people into doing more bad things than they would otherwise do - is criticised is that it is hard to imagine why God would allow such a being to tempt humanity (another problem of a mind without a body is not as difficult because it's possible there can be bodies that aren't physical in the sense we're accustomed to). Let's re-examine this 'absurdity' from a philosophical point-of-view.

There was a debate on Nightline a while ago (YouTube link) which discussed the existence of the Biblical character Satan. One of the persons in favour of an actual Satan said that she became a Christian because such a character existed, or in a skeptical explanation because she experienced a negative force that acted like Satan (i.e. self-destructive urges in human nature).

I find this statement interesting because it seems that many, many people become Christians because there is a sort of self-destructive or selfish force within people. What sometimes happens is that people's lives are falling apart and they need to make a choice between giving in to the self-destructiveness, and falling into an 'abyss', or giving their life to the Jesus of the gospels. In this way many people decide to do a complete turnaround and commit their lives to Jesus.

I see hence a reason why God might allow humanity to be tempted beyond what would 'normally' occur. A Satan character could magnify and make more extreme the self-destructive impulses within us. A lot of the time this would just be bad. But sometimes, through being forced to make a stark choice between life/death, becoming like Jesus/self-destruction, 'Satan' would actually accomplish the opposite of what is intended (something like, 'Hey, this is what will turn my life around and give my life meaning and purpose').

This seems like a reason for God to allow a 'Satan' to tempt humanity, if that's what it would accomplish. But I think two conditions need to be satisfied from a secular moral point of view:

1. The first condition would have to be that people are being saved from an ultimate separation from God in the process, which is, in reality, a really horrible fate.
2. The second is that this process is the ONLY thing that will cause some people to change their mind and choose to live forever with God rather than apart from God.

Presumably, if there was another way to save someone, then God should employ that way instead.

Looking at the second condition, what's a list of things that often make people want to be with God rather than be apart from Him? Often people are drawn to Christianity by feeling some sort of emptiness, lack of fulfillment, a feeling of hopelessness or pointlessness to life without God, discontent with the whole idea of serving oneself rather than God after seeing the 'bad side' of sin, the idea of perfect relationships in the afterlife rather than messed up ones now, a hope for 'another kind of happiness' that is eternally fulfilling and great, as well as other reasons.

These thoughts are negative thoughts that Satan could easily magnify (i.e. in Satan's desire to make life harder for people). They are also thoughts that tend to encourage a lot of people to follow Jesus and be with God forever (note: one reason why I associate 'follow Jesus' and 'be with God forever' is that it makes sense to me that you could only ever go to heaven as a free gift and I don't know any religion that teaches this apart from Christianity).

So if Satan can magnify these thoughts, and having these thoughts sometimes makes the difference between someone choosing to be with God forever rather than be apart from Him, then does Satan have a useful role? Can God use Satan? It seems so.

So allowing a 'Satan' to do stuff under these two conditions and only if these two conditions are satisfied could make allowing Satan to do stuff an overall good thing, and these conditions make some sense.

Broken free will

We like to think that we have free will and can decide our own values and to act on those values. But let's say someone's free will wasn't working properly. There are probably a number of ways this could manifest, but what would be the main problem that you'd see if it did happen?

Let's say that I have a certain principle that in certain circumstances people should do XYZ, including me. And that's not a principle I reluctantly accept, but one that I want other people to follow and for me to follow.

A free will that doesn't work properly would be a free will where I'm unable to act consistently on the principles that I hold near and dear. That sort of free will would be like a car that occasionally breaks down for no reason, or a computer that crashes every now and then for no reason. Because a free will like that is a free will where someone is effectively unable sometimes to choose what they have chosen.

Using that standard it seems that possibly everyone has a free will that is broken in some ways, because we all seem to affirm principles that we hold near and dear, and yet no one, unless those principles are very prosaic, can consistently act on those principles 100% of the time. So our free will, if we have it, is broken in some way. It doesn't work the way you'd expect it to work in theory, and perhaps the way it was intended to work.

These thoughts were prompted by a reflection on John 8:34-6: "Jesus answered them, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son does remain forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.'"

And Romans 7:15: "I don't really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don't do it. Instead, I do what I hate. But if I know that what I am doing is wrong, this shows that I agree that the law is good. So I am not the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it."

Perspective

Is there one face or are there two faces in this picture? Two people can see something different and yet they are looking at the same thing.

Sometimes looking at different perspectives on the world can feel like you're looking at this picture, especially regarding different explanations for people's behaviour (as outlined below).

Social sciences point out that in any population of people some are really nice, some people are quite selfish, and most people are in the middle - they are nice if people are nice to them and mean if people are mean to them.

An explanation of this from an evolutionary point-of-view is as follows: if everyone in the group is very selfish then the group will self-destruct. So the best evolutionary 'strategy' is for people to be 'reciprocally nice', or 'conditionally nice'. That way, the group won't self-destruct, but people can secure their own self-interest and thus have a greater chance of effective reproduction. Naturally, evolution has selected for this. And, of course, extreme niceness is explained as either a random 'there has to be a bell curve and naturally people at the nice end', or there's some kind of evolutionary strategy going on there, as well.

Looking at the same evidence, there is also another, completely different explanation (albeit a bit more mysterious because of the 'free will' factor):

Suppose we have free will, and everyone can pick their moral character: really nice, really bad, or in between. On one hand, it makes rational sense for people to be selfish because then they can always pursue their interests. But on the other hand, we don't like being treated in that way, and so we feel bad about it because we feel we should 'Do unto others'. These are the considerations, and based on them, some people freely choose to value extreme niceness, extreme badness, or something in between.

As it so happens, the in between personality, 'conditional niceness', is the perfect compromise between securing our self-interest and 'Doing unto others' a fair bit. So, naturally, it's the most popular 'choice' when we pick and choose our characters. So in every population, through free will, you get a bell curve with some people at either extreme and most people somewhere in the middle, like with the first explanation, above.

As it so happens, this personality - the 'conditionally nice' - is also the most evolutionarily effective. But, actually, it comes through a process involving free will, rather than genetics.

So if you have free will + selfishness makes sense + we feel a moral obligation, then you can explain what we see, and if you use the idea of evolutionary strategies, then you can explain the data as well. So which is right?

The prodigal son story and 'divine hiddenness'

Why can't we make the decision to be or not be a Christian after talking with God face to face, instead of the way we make that decision now, where God may as well not exist if you don't think about Him/Her/It?

