God is always in process- God is process- hence there can be no automatic identical discovery for every man. What God is, is determined by one’s preparation to discover and discern it.

That is the difference between a Mother Theresa, a Mahatma Ghandi and the man in the street.

God reveals himself differentially to each man- hence the controversies of history. Een to say God is love means different things to different people.

I suppose I don’t understand why one can’t live in relationship with Christ and maintain propositional belief? Or is it that Borg is trying to establish that it is possible to live in relationship while not holding to that belief? But, perhaps more importantly, on what basis is relationship required if divinity is not presumed?

Borg is not against propositional belief, per se. After all, he offers propositions in all his work. However, at some point, probably after the enlightenment, propositional belief became the center piece of Christianity. For most Christian denominations belief in certain propositions became the determining factor whether one was saved or not. Now as I said, some sort of propositional belief about the nature of reality must be in place in order to form any position including religious sentiment. The question is what propositions are the core basis for a religious position?

I think Borg would say that the relationship he is talking about is not one with Jesus, per se, but with God. Jesus as a historical figure and his narrative offer a revelatory picture of our relationship to God.

The answer to your final question would seem to be a question itself. What is the core message of Christianity? I would posit that it is living in grace, given yet undeserved. However, if one dismisses the divinity of Christ, from where does grace come? Is that where the metaphor arises?

I guess I don’t understand how the divinity of Jesus is essential to the message of God’s grace. I suppose it could be stemming from the roots of Christianity in the Jewish emphasis on justice, i.e. we are guilty, the debit must be paid, and God graciously and unconditionally pays the debit through the death of his divine son. If this is the dynamic then I suppose it presumes some sort of balance sheet where our guilt is so great that in order to balance the scales the divine value must offset it. While justice is an important concept, to me this presents a distorted picture of God as an accountant tallying things up. I just don’t think that God is involved in such tedium.

I guess I would also wonder what the end game is. If all is metaphor and there is no true north, no way for one to establish our bearings, no common belief and bond, then wouldn’t the Christian faith run into the very problem mentioned above where there is a lack of engaging ‘community’ in the UU churches? Stripping away central notions would seem to have that effect.

After Bultmann claimed that the narratives in the Bible where metaphor, there was a common sense about these narratives that “it’s only a metaphor” suggesting that there was no truth value in them or that it was diminished. Tillich and others, including Borg, rejected that understanding saying that metaphor didn’t mean “no truth” but rather that the truth was at a deeper and more profound level than the specific details of the narrative. Of course this makes it a challenge to tease out the deeper truth in these narratives but for those who can’t accept the literal interpretations the only way to “save the message” is to look for a deeper meaning. I personally find this strategy problematic but I guess many feel it necessary to save the religion. Having said that, when one looks at many of the classical religions worldwide the adoption of metaphorical interpretations becomes necessary to “save the religion” for our current “modern mind”.

I understand grappling with conflicting info from the Bible as well as critical historical and literary analyses of it. However, in the end, isn’t this just another form of disbelief? Faith as I understand it is never something proven, but rather chosen, even in the face of not understanding it and having open questions about it.

This raises an interesting issue. When faced with scriptures that are claimed to be revelatory how does one determine what to believe in? After all there are many scriptures that claim to be revelatory about ultimate reality. The Hindu Vedas are called śruti, not from human agency but rather “what is heard”. Other religious systems besides Christianity have elements like incarnation, virgin birth, the death of God, etc. Is faith in one or the other of these religious systems just arbitrary or is there some critical criterion that should be employed? If so, what would that criterion be?

The answer to your final question would seem to be a question itself. What is the core message of Christianity? I would posit that it is living in grace, given yet undeserved. However, if one dismisses the divinity of Christ, from where does grace come? Is that where the metaphor arises?

I guess I would also wonder what the end game is. If all is metaphor and there is no true north, no way for one to establish our bearings, no common belief and bond, then wouldn’t the Christian faith run into the very problem mentioned above where there is a lack of engaging ‘community’ in the UU churches? Stripping away central notions would seem to have that effect.

