God’s Big Dilemma[1]

          Christians describe a God who wants to share His “heavenly home” with others.  He wants to share the joy that He experiences; and apparently He wants to share this with human beings for all eternity.  In this entry, I want to describe how, if there is such a God[2], He faces a huge dilemma.  This dilemma ties in directly with the issue of free will that I am so fond of talking about.

          God has free will.  Regardless of what you think about human free will or human determinism, if there is a God worth calling a God, He has to have complete freedom of the will.  He can decide to do anything He wants – there are no restrictions to what He can decide to do.  Further, He can carry out those decisions due to a little feature called omnipotence.  As a result, we struggle to describe some aspects of God’s character.  Words like “want” or “desires” have a different meaning when nothing can stand in your way.

          At some “point in time” however, God was enjoying His ultimate freedom and His ultimate power and thought “I would like to share this with others.”  So, He made man with the plan of sharing fully in God’s joy – sharing fully in heaven.

          Here’s the big dilemma:  God’s joy is entirely intertwined with His “omni-“ characteristics and His complete freedom.  In order for man to share in God’s joy, man has to be made like God.  John says “…when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” [I Jn 3:2b]  This does not mean that man becomes God.  In fact, the Christian doctrine on this is very clear – man is always distinct from God.  Man is still man, but in heaven he is transformed so that he can experience the joy that God experiences.  But in heaven, what will be man’s characteristics?  I contend that heaven cannot be heaven – it cannot be the full sharing in God’s joy – unless we have the character of God.  And that means that man – faulty man – gets to have the big keys to the kingdom.  Man gets to have complete freedom and he gets to have complete power.  Do you see the problem here?

          The problem with any human being having complete freedom and complete power is that, with one mistake, that human can end everything, including God.  One tiny moment of indiscretion and everything ends with no chance of recovery.  Just consider the danger that God puts Himself in by bringing mere human beings into full fellowship with Him in heaven.

          It is true that, on earth, man can really mess things up.  But there is a significant limit to what man can do, by design.  Maybe, eventually, man will have developed a weapon big enough to blow up the whole earth.  And that will be the end of man.  But not for eternity.  Man can only destroy the physical; and even the ability to destroy the physical is fairly limited.  We cannot kill souls – we can only kill bodies.  And once we destroy ourselves, that is the end of our destroying.  As human beings, we can get frustrated or angry or depressed and we do stupid things.  One person might put their fist through wall.  But imagine if everyone carried with them a little button that released all of the nuclear warheads all at once.  In a fit of frustration or anger or depression, someone would hit that button and…boom.

          But heaven presents that problem in spades.  We’re not just given a button that controls nuclear warheads.  Full freedom and full power means that we could hurt not only ourselves and our fellow man, but hurt God as well.  We could end it all for all of eternity, and there would be no fixing of it.  In the material, finite world, there is a limit.  Death, despite all of the awful things it means, is also the ultimate in “safety limits.”  We, as human beings, can go no further than death.  Our influence extends no further than the finite universe.  But in heaven, our influence extends forever.  A single mistake.  A single mistake…means the end of it all for everyone, with no recourse of recovery.  It’s over.  Love, joy, peace…they end.

          I thought about this from a personal perspective.  Would I want to have the full freedom and full power that God has?  Would I want to have the possibility hanging over my head that in a brief moment of something less than perfection, I would be the one to bring it all to an end?  Is heaven worth that risk? 

          What this means from God’s perspective is that He cannot afford to make one little mistake in who He lets in to heaven.  I mean, if He allows in one person who isn’t completely, wholly, and permanently transformed to a perfect state, He runs the risk of this danger – the danger of complete annihilation.  He cannot take that risk.  So, here is the dilemma God faces:  He wants the companionship of human beings – He wants to be able to interact with humans in a manner that they experience the same joy that He experiences; but to do so He must risk it all, including Himself.  If He makes a mistake and lets in even one wrong person…it’s over.

          That’s God’s dilemma.

          This is why we can’t be involved in figuring out who gets into heaven or how they get into heaven.  We would mess it all up.  We’d let in the really good people that we know.  We’d grade on a curve and take the top 10% or 20%, and then let our good friend in even though they were only at 21%.  We look at heaven as a nice honor for a life well-lived.  A nice gift from God for trying to please Him in some way.  But it is not that.  Heaven is a gift, for sure, but it is first and foremost a gift for God.  It is a final act of creation – creation that started “long ago.”  And it is the most dangerous place in the universe for human beings and human nature.  Without a transformation of our nature – a transformation that only God can ensure is complete – we should not hope for heaven.  Heaven, populated by human beings – even really really really good human beings – would be hell in no time.  And then what will be left?

          In the first creation, there were apparently angels who rebelled.  Satan is described as a “fallen angel.”  But human beings, the Bible teaches, will be made higher than the angels.  The fall of angels was the most disastrous event in the universe.  It led to evil.  It led to the fall of man.  It led to the death of every human being.  It led to Jesus dying on a cross.  But the fall of angels would pale in comparison to a second fall of man.  It just can’t happen.

          That’s God’s dilemma.  Be careful what you wish for, o man.  Don’t think a minute that you would want to be the one with the keys to heaven.

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[1] Is it theologically correct to say that God has a dilemma?  No, not really – not without carefully defining your terms.  But I’ve written this whole thing from a very human perspective, using human terms to describe God, in order to more simply convey the idea here.  If I had to carefully define every term with respect to God and chase every rabbit trail of theology, I’d never be able to get my point across.  You’ll have to take this entry as something closer to an allegory.

[2] If you are certain that there is no such God, then the rest of this entry will not be of much use to you – you might as well skip it.

Not so crazy things Christians believe - #1

          Elsewhere I listed the top five crazy things Christians believe.  But not everything in Christianity, or even in religion in general, can be considered crazy[1].  In fact, there are some things that I view as obvious and, I think, receive general agreement by most human beings.  I think these more generally-accepted ideas or beliefs can be a good starting point for discussion.  Sometimes it helps to find some common ground when starting a discussion. 

