Free Will: Second Part of the Problem–Free Will’s Bad Reputation
The previous post on free will established why it is difficult for many to conceive of how there could be a radically free will. The first paragraph below is a reminder of that point. The rest of this post is about how the fact that free will can be abused and can lead to some bad opinions motivates some people errantly to assume it does not actually exist. Both posts are intended only to clarify why it will take so many posts, paragraphs, and arguments to demonstrate the reality and inherent value of a radical free will.
1.2 A Bad Reputation Makes Free Will Seem Undesirable
So there is a metaphysical argument against free will. That is, there is no room for a free will in the reality of this presumed causally closed universe. In fact there is no room beyond the universe for that kind of freedom either—an admission which ought to be disturbing for a theist. But there is also a moral objection to admitting the reality of free will.
In this culture, autonomy takes first place in the race to be the highest value. As with any value, there are good and bad consequences associated with its maintenance. For instance, when the liberty of an individual competes with the value of her own life, or of the life of her fetus, that liberty can be construed as the enemy, and often is. In fact, that construal is not altogether misguided. It does happen in a libertarian culture (such as American culture) that emphatic tolerance can become the very narrow embodiment of and substitute for the fuller reality of freedom. In other words, individual liberty can become so important that the only absolute within culture becomes the toleration of others’ rights.
But there needs to be a distinction made here. There is a difference between a metaphysical and a moral argument. To claim that freedom is metaphysically real is different from arguing for its proper disposition within a moral context. If freedom and life are both real, there remains the issue of resolving how each is to be valued in the context of the other. But regardless of whether that distinction has been appropriately made in the past, free will’s reputation among theists still suffers.
The point here is simply that the assertion of the reality of free will can become confused with the arrogance associated with its use against any and all standards or authority. The error of over-reacting to that effect of freedom (the effect of rejecting any standards of authority) is to undermine liberty’s value on the moral level and dismiss it altogether on the metaphysical level. To put it briefly, free will is taken to be the excuse of the disobedient for their waiting-to-be-condemned existence. It is not something real; it is only an excuse for sin in sinful characters. After all, why else would sinners so adamantly espouse an inscrutable entity! What such an argument overlooks is that free will would most rightly exist only in an environment where it might not exist—where an agent must choose regarding its reality. That choice, along with all others, is not the invention of the creation, but the creation’s responsibility within the context its Creator bestowed. And the fact that a free will is one which can be disobedient and arrogant is an argument neither against its reality nor its significance within reality. In fact, to espouse free will is to espouse the reality that anyone can choose to use or abuse it.
