Determinism

I recently took in the movie Valkyrie, the story of the July 1944 plot against Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. The movie was mediocre, the story itself riveting. I don't mean to make this post about the movie, but it did set me to thinking about the idea of free will versus determinism.

There are those who would have us believe that everything that we do, that very decision which we make, is determined beforehand by our past. They would have us believe that our will, our ability to make decisions, our choices are mere illusions. They contend that if we could build a computer with enough capacity and could enter into that computer the pertinent data, then that machine could predict our decisions. For the most part those who hold such views are to be found among the atheist or agnostic intelligentsia, the same intelligentsia who rail against the existence of an all-knowing God who refuses to, or elects to seldom, interfere in the affairs of men, and who, oddly enough, complain at the same time of a God who gives us no choice in our actions a la Adam and Eve, or the hardening of Pharaoh's heart against Moses and the Hebrews.

I contend that such thinking has found its way into atheist circles via Calvinism. I surmise that former adherents of Calvinistic Christian denominations who "deconverted" to atheism carried bits of the idea of predestination with them, and that from this seed the ridiculous concept of determinism has sprouted. Not that its origin really matters all that much. What really matters is that such thought makes possible a great moral dodge, and that is the idea that, since we cannot actually make choices freely, that since we are constrained in our present and future actions by our past, we cannot be held accountable for our present or future actions. The evil choice which we make are simply the product of what we or others have done in the past. Likewise, any positive actions or decisions we make are simply the foregone conclusion of what has transpired in our lives previously.

I do not mean to suggest that our past experiences play no role at all in our decision making. In fact, I believe that such experiences factor greatly into the decisions we make. Pondering the past is the process by which we learn. I do object, however, to the idea that we are inextricably bound to the past, that we are incapable of freeing ourselves from such bonds.

Thus would heroism become one and the same with villainy; the hero would be no more heroic for his courage than would the villain be culpable for his malevolence. Our admiration of the hero for acting out of the ordinary would be as misplaced as our outrage at the villain for his atrocities. The hero would be as unworthy of recognition as the villain would be of punishment. Even now, it seems that nearly every misdeed can be justified through a diagnosis of some sort of mental disorder.

I guess that the point I'm trying to make here is that our society is based entirely upon the idea that we do have a choice and that we are responsible for the choices we make. To deny that is to deny that we possess any shred of dignity; to deny that is to deny that we can be rewarded or punished for our actions. Crime and punishment, heroism and altruism become outmoded concepts to be relegated to the scrap heap of ideas whose usefulness we have outlived.

Til nest time, all the best. Joe