Well, here’s the first of my “not so crazy things” that Christians believe:

#1 – Nobody’s perfect.

          I think I’ve only ever met one person in my life who seemed to seriously believe they were perfect[2].  Most people acknowledge that they make mistakes – some more readily acknowledge it than others.  Obviously, there are plenty of people who think they are better than everyone else around them, but that is different than considering yourself to be truly perfect. 

          Christians will generally phrase this concept as “All have sinned.”  That phrase comes directly from multiple places in the Bible, most notably in Paul’s letter to the Romans.  By the way, regardless of your belief system, you should read the book of Romans.  I know that there is a lot of skepticism out there about the Bible and many consider it mythology and so on.  But not the book of Romans.  Good luck finding anyone who has a serious argument that this book was not written by Paul in the AD 50s or so.  As well-preserved ancient writing goes, it is one of the best, so on that basis alone, you should read it.  It won’t take long.

          Anyway, back to the phrase “nobody’s perfect.”  I know that in this day and age, where few people want to acknowledge that there are any moral absolutes, some might start to argue that the idea of “perfect” is outdated.  Personally, in my experience as a human being among other human beings, I don’t think it really matters whether you use an absolute moral standard to judge perfection with respect to this general concept.  If you want to redefine a moral standard based on your own reason, personal experience, or whim of the moment, that is fine – the concept of “nobody’s perfect” still applies.  Maybe you feel differently, but I don’t know anyone who can even live up to their own standards 100% of the time.  I know I can’t.  Even something as simple as staying on a diet or not getting upset with other drivers or paying state sales tax on items ordered off of the internet…we all fail even at the things we say are important to us.  We fail to love the people we say we love.  I don’t mean we always fail.  But we are not perfect – not even when we get to establish the rules!

          I will take it a bit further:  we can’t become perfect, either.  By that I mean that regardless of how many self-help books we read, or how hard we train, or how much will-power we can muster, or how much Oprah we watch…we can maybe become a better person, but never perfect.  We’ll fail again.  We’ll make mistakes again.  And, again, we don’t even need to agree on any kind of moral standard for this statement to be true.  No matter how hard we try, we cannot become perfect.  I mean, even ignoring the fact that we can’t eliminate our past mistakes, we cannot make ourselves perfect going forwards for any reasonable period of time.  For an hour?  Sure, maybe – if we’re sleeping during that time!  For a day?  For a week?  I suppose we can all say facetiously “I was perfect once – for five minutes…”  But even that was in the past!

          The funny thing about the statement “nobody’s perfect” is that most of us get upset when someone tries to get into specifics.  We say “I know I’m not perfect”, but if someone tries to point out a fault, we get very upset.  We know that “theoretically” we are not perfect, but when it comes to the practical implementation of that concept, we often function and act as if we are perfect.  That’s just human nature.  “I know I’m not perfect, but I don’t have any faults!”

          Well, if it is true that we almost all agree about this general concept, it seems like it ought to be a central theme of any belief system that we might have.  Or, at the very least, our belief system shouldn’t contradict that general sentiment.  Not that there isn’t the possibility that we could all be wrong…although in this particular case, if we were all wrong, wouldn’t that just reinforce the truth that “nobody’s perfect”???  But it just seems to me that we’d be fighting against the overwhelming evidence of our personal experience.  A belief system that says:  “I will strive to, and must achieve, perfection” seems doomed from the start.

          Finally, to me, this issue illustrates the inadequacy of science to comprehensively address the human condition.  I am a scientist and I place a high value on science.  I just don’t think it addresses everything, nor is it designed to address everything.  I don’t think science can confirm for me that I am not perfect.  I don’t think science can tell me what, if anything, should be done about it.  That’s why, for me, science is not “all”.  We need more.  Whether there is more is another topic entirely.  But as faulty human beings, we need for there to be more.

          It may be that I have misread my fellow human beings.  Maybe everyone will not agree with my original statement above.  I would be interested to hear any dissenting thoughts on the matter.  But, barring a significant misread on my part, I feel that the imperfection of human beings may be a good place to start discussion, because it can be a point of common agreement among many disparate views.

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[1] I use the word “crazy” because it is a fun word, not because it is the best word in this context.  To me, things that are “crazy” are things that are surprising, unexpected, unlikely, shocking, and/or hard to believe.  Miracles would fit into that category, but so would most of the predictions made by quantum physics.

[2] And they were quite obviously wrong!

Put Your Ideas to the Test - #2 - Experimenting with God (!)

          In my previous entry on this topic, I tried to motivate the desire to “test things out” or “conduct an experiment.”  That’s all well and good in the natural world.  The entire field of science is built on that concept.  But now, I’d like to step out into the deep deep deep end.  What about testing things in the spiritual, or non-material, realm?

          Well…this is going to take a lot of explaining first!  I just want to set up a few things in this entry.

          First, although I just suggested that we might consider “testing the spiritual”, I’m not considering here the things that you see on television about searching for ghosts and so on.  Why is it that non-material ghosts seem to have to produce fully-material electromagnetic waves everywhere they go???  I am highly skeptical of all that sort of thing and I have no real interest in it.  In fact, I feel that it clouds the issue.  With so much foolishness, it’s hard to find the truth and, in fact, hard to believe that there really is any truth to be found there.  So, I want to distance anything I say from that whole realm of craziness as much as possible.

          No, all I care about is performing experiments about the existence of God.  Actually, even the phrase “existence of God” is too generic.  I want to get even more specific than that.  But I have to stop here again and make another point.

          You can’t test God in a randomized, double-blind experiment.  You can’t even do a simple repeat “test”.  It’s the same reason that you can’t trust political opinion polls about which candidate someone will vote for.  How do I know you can’t trust them?  Because I’ve been asked to do some of those polls and – guess what? – I lied.  I lied.  I exercised my freewill as an obstinate human being who doesn’t like being called in the middle of trying to write up a blog entry and being asked about my opinions for a poll that is a waste of time to begin with (in my opinion).  So, I don’t take them seriously.  They can’t make me take it seriously.  Why?  Because I have free will (hah!).