I understand grappling with conflicting info from the Bible as well as critical historical and literary analyses of it. However, in the end, isn’t this just another form of disbelief? Faith as I understand it is never something proven, but rather chosen, even in the face of not understanding it and having open questions about it.

Great questions.

I think your concerns are valid. In my view, the question is “what does it mean to be a Christian”. Does it mean propositional belief in something or living a certain way? Borg recommends a shift from the paradigm of propositional belief to relationship. But that begs the question of what that relationship would look like. Clearly a relationship is based on some propositional sense of the way things are. Borg’s answer is to view the Christian message as a metaphor for “dying and rising” as a personal transformation. That can be a powerful message but is it enough to keep the capital “C” in the religion? I don’t know. However, as far as I’m aware, it is a unique metaphor in world religions but then each religion has its own take on what is foremost in its message.

I think what has driven scholars like Borg (BTW, Borg is an accomplished biblical scholar. He was part of the Jesus Seminar) is that as scholars did their in depth biblical criticism they found it harder and harder to accept a literal interpretation of the texts. I myself ran into the same issue as I studied scripture in the historical-critical mode when in seminary. The deeper one goes into an in depth historical and linguistic examination of the Bible, the more and more it appears to contain what they are called, testaments, by very human beings who have their own worldviews, traditions, and biases. If it is the case that the Bible is not some sort of holy transcription, then the question becomes, is there something truly revelatory in its testaments. I would say unequivocally, yes. But I would also say the same thing about other scripture and even first person testimony throughout history. The challenge becomes how to winnow out the true revelatory message. To me this is a personal challenge to tap into one’s own religious sensibility informed by everything one can draw from. Now this does not necessarily mean a complete “roll you own” approach but it does mean approaching the traditions with a critical eye. This can be either a scary or liberating challenge or even both. But given the religious pluralism that we find ubiquitous in the world, I see no other alternative at least for those who feel the need to critically seek the truth. For most people all this is irrelevant and I have no problem with that as long as they find some sense of fulfillment in life and promote the general welfare of others and the world.

So the question becomes, even if the unique divinity of Jesus is questioned, is there something about the testaments of Christianity that compel one to passionately identify with its message?

Out of curiosity…

If one is inclined to forsake the core belief or faith in the divinity of Christ, the Holy Trinity, the resurrection, salvation, et al., why is one still couching their theology in a christian (clearly little ‘c’ required when divinity is no longer adhered to) framework?

If you’ve cast off the “problems” of the religion itself by casting them as metaphor and are now arguing for a universal God, christian schema would seem to have no standing in that sense, at least no more than any other religion.

Why continue to frame things in the Christian tradition when it no longer applies to such thinking?

What, exactly, is the point of being christian without believing in the Christian tradition? Is one still compelled to live distinctly from the world, strive towards a Christ-like life and a giving heart? Is one still compelled to act with grace towards others, as we have been given?

Lastly, does anyone approach such thinking with a solid grounding in the Bible, in its teachings, from cover to cover? The only people I know advocating such thought are absolutely not well versed in it and are the least likely prepared to mount any kind of Biblical (or otherwise) based defense of Christian doctrine (myself included). Or is a key tenant of this argument to first dismantle the Bible so any such defense is merit-less in the counter-party’s POV?

This line of thinking seems like the epitome of conforming God to our idea of Him rather than belief in Him despite our own lack of understanding. Seems like the cart may be before the horse…

By the way, I do hope you realise that I don’t deny free will. I just see it in a particular light.

Seems like all the discussions on this type of subject end up at a point like this. I suppose it comes down to subtleties of arguments and the understanding of terms. Thanks for the discussion.

You seemed to be suggesting that my current sense of the free-will question may derive from a commitment to empirical investigation. While I certainly respect empirical investigation, I rather doubt whether this is the source of my sense of this question. My sense of free will appears to be consistent with empirical investigation, and if it wasn’t, I would question it, but that’s another matter.

