What’s the relationship between your freedom and your will? Most people talk about free will as if human will is free from influence, but our wills are captivated by all sorts of things on a daily basis. In order for something to influence us it has to affect our will i.e. it has to make us want to do it or at least be inclined to do it. Our will always has an object, when we talk about our will it’s always the will do to something (even if that something is to do nothing i.e. to rest). And so our wills are never free in every sense, for they must, by definition, orbit around one or more things.
Augustine said “What the heart desires, the will chooses and the mind justifies.” Implying that our wills are slaves to our heart's desires. Using these terms, those who advocate for free will may equate it with freedom of our hearts desire. Which sounds reasonable except for the fact that “the heart wants what the heart wants.” We’re never free from our hearts desire, if anything, we’re slaves to whatever captivates our hearts.
And so freedom isn’t the ability to control your will (it’s your will that controls you). Freedom is the ability to exercise your will, the ability to do whatever your will moves you to do. Freedom is not just having more options, because options that you will never choose are irrelevant. Freedom is the ability to go through the doors you want to go through, not just having access to more doors. This is fairly easily seen by reflecting at why people cry out for freedom. It’s always because they’re compelled to do something against their will, the door they want to go through is locked. An environmentalist is not going to feel oppressed when the government takes away peoples freedom to litter.
Freedom is further complicated by our changing situations. Usually, when you go through a door you come into a room with a different set of doors, previously open doors are now closed and new doors are open to you. If you want to be free to express yourself on a piano then you have to make yourself a slave to the study of piano lessons. Whichever you choose depends on your will, and turns what might otherwise be slavery into freedom. If you really want to be free to express yourself on a piano, you won’t see piano lessons as slavery. If you want to be free from piano lessons, you won’t see expressing yourself on a piano as freedom.
Which brings us to the question of truth. Postmodernism often sees truth claims as threats to peoples freedom. If I claim that guns a bad and people shouldn’t have guns, lots of people (especially in the U.S.) will see it as a threat to their freedom. If I say that marriage is between a man and a woman then the gay community and its supporters cry oppression. But the truth doesn’t limit our freedom, rather its lies that trap us and the truth that sets us free. If the captain of a ship knows where sandbanks and coral reefs are, then he’s free to steer the ship safely. If a competitor knows the rules of his competition than he’s free to compete in such a way as to win the prize.
And so truth claims about God are only restrictions to freedom if God doesn’t exist. If God’s character is a matter of opinion than proclaiming Christianity or Islam or even atheism is just as oppressive as demanding that everyone listen to your favourite type of music. But if God does exist then telling people the truth about him is like telling the captain of the ship the truth about the ocean, or telling an athlete the truth about their sport.
Jesus claims that anyone who sins is a slave to sin (John 8:34), and the rest of the bible claims that people are either slaves to sin or slaves to righteousness (Rom 6:16). We’re all free in that whichever we do is voluntary (sin is willful disobedience, righteousness is willful obedience) but we don’t have the power to do the contrary. If we’re saved by grace alone (Eph 2:8-9) then we don’t contribute, God alone frees us from sin and makes us slaves to righteousness. And if grace is effective then once we’re slaves to righteousness we can’t go back to our slavery to sin. It’s like we’re locked in one of two rooms, but we don’t want to leave the one we’re in, convinced that freedom is found in our room and slavery in the other (like freedom to express yourself on piano vs. freedom from piano lessons).
However, only the slaves to righteousness have seen both rooms. Becoming a Christian is kind of like the coming out of the matrix, you don’t what you’re coming out of until you’ve come out of it. While the devil has captured the will of mankind to sin, if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed (John 8:36).
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Defining Right and Wrong
What makes something right or wrong? Where do you draw the line between good and evil? Contrary to what some post-modernists say, in order to punish anything by law or to commend anything in any way, some things must be objectively right and some things must be objectively wrong. If whatever is right or wrong for you is only right or wrong for you, then not only do you have no grounds for enforcing any law, but you can never critique or improve anyone’s morality. If Hitler thought it was ok for him to kill the people that he saw as inferior then post-modernism is bound to let him do so because that’s what he believes is right and we need to respect that.