          The point is, if God has any of the qualities that a God should have, then He has free will.[1]  If we don’t place any other requirements on God, then we face the same problem that pollsters face when they ask human beings questions:  God could lie too.  Or He could play hard to get.  He could hide Himself behind blind chance.  There’s just no way to pin God down and do a study on Him.  We’d have to get His consent first, and His willingness to play along and play fair, and even then, how could we be sure He was playing fair?  We just can’t control Him.  So, no, I can’t see any way of testing a general concept of God through any type of experimental means.  That is not what I’m talking about here either.

          We will have to get down to a very specific “God” and a very specific situation to have any chance of testing.  Even then, the rules for this evaluation are going to have to be very carefully spelled out.  But I just want to define the general concept right now and get into the details in the future.

          The specific “God” I am talking about is Jesus.  As I pointed out in my “Top Five Crazy Things” entry, Christians make a couple of claims that are relevant here:  1) Jesus is God and 2) Jesus is still alive today and active in people’s lives.  Further, I’m talking about Jesus as described in the Bible.  I am being very specific because we can only test very specific things.  We cannot test God in general, but we might have some chance of testing – or evaluating[2] – specific aspects of a very specific kind of God.  That is what I am talking about.

          I said all that to say this:  in the Bible, it is recorded that Jesus said the following:

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”  [Matt 7:7-8]

And also

“Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.”  [Rev 3:20]

          There is a lot to these statements, and we will have to analyze them in detail and make sure we understand them fully before we can go much further.  But for the moment I want you to entertain this one thought:  is it possible to evaluate whether these statements are true or not?  We certainly can’t test to figure out if a lying God exists, but can we test to see if a man, claiming to be God, who made the claims above in the past and still intends to live up to these claims even now, today…can we test to see if such a God as that exists?  From an experimental design perspective, the major advantage of adding Christian beliefs to the statements above is that if Jesus is still alive today, then we don’t have to try to figure out how to test if this statement was valid at some point in the past – that would be nearly impossible to do – we just have to figure out if this statement is valid right now.

          It’s not going to be easy to figure this out.  But I would suggest that, at the very least, it is worth some effort on our part to try to figure it out.  Maybe we can’t figure out a way to test this claim, but ignoring the possibility hardly seems like the smart thing to do.  OK, well, I can’t resist the possibility, and since this is my blog, I get to dive in.

Be careful though – best to think everything through in detail before knocking on the lion’s door!

Next Entry on this Topic

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[1] I’m not talking about a mindless “Force” that has no will.  Actually, such a force, assuming it follows some kind of rules, would probably actually be testable using scientific methods.  And, in fact, such forces have been identified by science…gravity…electromagnetic force…strong and weak nuclear forces…

[2] It is very unfortunate that the English word “test” has different meanings.  A better word would actually be “taste”, but that would probably seem odd without a lot of explanation.  I’ll save that for the future.

Put Your Ideas to the Test - #1

          I do not know enough philosophy to know how to label ideas and concepts properly.  I’m much more interested in testing ideas than labeling them.  I love science and I like to learn new things, but I’m not all that excited to discover more knowledge for the sake of knowledge.  I am, at heart, very practical.  Thus I think that if there is any term that describes my way of thinking it is this: “an engineer”.  I don’t suppose “engineering” can be considered a philosophy, but for me, it is about as close to a description of my way of thinking as I can get.  I think things through to decide what I should do today.  I want a practical outcome from my thoughts.  I’ll bet you won’t even find the word “engineer” or “engineering” in any textbook on philosophy.  Well, that’s a shame in my opinion!

          In light of that, I thought that today I would give you what I imagine as the first chapter of a book about “testing the non-material world” that I would love to write.  Someday...  I’m guessing it’ll more likely show up as pieces in this blog over time.  But, without further ado…here is Chapter 1.

Chapter 1 – Open Your Mind to Experimentation[1]

          What if you were standing before those proverbial pearly gates and you find yourself presented with…not one, not two, but three identical pearly gates.  As you contemplate your next move, a voice from above says “Behind one of those gates is everything you could wish for.  Choose it, and it is yours.  But be careful – behind the other two gates is darkness and pain!”

          Well, after some significant consternation, during which time you think to yourself that “this is certainly not how I heard it would be”, you realize you need to make a choice.  Each gate is identical.  There is nothing to give you any further information.  So, you say to yourself “it’s a one in three chance” and you point to the middle gate.

          Now the voice from above says “You have selected the middle gate.  Let me show you what is behind the gate on the right.”  The right gate opens and inside you see that it is, indeed, dark and frightening.  You look away, thankful you didn’t pick that one.

          Then the voice asks you a question you didn’t expect.  “Would you like to change your pick?  Would you like to switch to the left gate instead of the middle gate?” 

          After you think again “this is definitely not how I heard it would be”, you consider whether you can read anything into this option.  Is the voice “good” and trying to get you to change, knowing that you’ve picked the wrong gate?  Or is the voice trying to trick you into changing your pick, knowing you’ve picked the correct gate?  After some consternation, you realize that there is nothing in what the voice has told you to give you any clue.  Fundamentally, you are on your own here, with nothing to aid you in making a decision except the pure odds of the selection.  So now you are kind of back where you were at the start, except that now the odds are a little better.  There are just two gates now.  This is nerve racking.

          So you ponder…what’s the point of switching your choice?  You have no idea which gate is which, so why change?  Your odds are 50:50 either way, so you say “I’ll stick with the middle gate.”

          Not good.  What if I told you that you just make a huge mistake?  What if I told you that your odds were not 50:50?  What if I told you that you were twice as likely to choose the correct gate by switching your choice?

