Everything was Prophecized

“Determinism VS Freewill” It’s All Predetermined?

The Definition for determinism is: “the doctrine or belief that everything in the universe, including every human act is pre-determined and there is no freewill.” I’ve given this a lot of thought and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m a “compatibilist” leaning heavily toward “determinist.” Meaning that I believe many events throughout world history were predetermined or preordained. I also believe some were not. So to me, it’s a mixture of both determinism and freewill. Now, thinking about it scientifically I have trouble reconciling science with freewill. Pushing science aside for now, some events have to play out in certain ways and the main players or actors are steered for those particular events. This means that nothing can be allowed to alter those events. However for nonessential outcomes, it is my belief that freewill is allowed. Religious Libertarians on the other hand are “incompatibilists” which believe freewill and determinism are completely incompatible beliefs.

Is it god that causes certain outcomes? Is it intervening aliens carrying out their plan for human events? What invisible forces cause events here in the physical world? If invisible forces are the cause perhaps gods whatever a god may be are the ultimate cause.  Man as well plays his role. Man you might ask? Yes man everyday on his quest for god-like status through many overt and covert situations has a hand in many actions. Gods create cause even if only by nonintervention but governments also interfere where they can thereby removing personal freewill.

Now, when it’s artificial scenarios with setup manmade manipulations to reach a desired outcome we can extend that. Is man the end all of intelligence here on earth or are there other forces at work that are much more intelligent? Well, if you ascribe to our planet being visited and watched by aliens, then you might believe that on some level there is an involvement by the “watchers” just as there are by intelligence agencies. It’s one onion of conspiracies. Layer after layer and when you’re done with that, just read your bible. There, god is directly involved with manipulating situation after situation. If god is your be all, end all, then both man and alien are all part of the whole big plan either wittingly or unwittingly. Shadows playing games with the colorful blue green ball [Earth].

There are several different sources for thinking about this issue and way too much to cover here. This debate is still going strong to this very day. We have philosophical, religious and scientific theories or opinions on whether or not we have freewill vs determinism.

The Kabbalists say that nothing we do is done by freewill. All of it is predetermined by the creator. In fact many religions and other belief systems believe the same thing. As Newton puts it, “A Clockwork Universe.” Set into motion by God as a perfect machine it was then left alone forever to run on its own. Many scientists and philosophers as well believe that everything is predetermined but not by a creator as Newton believed, but by physical laws.

Where did it all begin? Where does determinism end and freewill begin? I’m only human like you, so how do we know the difference? Keep in mind that proponents of determinism suggest that freewill is an illusion. I know that the debate started in ancient times in antiquity. Before philosophers would argue in favor of freewill, there was the foreknowledge of gods. If gods knew of future events, then they must be pre-determined. Einstein’s quote “God does not play dice with the universe” means that God left nothing to chance.

The pre-Socratics looked to cosmology because they believed the universe held all the answers to the heavens, the earth and man. These same pre-Socratic Greek philosophers like Anaximander who coined the term “physis” then looked away from gods to other causes determining everything. The materialist philosopher Democritus was one of the first “determinists.” The idea is that there is no room for chance in the cosmos, nothing is random and everything happens by necessity. Socrates, Plato and others countered this by presenting human freedom as a way of ascribing individual’s responsibility.

Aristotle was the first to argue convincingly against pure determinism. Accidents he argued were caused by chance. When we trace back the origins of causes to accidents or any other event, there may be many different sequences or “causal chains” that may have occurred that led to an event. Some of these strings of circumstances may lead back directly to our minds and decisions we’ve made. If you believe determinists, all these thoughts and decisions we make in our minds are the illusions of choice. The finality of occurrences could happen no other way than the way they turn out. The argument of course would mean that the world timeline would have one single avenue of outcome. No chance at all would be allowable, no alternate future outcome, no fork in the road and no Robert Frost’s choice of the “Path Less Trodden.”

Aristotle accepted that indeed, the past is fixed but the future may allow for chance or choice. This all goes back to Epicurus and his idea of atomic swerves or whether the path of random atoms could vary. I’ll simplify this much debated historic argument for you. If the path of even one in a trillion atoms could randomly vary, then determinism is not fixed. It is actually Epicurus who is credited for being the first to discover the problem of freewill vs determinism.

Epicurus found that if all our actions and events are pre-determined, we would not be morally responsible for any of our actions. Workings around these problems, different schools of philosophy have attributed different values for freewill. This attempts to reconcile determinism with choice and personal responsibility.

