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Is There Room For Free Will?

 

            
            
             Everyone wants to believe they have free will. From the lonely man growing old and gray in his abode to the convicted serial killer who pleaded that he is not morally responsible for his actions, people in all walks of life in all different circumstances want to believe that they are not merely very fancy marionettes. This idea is every bit as intrinsic to the human situation as the desire for an afterlife if not even more so, but can this possibly be the whole truth? Predestination has long been a staple of many religious sects, and it has long been known that personality traits and decisions are largely determined by one's upbringing, and furthermore things like alcoholism have been all but totally proven to be genetically determined (Johnson). However, in the face of all of this evidence, new and old, nature-based and nurture-based, that humans are simply puppets, shines the fundamental ability to make a favorable choice between various options. This is the very essence of free will, and this is what makes humans human.
             Religion, Christianity in particular, comes into play in many topics, from abortion to capital punishment, to homosexuality, and now free will. If one is to believe the content of the Bible (taken literally), then one believes at least in part in predestination. It is stated that God is well aware of everything that ever has and ever will happened, until the end of time. Some religious followers take this to mean that though God knows the exact actions everyone will decide to perform, these deeds are still being performed through free will. However, simple logic shows that this, at least on some level, is incorrect. For example: if a man has to choose between A and B, and God knows that he will pick A, he has no actual option of picking B. This is called epistemic determination, and though it is argued that simple word choices and sentence structure of things like "If God knows you will do this then you must do this" are solely what make this deterministic (Schwartz), it is obvious to anyone with any sense of logic that this is just a way of dancing around the issue.


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