So there are people still living today that lack free will. What about Buddhists?
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Yes, indigenous cultures who have continued to live isolated from modern humanity.
Buddhists strive to overcome the ego/free will they have.
For a much more detailed look at the psychological shift Iâm speaking of please check out âThe Fall: The Insanity of the Ego in Human History and the Dawning of A New Eraâ by Steve Taylor
âThe Fall, then, refers to a change which occurred in the psyche of certain human groups around 6,000 years ago. It was the point in history when these peoples developed a strong and sharp sense of ego. The Fall was, and is, the intensification of the human sense of âIâ or individuality.â - Steve Taylor
But no cultures are isolated from modern humanity.
And if they succeed, they no longer have free will?
So your definition of free will is a strong sense of individuality. Why do you feel a need to define it differently from everyone else? Doesnât that cause a lot of confusion for no benefit?
They still have free will. Theyâre âchoosingâ to overcome the ego. And as theyâll attest, this is no small feat.
Everyone elseâs definition is based on trying to interpret ancient texts in an ancient language with little to no context. My approach is to find the historical context to place these stories in, then interpret them based in all the modern knowledge weâve acquired in the ages since.
Iâm defining the behavior change that can be seen in the archaeological evidence that lines up with the story being told in time/place/description. So, yes, my definition is going to differ.
I think you are confusing free will with the image of God. Ancient texts donât mention the former and donât explain what the latter is. Since free will isnât mentioned in the bible, it isnât clear why you want to use that term. But this âbehavior changeâ you mention has no clear connection to either free will or the image of God. And it seems to follow, if from anything, from irrigation agriculture, food surpluses, urbanization, and such things. That it happens independently in multiple areas would seem to rule out the single source you want to present.
Of course it is. The bible has much to say about making choices.
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Thatâs why I started this thread. I have reason to believe they are actually speaking of the same quality.
That book will put this concept to bed if you check it out.
Yes, the assumption has always been that farming led to larger populated communities, which meant more interaction and sharing of ideas, which led to these progressions. It makes sense.
But that can be shown to not be the case. Farming and developing highly populated farming communities spread all throughout the continent. But the kinds of advances seen in Sumer/Egypt/Indus Valley did not follow. There are numerous examples. Hereâs a couple I covered in an article I published âŚ
âExceptionally large settlements developed in Catal Huyuk (7,500 to 5,700 BC) in Turkey and the Lepenski Vir settlement (dating back to 7,000 BC) located in the central portion of the Balkan peninsula. The Lepenski Vir culture gave way to the VinÄa-TurdaČ culture (5,000-4,500 BC), which at one point had populations estimated at 2,500 or more in some of the larger sites.â - https://hubpages.com/religion-philosophy/On-The-Evolution-of-the-Human-Mind-and-the-Origin-of-Free-Will-Part-2
Largely populated, highly organized, sustained for centuries, yet showed no signs of class stratification, remained totally egalitarian, and didnât experience the growth in inventions or any of the other developments seen in the region of early Genesis.
Farming isnât the catalyst. This psychological shift is. The advances Iâm talking about did not follow farming practices, but where they are found, so are the characteristics of the psyche shift.
Gen3:7 - Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
Gen3:9-11 - 9 But the Lord God called to the man, âWhere are you?â He answered, âI heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.â And he said, âWho told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?â
Self awareness. Who told Adam he was naked. His ego did. This is what God is testing in the garden scenario. Itâs a controlled experiment. Subject is placed in an isolated region where only one rule exists. âYou are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evilâ.
No, it is not called âfree willâ, but it is more than mentioned. Itâs the central theme of the story right from the beginning. The choice made in the garden is the reason for everything that followed through the rest of the story.
This is why Iâm keying in on âImago Deiâ. Put in context as Iâm laying it out, this very well could be directly telling the reader what the specific difference is between the humans that God eventually âregrettedâ putting on the Earth and Adam.
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But is that what âfree willâ means? You have to make that connection on your own, and Jeremy has quite a different definition.
So far, however, you have not expressed any such reasons.
Nope. Itâs âknowledge of good and evilâ, which is not at all the same. Adam now knows that being naked is evil (itself a dubious lesson). Thatâs not self-awareness. Further, you contradict yourself. If the image of God is self-awareness, Adam was created with the image of God, but you say he gained self-awareness by eating from the tree of knowledge.
So which is the image of God, self-awareness or the ability to make choices? They arenât the same thing, so only one of them, at most, can be free will.
Isnât Adam the same as those humans? Is he not the origin of the quality that God regrets?
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Well the ability to make choices and be a free moral agent is my simple definition. Although simple as it may be, it is only possible supernaturally, since without the supernatural we are just time stepping through the universeâs differential equation, with perhaps a bit of quantum indeterminacy tossed in.