Other divisions are then included which may conflict with one another. Physicalism which depends on physical, natural explanations is one theory. Then there are the non-physical causes, mind, soul, will and then there is panpsychism as a cause. Panpsychism is the belief in a universal mind for everything which we are simply a part of the whole. These are sub-divided beliefs held by some Libertarians.

Philosopher Robert Kane a proponent of freewill argues for alternative possibilities or the ability of someone to have choice. This is very important when it comes to personal responsibility as you will see. It also dismisses the idea that freewill is random action because it is a conscious effort. There are different terms used for freewill to describe it as well as there are for determinism. There are choice, free agency and volition used to describe freewill as well as there are words like fate and destiny as alternatives for determinism.

We’ve discussed some philosophical ideas about these issues and yet we started out with gods. In theology as well as philosophy, we have never come to a consensus. This goes back farther than Christianity, but no matter which god we talk about, it is the same debate. Either God was perfect and made the world perfect and determined or the perfect God left room for freewill. The third choice is the same choice as in philosophy, a combination of the two. God did after all choose certain humans as prophets. Moses, Noah and others were chosen to be steered to certain roles. Their lives were determined, and yet at the very beginning of the Christian bible, Adam and Eve were given freewill.

Let us then look a little further into this problem. It begins with the fact that there is a god in the middle of the issue. God is all powerful, omnipotent, omnificent, omnipresent, omniscient and everything else. One issue that arises is that he is perfect another is that he knows everything. A conflict arises when you say he knows everything including everything you will ever do and that you also have freewill. Then here we mortals are in a test of our faith, character and our ability to accept responsibility. On one hand, if we are to be born into pre-determined existence, how can a loving god choose eternal damnation in Hell for some of us? If our existence is determined how can we have commandments? If we have no freewill, there would be no need for us to choose between right or wrong because we would have no choice? We could choose neither Heaven nor Hell.

If we do have freewill, how could God know everything we are ever to do? If he is a perfect God, then he does and yet if he has foreknowledge of our lives, how could we make any other choices then what he knows we will make? This has been called a paradox beyond our understanding. This subject is extremely complicated, deeply theologically divisive and still very misunderstood. So although we are covering it, the paradox won’t come to conclusion here.

There is another similar paradox in Asian schools of thought as they relate to Karma because it allows for freewill. So our fate in this life is brought about by the actions of our freewill in our past life. Our freewill in this life will bring about our fate in our next life. But freewill and fate are opposite so here we have lives of contradiction. The laws of Karma recognize this and allow for this seeming contradiction. We will only be covering karma in general in this book related more to common beliefs rather than in depth.

In regards to Christianity, we note two Christians who have written extensively on this subject. St. Thomas Aquinas a believer in freewill and St. Augustine of Hippo. The two have taken this subject apart in sometimes seemingly exhaustive and meticulous dialogues. It is literally exhaustive just reading some of this material. The interpretations of these theological contemplations are not taken lightly as it is foreknown that the words will be looked at in depth as they will have effect on so many. There is a deliberate effort and conscientiousness given to the wording as to leave no leeway for any misinterpretation as to any meanings. You can’t look at this issue and after reading what anyone has to say, still feel you can come to an educated conclusion that your viewpoint is right. Like myself, St. Augustine being accused of being self-contradictory on this subject, came to the same conclusion as I did that freewill and determinism are often compatible. I myself of course may be leaning toward illusory. If a particular person for instance in the theory of preordination is chosen then their freewill in my opinion must be illusory. I unlike Augustine don’t have the responsibility to the church. The church must maintain freewill as it is a necessity in our ability to take responsibility to be able to choose between good and evil, salvation or damnation and to follow commandments.

As St. Augustine would say, by maintaining God’s grace some feel is denying personal liberty. It is still freewill to choose otherwise, but what are the consequences? Although coercion may be involved in any of our choices, it is still of our own volition. We are still obliged to choose to follow our individual inherent character and values unless we have no choice. That of course leads us to the question as to whether it “is” our character or if we had a choice. Has our character been coerced all along throughout our lives? So then whether we are coerced or not, because we use our personal histories of choices to form our moralities and views on right and wrong, are we really choosing from freewill or choosing because we know from our personal engrained morality it’s what we must choose?

This is all very extensive literature whether we’re talking about philosophy, religion or science and more than can be covered here. It is still being written about and debated to this very day and too easy to get caught up in. So, what of science? What does science say about this? Science to me is a useful tool for most of our material existence, but seems to fizzle when it comes to any subject that has to do with the spirit or soul the paranormal or supernatural. Determinism vs freewill is a supernatural subject, but there is no absence of opinion from scientists either. As with everything else, we have a difference of opinions freewill, determinism or a combination.

