By Victor M Fontane
If everything happens by God’s will then I’m not responsible for what I do and if God is also omniscient, why prayers.
Although the concept of free will is rooted on Christian theology there are some discussions on the ancient Indian teachings about freedom. The question arouse then about why if God is all love, omnipotent and omniscient, there is suffering and the theological answer is because of evil. The answer in Indian philosophy is simpler: because of karma or our past actions which works only if you accept the concept of reincarnation and many lives. Christianity doesn’t have that believe, just first life and the last one for everyone. But then why suffering, why a baby suffers in his first life not committing a foul. To cover this escape clause, Christianity says that God gave humans the gift of “free will” and the misuse of this free will create suffering, in the case of a baby, because of the original sin.
Arguments for the existence of free will:
Libertarianism argument. Self observation. Experiencing things in the moment and feel the freedom, is a phantom feeling.
Ethical appraisal argument. Choosing behavior between ethical actions good or bad. Ex. plead for insanity, force the person to do something.
Pragmatic self reputation argument. Without free will you can’t make a choice, you make the choice that you want.
Arguments against the existence of free will:
Metaphysical or deterministic argument. Every action is an event in time and every event in time in the Universe is preceded by a cause. So, if a cause happens his effect will appears. So, we feel that we have free will but in essence we don’t because the cause force the effect to happens. This works for the outer world and person inner world.
Theistic argument of God’s omniscience. If God exist and knows everything then is not free will as is not our decision, somebody else (God) know before we know.
Karmic argument. All actions and experiences are driven by karma or previous actions. Decisions are mental events that happens based on previous actions so are not free.
Psychological determinism argument. Mental like physical acts, are mental events in time and have causes that determine our decisions by genetic, environmental, geographical, social factors, etc. So, our thoughts are caused by past events and decision are been already taken. Thus, Neuroscientist says that there is not any free will.
Logical-semantic language argument. Any statement can be true or can be false and if is true you can’t make it false and if is false you can’t make it true. I there is a statement about something that happened in the past and can be proven in the present is true and can not be changed. But a statement about something in the future is already true or false as can’t be proven, might be true or false when the time comes, so there is no freedom or free will.
In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna said three times: All decisions are taken by Nature (Prakriti does all work).
So, the intelligent person is the one who realizes that is the witness of the actions of the body and the mind and the conscious self is not the doer.
Sri Ramakrishna (Indian sage) says: “It is God alone who does everything, free will is a false appearance. Man is the carriage and God is the driver. A man become Jivanmukta (liberated while living) when realize that God is the doer”.
Conclusion: Practically we have the feeling of freedom but in reality is all God’s will. Since we have freedom at the level of God, let’s join both, use this feeling of freedom and combine all our thought, words and actions into prayer, into offer and surrender to God. Do all your regular daily life and mentally surrender all to God.
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