I think a helpful answer to this can come from the 'Prodigal Son' story. This isn't a philosophical answer; it's making an appeal to psychology and a story rather than philosophy.

The Christian view seems to be that if God made everyone accept/reject Him 'face to face', in a completely upfront way, that fewer people would end up with God than through the 'distant approach'.

Does this seem psychologically plausible/realistic?

I think it is psychologically realistic if we're all in a 'Prodigal Son' situation. Here is the story below from Luke 15:

To illustrate the point further, Jesus told them this story: “A man had two sons. The younger son told his father, ‘I want my share of your estate now before you die.’ So his father agreed to divide his wealth between his sons.

“A few days later this younger son packed all his belongings and moved to a distant land, and there he wasted all his money in wild living. About the time his money ran out, a great famine swept over the land, and he began to starve. He persuaded a local farmer to hire him, and the man sent him into his fields to feed the pigs. The young man became so hungry that even the pods he was feeding the pigs looked good to him. But no one gave him anything.

“When he finally came to his senses, he said to himself, ‘At home even the hired servants have food enough to spare, and here I am dying of hunger! I will go home to my father and say, “Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son. Please take me on as a hired servant.”’

“So he returned home to his father. And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him. His son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son.’

“But his father said to the servants, ‘Quick! Bring the finest robe in the house and put it on him. Get a ring for his finger and sandals for his feet. And kill the calf we have been fattening. We must celebrate with a feast, for this son of mine was dead and has now returned to life. He was lost, but now he is found.’ So the party began.

If the prodigal son hadn't been allowed to experience life separated from his family, then he would never have ultimately accepted home life and the authority of his father (representing God). It's because he got to experience life separated from his family, and the hardships that caused, and not very good benefits, that caused the son to come back.

So a world where we can reject God from a distance allows us to experience being the prodigal son, and a world where we reject or accept God face to face doesn't (because in a world where God is visible everywhere you can't try things out on your own).

And we are in the situation described in the above story. I think that hell is actually living forever without God, and being able to do your own thing for an eternity (which God accurately warns us will become as painful as fire - see here). And, secondly, God has no way of giving a real and lasting happiness to someone apart from that person being forgiven for everything wrong they've done and them accepting that forgiveness, through 'the cross'

So if the right thing to do in the 'Prodigal Son' story was for the father to do the equivalent of divine hiddenness (with the guy's father letting him run off and do his own thing), and our situation is a replica of the 'prodigal son situation', then divine hiddenness should also be the better option for God to use in this world.

[Edit] Here are some additional notes from a discussion over this post at Revelife which helps to clarify some things.

Someone wrote that everyone knew that the father existed in the story, but nonbelievers don't have a pre-existing relationship with God to reject in this world, making it a bad analogy. I wrote:

Probably the standard Christian answer to this is that, and I admit there's no reason to believe this if you're not a Christian, that the Holy Spirit subconsciously/unconsciously communicates to people who hear the gospel that heaven/hell is like the Prodigal Son situation, and if that person wants to make the choice of the son in that story, then - regardless of their beliefs and whether they think Christianity makes zero sense - God supernaturally makes that person have faith. Some verses on this are:

John 6:44: "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day."

1 Tim 2:4: "who wants everyone to be saved and to understand the truth."

Someone wrote that the prodigal son knew how bad life was without his family, but God can't communicate the full gravity of hell to us when someone presents the gospel. I wrote:

I think we already have experience of what hell is in this life, based on my understanding of hell. People experience a bit of hell when they achieve a lot of pleasure but feel empty inside because they aren't doing anything really fulfilling, or when someone has run out of things to do and is mind numbingly bored. Because I think that hell is being able to go off and do our own thing forever "shut out from the presence of the Lord and the majesty of His power" 2 Thes 1:9.

But it's nonetheless the case that we don't experience the full magnitude of this sort of state of being unless we go to hell.

I believe that God is somehow able to communicate the full magnitude of its horribleness in some way to everyone who hears the gospel, but that maybe people don't believe God, or something happens to frustrate God's plan to save someone that isn't reflective of someone's works.

Someone pointed out that you could still be a 'prodigal son' if God was obviously everywhere. So this explanation doesn't work. I wrote:

The alternative to a 'prodigal son' situation is for God to be present everywhere in the world in a very 'in your face' way. On reflection, I think I agree with you that that would still allow people to not care about God and what God wants, and act out the prodigal son story.

Thinking about it, how it would work is that God would rule His own city and people could appeal to him for protection and stuff, and everyone would know with 100% certainty that God exists and the Bible is true, but God could designate areas of the world where people could go off and do their own thing. So you might have a division of the world into areas that embrace God and 'no God zones'. Based on these cursory thoughts, this is how it might have to be.

If so, then that's all well and good for the people living in the 'God protected' areas, but is that plan giving the people in the 'no God zones' the best possible chance at salvation? If those people have to reject God face to face to get away from God, then I believe it would be harder for God to win them back than compared with this world where people reject God from a distance. If you reject God from a distance God can win you back more easily, given enough time, surely, than doing it face to face.

An odd aspect to free will

If we have free will, then we have something that has several unusual attributes.

One feature of free will is that it separates the possibility of something from the probability of it.

We normally think that if something is possible then there's a probability we could give to it happening. For instance, if there's a chance that something will happen at every moment, then eventually it will happen over an infinite length of time. So given an eternity a computer randomly putting letters together will assemble the complete works of Shakespeare, by accident (maybe after 10 to the power of a googolplex years, but eventually...)

Let's apply this thinking to free will and see what happens. Suppose that God made everyone live forever, in comfort and safety, on a planet like Earth.

If we have free will, and have the resources to build a lot of things, then it should be possible for all of us to decide to build a mountain out of books in every year of that eternity.

But does everyone have to build a mountain out of books in an eternity? If we have free will, then you'd have to say no. Because if we have free will, then in each year in that eternity we must be able to reject that idea. So maybe a lot of people won't ever build the book mountain, regardless of how much time passes.

Just because it's possible for everyone to make a book mountain doesn't mean everyone will eventually do so over an eternity given true free will. So with free will a possibility can always exist with zero probability of it happening, given the determination never to do it.

Optical illusions, free will, and omniscience

Here is a link to a picture of the 'leaning tower illusion'. The two towers are really identical, but the brain expects that the second tower will lean more because of the way the brain processes perspective. Because of this expectation, we actually do see the second tower lean more.

It's arguable that we're making a similar kind of mistake when we think that free will is contradicted by God's foreknowledge of how we will choose - we're being misled by the tools we use to predict the future.

