Free Will Summarized

Without free will, we are witnesses to our lives, but not participants.

Without free will, we are powerless to choose between right and wrong,

between truth and falsehood, between good and evil.

Without free will, there is no justice, no accountability, and no mercy,

neither courage nor cowardice.

 

Without free will, we cannot choose what to believe nor to disbelieve.

Without free will all our beliefs are just random babblings of a robot, a puppet on a cosmic string.

 

Without free will, we are all actors on a stage, reciting lines that nobody wrote.

As Shakespeare says, "a sound and fury signifying nothing," and "a tale told by an idiot."

 

Physicalists preach the absence of free will, because free will overturns all their precepts.

 

Exceptions to free will include reflexes, but when it comes to moral choices,

free will overrides the tenets of cause and effect.

 

It is a truly supernatural power, an image of God.

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Physicalists go completely off track when they try to explain consciousness,

because they fail to distinguish between the outward appearance of consciousness (responsiveness)

from the inward experience of consciousness (which is ineffable, indeed, undefinable).

 

Philosophical Idealists are on the right track

when they affirm that consciousness is fundamental and irreducible.

But they stop too soon.

They omit the other two key elements of human experience,

which are life and free will.

 

Without these two, consciousness becomes a prison.

 

Indeed, all three are so intimately connected that we might almost regard them as one.

 

Another misconception by Idealists (if I read them correctly) is that

they fail to understand that human beings are sovereign, autonomous individual agents,

influenced by, but not controlled by, the laws of physics, at least as regards moral decisions.

 

This is what makes us accountable for our deeds, our words, even our thoughts.

What we think, say and do, have not merely reactions, but eternal consequence.

 

Fortunately, God involves Himself in our lives, offering guidance when we will accept it,

and forgiveness when we don't.

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