There are three major schools of thought in deciding what’s right and what’s wrong. Whether an action is good or bad depends on either the action itself (deontological ethics), the consequences (consequentialism), or the motive (teleological ethics). To define actions as universally good or bad (deontological ethics) is the most difficult ethic to defend and the most objected to ethic by post-modernism. This is because it forbids you to choose the lesser of two evils if the greater evil is more passive than the lesser. This was famously demonstrated when Immanuel Kant (who championed deontological ethics) was asked what he should do if a murderer asked him where his children were. Kant replied that since lying was universally wrong he was bound to tell him the truth. By contrast, when God-fearing midwives lied in order to save life they are commended by God for doing the right thing (Exodus 1:15-21). Deontological ethics also forbids going to war as the lesser of two evils because allowing a country to invade is more passive than defending yourself.
Defining an action as good or bad based on its consequences (consequentialism) is easier to defend but it is ultimately flawed by our limited understanding of consequences. While consequentialism invariably chooses whatever is for the greater good, who decides what the greater good is, and whose good are we talking about? Consequentialism leads to an ethic where the end justifies the means and so if you’re ‘end’ is important enough then it doesn’t matter how many people you hurt along the way. Consequentialism is gaining more and more popularity today and is often used to justify abortion and euthanasia. However, as finite human beings we can never see the full extent of the consequences of our actions. If your consequential scope is too small then you might be willing to negotiate with terrorists even if it means more terrorists will arise because they could get their way. If your consequential scope is too big then you might be willing to kill people for your end because it won’t make a difference in the big scheme of things after a few generations have passed. In the end it doesn’t really answer the question of right and wrong because the greater good is still subjective, even Hitler thought he was doing the right thing. All a man’s ways seem right to him, but the Lord weighs the heart (Proverbs 21:2). Consequentialism is a slippery slope to the mind justifying whatever the heart desires.
To define an action as good or evil based on motive (teleological ethics) is the easiest ethic to defend and the most liveable. It allows you to choose the lesser of two evils provided you do so for the right reasons, and it condemns pursuing your own ends at the expense of others. Motive plays a major part in how the law punishes crime, mistakes are never treated as severely as preconceived law breaking. Moreover, teleological ethics allows for innocence and guilt to fall on different people involved in the same action. If you tell someone the time without knowing that they would use that information to detonate an explosion at the time that would kill the maximum number of people, then to what extent are you an accessory? If you’re just looking at the raw consequences then your action has contributed to the death of many, but your motive (or lack thereof) testifies to your innocence. When Joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers as part of God’s plan to save lives, Joseph’s brothers are shown to be guilty because their evil intent while God is shown to be loving and merciful because of his good intent (Genesis 50:20). When Jesus was killed by men as part of God’s set purpose, the men are seen as wicked because their motive was jealousy and pride while God is seen to be good because his motive was the salvation of humanity (Acts 2:23). In the end, teleological ethics justifies everything done out of love and condemns everything done out of hate.
There are three major schools of thought in deciding what’s right and what’s wrong. Whether an action is good or bad depends on either the action itself (deontological ethics), the consequences (consequentialism), or the motive (teleological ethics). To define actions as universally good or bad (deontological ethics) is the most difficult ethic to defend and the most objected to ethic by post-modernism. This is because it forbids you to choose the lesser of two evils if the greater evil is more passive than the lesser. This was famously demonstrated when Immanuel Kant (who championed deontological ethics) was asked what he should do if a murderer asked him where his children were. Kant replied that since lying was universally wrong he was bound to tell him the truth. By contrast, when God-fearing midwives lied in order to save life they are commended by God for doing the right thing (Exodus 1:15-21). Deontological ethics also forbids going to war as the lesser of two evils because allowing a country to invade is more passive than defending yourself.
Defining an action as good or bad based on its consequences (consequentialism) is easier to defend but it is ultimately flawed by our limited understanding of consequences. While consequentialism invariably chooses whatever is for the greater good, who decides what the greater good is, and whose good are we talking about? Consequentialism leads to an ethic where the end justifies the means and so if you’re ‘end’ is important enough then it doesn’t matter how many people you hurt along the way. Consequentialism is gaining more and more popularity today and is often used to justify abortion and euthanasia. However, as finite human beings we can never see the full extent of the consequences of our actions. If your consequential scope is too small then you might be willing to negotiate with terrorists even if it means more terrorists will arise because they could get their way. If your consequential scope is too big then you might be willing to kill people for your end because it won’t make a difference in the big scheme of things after a few generations have passed. In the end it doesn’t really answer the question of right and wrong because the greater good is still subjective, even Hitler thought he was doing the right thing. All a man’s ways seem right to him, but the Lord weighs the heart (Proverbs 21:2). Consequentialism is a slippery slope to the mind justifying whatever the heart desires.