I’ve checked out Hammeroff’s site and read the Amazon reviews of A Different Universe. I’m not sure whether I would get anything new from A Different Universe or not. I don’t have any problem with what appears to be the author’s critique of some current, crude forms of reductionism, and I share his interest in emergence. I don’t know whether reductionism at a lower level will eventually be able to account for higher-level behaviour or not, but I don’t find the prospect of either eventuality to be challenging to my perspective. By contrast, I would definitely find some of Hammeroff’s views somewhat challenging to my current overall perspective if they proved to be correct. However, Hammeroff’s views are one thing and the Penrose-Hameroff hypothesis is quite another. I don’t see how his views on free will derive from the hypothesis itself, or are even consistent with the hypothesis.

Even if the outcomes of decisions are non-computable, I don’t see how this affects the reality of our inner and outer alignments with an existence that is determined solely by necessity and chance for all practical intents and purposes. Hammeroff does not indicate how non-computability provides an opportunity to act otherwise. He simply describes the decision-making process, and seems to think that having done so, and having introduced non-computability, this in itself provides an opportunity to act otherwise. Certainly, there is an otherwise-ness about non-computability, but this is only of value insofar as it is effective in terms of the predetermination of the inner and outer alignments, in other words, if it conforms to predetermination and amounts to the same thing as predetermination. If it does, non-computability is simply a more effective way of arriving at a predetermined outcome, perhaps in much the same way that a quantum computer may be a more effective way of coming to a predetermined outcome than a normal computer.

Even if this mental non-computability is connected to some form of proto-consciousness in the rest of existence, or to Platonic logic embedded in space-time, I don’t see any way this alters the picture. Hammeroff’s writings seem to contradict his own views sometimes. He says “In a volitional act … selection results from deterministic quantum computation influenced at the moment of reduction by Platonic logic embedded in the Planck scale.” He is saying that the process is totally predetermined up to the moment of reduction, and at that moment Platonic logic enters the picture. So in what way is Platonic logic itself not predetermined? (In one debate, Hammeroff does address this question, but only by introducing other predetermined factors.) The idea of ORCH, that the mind might in some way be orchestrating this whole process, as opposed to actually being the process, doesn’t make it any less predetermined, if the process itself is entirely predetermined.

Let me try to put it differently. I do not deny that we can choose, and choose to do whatever we want. In the process of choice, we can toss up one option or another, and examine what it is we really want, reflecting on our priorities and reflecting on what will be involved in achieving one outcome or another. Our decision-making process can waver between one decision path and another, and there can be a very fine line separating one path from others. This is all true. At the same time, there is every reason to believe that an awareness of the need to choose, the desires we mediate between, and the basis of our judgement in assessing outcomes, is predetermined by a confluence of internal and external factors.

If there is nothing in this post that spurs a response from you, I guess we’ve come to an end of this conversation. I would say that I’ve met one of the implicit agendas I had in commenting on this page, which was to bring into consciousness and clarify my sense that necessity and chance are sufficient to account for free will, and to open up my sense of it to challenge. I may or may not have met my second implicit agenda, which was to convey to you the lack of need for anything more than necessity and chance in free will, but at least I’ve made an attempt to convey it, and feel the conversation has been worthwhile.

Perhaps a third implicit agenda was to convey some sense that theological thought is not dependent on the idea of a universal mind distinct from human beings, or the human-incorporating universal mind (or somewhat mind-like-ness) of panentheism. I certainly feel that current directions in theology, yours especially, are an improvement on the past. I just wish theological thought as a whole was more honest about the frailty of the assumptions embedded in its explanations, more open to questioning these, and more willing to forego definiteness of explanation in the face of not knowing.