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Yes, though one cautionary note: that physical reality may be deterministic does not mean that supernatural reality is not also deterministic. All we can say about the latter is that we donât know.
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Fair enough. Although I donât think Christianity, or any religion that presents humans as free moral agents, could survive. So if there is a supernatural that is deterministic it is very different from the one we are contemplating.
Also, I donât think the physical realm is deterministic, because of QM. However, QM cannot rescue free will, if it gets amplified by some unknown means and affects our choices, they would be randomized and therefore still no real moral culpability.
EDIT: typo
I agree, except for the âwithout the supernaturalâ part. I donât think that helps at all. The very concept is incoherent. Still, thatâs not what Jeremy is talking about.
I agree with that â except that Iâm not sure that âreal moral culpabilityâ depends upon determinism. If, arguendo, the world were either fully deterministic or non-deterministic only to the extent QM gets involved, we still have âapparentâ free will in the sense that our self-experience is of making choices. We deliberate, and in deliberating, we intuitively suppose that we choose freely. If we relieved atrocious actions of atrocious consequences, weâd unleash violence, larceny, and all of the other unpleasantness people are capable of. Moral culpability is therefore still a socially useful concept, even if at bottom people are not in a philosophical sense âfreeâ to have chosen other than what they did.
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I donât disagree that in any event we have at the minimum the appearance of free will, and if it is just the appearance, then we also have the appearance of moral culpability, but it is all just a matrix-like illusion. Itâs just t advancing to t + dt.
I think you are confusing incoherent with something else, perhaps âsillyâ or âlacking evidenceâ or something similar. Incoherent means it is not expressed clearly, and thatâs not the case with âsupernatural.â It simply means events that are not even in principle explainable by science. Very coherent definition, very coherent concept, even if it turns out to be the null set.
If you want real incoherence germane to this topic, try Daniel Dennetâs attempt to rescue free will without invoking the supernatural. His âconsideration generatorsâ are woo that would make a theologian blush.
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I guess it depends upon what you mean by âmoral culpability.â I think moral culpability is a socially useful concept for people who, whether they live in a deterministic universe or not, see themselves as having choices about whether to impose punishments for immoral behavior upon those who commit immoral acts, and who also see themselves responding to punitive incentives by refraining from committing those acts. In that sense it is as ârealâ in a deterministic universe as a non-deterministic one.
If by âmoral culpabilityâ we mean actual choice in the sense that we could have chosen otherwise, I suppose thatâs just the sort of thing which, without an observable multiverse to look at, we canât know. Do I, in nine times out of ten, choose to type these exact words, or is it ten times out of ten, and even ten billion times out of ten billion? The notion of being forced to study that question reminds me of Bob Newhartâs routine about the guy who had to check what the infinite number of monkeys were typing:
âTo be or not to be; that is the gzzornenplat.â
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No, I donât believe I am. âIncoherentâ can mean âinternally inconsistentâ or âself-contradictoryâ, and this is the sense in which I am using the word. Nor was it âsupernaturalâ that I was calling incoherent; it was free will. Free will is an incoherent concept. Clear now?
Introducing the supernatural doesnât rescue free will from incoherence, and that was my point.
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So in your view Adam is ashamed because his being naked is evil? Thatâs how God just made him. Why is it evil? It seems pretty evident, in what it specifically describes, that this is describing them as becoming aware of themselves. And as anyone reading it will be familiar, being aware of your being naked and exposed isnât a comfortable feeling, and not because you feel youâre being evil.
Re: âKnowledge of good and evilâ - This is how I see it. Tell me if this sounds totally off base to you.
The âforbidden fruitâ was not magic. It was just a piece of fruit. What made it significant is that God forbid it. Breaking that rule, diverging in that moment from Godâs will and instead acting in interest of his own will, caused this emergence of the ego. âthe eyes of both of them were opened.â Itâs a severance.
You misunderstand me. The image of God is not self-awareness. The image of God is a will according to Godâs will. A human who does not have free will and therefore behaves ânaturallyâ within Godâs will. Therefore they are an accurate âimage of Godâ. A true representation/reflection.
It is the humans created in Genesis 1 who were created in Godâs image. It does not say Adam was formed in Godâs image.
No, it shows them becoming aware that they were naked. Now it doesnât show them becoming aware that they had no clothes on, just that this was a special condition called ânakednessâ, which was in some way shameful. It wasnât called âthe tree of self-awarenessâ, as you may have noticed.
Not what the story says; itâs a special piece of fruit that gives you important knowledge, the sort of knowledge that gods have already. Thatâs what the story says. Youâre making stuff up.
Quite right. So youâre saying that Adam did not have imago dei, but other humans did. Adam was created without it, because he was created with free will, which is antithetical to imago dei. God seems an odd sort in your story, I have to say.