How do we predict the future? We can categorise any of our predictions into one of three categories:

1. Pure chance. We can't figure out a pattern. E.g. a coin flip.
2. Probability. You're trying to predict something that's somewhat chaotic but you can still see a pattern. E.g. what teams have the greatest chance of winning a championship.
3. Determinism. Because nothing else is possible. E.g. whether gravity will pull a rock to the ground.

These are the only three categories we know about when it comes to prediction.

For us to know the future with certainty means using category 3 thinking, which is determinism. The way it works is that you narrow down all possibilities so there's only one possibility left, and that's how you know.

So when we think about God predicting our choices we imagine God using category 3, and narrowing down (to one) all possibilities for how we will choose, because it's the only way of predicting something that we know. And it's true, such a thing would take away free will.

But why must God's foreknowledge use category 3? Couldn't God have some other way of knowing stuff, because He's an all powerful God? One that doesn't narrow possibilities down to one?

One idea of how God's foreknowledge isn't in category 3 is that when God predicts our choices He has an 'intuitive' understanding of how people will choose, that's right, but which is never explained 'intellectually'. So God may not know 'because of reason A, B, and C, Sally must go for a walk', only 'in this situation, Sally will go for a walk'. Because God doesn't account for Sally's choice any further, God can know that Sally might have acted differently, because God hasn't explained Sally's choice completely. This is an attempt at a 'non category 3' type of prediction.

So it's fair to say we could be tricked into thinking that God's foreknowledge takes away free will because of how we predict the future. But our techniques for knowing the future aren't necessarily God's techniques.

Another interesting thought on this is that the 3 categories don't apply to free will itself, assuming free will totally contradicts determinism. So it wouldn't be surprising if there's a fourth category of predicting, because (incompatibilist) free will requires another category (of something) to 'work'. This opens up the idea of a fourth category of predicting, as well.

Anxiety

Phil 4:6-7: "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

What would have to be true for these verses to be giving good guidance?

I think it would have to be that Christians have almost no control over the major events and occurrences in their life, although it often seems that we do. Instead, God must really be the one in control, who orchestrates the major and many of the minor points of our life. Otherwise worry would be the proper, rational response.

The reason for saying this is that anxiety and worry are always about trying to control something that you believe you have power over, and/or the feeling that it will be awful if you mess something up that you can mess up.

So for example, if I didn't think that I had any control over whether a job interview went well, but I just turned up determined to go through with it, then it stands to reason I wouldn't worry at all about how it would go. It's only if I thought I had it in my power to make or break the interview that I would worry.

Also, if I'm taking an exam that isn't very important then I won't worry either, because I can't mess things up by doing badly. Even if I have the power to do well or do badly, the fact that I don't care how I do on it means I'm not going to try and exert any control over its outcome beyond just turning up and doing it. My lack of concern for control means I won't worry about it.

So it's obvious that anxiety and worry is about control: about believing you can control and affect whatever issue or thing you're worried about.

So for God to tell Christians, "Do not be anxious about anything," God is pretty much saying we have almost no control over the major events of our life, or that they can't be messed up against God's will. Otherwise we ought to try to control these events, and therefore should experience a lot of anxiety and worry as part of that control. Also see Matt 6:24-34 where God says the only things that we should worry about are things that we can obviously and easily affect.

A possible exception to this is that, if we reject what God obviously and unambiguously wants for us, then we can completely go against God's will. But even then God could work around it, and in any case God is assuming in these verses that we won't do that.

Did God design our brains to enjoy sin?

God is responsible for the way our brains are designed, and the design of our brains makes us enjoy some things and not others. Actions that involve doing the wrong thing can be enjoyable, although in the long-term they create suffering. So did God design our brains to find wrongdoing (e.g. pride, envy, hatred) enjoyable?

No. Part of the answer is that the way free will works (it seems) is that we have the power to change our brain structure over a long period of time. Free will gives us the power to make certain things enjoyable and other things not enjoyable to our brains (here is a link to a good article on the science supporting this view, click 'show transcript').

So we have the power to change our brain structure against the way God intended our brains to function. An example of this might be someone who occasionally gives in to anger. They start getting angry more and more as they stop giving people the benefit of the doubt. Then they start assuming the worst about people. This process literally changes their brain structure, so the angry person changes their brain into one that 'thrives' on rage and anger.

But this is not the way God originally intended their brain to work.

OK, so why did God design us so that anyone would ever find it a good idea to change their brain structure in bad ways?

Our desire to do this is actually an unintended byproduct of something good. It's important that everyone has a sense of self-interest. If we had no sense of self-interest, then people would forget to eat, sleep, and would do things like walk off cliffs without any fear of death. Our sense of self-interest keeps us alive and enables us to perform very many sensible, everyday actions.

But there's not just 'good' self-interest, there's also 'bad' self-interest. We have various needs and wants (like food, security, shelter) and messing other people around will sometimes fulfill them better. Bad self-interest is e.g. murdering someone if it will make your life easier, or abusing someone to get them to do what you want.

God can't give us 'good' self-interest without making us aware that our life would be easier if we did 'bad' self-interest sometimes, and thus all sin.

For this reason we all change our brain structure to find 'bad' self-interest enjoyable to some extent - like pride, envy, unjustified anger, and so on. Sometimes, those things will fulfill our needs better than being honest. It wasn't in God's original plan for our brain structure but free will gives us the power to do it.

And God had to give us these needs and wants, because if we had no needs and wants then we would be self-contained 'social islands', which is not a better situation.

But isn't there evidence that personality can be influenced by our genes?

Yes, but there's a reason why God made it like this. To start off, there's an important difference between personality and character. Character is about good and evil, personality is about everyday (non-moral) choices. Personality can never be morally bad (when it's defined as choices not connected to moral issues), although it can be 'inconvenient' in some ways.

If God designs much of our personality, then God is not thereby encouraging or enabling us to sin. I think that God gives us certain personality traits to glorify His plan (like if you are an extrovert God may want you to meet a lot of people and encourage them in some way or something, so God designs you to be an extrovert). So there's really no problem if God has a hand in designing our personalities.

If God designed us to have flaws in our character then there is an issue, because that would make God the author of sin. But I don't think there's evidence for this view in the same way there's evidence that our personality is designed partly by God. Studies will show that personality has a genetic aspect, but it doesn't show that with an evil or good character.

Practically, these ideas can be encouraging - we are becoming more like our true selves when we reject the 'dark side' of our nature (Gen 1:27; Col 1:15). We are not betraying 'natural' desires to do wrong, actually we are becoming more like the kind-hearted people God intended us to be.

