To know God Is to Obey - Lukewarm Christians be warned, 57856943, page-324 - HotCopper | ASX Share Prices, Stock Market & Share Trading Forum

Originally posted by wafflehead ↑

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.

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It's interesting to see how things one regards as self evident or without question or a "natural truth" can actually be quite difficult to express. So exchanges such as this are quite useful to examine what one's ideas, assumptions and experiences are.

"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."

Now you introduce having a spirit which it seems to me is a different question though of course part of the mystery of oneself. Are you suggesting free will is an attribute of one's spirit ?

In any case you seem to be concentrating on one aspect of free will as it relates to "the ability to choose between right and wrong." albeit ".. in a very limited way."

This is just one dictionary definition of "will" as a noun.

Will ... Noun
The faculty of conscious and especially of deliberate action; the power of control the mind has over its own How many actions: the freedom of the will.

Power of choosing one's own actions: to have a strong or a weak will."

So, will can be understood as a power to choose one's own actions. This could equally apply to the power to refuse that next McDonalds or to comply with a particular moral position.

Likewise the ability to choose between right and wrong is far more likely dependent on upbringing and training as per the example you give than any exercise of will, let alone free will.

For example, a serious Christian/Muslim/Atheist/Humanist might have sufficient will to initiate an action that conforms with their particular belief of right and wrong and choose "right".
Actually, even that is quite something since for the vast majority there is no will or real choice involved. They just do what their inbuilt impulses dictate in that particular situation.

Then there is the question of "free" will. What is it free from ?
Are any of the above serious people able to impartially evaluate their current beliefs and established views and choose a particular action based on that evaluation.

Not likely. Instead we see that the more serious or devout and moral the person, the more rigid they are in their prison and the less actual free will they have. For them there is no freedom to choose. They simply must conform.

Imagine a Christian who encounters devout people of other religions or others with a balanced relationship with their environment. It;s confronting and a shock. However through impartial examination of his own entrenched beliefs he is able through the exercise of free will to put his entrenched beliefs aside and respect those others as his equal human kin. That doesn't mean blanket acceptance of their beliefs or practices.
Wow, wouldn't that be an exceptional person. Even more so if that exercise of free will led to a deeper understanding of our common similarity rather than differences.

OMG now Copperbod is in danger of out waffling waffle himself !

Of course the philosophy is one thing but the reality can only be determined by one's own observation and experience.
The question is do you (or me) have free will.

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