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Apparently, a determinist can believe anything he wants, but he cannot live a ny way he wants: "A determinist cannot live consistently as though everything he thinks and does is causally determined—especially his choice to believe that determinism is true! Thinking that you’re determined to believe that everything you believe is determined produces a kind of vertigo. Nobody can live as though all that he thinks and does is determined by causes outside himself. Even determinists recognize that we have to act “as if” we had free will and so weigh our options and decide on what course of action to take, even though at the end of the day we are determined to take the choices we do. Determinism is thus an unliveable view." The main point is found in the first sentence: " A determinist cannot live consistently as though everything he thinks and does is causally determined—especially his choice to believe that determinism is true!"  The argument goes something like ...

Alexander Pruss argues for the following : "given soft determinism, it is in principle possible to avoid culpability while still getting the exact same results whenever you don’t know prior to deliberation how you will choose. This seems absurd, and the absurdity gives us a reason to reject the compatibility of determinism and responsibility." Pruss asks us to suppose, for reductio, that determinism is true and that we are morally responsible for our actions. Then he tells the following tale: ...imagine a device that can be activated at a time when an agent is about to make a decision. The device reads the agent’s mind, figures out which action the agent is determined to choose, and then modifies the agent’s mind so the agent doesn’t make any decision but is instead compelled to perform the very action that they would otherwise have chosen. Call the device the Forcer.  Suppose you are about to make a difficult choice between posting a slanderous anonymous accusatio...

I have spent many an hour in the company of friends who hold to a form of libertarian free will. Most conversations on the matter are gracious and good spirited. Some people are slightly mystified by my Calvinism, but they earnestly seek to know what it is and why anyone would hold to such a thing. Occasionally, however, I have confronted the more extreme type who claims that there can be only one kind of free will. They represent a necessary-truth type of libertarian free will proponent. Evan Minton is of this stripe. He argues that libertarian free will is the only game in town . We either have the libertarian kind or we have no freedom at all: "Libertarian Free Will is the only true free will there is. If you deny that, you might as well deny that we have free will altogether. I believe we do have free will, and I have both philosophical reasons as well as scriptural reasons for holding this belief." Notice the trick: If you don't hold to x kind of y, then y...

The most common objection to Divine Determinism is that if God determines everything, then human beings are not morally responsible for their actions. In other words, for a human agent to be morally responsible for their actions, they can't have been determined to carry those actions out. The defender of libertarian free will will often say: "No LFW, no moral responsibility." This is perhaps the strongest argument against determinism (although there are good responses ). However, some argue that there is an additional feature of human life that would not be possible if there is no LFW – love. Love, it is suggested, is only possible if a human being has LFW. It is often suggested that if human beings had no LFW, then love would be coerced. Loving God, then, would be something one is forced to do. [1] It would be like trying to get a girlfriend by dating her at gunpoint. I will argue that love does not lend anything to the LFW proponent’s case. Either what is meant...

Compatbilists about free will hold that, although everything is determined by God, human beings are free because they are able to operate, uncoerced, according to their desires. Greg Boyd argues that such a view inhibits the possibility of loving relationships particularly when it comes to human relationships with God. He describes the following scenario in order to make his point: Suppose I were able to invent a computer chip that could interact with a human brain in a deterministic fashion, causing the person who carries the chip to do exactly what the chip dictates without the person knowing this. Suppose further that I programmed this chip to produce the perfect wife and inserted it in my wife's brain while she was sleeping. The next morning she would wake up as my idea of the perfect wife. She would feel, behave and speak in a perfectly loving fashion. Owing to the sophistication of this chip, she would believe that she was voluntarily choosing to love me in this fashio...

The foreknowledge argument is supposed to establish the truth of determinism. I think it works in the favor of determinism (of the divine kind not the naturalistic, causal kind). Whether or not one is convinced by the conclusion of the argument is dependent, at least in part, on whether or not one can come up a valid form of the argument. In this post I intend to provide one (but not invent or originate one; only to repeat one from my elders and betters). First, let's distinguish determinism from fatalism. Fatalism is the view that whatever happens must happen. There is no way things could have been anything other than what they are. This is to be distinguished from determinism that holds that there is some antecedent condition such that, given that condition obtaining , it is not possible that things could have been other than what they are. It has been suggested that fatalism is supported by the logical entailment of the following: if it is true that some event, e, will o...