If we have free will then why is it so hard for people to change? The 'settling' aspect to free will

People often point out, if we have free will, then why do we almost always stay the same? Introverts don't suddenly wake up and become extroverts, and evildoers tend not to become saints. As people get older and more mature there is some change, but it's hardly ever a 180 degree personality shift. Yet this should be possible if we have free will.

I think something that people often miss in free will is that it involves a really strong 'settling' ability. Part of free will is the ability not to be constantly 'up in the air' about what you're going to do, but to 'settle' your choices in a certain personality trait. So instead of 'umming' and 'ahhing' about whether to be nice, a nice person can choose to 'settle' their choices in niceness, and an evildoer can 'settle' their choices in evil, so they no longer think about changing. When we choose to 'settle' our choices and not constantly go over and rethink them, those choices become our personality that our friends easily identify (e.g. extrovert, quiet, etc.)

So free will is sort of like a snowball rolling down a hill, gathering up snow. We mostly decide what personality to have when we're young, and then at some point we 'settle' into a groove and almost never change - although we theoretically can.

Perhaps free will is a little bit like a train. The front of the train is a person's values. Someone might value bravery, trust, shrewdness, being outgoing, polite, etc. There would be values corresponding to every personality and character trait. Your actions follow after your values like a boxcar after the front of the train (unless you have an unwanted personality trait, somehow). If your values change, then after a long period of time your actions change in response. It may take a while, though. That is how people change.

It should be pointed out that despite the 'settling' aspect to free will, no personality or character can be 'settled' outside of God's grace. If people are saved by grace alone, then personality and character traits (works) can't give anyone an advantage over others when it comes to accepting Jesus, or give anyone a disadvantage there, at any stage. So the only way someone could 'settle' their choices outside of God's grace is by rejecting it directly (Matt 12:31). You can't do such a thing any other way, because works (i.e. personality, character) do not earn (and thus do not block) salvation (Eph 2:8-9; Rom 11:6).

Also, God changes character, not personality. By definition, if something is personality and not character then it is neither good nor bad, but is simply the way someone chooses in a certain 'non-moral' area of their life. God is interested in changing our character, and will use all aspects of a person's personality to His glory in the body of Christ (1 Co 12:13-31).

The 'Salvation' Theodicy

This is one type of answer as to why God allows people to suffer. A 'salvation' theodicy says that at least some of the suffering in the world is a key part of bringing people into eternal life. I don't think it can be a very complete explanation for why people suffer, but it has something worthwhile to say.

The Bible associates the suffering caused by our disconnect from God with people returning to God and choosing to enter eternal life by giving their lives to Christ:

Luke 15:11-24 'And he said, "There was a man who had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me.' And he divided his property between them. Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living. And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything.

But when he came to himself, he said, 'How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants."' And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his servants, 'Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.' And they began to celebrate."'

In the 'salvation theodicy' somehow, in a way that we can't rationally explain, this world is the world in which the greatest number of people choose to enter eternal life.

The picture below illustrates a 'magical black box' analogy for God's decision to create our world, click it to see it full size:



Below is an illustration of the possible histories God might have faced in creating our world, click it to see it full size:



It makes sense that if 100 'degrees' of evil gets just one more person into eternal life, then God would choose to make that world. But God can never use immoral means to get someone to choose Him, so there must be limits on how much and what type of suffering can be a part of this process.

God cannot explain His choice of world because He cannot explain His understanding of our choices. Only God knows how someone is going to choose because only God knows how free will really works. So God's explanation wouldn't make sense to us because we'd only be going on what God says, we couldn't 'see' into other people's souls and understand why more people choose to enter into eternal life in this world rather than another, for ourselves. See Matt 24:36, Deu 29:29, and Rom 11:33.

Do people do everything for selfish reasons?

Isn't it true that whenever we do something good we get something out of it? Like pleasure from the joy of helping someone? Does that mean that a good act like helping someone is just another form of selfishness?

The problem with this argument is that pleasure seems to be: "anything that makes an action worth doing to someone". That's how every possible action, good or bad, is a matter of pleasure and therefore (according to the argument) selfishness.

Another way of putting this is that every act requires motivation, and that always means pleasure from doing it.

But wait a second - is this right? Can it really be selfish just to have a motivation? If motivation = pleasure? Seems a bit broad.

I think it's so broad that the argument says nothing. The argument doesn't discover anything empirically but relies on the definitions of 'pleasure', 'act', and 'motivation' to argue.

I would say instead that pleasure in doing something is actually a result of the decision to do that thing (whatever it is). What makes any pleasure selfish or not selfish depends on whether that decision is bad or good/neutral. Once we decide that we want to do something, then we get pleasure from the thought of doing it. So if someone has decided to get pleasure from being really nice, then the pleasure from doing that is selfless, because they didn't *have* to get pleasure from that - they could have gotten pleasure from being selfish. So nice people have done something good for choosing to get pleasure from doing the right thing. That pleasure is not selfish, even though they feel good about helping people, since that pleasure is a reflection of a desire to help people, which is a good thing.

Does sin explain why people don't use their free will that much?

"Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. And the servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever. If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." - John 8:34-36.

Two interesting facts:

1) We have a very strong, gut feeling that we have free will.
2) It often seems that hardly anyone uses it. Most of the time our personalities don't change throughout our life in very significant ways... we usually choose the same way.

Think about it. If you're an introvert you probably don't feel you could suddenly decide to become a very outgoing person. If you have a short-temper you probably don't feel like you could flick a switch and become very calm in all situations.

Yet we feel we have this thing called 'free will', which should ideally allow us to do what I've just described. If free will is true, then we should be able to change our personality if we feel like it, and choose to do anything physically possible for us. But even though we feel that we have this power, we hardly ever change/use it. The person who starts off liking certain choices will probably stay that way regarding most of them.

I think that the reason why we find it hard to change comes from sin.

How so?

Well to begin with, the greatest commandment is that you should 'love God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind'. This is basically saying that we should love and serve God with every fibre of our being.

Now, if you were doing this, it wouldn't detract from your freedom at all. Because God is good, and honours our free will, it would basically mean that you never sin. It wouldn't actually detract from your freedom in any other area, except you would not sin. Your personality would actually stay the same, except regarding the areas where your personality is morally flawed.

Now, if you followed this greatest commandment, you could really exercise your free will. You could always make the choices you know are the best. How? Well, by loving God with such a great love, you would only do what God wanted. So you could say to God 'Today I feel like making such-and-such choices', and God would say 'That's what I want for you then' and you would do it, because you would prioritise God's will with infinite importance.