To define an action as good or evil based on motive (teleological ethics) is the easiest ethic to defend and the most liveable. It allows you to choose the lesser of two evils provided you do so for the right reasons, and it condemns pursuing your own ends at the expense of others. Motive plays a major part in how the law punishes crime, mistakes are never treated as severely as preconceived law breaking. Moreover, teleological ethics allows for innocence and guilt to fall on different people involved in the same action. If you tell someone the time without knowing that they would use that information to detonate an explosion at the time that would kill the maximum number of people, then to what extent are you an accessory? If you’re just looking at the raw consequences then your action has contributed to the death of many, but your motive (or lack thereof) testifies to your innocence. When Joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers as part of God’s plan to save lives, Joseph’s brothers are shown to be guilty because their evil intent while God is shown to be loving and merciful because of his good intent (Genesis 50:20). When Jesus was killed by men as part of God’s set purpose, the men are seen as wicked because their motive was jealousy and pride while God is seen to be good because his motive was the salvation of humanity (Acts 2:23). In the end, teleological ethics justifies everything done out of love and condemns everything done out of hate.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
The Impossibility of Paradoxes
There are four types of mathematical proofs, by definition, by contradiction, by contrapositive and by induction. The second – proof by contradiction – works on the principle that if you start with an assumption and use it to logically deduce a contradiction (a paradox with something that’s true) then you’re assumption is false. This assumption that’s proved to be false may be one of your logical steps, but it has to be something, falsehood cannot be created from truth alone.
And so philosophically, contradictions and paradoxes are challenges to assumptions. In the same way that two even numbers can never add together to produce an odd number, truth plus truth can never equal something that’s false. When we come across a paradox, it must be because there is something false in whatever it was that led us to the paradox. This doesn’t mean that nothing is paradoxical or counter intuitive, only that there is no such thing as a true paradox or contradiction. This can be demonstrated in philosophy, science and theology.
One of the most famous philosophical ‘paradoxes’ is of Achilles and the tortoise, this is sometimes phased in terms of an arrow and a target but the philosophy is the same. If Achilles can run ten times faster than the tortoise and he gives the tortoise a 100 meter head start, then how far will the tortoise get before Achilles catches him? In the time it takes Achilles to run the 100 meter starting difference, the tortoise will have gone ten meters. In the time it takes Achilles to run that ten meters the tortoise will have gone one meter. In the time it takes Achilles to run that one meter the tortoise will have gone a tenth of a meter and so on. This is an infinite series where Achilles asymptotically approaches the tortoise but never catches it, even though he’s running ten times faster – a philosophical paradox.
But this isn’t actually a paradox, it’s a proof by contradiction that space and time are quantised. The underlying assumption to the philosophy is that space and time (if you use seconds instead of meters) can infinitely divided i.e. you can always divide any given amount of space (or time) into ten. There has to be a length, probably the width of an electron, (and a time, probably the time it takes the speed of light to travel the width of an electron,) that cannot be further divided. Once Achilles is an electrons distance from the tortoise, he catches him in the next time step.
The classic scientific paradox is the wave-particle duality of light. In Young’s double-slit experiment, he fired a single photon (particle of light) at two slits and observed two slits of light on the other side. The single particle went through both slits at the same time – a scientific paradox. But this is actually a proof by contradiction that light has properties of waves as well as particles. The experiment disproves the assumption that photons behave in the same way as protons and electrons, which isn’t that surprising given that they have mass where as photons don’t.