          You may say “Obviously the odds are 50:50, and it makes no difference which gate I pick.  There are two gates – one with the prize and one without – so how can the odds be anything other than 50:50?  Only an idiot would think otherwise!”[2] 

That’s exactly what I said the first time I heard this problem.  I was convinced that it makes no difference whether you change your selection or not.   How could it possibly be any other way?

          At this point in your reading of this Introduction, you can do one of two things.  You can say to yourself “I know statistics – I’m not an idiot.  This is a simple probability problem.  It is what it is.” And you can close this book and not think about it again.

          Alternatively you could, maybe out of a certain amount of indignation or just simple curiosity, say “let’s try it and see.”

          Which group are you in?  This book is written for those who are willing to try it and see, no matter how strongly they are convinced that the odds are 50:50.  When someone who seems to be sincere and reasonable makes the claim that I have made – the claim that you are actually twice as likely to choose the right gate if you change your original selection – you are willing to put it to the test.  You’re convinced that the outcome will show that the odds are 50:50.  You’d put money on it.  But you’re still willing to try it out.  This book is for you.

          Of course, this book is not about selecting the right gate.  It’s not about statistics.  I have no interest in trying to mislead you about my purposes.  Here is what I’m hoping to accomplish with this book:  I’m hoping that some of you – those who have totally rejected the claims of any and all non-materialist viewpoints – will be willing to put your claims to the test.  And I don’t mean a mental exercise.  I don’t mean arguing logic.  I mean really put them to the test.  I’m talking about conducting an experiment.  By the end of this book, here is my goal:  that you will have designed your own experiment to test a variety of spiritual beliefs, and that you will be ready to start conducting that experiment.

          So, if you are in the first group – if you know already that no amount of evidence could ever convince you otherwise regarding any other view of reality than the one you have now – well, you ought to put this down and read another book.  Go read some good fiction!  This book is not for you.

          If you’re still reading, then don’t say I didn’t tell you up front!

          And what about the problem with the gates?  Well – try it.  Do an experiment.  It’s easy enough to do.  Get a friend to help you.  Get three cards – say an ace of spades and the two red deuces.  It would be helpful if you got a piece of wood with a slot in it so that you could set the cards upright.  Then you sit on one side of the cards with the cards facing away from you, and have your friend sit on the other side.  Have him place the three cards in random order in the slots.  You pick one.  Then, have your friend remove one of the two remaining cards – but never removing the ace of spades.  Then, keep your original choice and write down whether you selected the ace of spades or not.  Do this 100 times.  Then, change your strategy and always change your mind after the first card is removed.  Write down whether you selected the ace of spades in this scenario.  Do this one 100 times.  Compare the results.  Do you win about twice as often with the second scenario – when you change your mind – than you do with the first?  If so, you might still be unconvinced.  Too small of a sample you will say.  Well, that is easy to remedy.  Repeat the test, only do it 1,000 times.  Or 10,000.  Whatever it takes.  At some point the evidence will become overwhelming to you.  It is at that point that you might be willing to consider that the odds really are not 50:50.  At that point, you are ready to consider additional logical arguments.

          Why isn’t it 50:50?  If you haven’t tried it, go try it first.  Then you can read this paragraph.  Actually, I will simply talk you through this by describing experiments where the results may be more obvious to you.  Let me start with an extreme example and work backwards.  Let’s use the entire deck of 52 cards this time.  So let’s imagine a scenario where all 52 cards are spread out in front of you, facing away where you can only see the backs.  The goal is to pick the ace of spades.  So, you pick one of the 52 at random.  Then, your friend removes one of the remaining cards (but not the ace of spades) and you decide whether to change your original pick or not.  Now let’s change the game up just a bit.  Let’s say that your friend keeps removing one of the non-ace of spades after each round.  And let’s say that you stay with your original card while the other cards are being removed.  Finally, you get down to the very end where there are only two cards left.  Your friend has removed 50 cards, none of them the ace of spades.  Should you switch?  Consider this.  When you first picked the one card out of 52, what were the odds that it was the ace of spades?  It was 1 in 52.  Not very good at all.  What were the odds that the ace of spades was part of the remaining 51 cards that you didn’t select?  51 in 52.  Very good odds.  Do you see where this leaves you?  Think of it this way:  if, instead of stopping to ask you if you wanted to change your mind after each selection, your friend simply removed 50 of the remaining 51 cards after you made your first pick.  All 50 are known to be non-ace of spades (let’s assume you picked a trustworthy friend).  Now there is just one card remaining of the original 51.  What are the odds that the last remaining card is the ace of spades?  51:52.  And what are the odds that the card you originally picked is the ace of spades  1:52.  In fact, in this case, if you switched cards at the end, you would almost always win, and if you kept your original card, you would almost always lose. 

          If you can see that the situation with all 52 cards clearly and logically shows that you should change your selection at the end, then let’s work backwards from that point.  What if the deck only had 10 cards?  Now there would be a 1:10 chance that your original choice was the ace of spades and a 9:10 chance that the remaining card is the ace of spades.  You’d win 9 times as often if you always changed your choice at the end.  Well, what if there are 4 cards?  Its 3:4 vs. 1:4, so you’re three times as likely.

          And that takes us back to where we started.  Three gates.  You select one.  The odds are 1:3 that you picked the right gate.  On that we can all agree.  And, the odds are 2:3 that the right gate is one of the two remaining.  The wrong gate is removed from those two.  So, the odds are 1:3 that you picked the right gate first, making the odds 2:3 that the remaining gate holds the prize.  And, therefore, you find that you are twice as likely to win if you change your mind.

          By the way, when people are presented with this situation in real life, they almost always keep their original choice.  “Go with your gut.”  “Your first inclination is often the best.”  Or, simply “it doesn’t matter – it’s 50:50 either way – so I’ll stick with my original choice.”  Isn’t that interesting?  I find it to be quite fascinating. 

I wonder if Monty Hall knew that? 

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[1] I’m talking about “putting things to the test”, not “experimentation” as you might have used that term in the 60’s!

[2] If you heard this problem before, then you might have already been convinced that you should switch your choice.  But put yourself in the mindset you had the first time you heard this problem presented.