That would enable someone to easily make whatever choices they wanted (apart from sinful ones) very easily; instantly.

Maybe this is the 'default' setting for the people that God creates in His image. In the 'default' setting we have free will and we use it. If anyone chooses a certain way, it's because that's how they genuinely want to be.

It's ONLY due to our fallen, sinful nature that we get 'locked into' certain choices. So it's ONLY because of our sin that we have the phenomenon where someone is addicted to something and can't break out, and so on. Or someone can't change in a way they want to change. That's not something that 'naturally' comes with free will, but can only come with free will + our fallen nature. That's why it sometimes seems as though people don't have free will even though we all do.

Free will megapost

A collection of short essays (except the last one) in one post on various issues/problems to do with the idea of 'free will' in Christianity.

1. Summary of free will in a paragraph
2. Does God's foreknowledge contradict the idea of free will?
3. Why didn't God only make people who would follow Him?
4. Is God responsible for how everything has turned out?
5. How can God have free will if He can never be tempted to do evil?
6. Does the fact that we have original sin mean that humans are not responsible for our evil?
7. Wouldn't serving God take away our independence and free will?
8. Does the Bible say that humans don't have free will?

1. Summary of free will in a paragraph

What is free will? An answer I favour is that our intellectual reason isn't like what God has - ('My thoughts are not your thoughts' - Isaiah 55:8; Romans 11:34). But our soul, or something like that is like what God has (John 10:34). We get free will from the latter, but because the former isn't really like what God has it can never understand free will (from the latter) adequately. Something not like God is on the wrong 'level', or category of reality, to understand something that is like what God has. Moreover, to paraphrase Bertrand Russell, this means that we will always unconsciously translate anything to do with free will into non-free will language our intellect can understand.

2. Does God's foreknowledge contradict the idea of free will?

The 'God's foreknowledge contradicts free will, because we can't make God wrong' argument ONLY works if free will is something that exists within what you might call the 'three known causal categories'. The three known causal categories are: a) randomness, b) probability, and c) determinism. For a human the whole idea of a 'prediction' necessitates these categories. 0% certainty = randomness = no clue at all, 50% certainty = probability = it could go either way, 100% certainty = determinism = no chance of it not happening. We can never think outside of these known categories, or even imagine how any being possibly could... Determinism is the predicting category of the three, and that pretty much kills the idea of free will (for obvious reasons).

But free will doesn't necessarily have to exist within the 'three known causal categories'. Maybe it can exist in a completely different causal category, outside of cause/effect/probability/random 'space'. If so, then unfortunately we can never understand it (and it's very mystical). Yet it may not have to exist within those categories. If so, God could know something without forcing it to happen.

3. Why didn't God only make people who would follow Him?

I think if we understood it really well then we'd know that free will is *like* a random process in a couple of ways. Creating a person is kind of like flipping a coin that will come up 50/50 heads or tails. This is important because if a process is random then you can't make it go heads or tails. So God making a person is kind of like flipping the coin in the sense that God can't make someone on the basis of how they're going to choose, just like I can't make a random coin toss go the way I want. But unlike flipping the coin God *can* predict how we'll turn out - He just can't make only the people who will choose the way He wants.

So in some ways free will is *like* randomness, but it's not really random because randomness is a terrible thing in people. It's somehow a 'third option' out of cause and effect that mimics randomness in this aspect, but is overall a genuine, great thing to have.

In Matt 13:24-29 God says that there's some kind of ratio of people who'll choose the way He wants and people who won't. Salvation is kind of like a statistical generalisation of e.g. X:Y ratio that becomes meaningless on an individual level because individually everyone has the power to choose the way God wants. It's just that on a generalised statistical level God knows X:Y ratio will be saved. It's like individually most philosophy students can choose to study metaphysics but statistically only a certain proportion will. Individually every Internet user can visit Apple.com but statistically only a certain proportion will.

4. Is God responsible for how everything has turned out?

Question: isn't God responsible for how everything has turned out, by choosing to make things in the way that He did?

I think at some point, one has to make an intellectual leap and say that as beings with finite reasoning, our reasoning is on the 'wrong level' to understand the infinity of God effectively, which also includes the image-of-God in humans. This frees us from having to work out in-depth how something like free will could work, which might come from something Godlike (infinite) that human brains make use of (Ecc 3:11; John 10:34-36).

So I don't think that Christians can be expected to explain how a) God could predict something without narrowing everything down to only one possible outcome, and, b) how we could possess a 'thing' called free will where multiple outcomes were possible, although only one outcome in fact occurred (which is part of our intuitive grasp of the concept of free will).

This means that we can trust from our feeling that we have free will, that although God knew what would happen by creating the world, the fact that there is evil in the world is our responsibility.

5. How can God have free will if He can never be tempted to do evil?

To begin with, in Christian theology just like being physical is part of our concept of 'a stone,' so loving and rejoicing in doing the right thing is part of what it means to be a 'mind' or 'conscious.' Love and goodness is to consciousness what being physical, or existing in the universe, is to a rock. Mind/consciousness is a kind of substance or thing that follows different rules to physical stuff. One of these aspects of mind, different to rocks, is loving and being good. So mind is love.

Following this, there are two possible reasons why people are tempted by God is not.

The first is that because God is God, He's never tempted. Because we're not, we must be tempted. Never being tempted is a 'perfection' that only God can have.

A second possible reason is that our mind is localised in a brain, and the brain isn't sort of made out of love like our mind is. It's not bad or evil in any way, it's just not 'love', or has the connection to love, that 'mind' does. Our mind pulls us in the direction of loving others unconditionally. But since we use our brain to think, and the brain isn't love, we can step 'outside the box', as it were, and do anything.

The question is: why did God make us brain-Minds instead of 'Mind' by itself? Couldn't God have taken away the possibility of evil? The answer is that to be pure mind you basically have to be God, I think. So the above setup (which makes sin very likely) needs to be the case.

So for us, free will MUST INCLUDE the possibility of sin. But for God, genuine free will comes without the possibility of sin...

6. Does the fact that we have original sin mean that humans are not responsible for our evil?

Our intellectual reasoning and moral sense belong to different worlds. Our intellectual reason belongs to our brain in the universe, our moral sense belongs to the image of God... in whatever kind of reality that involves.

Our moral sense gives us our highest moral ideals, and tells us that we should never do wrong. But our intellectual reasoning can't understand how a person could have reasons for doing the right thing in every circumstance.