In theology, one of the biggest ‘paradoxes’ is in God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. If God is sovereign over everything that happens, then how can people be held responsible for their actions? But again, this is no paradox, only an exposure of the false dichotomy between God’s sovereignty and our responsibility. Left to our own devices we all choose the path of selfishness, but God uses our bad choices for his good purpose. Like the dual authorship of the Bible, God’s sovereignty and our responsibility is the dual authorship of history. The two are not pulling in different directions but running parallel. Your choices and actions can be with or without God, but never instead of God.
Other theological concepts like the trinity and Jesus’ nature may appear to be paradoxical, but God’s word doesn’t contain contradictions. When a perceived contradiction arises, it is our assumptions that are challenged, not God. This gives rise to the principle hermeneutic; that the Bible must be read without drawing dichotomies with itself. This principle for understanding God’s special revelation – the Bible – is also used for our understanding of his general revelation in science. A scientific hypothesis is made in conjunction with other scientific laws, not in opposition to them. So too, theological conclusions must be made in coherency with all of God’s word. Furthermore, if the God who created the universe has revealed himself in the Bible, then dichotomies can’t be drawn between God’s special revelation and his general revelation. Our assumptions about how they are true may be challenged, but our challenge is to hold them both as true.
And so philosophically, contradictions and paradoxes are challenges to assumptions. In the same way that two even numbers can never add together to produce an odd number, truth plus truth can never equal something that’s false. When we come across a paradox, it must be because there is something false in whatever it was that led us to the paradox. This doesn’t mean that nothing is paradoxical or counter intuitive, only that there is no such thing as a true paradox or contradiction. This can be demonstrated in philosophy, science and theology.
One of the most famous philosophical ‘paradoxes’ is of Achilles and the tortoise, this is sometimes phased in terms of an arrow and a target but the philosophy is the same. If Achilles can run ten times faster than the tortoise and he gives the tortoise a 100 meter head start, then how far will the tortoise get before Achilles catches him? In the time it takes Achilles to run the 100 meter starting difference, the tortoise will have gone ten meters. In the time it takes Achilles to run that ten meters the tortoise will have gone one meter. In the time it takes Achilles to run that one meter the tortoise will have gone a tenth of a meter and so on. This is an infinite series where Achilles asymptotically approaches the tortoise but never catches it, even though he’s running ten times faster – a philosophical paradox.
But this isn’t actually a paradox, it’s a proof by contradiction that space and time are quantised. The underlying assumption to the philosophy is that space and time (if you use seconds instead of meters) can infinitely divided i.e. you can always divide any given amount of space (or time) into ten. There has to be a length, probably the width of an electron, (and a time, probably the time it takes the speed of light to travel the width of an electron,) that cannot be further divided. Once Achilles is an electrons distance from the tortoise, he catches him in the next time step.
The classic scientific paradox is the wave-particle duality of light. In Young’s double-slit experiment, he fired a single photon (particle of light) at two slits and observed two slits of light on the other side. The single particle went through both slits at the same time – a scientific paradox. But this is actually a proof by contradiction that light has properties of waves as well as particles. The experiment disproves the assumption that photons behave in the same way as protons and electrons, which isn’t that surprising given that they have mass where as photons don’t.
In theology, one of the biggest ‘paradoxes’ is in God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. If God is sovereign over everything that happens, then how can people be held responsible for their actions? But again, this is no paradox, only an exposure of the false dichotomy between God’s sovereignty and our responsibility. Left to our own devices we all choose the path of selfishness, but God uses our bad choices for his good purpose. Like the dual authorship of the Bible, God’s sovereignty and our responsibility is the dual authorship of history. The two are not pulling in different directions but running parallel. Your choices and actions can be with or without God, but never instead of God.
Other theological concepts like the trinity and Jesus’ nature may appear to be paradoxical, but God’s word doesn’t contain contradictions. When a perceived contradiction arises, it is our assumptions that are challenged, not God. This gives rise to the principle hermeneutic; that the Bible must be read without drawing dichotomies with itself. This principle for understanding God’s special revelation – the Bible – is also used for our understanding of his general revelation in science. A scientific hypothesis is made in conjunction with other scientific laws, not in opposition to them. So too, theological conclusions must be made in coherency with all of God’s word. Furthermore, if the God who created the universe has revealed himself in the Bible, then dichotomies can’t be drawn between God’s special revelation and his general revelation. Our assumptions about how they are true may be challenged, but our challenge is to hold them both as true.
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