Here's a really interesting argument for libertarian free will. I found it in Greg Boyd's Satan and the Problem of Evil : If humans lack a logically consistent concept of self determining freedom, What provides the analogical ground by which we can talk about God is gracious self determining freedom? A concept devoid of all experiential content is vacuous. If we assume that it is meaningful to claim that nothing outside gods will caused him to create and interact with the world, That he could have done otherwise, And that his decisions are not capricious, Then we must affirm that we experience something like this sort of freedom. In short, Unless we were free in a self determining sense, We could never meaningfully says that God is (page 70). So what is the argument? Something like the following: A concept is knowable/intelligible only if there is some experience that gives us the content of the concept.  If there was no experience of having something like self-determi...

Just what, if one is a Calvinist, can be meant by human free will? And how, given that everything that happens is decided in advance, makes a human beings responsible for their actions? These are the most common questions aimed at those who are committed to a strong doctrine of sovereignty,  one that features the idea that God determines all that happens in advance. Determinism  is the idea that for everything that happens there are antecedent conditions such that, given those conditions, nothing else could occur. For a Calvinist, the antecedent condition in question is ultimately God's will. God's will is such that every event in creation is determined by God in advance of the event. We call this  Divine Determinism  (DD). The debate over free will hinges on whether or not free will is compatible with any kind of determinism .  One is either drawn to  compatiblism  or  incompatiblism.  This leads to...

Dear non-Calvinist, I am reading a book that prompts the following: Calvinism, whatever you think about it, is not like a song. One can like or dislike a song. If I disagree with you and think it is a good song and you hate it, I might wish you liked it and wonder why you can't see how great it is. But that is all I can do. But not so with Calvinism and non-Calvinism. Calvinism is not like a song. A piece of music can no more be true or false than an argument can be in or out of tune. If you are writing a book about Calvinism and seek to persuade your reader that Calvinism is false, it is no good telling me about how bad Calvinism makes you feel and expecting me to agree with you. Calvinism may be false, but nothing you have said makes the case.  Calvinism is not like a song. There are no good arguments that I can make that will change your tastes. At least, if you do change your taste it will not be because of good arguments. Perhaps many bad arguments will do the t...

In his hour of agony on the cross, Christ cried out to his Father, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt 27:46). What did he mean? Did the Father reject the Son in such a way that the Triune God was temporarily broken? Does the Son suffer the rejection of his Father as the Son or is Christ forsaken in an entirely different way? Tom McCall argues that the forsakenness of Christ does not mean a rupture in the unity of the Trinity, but that the Father forsakes the Son to his death at the hand of sinners for the purpose of our salvation. [1] McCall contends that the godhead is not at odds with itself, love is not opposed to wrath, and that Christ’s death was part of the plan of God for our salvation. McCall rejects the “rupture view,” the view that the Father breaks a once close and loving union by intentionally rejecting his Son. On rupture view, the Father forsakes the Son through relational enmity. The Father abandons, rejects, hides and separates himself from his Son. ...

Just what, if one is a Calvinist, can be meant by human free will? And how, given that everything that happens is decided in advance, makes a human beings responsible for their actions? These are the most common questions aimed at those who are committed to a strong doctrine of sovereignty,  one that features the idea that God determines all that happens in advance. Determinism is the idea that for everything that happens there are antecedent conditions such that, given those conditions, nothing else could occur. For a Calvinist, the antecedent condition in question is ultimately God's will. God's will is such that every event in creation is determined by God in advance of the event. We call this Divine Determinism (DD). The debate over free will hinges on whether or not free will is compatible with any kind of determinism . One is either drawn to compatiblism or incompatiblism. This leads to two distinct views of what free will is. ...