The closest that intellectual reasoning can come to morality is 'You should do the right thing out of rational self-interest' - game theory. 'You do a good thing for me and I'll do a good thing for you' - tit-for-tat morality (the flip-side of tit-for-tat is 'Hurt me and you're going to suffer horribly').

This is a bad thing in circumstances where the self-interested thing is the wrong thing morally.

If you combine this reasoning with free will, then what you get is everyone choosing to sin because our reasoning leads us to make choices in a certain 'rational' (i.e. game theoretic) way.

You don't need to appeal to evolution to explain why humans are basically selfish - you can appeal to humans having a form of intellectual reasoning that tempts us with game theory, tit-for-tat, self-interested, etc. reasons for acting.

So original sin is essentially the curse that we'll work out good and evil for ourselves, instead of copying what God thinks.

The fact that we think this way doesn't seem to take away our free will, or excuse our actions. If we want to do the right thing our moral sense makes it plain to us. If we want to reject original sin then God provides the answer in Jesus Christ. Original sin makes it impossible to do the right thing consistently, because it creates constant, tantalizing temptations to sin, but in each individual act we are free.

7. Wouldn't serving God take away our independence and free will?

Mat 4:8-10: "Again, the Evil One took him up to a very high mountain, and let him see all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them; And he said to him, All these things will I give you, if you will go down on your face and give me worship. Then said Jesus to him, Away, Satan: for it is in the Writings, Give worship to the Lord your God and be his servant only."

One way of thinking about serving God is that it's like the ultimate 'protection mechanism'. Let's say that you had two people in a really heated argument, it would be very difficult not to say hurtful things to the other person which would hurt your relationship with them down the road. But if they were both focused completely on serving God, then they wouldn't even think of doing hurtful things because they wouldn't be concerned with what they wanted at that particular time, but only what God wants at that time. And God always wants people to love others. So by only focusing on what God wants, that protects us from doing what we think is right (but isn't) at a particular time. Serving God with all our heart and mind ensures that we will always do God's will, which is a 'protective cover' for helping us always love others and God as we should.

On a similar note, it's in the nature of God that God cannot be tempted by evil. All other creatures must be tempted at some point. This makes God the perfect person to refer decisions to, assuming our communication with God was clear.

Another argument that we should serve God starts by assuming that what makes us people is that we have minds. And having a mind makes you worthy of love and respect. People should care for you because you have a mind and have feelings, can suffer etc. Well, this is a little tricky to really convey, but God is not a mind on the 'human' level. He's a 'super-mind' which somehow encompasses more 'mind' than humans have. A 'super-mind', as opposed to a human-style mind, can do more stuff. A 'super-mind' can understand free will, everything about minds, is all-powerful, eternal, and so on. So the argument says that if humans deserve love because we have minds, then a 'super-mind' deserves even more love and respect, which is what God is.

Also regarding some issues we clearly think that limits to freedom enhance freedom. So it's illegal to yell 'fire' in a crowded theater without cause. So if you assume that humans are made to be 'love' like God, then it would enhance freedom to serve God in such a way that humans are love (i.e. by serving God like Jesus did).

8. Does the Bible say that humans don't have free will?

Rom 9:17-23: "For the holy Writings say to Pharaoh, For this same purpose did I put you on high, so that I might make my power seen in you, and that there might be knowledge of my name through all the earth.
So then, at his pleasure he has mercy on a man, and at his pleasure he makes the heart hard.
But you will say to me, Why does he still make us responsible? who is able to go against his purpose?
But, O man, who are you, to make answer against God? May the thing which is made say to him who made it, Why did you make me so? Or has not the potter the right to make out of one part of his earth a vessel for honour, and out of another a vessel for shame?
What if God, desiring to let his wrath and his power be seen, for a long time put up with the vessels of wrath which were ready for destruction: And to make clear the wealth of his glory to vessels of mercy, which he had before made ready for glory"

Does this verse say that humans have no free will? This has been used to argue that the Bible itself contradicts the idea of free will, since God is alleged to determine what people choose (for His glory).

I think that if a) and b) are true below, then one can show in a way that fits with Romans 9:17-23 that God wants everyone to be saved, offers salvation to everyone (in the next life if they never hear about Jesus) and that through a miracle by God everyone can say 'Yes'.

a) In one of the paradoxes of free will, although God knows before we're born how everyone will freely choose in an infinity of possible situations, God can't use this knowledge to make only the people who will freely choose in the way that God wants.

So if God knows that out of a hundred people He makes that 33 will choose to reject grace and 67 will not reject it, God can't use this knowledge to make only the 67 people who will be saved.

More about this here.

b) Given (a), God must deliberately make people who He knows will be damned in order to make anyone who is saved at all.

E.g. if the ratio of people who reject God versus not reject is 33:67, then God has to knowingly make an individual who will make 'cursed' choices (Matt 25:41) in order to make two individuals who will be happy forever.

You could describe the cursed individuals as 'clay vessels ready for destruction'. But they do the cursing themselves. But God knew they would do so before He made them! So God bears some responsibility. But it was nonetheless good to make them because their creation was a necessary part of making the saved given the 33:67 ratio or whatever it is.

So in a tricky way, both human freedom and divine sovereignty overlap here, and Paul is describing the 'divine sovereignty' side of things, where God bears some responsibility. But was God wrong to do what He did? Creating 'vessels ready for destruction' was needed to make 'vessels of mercy', so no.

To be more exact, God's actions are morally OK from our point-of-view as long as they fit with two requirements:

1. The ratio of the damned to the saved isn't too worrisome. E.g. if 90% of people are going to hell then it seems unlikely that God should create people even if it's based on a fair process. I'm not sure what ratio is 'alright', but as long as there's more happiness than sadness in reality overall, then it seems OK for God to make 'cursed' people as long that is needed to make saved people.

2. It's the outcome of a fair process. In the idea of grace there's nothing stopping the unsaved from coming to God; God offers salvation to both the unsaved and the saved and no one gets an advantage over anyone else in accepting it (over this and the next life). Every damned individual could be saved at any point over an eternity if they simply changed their mind and didn't reject grace(!) So damnation is the outcome of a fair process - the saved are only treated differently to the damned because they don't reject God's grace ("there is no respect of persons with God" - Rom 2:11).

(Note: What I just said is a bit confusing given the concept of heaven and hell. I wrote an article on a good way of looking at hell here).

It's a mystery how a) and b) works. Libertarian free will doesn't make sense from the perspective of finite reasoning so it's not a huge step from the not-making-sense nature of free will to accepting that free will works in a way consistent with a) and b). You have to accept the idea that free will is a mystery and somehow fits with a) and b) for this argument to work.

