We’ve been considering how it might
be possible to do an “experiment” to expose whether God exists or not. As we have discussed, it’s a lot more
complicated than just saying “God: make
yourself obvious.” What would be great
is if we could summon a supernatural event whenever we wanted to assure and
reassure ourselves that there is more to this universe than the natural
world. If every person in every time
period in history had the opportunity to instantly, at their fingertips,
experience a supernatural event, that would seem to solve the whole issue,
wouldn’t it? If we could summon evidence
of the supernatural from wherever we might happen to be at any time of the day
or night, that would be the perfect characteristic of evidence for the
supernatural. We would never have to
doubt it.
Well, in my opinion, we already
have exactly what I just described! We
have an event that demonstrates the supernatural, and we can summon it at will
– literally. I am talking about…free
will. As I have discussed previously, I
consider free will to be evidence of the supernatural – the supernatural in us
[see here]. And free will, of course, is always with us
and always at our beck and call. We can get up, go out our front door, walk to the
sidewalk, and decide to go north, south, east or
west – free will. Or we can decide
to go back in the house – free will. Or
we can decide a million other things – free will! We can decide to do today something that we
have never done before, something we have never even thought about before. And we can do that whenever we
want. It is an experience that
is common to every single person who has ever lived.
To me, the human
will is the most obvious part of our existence.
We observe it and feel it every moment of every day. Therefore I suggest that free will is the
answer to those who ask to see a miracle.
The spiritual world is on display every time we make a decision out of
our own free will. We want God to show himself to us every day and
well, why isn’t free will the obvious, daily miracle we seek?
Almost all of
you will say that my proposal is silly.
But why? If free will is not
enough to at least convince us of a world beyond the natural, then what
possibly could?
I don’t want to belabor this point
too much because I know it’s pretty much a dead end discussion. Half of you will say “free will is an
illusion, so your whole argument is baseless” and the other half will say
“we’ll eventually be able to understand free will in a purely naturalistic
sense – there is no supernatural component to it – it’s as natural as
eating.” There’s not much I can say against
either one of those arguments – especially the latter [although I have tried!] [...and tried again]. As a result, I’ll leave it alone. We won’t be using free will in a direct way
to validate the supernatural, despite how great I think it is. But, at the
very least, please be honest and recognize that it does illustrate how nearly impossible it would be to come up with
some means by which we could experience a “miracle” whenever we wished. Our view of the world around us just won’t
allow for it. I mean, can you think of
some kind of evidence that would be better
than free will?
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