Free Will<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I guess I just wasn't predestined to be a Calvinist. It isn't that I didn't try. In my teens, I encountered some very staunch Calvinists who persuaded me\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2013\/08\/free-will.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Free Will\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I guess I just wasn't predestined to be a Calvinist. It isn't that I didn't try. 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{"id":16508,"date":"2013-08-08T14:52:09","date_gmt":"2013-08-08T18:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=16508"},"modified":"2013-08-08T14:52:09","modified_gmt":"2013-08-08T18:52:09","slug":"free-will","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2013\/08\/free-will.html","title":{"rendered":"Free Will"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I guess I just wasn\u2019t predestined to be a Calvinist.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ It isn\u2019t that I didn\u2019t try. In my teens, I encountered some very staunch Calvinists who persuaded me that God didn\u2019t simply foreknow everything, but foreordained it. Nothing was outside of God\u2019s sovereignty, nor could anything thwart the divine will.<\/p>\n

But however much I thought that, I could not live it.<\/p>\n

I found myself, ironically, worried about which of two routes I should take when going somewhere. What if God wanted me to encounter someone on one of them? But surely I couldn\u2019t choose wrongly, if God was in control? But I still felt like I was choosing, and no amount of theorizing eliminated that feeling.<\/p>\n

Although such teenage theological anxiety may seem foolish (it certainly does to me, with hindsight), I am happy to say that it didn\u2019t take long for me to realize that one cannot live as though there is no such thing as free will. One cannot eliminate the sense of making decisions, whatever one\u2019s view of neuroscience, or of divine sovereignty, happens to be.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think that we can prove that we have free will. And having free will, on any plausible account, does not mean that we are infinitely free, completely unconstrained by genes, culture, habits, circumstances, and who knows what else.<\/p>\n

But ultimately, I find \u2013 perhaps ironically \u2013 that I cannot live as though I do not have free will. And so it turns out to be this constraint, placed upon me by my own experience, and thus perhaps limiting or eliminating choices, that persuades me that I do indeed make choices.<\/p>\n

That is my response to the Patheos discussion of the question \u201cDoes Free Will Really Exist?\u201d<\/a>\u00a0I believe that free will really exists, not because we can prove it (there is a lot about consciousness that we simply do not yet understand), but because I tried to live as though I didn\u2019t, and failed.<\/p>\n

And because I may not have as good an excuse to share it any time soon \u2013 sorry, I mean because I freely choose to share it \u2013 here is Rush singing \u201cFreewill\u201d:<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=YpCASVFyQoE<\/a>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"