Free will #9 – Being Honest: Problems I have Created for Myself

          When it comes to the beginning of the universe, some will say that God created the little ball that started the big bang.  They say that there has to be an uncaused cause to start it all, and God is that uncaused cause.  And then the materialists will say “then who caused God?”  It’s a valid question.  What we spiritualists are doing is pushing off the problem of an uncaused cause into the spiritual, or non-material, realm.  I know that those who delve into quantum mechanics might like to say that the material world can somehow achieve something equivalent to an uncaused cause, but I personally can’t accept that mathematics can trump reality to that extent.  So, yes, I push off the uncaused cause into the spiritual realm and say “there is God.”  It’s a valid criticism.

          Well, I’m doing the same thing with free will.  I say that people have a will, and that will influences (sometimes very weakly, as I have discussed previously) what we do.  The will, I claim, makes decisions that are independent of, and cannot be totally predicted by, all of the inputs provided to it.  And, further, the decisions of the will are not random.  Thus, that makes decisions of the will a true starting point for something, and therefore it is valid to call them uncaused causes.  From a materialist-only standpoint, the will couldn’t really be an uncaused cause unless the will has existed forever in its original (and current) state.  Actually, in some religious views, including Christianity, there is support for the idea that each person was created before they were born and, to a greater or lesser extent, who they are now is who they were created to be.  But I want to leave those religious concepts out of the conversation for now.  The issue at hand is that, from a purely material perspective, the will has the same problem as the little ball at the beginning of the big bang.  If you keep working backwards, you eventually get to something as far back in time as you can be and you are left asking “who caused that?”  With respect to the will, I’m doing what spiritual people do with the big bang – I’m pushing the uncaused cause into the spiritual realm.  Thus, when I say that the will is an uncaused cause I also say that the will is in the spiritual, not material, realm.

          To simplify it, here is what I am claiming:

1.  Each person has their own independent free will.  They make at least some decisions that are not totally, 100% dependent on all of their combined past inputs, and those decisions are not random.  I’ve decided this point based on my own personal experiences and the described experiences of everyone I know.

2.  In order for a decision to have some component that is not dependent on the past, and is not random, it must be an uncaused cause.

3.  Uncaused causes don’t exist in the material world.

4.  Therefore, free will is non-material, i.e. spiritual.  By extension, then, each person has a spiritual component to them.  If they have free will, then they cannot be purely material.

Further, I have made the following observations in earlier entries:

5.  Human decisions are ultimately encoded in the signals of neurons.

6.  Human decisions also encode free will.  By that I mean that free will can be observed in the decisions that people make.

7.  Therefore, free will is, somehow and some way, encoded (or at least observable) in the signals in neurons.

And finally:

8.  If it were possible to observe every neuron’s activity, you would find at least one neuron exhibiting responses consistent with free will.

9.  It is not possible to do #8.

So…there you have it in summary form.  I can see that almost every statement I make in the list above can be argued against, and some statements are almost naïve in their simplicity.  However, I think my two conclusions (#4 and #7) are valid conclusions if my preceding statements are valid.  I hope, at least, that there are no logical inconsistencies there. 

I will have to delve into each one of these statements in the future.  Some are highly dependent on careful definitions of each term (e.g. “material”, “spiritual”, “free will”, etc.).  I suppose statement #1 is the most controversial, yet it is the one I feel most strongly about.  I think most people – even hard determinists – would agree with #2 (but they would use it to say “and uncaused causes don’t exist, so therefore free will doesn’t exist”).  Personally, I feel that statement #3 is my weakest, although again, I think the hard determinist would agree with that one.  But sometimes I wonder – are there really any hard determinists left?  They’ve all gotten soft in their old age!

The one thing I’ve tried to do in my line of thinking is not stoop to what I believe the soft determinists do.  Soft determinists get to avoid the problem of uncaused causes and yet somehow retain personal responsibility and human freedom.  I don’t think they are playing fair – they are cheating.  When faced with a true/false question, the soft determinist gets to answer “yes” and the rest of their soft determinist buddies all applaud and say “good answer”!  Hah!  More topics for future discussion.

Well, although I am a non-materialist – spiritualist – at heart, I don’t like the fact that someone can argue that all I’ve done is push everything I can’t explain off into some vague spiritual realm where the normal rules don’t apply.  I wish I had a more satisfying answer.  I wish, actually, that I had a more scientific answer.  But I don’t.  However, that doesn’t mean I’m ready to discard it all.  No, there is much much more to the spiritual realm that I also need to address, and will address, in the future.  Much of it is intimately wrapped up with the #1 Crazy Thing that I discussed in a previous entry.  We’ll get to all that in time…

Free Will #8 – Free will and fool’s gold

          The topic of free will is something I bring up frequently in this blog because I see it as an important topic for discussion.  I also think the rejection of free will is: 1) tragic/dangerous and 2) foolish.  I’ve heard many scientists state things such as “it is only an illusion that we have free will” and “free will is a delusion”.  Worse yet, I think a few of those scientists actually believe what they are saying.  There is also a sentiment among a few scientists that the experimental evidence already published is sufficient to confirm the “no free will” hypothesis.  Over time, that kind of thinking slowly bleeds into the popular press and the common psyche, so that the average person begins to have a vague notion that science has proven that there is no free will.  This is where we are at today, and I worry that this fallacy will continue to spread.  If you have any belief in the supernatural in any way, you should expend much more brainpower on this issue than on other so-called issues of science vs. religion.  To me, the fight against “effective determinism” will be one of the most important battlegrounds of the 21^st century.

          I would like to discuss here why I consider “effective determinism” to be foolish, but first a brief word (for now) on why I think it is tragic/dangerous.  The ultimate consequence of effective determinism is the loss of responsibility.  Ultimately, each individual is no longer responsible for his or her own actions.  I believe such thinking spells the end of humanity and the descent to chaos.  I know that there are a number of effective determinists who try to say that human responsibility is compatible with determinism.  I don’t buy it.  But that is a topic for the future.  Suffice it to say that I consider this issue more important to the ultimate future of mankind than nuclear war.