Probably my lack of a gut respect for any real choice to act otherwise derives from a lack of any great respect for the conscious, chattering mind as a distinct, entirely separate controller of the human organism as a whole, which is the way it is sometimes considered. Certainly, the mind has a critical role as a mouthpiece and means of clarification for the organism, and there is also a value and beauty in consciousness in and of itself. It is enough for me that the mind is the mouthpiece of destiny — clearly perceived or less clearly perceived — and a clear perception of this destiny may well be the ultimate source of freedom.

I came across a recent blog written as a primer on process-relational theory that I thought might interest you. I clipped the section below because, when I read it, I thought of your “Aspect Monism”.

Process-relational thought rejects the Cartesian idea that there are minds, or things that think, and bodies, or matter that only acts according to strict causal laws. Rather, the two are considered one and the same, or two aspects of the same evolving, processual reality. In this sense, process-relational views are related to certain forms of panpsychism and pan-experientialism, that is, to philosophies that understand “mind” or “mental experience” to be not the possession of specific objects or subjects, but part of the relational expression or manifestation of all things.

http://aivakhiv.blog.uvm.edu/2010/11/theory_primer.html

Your comments on quantum effects are interesting. However, whatever role one assigns to it, there is still an extraordinarily large role for necessity (including contingency). I’ll certainly check out Stuart Hammeroff’s site and at some point I’ll probably check out A Different Universe. By the way, I do hope you realise that I don’t deny free will. I just see it in a particular light.

Here are some further thoughts on the core question that I’ve been jotting down:–

If one clearly sees a fact in front of one’s eyes, then there is no choice about it. There is just the fact. If we don’t see it clearly, then there is choice. Is what we are seeing this or is it that? If what we are seeing matters to us, we need to make a decision, a choice. The choice is based on our ignorance about the fact and our need to establish what it actually is.

Fatalism results from a feeling of being compelled, not from reality. If we are reasonably healthy, we don’t feel compelled by the fact of gravity (however utterly compelling its operation is), or by the fact that the sun rises and sets each day, or by the fact that we are a human being, with all the preprogrammed impulses that this entails. These preprogrammed impulses arise from the unconscious, and we tend to accept them fairly easily, because we identify ourselves with them and up to a point we align ourselves with them. The action of thinking, as a result of one preprogrammed impulse or another, can divide itself off from what it considers to be the unconscious, and feel compelled by the whole nature of preprogramming itself. However, that requires a lack of attunement with one’s own nature, and the nature of existence as a whole. We construct fatalism from a perception that we are not free, without understanding that freedom is really freedom from something, and includes the capacity to act effectively in a choiceless alignment with the choiceless nature of existence, not the freedom to recreate the nature of existence in whatever way we fancy.

For my part, I don’t have a problem with the idea that what I am writing arises from a choiceless reality, and that “I” have no choice in the matter, considered within the whole context of the reality that is taking place. Indeed, the very best writing or speaking derives from a clear consciousness of choicelessness and a lack of a sense of self on the part of the individual. What is called revelation, in Moses or Muhammad, was experienced as arising outside the choice of the individual (though apparently Muhammad did have a problem with this initially). The most creative, original, insightful forms of writing arise from the “Muse”, from a source that the writer cannot really identify with their conscious self or their conscious choice.

We don’t have a problem with the choicelessness of the Muse or the moment of orgasm, and there is no real reason why we need to see a fundamental choicelessness at other times as problematic, though this does require not getting caught up in the connotations of words such as ‘blind’, ‘compulsion’, ‘freedom’, each of which can carry more than one meaning. This is a huge difficulty, and always has been. We carry connotations that are applicable in one context into contexts where they are not applicable at all.

