Board index ‹ Free Will

[Clock Work]

An all-powerful being who is also all-good can't have free will.

Granting that there are a number of different definitions of "omnipotence" (ability to do literally anything, ability to do anything that is logically possible, ability to do anything that is consistent with the being's nature, etc...), we can probably agree that a being who has the attribute of being "omnipotent" generally has the ability to do anything it desires. Once you add the attribute of "all-good" to the mix, regardless of your definition of THAT term, we find that the being's actions in any given situation are constrained to a single option. It (god) must do the most perfect/good action every time. Even if you propose that god is a-temporal and exists outside of time, so that all of its actions occur simultaneously from its perspective, you haven't gotten away from the fact that god could not have taken an action that was less than perfect.

When a (non all-good) being makes a choice, there is a continuum of good/bad options. It's not the case that there only exists a binary set of choices to be made. One could choose the worst possible option, a bad option, a neutral option, a good option, the best option, etc... With a perfectly "good" being however (regardless of your definition of "good"), the choice does become binary. Everything boils down to the "perfect decision", and "everything else". God, being perfect, does not have the option of choosing anything other than the "perfect decision", therefore it doesn't have free will.

It might be the case that the argument will be made that whatever god chooses to do becomes "good" simply by the fact that god did it. Of course this argument makes "goodness" completely arbitrary and meaningless. I will grant that this interpretation allows for god to have a kind of "free will" at the cost of any kind of absolute goodness that means anything.

The overall argument also implies that we live in the best possible world, and it would be impossible to conceive of a universe that would be "better" even to the smallest degree.

Conclusion: Either god is not perfectly good (by any measure that has meaning), god is not omnipotent and cannot take the most "perfect" action, god does not have free will, or god doesn't exist.

[jimwalton]

I think it's fair to say we all grant that God's omni-attributes are limited by logical consistency and the rules of non-contradiction. It's logically absurd to think God's omnipotence can create a square circle or a married bachelor. It's also absurd to think that God's omniscience includes that He knows what it's like to learn. In the same sense we recognize the logical restraints of free will. We are entering absurd territory when we claim God's free will should allow Him to be imperfect, to be less than eternal, to do something wrong, or to act or decide against His immutable nature. Therefore to perceive of God as omnibenevolent, which is a Scriptural teaching, necessarily indicates logical constraints on free will that don't negate his ability to decide.

Just as we have free will in those decisions that are proper expressions of free will (just because we can't will ourselves to turn invisible doesn't negate our free will), so also God has perfect free will within the logical consistency of proper expressions of free will, in his case, always consistent with His nature. You can't expect that it's logically reasonable that true free will includes self-contradiction.

> It might be the case that the argument will be made that whatever god chooses to do becomes "good" simply by the fact that god did it.

I wouldn't argue this. Instead, there is objective morality where good exists in an ideal sense in the nature and attributes of God. Something doesn't become good simply by the fact that God does it. Rather, God only does good because He is self-consistent.

> The overall argument also implies that we live in the best possible world, and it would be impossible to conceive of a universe that would be "better" even to the smallest degree.

I don't agree with this, either. Assuming that we live in the best possible world negates acts of goodness that people do every day. If a person can do something good in the world that did not exist yesterday, then this is not the best possible world. Such dynamic capability is a value, not a detriment.

> Conclusion: Either god is not perfectly good (by any measure that has meaning), god is not omnipotent and cannot take the most "perfect" action, god does not have free will, or god doesn't exist.

Therefore I think your conclusion fails, God can exist, be omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and capable of free will simultaneously. The attributes are not mutually exclusive.

[Clock Work]

> We are entering absurd territory when we claim God's free will should allow Him to be imperfect, to be less than eternal, to do something wrong, or to act or decide against His immutable nature. Therefore to perceive of God as omnibenevolent, which is a Scriptural teaching, necessarily indicates logical constraints on free will that don't negate his ability to decide.

That's the point, but I think you dropped it at the end. My argument is that they DO negate his ability to decide. You said yourself that it's absurd to think that god could act against his immutable nature (which includes perfection).

> God has perfect free will within the logical consistency of proper expressions of free will, in his case, always consistent with His nature. You can't expect that it's logically reasonable that true free will includes self-contradiction.

Again, exactly my point. For god, it's not logically reasonable for him to be self-contradictory, and since he is perfect, he HAS to act in a perfect manner every time. To do otherwise is self-contradictory.
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> God only does good because He is self-consistent.

If he is self-consistent and perfect, then he cannot act in a way that is less than perfect. And since 'perfect' is superlative, he only has one option.
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> I don't agree with this, either. Assuming that we live in the best possible world negates acts of goodness that people do every day. If a person can do something good in the world that did not exist yesterday, then this is not the best possible world. Such dynamic capability is a value, not a detriment.

By "best possible world" my intention was to include the dynamic capabilities that can exist over time in a universe.

[jimwalton]

> My argument is that they DO negate his ability to decide.

Here's the issue: Because you don't have the free will to teleport yourself to Saturn, does that negate your ability to decide to the point where I can say you have no free will? Of course not. When we talk about free will, we are not assuming the power to do absurd things. Free will has its rightful context.

In the same way, God can't just free-will Himself to not be Himself. It's an absurdity and a logical contradiction. But that doesn't mean God doesn't have free will. Free will has its rightful context and it doesn't exist in absurd logical self-contradictions.

> Again, exactly my point.

Let's not be confusing here. Your point is "An all-powerful being who is also all-good can't have free will." The only way to arrive at this conclusion is to say God is or can be self-contradictory.

> If he is self-consistent and perfect, then he cannot act in a way that is less than perfect. And since 'perfect' is superlative, he only has one option.

I disagree. God always has many many options on the table. There are a thousand ways He can make decisions to arrive at a good end. Just as you and I have hundreds of choices of colleges we can go to to get a good education. You can't say, "Well, since you want to further your education after high school, and college is the only choice, you have no free will in the matter." Instead, there are MANY choices that are an exercise of my free will that are an expression of goodness and wisdom. There are a thousand college I can attend that would be a "good" school for me. That's what I'm saying about God—thousands of options, not just one. It's a free-will bonanza, but well within the confines of "goodness."

[Book Mitten]

> If this is the case, we exist in a state of an infinite series that never arrives at a point of action. Our inclinations come from our consciousness that comes from our inclinations that come from our consciousness that come from... Some power or force must be able to be the first cause of our decisions and actions, to break the series and do something.

I think we're coming from different angles. You seem to be taking a Thomistic or platonic approach, where there must be a first an eternal unmoved cause behind everything thing else. I would say that A.) Flux and motion are primary and thus don't require a first cause, and B.) that there are a multiplicity of causes that influence each other, a plurality of you will. I am the cause of moving a stick, but something about the nature of the stick causes me to move it. There's a feedback effect, like in Karl popper's three world ontology. Neither movement/cause/etc is the predicate of the other, they both bouncing off each other.