Why is free will considered to be a good thing? That is the question that has been bothering me lately, and one that I don't have an answer to. But free will is constantly talked of as if its existence is a good, and its nonexistence is an evil. God must have free will, and if we didn't have free will we would not be able to love God or others. I suppose I disagree with the assumptions that God has to have free will and that there is much choice in loving others (even the self-sacrificing sort of love that people rail on about). Regardless, I'm curious about how people talk in these ways as if it is self-evidently good. That is a much more interesting conversation than the one about whether we have free will or not.
The arguments always seem to be, to some degree, dishonest. People don't look at the evidence and decide whether or not free will exists (actually, whether or not to believe that free will exists), they value or don't value free will and move forward accordingly. Additionally, it seems dishonest from the love side, because I don't think anyone starts there. The idea that free will is a good is wrapped into a whole range of assumptions about economics and morality, and how we can treat people. Basically, we want to believe in free will because it allows us to be cruel to others, or at least to see cruelty against others and believe that we are not responsible in some way to alleviate their suffering.
Ah, but if we don't believe in free will why would we believe ourselves responsible?! That is the other problem with the conversation, which supposes that its one or the other, or that the complexity of life can somehow be dropped into nice categories (compatabilist, incompatibilist). It all starts to seem like someone started it out as a joke, and everyone who heard the joke took it seriously, and the rest of us have paid for it ever since.
I suppose the only real good that can come from the conversation is talking about the consequences of believing or not believing in free will, and the values in assuming that it is good or not good. It doesn't really matter whether we have free will or not, just whether or not we believe we do.
I'm not sure that "free-will" ever means very much, but it really doesn't mean anything when applied to God.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
A few thoughts in reply to a commentor on my last post, and some connected issues.
1. Where is the impetus for thinking that God's priority is to be understood? Especially to be understood in some essential way, or as an absolute truth? The closest thing to an absolute understanding of God is touching Jesus' body. In general in the gospels Jesus speaks quite ambiguously and mysteriously, and confuses the people around him, and is quite content to do so. When he explains what his parables mean (the sower and his seeds, for instance) it really only adds another layer of ambiguity, and often he only explains things after his followers ask him to. What is important is how God's interactions with people in the bible are non-repeating and unique, and this includes Jesus' methods and interactions too. Repetition leads to essentialization, and difference ends it. God constantly reveals himself as different from his self. Perhaps the impetus for projecting a desire to be understood onto God is our drive to understand God, which is our drive to atheism, to minimize God and conceptualize him as a linguistic proposition, as an ideal.
Any use of language is giving up on absolute truth. Whenever God "speaks" it is always a limitation on God's self. Language doesn't have the capacity to hold truth, especially taking seriously what Jesus says when he identifies truth as person. Incidentally, the more I insist that God is a being and person rather than an ideal, the less it makes sense for me to have a relationship with Jesus. For some reason its very popular to talk about being humble and killing off yourself (take up that damn cross, son), and to talk about God humbling himself in the form of Jesus, but this is never extended to God humbling his own statements, or humbling truth. Probably because truth (as an ideal, and as the bible, not as a person) is worshiped more than God is ever worshiped.
1.5. To talk about the meaning, you always have to extend your argument to something outside of the text, something that isnt present, that isn't there, something that's added or subtracted. Give it a whirl: read anything at all, ask yourself what it means, and if you think you know, ask how you know and on what basis you're making your interpretation. The interpretation always extends to something outside, which means that meaning is a sort of glue from the outside that holds everything together, rather than an internal tissue.
Of course, it's ignorant to say that this means you just pick and choose, as if everyone isn't already picking and choosing. The whole process of interpretation is picking and choosing different patterns of repetition and difference to spin out some sort of ideal and some sort of argument. More significantly, there are still good interpretations and bad interpretations, the standard for which is probably more based on ability to persuade someone who has read the same text, rather than on adherence to any sort of genuine meaning in that text.
2. I've heard many different people make this sort of statement, "The bible is so amazing, every time I read it I find something new!" What that usually conveys to me isnt anything about the bible but something about the person. Usually it means that the person hasn't read very much at all, and whatever they have read they haven't reread. That sort of experience of discovery is the experience you will have reading anything, and it happens because when you return to the text you've already read it, you've heard other people talk about, and you are a different person than the last time you read it. It has nothing to do with a special or magical quality, or secret knowledge that is being revealed. But most people don't read, so why should they know that? The bible is worth reading and rereading, but so are thousands of other books.
3. Is God omniscient? When you talk about God, 'omniscience' has no meaning.
1. Where is the impetus for thinking that God's priority is to be understood? Especially to be understood in some essential way, or as an absolute truth? The closest thing to an absolute understanding of God is touching Jesus' body. In general in the gospels Jesus speaks quite ambiguously and mysteriously, and confuses the people around him, and is quite content to do so. When he explains what his parables mean (the sower and his seeds, for instance) it really only adds another layer of ambiguity, and often he only explains things after his followers ask him to. What is important is how God's interactions with people in the bible are non-repeating and unique, and this includes Jesus' methods and interactions too. Repetition leads to essentialization, and difference ends it. God constantly reveals himself as different from his self. Perhaps the impetus for projecting a desire to be understood onto God is our drive to understand God, which is our drive to atheism, to minimize God and conceptualize him as a linguistic proposition, as an ideal.
Any use of language is giving up on absolute truth. Whenever God "speaks" it is always a limitation on God's self. Language doesn't have the capacity to hold truth, especially taking seriously what Jesus says when he identifies truth as person. Incidentally, the more I insist that God is a being and person rather than an ideal, the less it makes sense for me to have a relationship with Jesus. For some reason its very popular to talk about being humble and killing off yourself (take up that damn cross, son), and to talk about God humbling himself in the form of Jesus, but this is never extended to God humbling his own statements, or humbling truth. Probably because truth (as an ideal, and as the bible, not as a person) is worshiped more than God is ever worshiped.
1.5. To talk about the meaning, you always have to extend your argument to something outside of the text, something that isnt present, that isn't there, something that's added or subtracted. Give it a whirl: read anything at all, ask yourself what it means, and if you think you know, ask how you know and on what basis you're making your interpretation. The interpretation always extends to something outside, which means that meaning is a sort of glue from the outside that holds everything together, rather than an internal tissue.
Of course, it's ignorant to say that this means you just pick and choose, as if everyone isn't already picking and choosing. The whole process of interpretation is picking and choosing different patterns of repetition and difference to spin out some sort of ideal and some sort of argument. More significantly, there are still good interpretations and bad interpretations, the standard for which is probably more based on ability to persuade someone who has read the same text, rather than on adherence to any sort of genuine meaning in that text.
2. I've heard many different people make this sort of statement, "The bible is so amazing, every time I read it I find something new!" What that usually conveys to me isnt anything about the bible but something about the person. Usually it means that the person hasn't read very much at all, and whatever they have read they haven't reread. That sort of experience of discovery is the experience you will have reading anything, and it happens because when you return to the text you've already read it, you've heard other people talk about, and you are a different person than the last time you read it. It has nothing to do with a special or magical quality, or secret knowledge that is being revealed. But most people don't read, so why should they know that? The bible is worth reading and rereading, but so are thousands of other books.
3. Is God omniscient? When you talk about God, 'omniscience' has no meaning.
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