Need a Little Help From My Friends
I need you intelligent bunch of people help me with a philosophical problem:
What's so great about freewill?
Please tell me your thoughts. They don't have to be rigorous (that's my job ;-)) and intellectual sounding, I'd just like to hear your opinion.
posted by The Borg @ 2:43 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
Good question. If you didn't have free will, you wouldn't be unhappy about it...
-- Radagast
Hrm. I originally misread "important" for "great". I also betrays the fact that I think more about theology that philosophy-proper these days.
I think a lot of people would say that free will is great because it allows you to choose to obey God.
I think that's a misnomer—we only obey God through the work of the Spirit in us.
Free will is actually important because it leaves the responsibility for Man's actions with Man, and thus affirms and confirms God's justice and righteousness (and greatness).
Free will results in choice. Choice results in (for every single humans minus one) sin. Sin [leads to the dark side. And the dark side] results in judgement. Judgement results in death.
Judgement and death is important because it results it God's salvation, affirming his graciousness and mercy, which is also to his glory.
With free will comes responsibility to make choices. I think the choices you make go a large way towards defining the kind of person you are. So without free will, I don't think I'd see myself as being as much 'my own person' - I'd be someone else's person (whoever was controlling me). And I'd like to think I have a bit more control over my identity and the kind of person I am.
One of the most frightening thoughts I've come across in a novel was in The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, where the villain threatens to remove the heroine's free will.
-- Radagast
I didn't think it was that great really, I mean it did okay at the box office and the first one didn't have too bad a story but ho boy did they milk it with those direct to video sequels...
oh wait, sorry, I thought there was a Y on the end of your question and I got confused.
What is the "will" anyway?
Is it my desire to do something? Or the ability to choose to act?
If it is the latter, then "free will" is good, if it is used correctly.
However I do believe that the freedom to follow our "desires" like in the first meaning, is overrated...
If I was not rescued by Christ and had had my will transformed ( and continue to) to be more and more like Christ's ( i.e compassion for others, having a goal of glory to God and my own growth in love, peace, patience and submission etc) my free will would be wasted, I believe.
I do believe that our conscious decision making ( the latter sense of free will) is essential to a true submission to Christ, as Haoran said. It gives glory to God as we choose him again and again, and our will is still our own, but purified.
that is what is so great about free will!! Not that we have freedom to choose, but that we have freedom to choose what is right.
Haoran, I mainly use philosophy only for theological purposes these days too. Decision making is helped by it to one level but paralysed by it at another...:)
There once was a man who said "Damn!
It is borne in upon me I am
An engine that moves
In predestinate grooves
I'm not even a bus, I'm a tram."
-- Maurice Evan Hare
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