          Before I go further, I probably should explain why I refer to the opposing view as “effective determinism”.  I recognize that there are varying degrees of belief in this issue, such as “hard determinism” and “soft determinism” and so on.  There are also those who have a vague notion of determinism, but probably haven’t thought through it very clearly.  So, I’m making a sweeping generalization that everyone who rejects the idea that there is anything beyond the material world is an “effective determinist”.  I’m not sure that’s always fair, but we need a starting point, so that’s where I’m starting.  I may need to come back and clean that generalization up a bit, but you’ll have to humor me for now.

          Why do I call effective determinism “foolishness”?  For me it is simple:  there is nothing else that I sense and experience more completely than my own free will.  It is fully rational.  To deny free will is to deny what every fiber of my being tells me is true at every moment of the day.  Why would you deny the obvious?  The only reason to deny such a strong sense and experience and rationality would be because of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.  But that evidence would have to be based on my senses and experience and rationality…all of which I would be denying by denying free will. 

          I don’t exclude the possibility of effective determinism as a logical impossibility, though.  I just think that if such a concept as free will is going to be rejected, it must be rejected on the basis of overwhelming evidence.  As I have discussed in my previous entries on free will, I think there is zero evidence in contemporary science for effective determinism.  I will continue to review and evaluate scientific studies related to this issue and I hope to offer more critiques of the papers that are out there in the future.  But even those of you who are hard determinists have to at least admit that the evidence is weak at best.  That field of scientific inquiry into determinism and free will is, admittedly, in its infancy and I expect there will be much better experimental designs, using much better tools of analysis in the future.  But, as I discussed elsewhere, I’m skeptical that it will ever be possible to design an experiment that produces the type of overwhelming evidence that this situation requires.  Actually, of course, my prediction would be that if an experiment could be set up that truly tests free will, it will be shown to exist.

          We are in a situation that often happens in this general field of the material vs. the spiritual realms.  If you start, as I have, with the assumption that there is, or could be, something beyond the material, then you probably conclude there is free will[1].  If you start with the assumption that there is only the material world, as science always does and many scientists frequently do, then you will probably settle on some sort of effective determinism.  The initial conditions determine the outcome, leaving us with a complete impasse.  You can’t argue the “givens.”  But…I have the overwhelming evidence on “my” side.  If you are an effective determinist, it is because of the assumptions you are starting with (materialism), not because of the overwhelming evidence.  My belief in free will is a result of my non-materialist assumptions as well…I am in same boat as the effective determinists in that regard…but I have the overwhelming evidence of free will.  And I don’t have to do anything special to get that evidence – I just have to wake up and be human.  Even the staunch effective determinisms find the evidence for free will hitting them in the face at every moment of every day.

          I don’t think that most effective determinists really believe what they say they believe anyway.  I think it is just too hard for them to deny their own overwhelming personal experience, despite their strong materialist beliefs.  For example, effective determinists still use words like “chose” or “decide” when talking about what humans do.  They still act as if most humans are responsible for their own actions.  They certainly act as if they are responsible for their own actions (and they are!).  They can’t escape their own sense of free will, and it keeps seeping out in their conversation.  Let me give you a perfect example.  Michael Gazzaniga is one of the authors who writes about this topic from a scientific point of view, and is clearly on the side of “no free will”, someone I would classify as an effective determinist (although I don’t think he would accept that term[2]).  His book “Who’s in Charge” is a reasonable read if you are interested in this topic.  But look at what he says in the first line of his acknowledgement at the end:  “My debt to colleagues…”  Also “…Over the years I have been inspired by many…”  What does it mean to be indebted to other humans if they don’t have free will?  Would you ever say “I’m indebted to a few cows[3]…?”  After all, since I eat hamburgers, they are responsible for what I “am” today!  Or could you be inspired by a cow?  At least inspired by a cow in the sense that you would want to run up and thank that cow?  Those words all lose a lot of their meaning when you throw out free will.  I challenge any effective determinist to carry on a meaningful human conversation without using terms that should be expressly forbidden from human language if there is no free will.

          I know that human beings can be deluded or tricked by their own senses.  Optical illusions are a common example of this.  But I can take a ruler and measure the two lines and convince myself that they are the same length because my experience also tells me that a wooden ruler doesn’t shrink or expand between the time it takes to measure one line and then the next.  However, just because I know that there are optical illusions doesn’t mean that I stop believing everything I see.  In fact, I can’t know about optical illusions without at least believing that what I see is generally reliable.  When I understand the principles of optical illusions, I simply incorporate that into my understanding of what I see – but I don’t throw out vision entirely.  So, yes, maybe there are times where we have the illusion of free will when we don’t.  We are certainly subject to subliminal messages and addictions and phobias and so on that affect the decisions we make.  But these should only serve to modify our understanding of free will and responsibility, not make us throw it out.

          For me, calling the view of effective determinism “foolish” feels a bit harsh.  I tried to think of another term.  But ultimately, it just seems foolish for me to deny the one thing I know is true by my own personal experience, without any solid evidence to the contrary.  I just can’t do it.

Well, like I have said before:  there is more to come.  It is not an easy topic, but it is well-worth the effort spent in thinking it through.

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[1] There is a major issue here that I’m ignoring for the moment, which is the whole discussion of human will and God’s will that is a central theme in Christianity over the last 2000, e.g. Calvinism, Arminianism, etc.  But I see that issue as almost completely separate from what I am talking about here.  I’ll have to circle back to that at some point.  The difference between natural and supernatural determinism is a vast chasm!

[2] In fact, to be fair, Gazzaniga is trying to argue that you can have moral responsibility without free will.  It’s a noble attempt that will fail.  It’s like trying to argue that nuclear fission will only be used for generating power and not for creating warheads.  It would have been great if that could have been true, but it was not.

