Free Will

Really? I was under the impression that morality is more complicated than that.

And looking at the world, it seems that most problems are caused by people claiming to be more moral than others. It appears we struggle with the distinction. :)

Morality can indeed be complicate as it is not only to reason between good and evil but also to choose or to decide between good and evil. That's when it becomes complicate.

The best text to understand how complicate is Morality is to read chapter 7 of the Pauline letter to the Romans. Morality was so complicate to Paul that he was about to go crazy. That's what constituted his thorn in the flesh. When he found out he could not get rid of his sinful condition, he decided to make of himself the exception to the rule that one cannot serve two masters and contented himself with serving God's Law in his mind only while serving sin in his flesh. (Rom. 7:25) By doing so, he made of himself an amoral person.
 
In Christianity and Judaism (not certain re Islam) a perfect God is believed to have created the universe and created humans “In His image.” This implies that humans were created perfect. Yet humans spoiled the original perfection by choosing to disobey God. That premise is plain silly! How can imperfection come from perfection? Perfection in and of itself indicates the inability for imperfection. Furthermore, a perfect Creator cannot, without intent, create anything imperfect. Therefore, a perfect God who creates imperfect humans, without intent, is impossible.

The Christian explanation (to my recollection, not in the Book) of God’s “gift” of free will doesn’t answer the perfection implications. Christian’s feeble attempt is; “God gave humans free will to enable them to experience emotions like love and happiness.” Believers say without free will humans would be little more than robots. However, this free will idea is difficult to find in the Bible and it seems any insinuation of free will is quickly expunged by one stroke of the quill (Matthew 6:10) -- “Thy will be done in earth as in heaven”.


Free will seems to be the response to the paradox offered by the Greek philosopher Epicurus regarding God’s inability to control evil. To paraphrase Epicurus, he stated that either God can prevent evil and chooses not to, which makes him less than merciful or He can’t prevent evil, which makes him less than omnipotent. This was of course unacceptable to the Church so the answer was clear. Free will.
 
Free will and determinism are two sides of the same coin.
Where you have one you will necessarily also have the other -- they are, in actual experience, inseparable as are all the other dualities the human mind posits in it's attempts to statically comprehend a universe that is constantly in motion and transition, thereby defying conceptual encapsulation at any and every juncture.

And everything is so much more wonderful and awe inspiring than we can ever "conceive it" because of that.

It is more important to understand the filters we look at the universe through than it is to attempt to make sense of the appearance of a universe we see through them.

Clarity is a subtractive rather than an additive process.
 
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