If you read the Romans passage above in light of these arguments, then I believe that you can reasonably interpret them in a way where God wants everyone to be saved but people reject His offer of salvation. For those who reject, God uses them for a dishonourable purpose to help the saved come to Him forever. It's only because God knows they will reject Him - and are a clay vessel made for destruction in the understandable way I talked about above - that God hardens their heart to use them for a dishonourable purpose if that is somehow needed to bring people to Him (through creating adversity in ways that God knows will do that).

What does the soul actually do? A discussion

From a forum discussion...

...As a philosophy undergraduate at my university I find myself in the interesting position of being probably the only really traditional dualist (among philosophy students) that I know of. I think a lot of Christians are moving to a less expansive view of the soul.

A good way I think of distinguishing the soul and the brain can be found from analysing David Chalmers' 'hard problem of consciousness' (Wikipedia article).

Say you have a brain that is structured in a certain way, so that it does a lot of things. The makeup of the brain can completely explain why it does a lot of stuff. The question is, could you have a brain without the brain actually feeling something like our experience of subjective phenomena? Could you have a brain that does lots of stuff without anybody actually being 'in there'? It seems that there is a kind of gap between having a brain doing stuff and that brain having a subjective awareness (note: subjective, unobservable consciousness is also referred to as 'qualia').

I would place the soul as what provides the subjective awareness. It is the extra thing, the missing piece, that transforms a brain that does stuff into a brain that does stuff and has a subjective awareness. So the soul and brain work together - the soul is the extra thing making us conscious (animals also have souls but not understanding, I would say, lest I deny animals consciousness).

(Note for readers: what is Chalmer's argument?

1. We can theoretically imagine physical bodies and brains acting roughly like we do but which have no inner subjective experiences (i.e. are not conscious)
2. If we can imagine it, then it is theoretically possible.
3. If it is theoretically possible, then there is an explanatory gap that we have not figured out between our brains and consciousness, that we need to figure out in order to fully understand why our brains are conscious.
4. For various reasons, this link is not likely to come from further scientific discoveries in understanding the brain. It can only come through philosophical speculation.

The discussion continues...)

...I would agree with the comments here that from what we can know from philosophy it certainly makes sense that this apparent 'gap' between functional states (or identity theory) and qualia could just be a result of missing, important knowledge of some kind. The 'water doesn't seem to have to equal H20 if you don't know much science, but in reality it does' type of response is a pretty good response.

So I would definitely say that it could be called an 'explanatory gap' rather than a gap that destroys physicalism... nevertheless, it is *some* kind of explanatory gap. I'm attracted to turning this 'explanatory gap' into a place for a real, dualist soul for a few reasons (soul defined as originator of qualia).

I'm quite perplexed by the libertarian free will problem, or how to have a really great kind of free will. Ultimately, any way I've read of explaining libertarian free will has fallen flat.

So in this 'explanatory gap' (provided by arguments like Chalmers') I'm attracted to placing a soul as a kind of substance that is totally unlike anything we can ever rationally talk about. The soul I see as something that draws on God in some way without being God... so from a world our reason can never access. It's because we can never fully understand this world that we a) Have free will, but b) Can never explain it satisfactorily.

That would probably be the primary reason I'm attracted to dualism... not necessarily because I'm a Christian. These days it seems that a lot of Christians are moving to a physicalist account of the mind. That sounds OK, as long as God can preserve our unique personalities when we die.

(Comment on how getting brain damaged affects personality)

...It's quite interesting the degree to which our conscious states are affected by physical states for any dualist. I think that the most a dualist can realistically say (such as myself) would be that the soul-qualia is basically the 'cherry on the top' of the 'cake' of a person, the cake being the physical brain. So we're significantly a physical brain, and the soul-qualia adds a bit of qualia.

But I add a caveat to this analogy: since we consider a person to be their mind, the 'cherry on the top' is actually the person, and the cake allows the cherry to 'sit somewhere', and thus exist in that way.

I'm not an epiphenomenalist like Chalmers. So I think that the soul-qualia, even though it's just the 'cherry on the top' does some important stuff. I think it somehow has the ability to remake the brain, which allows free will, somehow. So our qualia can influence our brain. I would say that the phenomenon of neuroplasticity is our soul-qualia exercising its free will (neuroplasticity being a very interesting area of research into how we can change our personalities by changing our patterns of thinking).

(Link - click show transcript - to account of research on neuroplasticity. This is a real, scientific area of research saying that we have the freedom, with a huge amount of effort, to 'choose' to change our basic personality, and is empirical evidence of free will.)

Does the Bible say that humans don't have free will?

Rom 9:17-23: "For the holy Writings say to Pharaoh, For this same purpose did I put you on high, so that I might make my power seen in you, and that there might be knowledge of my name through all the earth.
So then, at his pleasure he has mercy on a man, and at his pleasure he makes the heart hard.
But you will say to me, Why does he still make us responsible? who is able to go against his purpose?
But, O man, who are you, to make answer against God? May the thing which is made say to him who made it, Why did you make me so? Or has not the potter the right to make out of one part of his earth a vessel for honour, and out of another a vessel for shame?
What if God, desiring to let his wrath and his power be seen, for a long time put up with the vessels of wrath which were ready for destruction: And to make clear the wealth of his glory to vessels of mercy, which he had before made ready for glory"

Does this verse say that humans have no free will? This has been used to argue that the Bible itself contradicts the idea of free will, since God is alleged to determine what people choose (for His glory).

I think that if a) and b) are true below, then one can show in a way that fits with Romans 9:17-23 that God wants everyone to be saved, offers salvation to everyone (in the next life if they never hear about Jesus) and that through a miracle by God everyone can say 'Yes'.

a) In one of the paradoxes of free will, although God knows before we're born how everyone will freely choose in an infinity of possible situations, God can't use this knowledge to make only the people who will freely choose in the way that God wants.

So if God knows that out of a hundred people He makes that 33 will choose to reject grace and 67 will not reject it, God can't use this knowledge to make only the 67 people who will be saved.

More about this here.

b) Given (a), God must deliberately make people who He knows will choose to be damned in order to make anyone who is saved at all.

E.g. if the ratio of people who reject God versus not reject is 33:67, then God has to knowingly make an individual who will make 'cursed' choices (Matt 25:41) in order to make two individuals who will be happy forever.