[3] Yes, I use cows here instead of dogs because people often treat dogs as if they were human, but hardly ever treat cows that way, and my arguments would get lost in that rabbit trail.

Book Reviews and Recommendations - Entry #4

Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

by Sheri Fink

          This is the story of one of the hospitals in New Orleans that flooded during the Katrina disaster.  Ultimately a number of patients died in the hospital before everyone could be rescued and, in fact, one doctor and two nurses were charged in the deaths of some of the patients, but ultimately not convicted of any crime.  The first half of the story details what happened in the hospital during and after Katrina, and the second half of the story deals with the legal process afterward.  Personally, I found this story very fascinating and I could understand the difficult decisions that everyone faced.  I feel that the author was very even-handed in reporting the story and it makes you ask yourself “what would I have done in that situation?”  I highly recommend it.

          Though I am not a medical professional, I work in a hospital and interact with patients.  I can see how all of the problems that happened at the flooded hospital can develop.  So much of a hospital’s (or any organization’s) operational strategy is dependent on the existing infrastructure, and when that infrastructure fails, there really is chaos.  I remember working in my office at the hospital once when the power went out.  Since my office had no windows, it was suddenly pitch black.  But when I opened my office door into the hallway, I could easily see where I was going because there was emergency lighting all over.  If anything needed to remain powered up, it just needed to be plugged into the plentiful red outlets which are connected to backup power.  There was no panic – in fact there are regular tests of the process where the power is briefly switched off to verify that the backup power is working.  In the operating rooms and on the floors, business can really go on pretty much as usual.  That operational strategy works great.

          But what happens when the emergency power fails?  At Memorial hospital in New Orleans, the main power was, of course, knocked out by the storm.  No problem really – that was expected.  But when the floods came…well, it shouldn’t have been a problem.  The generator was above the flood level, so it should have been fine.  Unfortunately, the switching system was apparently below the flood level, so it failed.  There was no backup power.  That situation alone is hard to imagine.  Suddenly, everything that you totally rely on is gone.  How many things in a hospital do not require power?  The consequences are far-reaching.  Starting at that point, every patient on a ventilator had to be hand-ventilated 24 hours a day by someone.  That alone is just awful to consider.  Further, do you know of any big hospital buildings that have windows that open?  There is no air-conditioning, no ventilation at all.  The temperature soared inside.

          The problem was really complicated by the loss of communication.  First, of course, the hospital was flooded and no one could get in or out through the flooding.  Whatever staff was in the hospital at the time was suddenly on a 24 hour a day shift that was going to continue until they could be rescued.  How do you send an overhead code?  You can’t – you just have to take care of it yourself.  Communication was cut-off with the outside to a great extent (there was some communication – I can’t remember all of the details).  The hospital did have a helicopter pad, but it hadn’t been used in decades and no one knew if it could still be used.  And how do you get patients on beds up to the helicopter pad when the elevators don’t work.  There are no easy decisions and everything is difficult.  The more you think through the situation, the more you realize just how bad it is for the patients and staff.  Just awful.

          I believe the book is written clearly enough that anyone can put themselves in the situations that the staff, patients, and families faced and can think about what they would do in a similar situation.  Of course, the natural tendency is to say that this should never have happened – steps should have been taken long before to prevent the worst aspects of the disaster (like moving the generator controls above the flood level) – but that is not the situation people found themselves in.  This book is worth reading, whether you work in a hospital or are a medical professional or not.

The #1 Crazy Thing that Christians Believe

          I wrote in an earlier entry about the top five crazy things that Christians believe.  My point there was to show that the fundamental issues of Christianity are still the most important topics for discussion today (relative to Christian beliefs).  These are the issues that have been discussed through the ages, from Paul to Augustine to modern day thinkers.  I am concerned that those foundational concepts are no longer considered or discussed, and yet there is heated debate about issues that are only relevant when they are grounded to those foundations. It’s analogous to arguing about advanced details of calculus when we haven’t agreed on the associative and commutative properties of mathematics.  Such an argument is a waste of time until the basic foundational principles have been agreed to.  My goal is to endeavor to focus on fundamental issues in this blog and not get caught up in issues that are irrelevant when they are untethered from their foundations.

          In my earlier entry, I left out the #1 Crazy Thing that Christians Believe.  I figured that issue deserved its own entry.  So, without further ado, what is the #1 Crazy Thing that Christians Believe?  Well, according to me, it is:

#1 - Jesus is alive today, and He is active and involved in people’s lives on a moment by moment basis.

          This idea follows directly from Crazy Thing #3 – that Jesus rose from the dead – and is made important by Crazy Thing #2 – that Jesus is God.  And no, He didn’t die again in 1882 or 1966 or any other time before or since.  So, therefore, He is alive today and, according to Christians, still just as present as He was in first century Palestine.

          Think about it.  Christians pray to God and expect that He hears them and actually responds to their requests.  Christians believe He cures diseases and fixes problems.  They believe He changes the course of history.  And, most importantly, they claim He has changed each one of them personally from the inside.  People all over the world report “supernatural” experiences with God.  We are not talking about experiences that happened 2000 years ago – we are talking about experiences that happened yesterday.  We are talking about experiences that are happening right now!

          I don’t see how any conversation of Christian beliefs can look too far past this key point.  I mean, it is either evidence of total delusion by a reasonably significant segment of the population or it is critically important to all of us on a moment by moment basis (because of its immediacy).  Is there a middle ground here?  Personally I don’t see it.  This #1 Crazy Thing is either utterly false and ridiculous or it is shockingly true and spectacular.  Is there a third choice???

          OK.  Before I stop for now, I’d like to try out an analogy – a story – and see if it helps to illustrate the situation.

Example conversation…

Let’s say I come in the door and say to you “there’s a lion roaming the streets.”  You say “we live in the middle of the city – that’s ridiculous – there’s no lion.”  And I might begin to try to convince you.  “No – I really saw it – it was walking around on the sidewalk downtown.” 

