Friday night fun! Rush and Freewill

Rush: Freewill

Rush's song Freewill is noted for its sensational soloing in the middle of the track.

Chucky and I saw Rush for the seventh time on Thursday night. In my view for an electric band they are among the best artists ever. Within a secular band, a Christian should be able to listen to vocals/lyrics and filter out non-Christian or anti-Christian concepts if they are familiar enough with Christian philosophy and faith. Rush drummer Neil Peart is a sometimes noted critic of religion.

http://richarddawkins.net/article,800,Neil-Peart-cites-The-God-Delusion-in-new-albums-liner-notes,Rush

The liner notes to the forthcoming album "Snakes and Arrows" by the legendary rock band Rush mention The God Delusion. The author and lyricist Neil Peart writes the following:

I was also thinking, like Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion, about how children are usually imprinted with a particular faith, along with their other early blessings and scars. People who actively choose their faith are vanishingly few; most simply receive it, with their mother's milk, language, and customs. Thinking also of people being shaped by early abuse of one kind or another, I felt a connection with friends who had adopted rescue dogs as puppies, and given them unlimited love, care, and security. If those puppies had been 'damaged' by their earlier treatment--made nervous, timid, or worse--they would always remain that way, no matter how smooth the rest of their life might be. It seemed the same for children.

Some of us are educated in our religious philosophy and faith, and do not simply follow the worldview of our parents. I reason that many non-religious adults grew up in non-religious homes. Children can also grow up conditioned with atheistic or agnostic views. The bottom line for whether a worldview is true or false is evidence. Sadly many persons in relative intellectual blindness do simply follow the worldview, religious or not, of their parents. If the evidence for the worldview of parents is good then it would not be blind for children to hold the same worldview. Evidence for Christianity includes historical revealed documentation. This documentation is a key to reasonable Christian philosophy.

My views on free will have been discussed on this blog, but here are two major positions I have dealt with in my MPhil and PhD theses. I hold to compatibilism, also know as soft determinism which is in line with Reform theology.

Compatibilism:

Compatibilism, would agree with incompatibilism that God or any other being cannot cause by force or coercion any significantly free human action, but contrary to incompatibilism thinks that God or an outside force can simultaneously determine/will significantly free human actions. Feinberg (1994: 60).

Philosopher Louis P. Pojman explains that within determinism or hard determinism, an outside force causes an act and no created being is responsible for his or her moral actions, while for compatibilism or soft determinism, although an outside force causes actions, created beings are responsible where they act voluntarily. Within hard determinism an outside force would be the only cause of human actions, while with soft determinism an outside force would be the primary cause of human actions and persons the secondary cause. Pojman (1996: 596). God would be the primary cause within Christian theism of a Reformed tradition.

In modern, but not Reformation era terms, John Calvin could be considered a compatibilist and he writes that those who committed wrong actions performed them willfully and deliberately. Calvin viewed God as working his good purposes through the evil conduct of people, but he pointed out that God’s motives in willing these deeds were pure while those who committed wrong had wicked motives. Calvin (1543)(1998: 37).

Incompatibilism:

Gregory A. Boyd explains that incompatibilism assumes since human beings are free, their wills and resulting actions are not, in any way, determined by any outside force. Boyd (2001: 52).

John Sanders writes that in incompatibilism it is believed genetic or environmental factors are not ignored in the process of human actions, but it is thought that a human being could always have done otherwise in any given situation. Sanders (1998: 221).

Hugh McCann (2001) explains there can be no independent determining conditions of human deeds, and human actions are committed voluntarily. McCann (2001: 115).

BOYD, GREGORY A. (2001) Satan and the Problem of Evil, Downers Grove, Illinois, InterVarsity Press.

CALVIN, JOHN (1543)(1996) The Bondage and Liberation of the Will, Translated by G.I. Davies, Grand Rapids, Baker Book House.

FEINBERG, JOHN S. (1994) The Many Faces of Evil, Grand Rapids, Zondervan Publishing House.

MCCANN, HUGH J. (2001) ‘Sovereignty and Freedom: A Reply to Rowe’, in Faith and Philosophy, Volume 18, Number 1, January, pp. 110-116. Wilmore, Kentucky, Asbury College.

POJMAN, LOUIS P. (1996) Philosophy: The Quest for Truth, New York, Wadsworth Publishing Company.

SANDERS, JOHN (1998) The God Who Risks, Downers Grove, Illinois, InterVarsity Press.