You could describe the cursed individuals as 'clay vessels ready for destruction'. But they do the cursing themselves. But God knew they would do so before He made them! So God bears some responsibility. But it was nonetheless good to make them because their creation was a necessary part of making the saved given the 33:67 ratio or whatever it is.

So in a tricky way, both human freedom and divine sovereignty overlap here, and Paul is describing the 'divine sovereignty' side of things, where God bears some responsibility. But was God wrong to do what He did? Creating 'vessels ready for destruction' was needed to make 'vessels of mercy', so no (and they do the 'destructing' themselves by freely rejecting grace, as God knew they would).

To be more exact, God's actions are morally OK from our point-of-view as long as they fit with two requirements:

1. The ratio of the damned to the saved isn't too worrisome. E.g. if 90% of people are going to hell then it seems unlikely that God should create people even if it's based on a fair process. I'm not sure what ratio is 'alright', but as long as there's more happiness than sadness in reality overall, then it seems OK for God to make 'cursed' people as long that is needed to make saved people.

2. It's the outcome of a fair process. In the idea of grace there's nothing stopping the unsaved from coming to God; God offers salvation to both the unsaved and the saved and no one gets an advantage over anyone else in accepting it (over this and the next life). Every damned individual could be saved at any point over an eternity if they simply changed their mind and didn't reject grace(!) So damnation is the outcome of a fair process - the saved are only treated differently to the damned because they don't reject God's grace ("there is no respect of persons with God" - Rom 2:11).

(Note: What I just said is a bit confusing given the concept of heaven and hell. I wrote an article on a good way of looking at hell here).

It's a mystery how a) and b) works. Libertarian free will doesn't make sense from the perspective of finite reasoning so it's not a huge step from the not-making-sense nature of free will to accepting that free will works in a way consistent with a) and b). You have to accept the idea that free will is a mystery and somehow fits with a) and b) for this argument to work.

If you read the Romans passage above in light of these arguments, then I believe that you can reasonably interpret them in a way where God wants everyone to be saved but people reject His offer of salvation. For those who reject, God uses them for a dishonourable purpose to help the saved come to Him forever. It's only because God knows they will reject Him - and are a clay vessel made for destruction in the understandable way I talked about above - that God hardens their heart to use them for a dishonourable purpose if that is somehow needed to bring people to Him (through creating adversity in ways that God knows will do that).

Do humans get the image of God through Jesus?

Some speculation on Jesus being the image of God versus humans being in the image of God...

For Christ:

Colossians 1:15-16: "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him."

Colossians 2:9-10: "For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority."

John 5:26: "For even as the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son to have life in himself."

For humans:

Genesis 1:26: "Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness"

James 3:9: "With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God's likeness."

John 1:4: "In him was life, and that life was the light of men."

John 1:9: "The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world."

The question is: how can humans be made in God's image, since God is infinite and humans are finite?

Another question is: what does it mean to speak of an infinite God? What does 'infinity' in that context mean?

One answer is to say that the infinite is essentially a person, and a unified whole.


(Click to enlarge)

Suppose that the only way that something can be a person is through being infinite. Infinity, and only infinity gives consciousness, love, morality and free will.


(Summary of this view, click to enlarge)

I think what these verses COULD mean is that God incarnated Himself into creation as Jesus, as someone that could have both infinite and finite aspects. The infinite part of Jesus was God, God's soul and therefore personality, and the finite aspect of Jesus was His physical body in the universe (although all finite things are also held together in Jesus - Col 1:17).

I think that the way God made finite creatures in His image is that through Jesus God somehow gives finite humans access to His infinite qualities like personhood etc. Jesus gives 'light' (or 'image-of-Godness') to finite creatures.

So humans take on the 'image of God' through Jesus, through whom every human has access to infinite qualities like personhood, consciousness/mind, love, morality, and free will.

Jesus is the 'door' through which humans are made in God's image.

This explains how we have free will, consciousness, a moral sense that holds us accountable before God's standards, even though we can never explain it. Since our reason is finite. But we're not Gods - Jesus is God and we get these things through our existence in Christ, which people who never come to God will one day lose.

What does the Bible mean when it says 'our flesh wars against our soul'? Part 1

Romans 8:5-8 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. (ESV)

1 Peter 2:11 Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.

Gal 5:17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

I guess the basic question I want to ask here is: why does our 'flesh' have to war against our 'soul'? Why can't God just arrange for us to have brains that help us always do the right thing?

I ask this because it's becoming common to say that people behave the way they do purely because of their genes. Accordingly, many people would probably criticise God for shooting Himself in the foot. Since evil is merely the result of our genes, God could avoid all sin and evil merely by giving us better genes. In fact, God could ensure that absolutely everyone in the whole world will be perfect by giving them more helpful genes... so this way of thinking goes.

The problem with this view is that it goes against the concept of 'free will'. Let me explain where the mistake is.

The Bible says that God made us in His image, but not everything about humans is made in God's image. Consider Isaiah 55:8: "My thoughts are not your thoughts" (also Romans 11:33-34). Our emotions, free will, moral sense, and consciousness is clearly made in God's image because God has those things just like we do. But our intellectual reason obviously isn't made in God's image, or we would know all that God knows.

We can either look at free will intuitively or intellectually. Intuitively it's 'case closed'. We know that we have free will. Intellectually it's 'case closed' that we don't have free will, because free will doesn't make sense on an intellectual level.

This is because the only thing that can understand something made in God's image is a thing made in God's image. Since our intellectual reason isn't made in God's image, it cannot grasp the things of God or the image-of-God (it can, however, grasp the things of the universe, since the universe isn't made in God's image).

That said, you can think of free will like this:

a) if humans have free will and God does NOT exist, then we simply don't understand it.
b) if humans have free will and God gave it to us because we're made in His image, then we can never understand it. Our reason would be on the wrong level since it's not made in God's image.

Bertrand Russell once said that 'a stupid man's report of what a clever man has said is never accurate because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something that he can understand.' You could say something like that about humanity trying to understand free will.

If free will exists 'outside' of what our intellect can know then we will unconsciously translate our feeling that we have free will into terms that our intellect can understand, terms where there is no free will.

So to go back to the question: why doesn't God just create 'flesh' that is at peace with the 'soul'? To answer this, we first need to ask ourselves, do we really know what we're talking about?

I say this because if free will comes from the image-of-God in humans, then our different-to-God intellect could never understand it well.

So we can't say with much confidence that God could fix all sin and evil by merely giving us flesh that never wars against the soul/Spirit. That presumes that we have a good vantage point on the issue when we really don't.

More in part 2.