“Oh that’s ridiculous – it would be all over the news if there was a lion walking around downtown.”

“But I saw it clear as day.”

“It was probably just someone wearing a lion costume for some reason.  I heard there was some kind of parade downtown today.”

“No – it was really a lion.  I went over and saw the footprints in the grass.”

“Footprints could be anything.”

“I took a picture of the footprints – look – here it is.”

“That doesn’t look like anything to me – that could be someone’s shoe that made that.  Besides, how do I know that you didn’t just take a picture at the zoo?”

“Other people saw it.  I’m not the only one.  Don’t you want to talk to them?”

“No.  I don’t want to talk to them.  It’s all foolishness.  There was no lion walking around downtown.  Let’s change the subject.”

Compare that to the following conversation…

Let’s say I come through the door and say to you “there’s a lion roaming the streets. And…”

“What are you talking about – that’s ridiculous – we live in the middle of the city – there’s no lion.”

“…and – don’t move too quickly – he’s standing right behind you!”

What makes this the #1 Crazy Thing?  Well, if you can establish this one as fact, don’t all the others kind of fall away?  For example, why try to prove or disprove that Jesus rose from the dead if He is still around today?

There will be more to come on this particular issue because I really do feel that it should be at the top of the list for discussion relative to Christian beliefs.  For now, I will leave you to ponder whether you agree with my list of crazy things!

Free Will #7 - Why is it so difficult to experimentally prove or disprove free will?

          I’ve heard and read a lot about the “evidence” that free will is just an illusion.  Sometimes that evidence comes from experiments such as the one I addressed in my previous post on this topic.  Sometimes that evidence comes from observations.  For example, I just listened to something from Sam Harris (one of my least favorite authors!) where he tried to make the point that our thoughts just come to us and it’s not like we freely decided to have those thoughts.  So, therefore, free will is just an illusion that we make up after the fact.

          As you may imagine if you’ve read other posts from me, I don’t agree that such evidence proves the case against free will.  The problem I see with all of these arguments is that the people making these arguments, or the people doing the experiments, pick the wrong kind of tasks.  They do not pick tasks that require free will; rather, they pick tasks that require decisions.  To me, a decision is not the same as exercising free will.  I will try to explain that here.

          I would describe a decision as something that happens to us constantly because we are alive.  Decisions can be fairly complex, can be incredibly simple, or can even be subconscious.  Do I get up or lay back down?  Do I go left or right?  Do I hold my breath until I turn blue?  Do I spell “tomorrow” with one “m” or two?  Should I super-size it?  Should I keep thinking up examples or should I stop?  What card should I pick from the magician’s deck?  Etc. etc. etc.

          In my view, free will is not a critical component of the vast majority of the kind of daily decisions we are constantly bombarded with.  That’s what makes it so hard to test. 

          Recall that I’ve defined free will with respect to human beings being responsible for their own actions.  This is critical.  We do not hold dogs or monkeys or even cows[1] to be morally responsible for the decisions they make.  Therefore, I say, those animals do not have free will.  Despite their lack of free will, it certainly seems that those animals have to constantly make decisions as well.  Do I get up or lay back down?  Do I go left or right?  Do I chew on this bone or chew on the couch?  Do I drink water from this bowl or from the toilet?  Dogs do not make moral decisions involving free will, but, as living things, they have to make decisions all the time.  Constantly.

          As a first pass, I would suggest that free will is only involved in those decisions that have a moral outcome.  If the result of the decision could be called morally wrong or morally right, then it is at least a candidate for free will.  I’m not sure every moral decision involves the free will either, but it’s a good starting point.  Someone with a Christian view would say these types of decisions result in either a “virtue” or a “sin”.  I don’t even know if there is always a clear demarcation between a decision that is just done as part of life, versus a decision that has moral implications.  For example, speeding down the highway may be illegal but not necessarily immoral, and the act of speeding can become so rote that it does not involve a moral decision at all (and maybe never did for most of us[2]).  To be honest, I don’t know where to draw the line between what I would call a “rote decision” and what I would call a “moral decision”, and that could be a problem with my line of thinking here.  But I also don’t think that free will comes into play as an “all or none” proposition.  I can imagine that there is a continuum of moral decisions where free will is more or less active in the decision-making process.

          Is free will testable?  Well, going back to the design of experiments, I think it is very difficult to come up with a decision that, without question, requires an exertion of the will.  I do not consider a contrived “moral dilemma” to necessarily require the use of free will, because it is contrived.  Sometimes people are tricked into what they think is a real moral dilemma – like that TV show “What Would You Do?” – but it would be pretty hard to get human studies approval to put people in those situations!  Plus, a lot of those types of situations involve requiring the person to make a quick response, and I’m not sure a “reaction” typically requires free will either.  Or, think of it this way:  is there any kind of moral decision you could make “on command” in an MRI machine for which you could be later convicted of and jailed? 

          Even if you could figure out a good moral dilemma for testing, what would you measure?  As I’ve stated before, the will is a “weak force”.  The overwhelming activity in your brain for any given decision, even a moral decision, would still be the rote learned reactions.  To pick out the bit of neural activity influenced by free will from this torrent of ongoing rote activity would be nearly, if not completely, impossible.  If there really was only one neuron in the whole brain that was influenced by the will in a given moral decision, how would you possibly find it?  And if you did find it, how would you know you found it?  How would you be able to identify the response of that neuron as being distinct from just a random signal?  I don’t think it can ever be done – either now or in the future.

          My main point in this entry is just this:  whether free will is real or not is still very much an open issue.  It has not been debunked as some might claim, and it’s not going to be debunked any time soon.  We may someday have flying cars and cloaks of invisibility, but I don’t believe we’ll ever have a definitive materialistic explanation of free will.  It will remain elusive…and utterly fascinating!

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[1] Well, maybe Gary Larsen does, but not anyone else!

[2] Unless you read Jerry Bridges’ book “The Pursuit of Holiness”, in which case speeding suddenly became a moral issue…for a while.