A traditional Judeo-Christian view is that human beings are free, autonomous agents, responsible for their own actions. In Genesis, Adam and Eve exercise their freewill by choosing to eat the forbidden fruit. They are held responsible for their actions, and God punishes them, banishing them from Eden. Many of the main Christian denominations therefore believe that we are free to choose whether to do good or sin. However the Protestant Church holds the view that God has chosen who will be saved and who will not on Judgement Day. This idea, which originates from St Paul’s letter to the Romans, is called “predestination”
“And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.”
The idea that God decides who receives salvation and who doesn’t at creation suggests that humans don’t have freewill with regard to their moral or religious behaviour. The idea suggests that salvation cannot be achieved through actions on this earth, but through God’s grace alone. As regards to the ethical ramifications of such a view, the notion that human beings are not autonomous moral agents raises a number of problems. If we aren’t free, how can we be morally responsible for our actions, and how can we be punished for those actions; and if God has already decided who goes to heaven and who goes to hell, do our actions on earth count for anything at all?
Hard Determinism has some ethical similarity to the protestant “predestination”. It maintains that all of our actions have a prior cause. Humans aren’t free to act, but our actions are determined by a complex set of previous causes. It is as if we were trains, running along a fixed track. Hard determinism has a number of profound consequences. It puts into doubt our hopes for the future and how we consider the morality of others. Determinism means that we cannot praise people for being good, or blame others for being bad. Furthermore, is our actions are determined, then we cannot deliberate rationally. It seems wrong to punish people for their actions if they aren’t responsible for them in the first place.
Many people reject determinism because it rules out moral responsibility, and also because most people have a sense of self-determination or freedom to act. These people are known as libertarians (or incompatibilitists). Libertarians believe that we are free to act, and are morally responsible for those actions. They believe that we are not duty-bound to act by forces outside of our moral consciousness. Moral actions are not chance, or random events, but result from the values and characteristics of the moral agent. Many people however feel that the human sense of decision making, points towards determinism. They maintain that a human’s sense of freedom, the sense of deliberating over our options is only “an illusion of freedom”. John Locke (1632-1704) points out that a man who is placed in a locked room, and does not know that the room is locked, may believe that he can leave the room by walking through the door, even though the door is locked and realistically he could never do it. We may feel at any point that we are free, and that we can choose from a group of options when in truth, our moral choices are determined by factors beyond our control.
The third way that people look at freewill and determinism is “soft determinism”. Soft determinists argue that determinism does not rule out freewill. They believe that determinism and freewill are compatible. An example of this is: If I have no food, I cannot eat. If I have food but want to lose weight, I eat less. If I have food, but I am fasting, I choose not to eat, although I can change my mind at any point. In each case the relationship is different. Humans may be limited through their circumstances, but not by their choice. Hard determinists often criticise soft determinists for failing to realise the extent to which human freedom is limited, and by libertarians for failing to realise the full extent of human freedom. Many criticise soft determinists suggesting that soft determinism if the easy option, the “soft” option.
I believe that no matter which way you look at it if the universe follows the laws of determinism, it may well be determined that I believe the universe follows the laws of free will. However if the universe follows the laws of free will, it is allowed for me to believe the universe follows the laws of determinism. Regardless of whether free-will or determinism is the way the universe works, it is clear that society does hold me accountable for my actions; does dish out praise and blame; does decide whether I am sufficiently sane to be held accountable. Even self-proclaimed determinists will hold me accountable for my decisions and my actions. It therefore compells us to behave as if we have free-will, and expect to be held accountable for our decisions and actions.
