To know God Is to Obey - Lukewarm Christians be warned, page-320

Are you equating sentience with free will ?
Maybe? Can you be sentient without having a spirit? If a being can be sentient without a spirit, then I'm not. If a being can't then I am.

The definition I would use and I stress, in a very limited way, is the ability to choose between right and wrong. If Free Will is not ours alone, then I can't make sense of me, or others.

Choice is not the same as Free Will, but of course there must be some degree of entanglement.


"Free" will would be the ability to initiate and carry out an action that if necessary would be independent of one's inner habits, automatic reactions, programming, appetites, propensities etc etc.

Well put. Yes! Free Will, in such a case would be subject to an ideal that somewhat transcends the self and its base impulses.

Your next point is a wonderful insight and a great probing question. Re-religion and Free Will. Religion is a work in progress, today we see it at its lowest state, more akin to the Emperor's New Clothes than some real challenge to the material status quo. Religion's declaration regarding Free Will is more about conformity and sheepish obedience, which is the exact opposite of Free Will. Free Will is individualistic, though there are many aspects of it that must conform to standards of morality and ethics. We can then argue that morality and ethics are not real, or they are a reality that is slowly coming into focus. Let's not go there for now.

So Free Will then becomes the just self, the moral self, the higher self, acting against all those personal hurdles you mentioned. I believe that even religion has the potential to enable Free Will to come into focus without imposing itself upon it, but not as yet and not with the major religions as they exist. That is a general statement, clearly degrees of Free Will occur even within religions as they are today.

I don't believe that Free Will is some etherial mist that descends upon a person and they get all Zen. And few choices are black and white, Free Will does not itself make correct choices, but if a child is raised in a moral, ethical, loved environment and trained to have an open mind, then as they exercise their Free Will, its general collective outcome will be far more positive than negative.

Christianity and the other major religions are not healthy examples of functional institutions. We are talking about belief systems that are thousands of years old. They have been playing Chinese Whispers for thousands of years. Most cases of yielding to a higher power is really yielding to a small group of humans. Free Will is complex and difficult to exercise. It's more about its collect results than its immediate results. Free Will is a choice between right and wrong. Is it right, even at the foundation of belief, that Christ is the only path to G.d, that all other religions are pagan, in league with Satan, of so little regard that as they colonised the world, death and destruction was seen as piously served a higher power?

I would suggest that a Christian in many regards has little concept of what the purpose of Free Will is.

Great paragraph re- automaton. I agree with you here, but even in the minutiae of the daily grind there are brief intersections in which some semblance of Free Will may be exercised. I guess we all just have to get on with life and it is predominantly habitual. I guess we are talking about something that is a bit more esoteric than the daily grind, but even so, ever day there are choices between right and wrong, so long as you don't leave an Amazon box on a doorstep we should be okay.

And yes, I get you now, re that last part. Great post and I thank you for your time and effort.