Is Free Will an Illusion?

[westerebus]

48. This is going to get complicated. so bear with me.

Free will is not an illusion, humans understand the concept but confuse it with choice which is what humans have under limited conditions. To posess free will you would have to have god like powers which humans do not have. An example would be the mythos of jesus' power to have raised the dead or to change water into wine. This is a demonstration of free will. To materially affect change by willing it to happen.

Humans have limited choice. We can choose to be kind. We can choose to be cruel. We can't will some one to be kind. We can't will someone who is cruel to us to stop. We can choose to be kind in the face of cruelty. Or we can if possible choose to end the abuse with the options available to us.

If we had free will, the ability to control our destiny but affecting the universe around us by will alone, we wouldn't be here.

Where this gets interesting is how it is applied to form deterministic mythology. Again, jesus as god was fullfilling his role in the sacrafice of a god as attonement for the sins ( choices ) of man. Right up to his death he possessed free will, the power of a god to affect change beyond human means. Despite this power he died begging for the cruelty to stop. Some take this as a lesson that their god has a plan for them and life while predetermined still requires adherence to a mythology that is conflicted with its teachings. Blind obedience to authority is not a christian concept, it's much older than that.

The ability to get people to choose to obey because they believe they have free will, a power they share with the gods, helps. Having the biggest and cruelest god willing to sacrafice his only son is a hard act to follow.

The teachings of jesus don't rely on the power of a god. They don't rely on free will. They were simple to follow. Choose to be kind. Choose to forgive. Choose to stop cruelty. The example of cruelty that many see is that of jesus nailed to a cross and abandoned by his god. It is at that point in time the god of abraham stops dead. Just gone from the world of the Hebrews. Leaving the sacrafice behind without so much as an explaination as to why hell itself wasn't emptied in exchange.

As the myth continues, jesus completes his rescurection from the dead to prove that he is a god. Mythology is all there is to explain the difference between man and god. All the silliness that followed from the myth just comes full circle. Away from kindness and returning to cruelty in the name of he who forgives sins.

Yes, I'm still an agnostic. I do try to practice kindness. Not because jesus wants me to. It's a choice that as a human I can.