If time is a dimension as Einstein proposed, there is only an illusion of passing time. No moment is now and in my own theory on time in this book, linear time itself may be a partial illusion. In Einstein’s “relativity,” time exists all at once as a dimension. If time could be traveled you would be able to go to any point in the future as no point in time is present. If that’s true then everything would have already happened. Your life would have already occurred. You could not go back and change decisions. If you were an observer looking from outside of time like an entity, you could not change what happened. So although we have an appearance of freewill we don’t because we can’t alter time as being an object of it which has already happened. This means that no matter how we perceive time, every moment has already happened and even this very moment can’t unfold differently. Many other scientists do not agree with Einstein and for different reasons.

Many believe that time cannot be traveled because it is an impossibility. This is not my belief, because I am somewhat partially in agreement with Einstein on this one. And don’t say the obvious, because I don’t agree with everything that Einstein has said. For instance, I don’t agree with the speed of light being the speed limit of the universe. I personally believe that we will eventually discover that light is like molasses and that our current understanding is too beyond limited. Aside from that, there are points in history that I believe not only were predicted because they were going to happen, but because for the good of man they had to have a guided outcome. Some events that are less than happy endings of course where no intervention took place, disheartens me and can only be justified in my mind as lessons. Like we were supposed to learn something in History class?

As I discussed earlier about block time if you believe in the theory of relativity, then you would have to believe in determinism. Remember time is supposedly a dimension in a four dimensional space that exists all at once it is often referred to as Minkowski spacetime named after Mathematician Hermann Minkowski. When I started to think about this, it just wasn’t a complete justifiable theory to me. I mean if you said periods of time exist at once, maybe but to think that trillions of years exist at once, that takes a real stretch of my imagination. Not every physicist believes in the big bang theory. Just like not every physicist believes in block time, just like not everyone believes that the universe is billions of years old.

Karl Popper in a conversation with Einstein tried to persuade him to give up his belief in determinism. Determinism holds the view that change and freewill are human illusion. Popper argued: the fact that man could experience change and succession in time made it “real” and could not be explained away by theory. In theological terms Popper said:

“If God wanted to put everything in the world from the beginning, he would have created a universe without change and evolution and without man and man’s experience of change.”

Now I’m not one to sit here and argue with the theories of Einstein, but he has been proven wrong before. Theories abound on the nature of reality and they can’t all be right. Sure while you’re reading them they all individually seem plausible enough, but there are dozens if not more. So we again have to think for ourselves on this one. Since I’ve had personal experiences with synchronicity, I have to believe that there are certain situations in which the outcome is predetermined. I also believe that a majority of the population of the world gets to experience freewill. Not everyone is George Washington who I do believe was predetermined or Christopher Columbus. I’m not the first one to say this about these two but I do believe it. Many of the rest of us have very small roles in the big picture so there is a lot more freewill allowed.

Now let me just say this before I delve into this topic. Freewill is not necessarily free in the sense that it requires that it comes at the cost of responsibility. If we only used our freewill to do what we wanted to do that gave us the reward of gratification then it would be easy. A rock rolling down a mountain is easy. The rock naturally falls downward. It is when we do what is against our desire to do but choose to, that we are truly testing our will. After all a rock doesn’t fall up a hill, we have to use effort to push it upward. It’s when we resist our desire in order to do what we know we should. Often people say “God created humans as sinners” and they use this as an excuse to sin. This argument is often used as an example for the determinist argument. For example, if everything we do is pre-determined then I could have done nothing else. The example often used is that of the murderer. If someone kills and everything we do was predetermined, then that person could have done nothing else and therefore bears no responsibility. However, this is not a defense that could be used in a court. As St. Augustine wrote, God gave us freewill to do good for freewill is needed to choose to do good. When we choose to sin, he doesn’t stop us. Because he as our creator knows what we will do, doesn’t make him the cause for not intervening. When a mother tells a child not to eat from the cookie jar, she knows the child may, but it doesn’t make her the cause for leaving the cookie jar there.

As humans we are also naturally ethical beings in general. We look to believe in a universal good that we’ve evolved with. Before there was religion, ethics was needed to survive as a species. Natural social laws came long before we put them to paper. We couldn’t live as social beings if we were cast out of the group. We needed to take care of one another and respect personal boundaries as a means for social survival. We often needed to evolve as social groups for our physical survival and that of our children. The necessities of life often revolved around cooperation for hunting, protection and all else.

This article is a chapter excerpt from the book “Sin Thesis” written by the author Robert Torres. https://www.about.me/Towers3