My hesitation derived from the distinction between the weight of evidence and forming what I would see as an absolute metaphysical position that goes beyond the evidence, though I did add that “it reflects the way I feel about it” to indicate that my intuition inclines me to this position “for all practical intents and purposes”. In terms of evidence alone, I agree with the statement about Adequate Determinism on http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/adequate_determinism.html: “the determinism of Newtonian physics, capable of sending men to the moon and back with astonishing accuracy. It is the determinism of those physiologists who think that quantum uncertainty is insignificant in the macromolecular structures of cell biology.” Quantum uncertainty appears to be “hard” chance, rather than the operation of necessity that amounts to chance on the practical level, such as a large meteor impact that may have eliminated the dinosaurs, which is perhaps more precisely described as contingency. The difficulty with referring to necessity and contingency, rather than necessity and chance, is that contingency can imply the absence of hard chance, and this may apply at the macromolecular level of biology, for all I know. The idea of a purely clockwork universe is a metaphysical position that derives from a large weight of evidence, but evidence that does not take into account quantum uncertainty. For all I know, there may be other factors as yet undiscovered, or even scientifically indiscoverable, which is why I would want to limit myself to talking about “all practical intents and purposes”.

Now this I can fully appreciate and respect your commitment to empirical investigations. I do as well. At one point I accepted the clockwork model of the universe and denied free will. At that point I thought I was following the evidence where it led. However, over a few years I came to see that the so-called evidence for the clockwork universe had holes in it. Several things contributed to my skepticism of this model. One concerned the denial of quantum uncertainty (although I would suggest his reflects intentional openness) at the macroscopic level. There have been several papers on quantum effects occurring at this level. One I saw a while back was a paper that suggested that quantum effects were responsible for the efficiency of photosynthesis. I’ve also seen a few other academic papers that also suggest quantum effects at room temperature in organic forms. If you are interested you can google it and check out Stuart Hammeroff’s site where he discusses these issues.

The other thing that had a large impact on me was Robert Laughlin’s book “A Different Universe”. In that book he strikes a powerful blow to the standard model concerning causation and fundamental laws. I highly recommend it.

So after a while I came to realize that the mechanistic models that were widely promoted are still indeterminate and perhaps very wrong and one has a reasonable right to be skeptical of them.

Once the road to an intentional universe has opened up, there is much for theology to do. At that point I started from basic principals of forming theology, starting from fundamental religious experiences. Apparently you’ve read much of what I have written and that reflects my explorations on how to form a minimalistic theology. Still, this does not lead to a dogmatic theology because interpretations vary of religious experiences. The best one can do, I think, is follow one’s informed intuitions where they lead and see if they resonate with others.

My hesitation derived from the distinction between the weight of evidence and forming what I would see as an absolute metaphysical position that goes beyond the evidence, though I did add that “it reflects the way I feel about it” to indicate that my intuition inclines me to this position “for all practical intents and purposes”. In terms of evidence alone, I agree with the statement about Adequate Determinism on http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/adequate_determinism.html: “the determinism of Newtonian physics, capable of sending men to the moon and back with astonishing accuracy. It is the determinism of those physiologists who think that quantum uncertainty is insignificant in the macromolecular structures of cell biology.” Quantum uncertainty appears to be “hard” chance, rather than the operation of necessity that amounts to chance on the practical level, such as a large meteor impact that may have eliminated the dinosaurs, which is perhaps more precisely described as contingency. The difficulty with referring to necessity and contingency, rather than necessity and chance, is that contingency can imply the absence of hard chance, and this may apply at the macromolecular level of biology, for all I know. The idea of a purely clockwork universe is a metaphysical position that derives from a large weight of evidence, but evidence that does not take into account quantum uncertainty. For all I know, there may be other factors as yet undiscovered, or even scientifically undiscoverable, which is why I would want to limit myself to talking about “all practical intents and purposes”.

I agree that all this is a conventional, scientific view, though I certainly feel that people often don’t fully think through its implications, and that, if they do, they can be led to serious depression as a result of taking a fatalistic perspective. I hoped that in my last post I indicated the way that this view does not need to lead to a fatalistic perspective at all, if it is thought through carefully enough. I’m not sure whether I can articulate this well enough to convey it clearly.

What you refer to as the non-intentionality of various processes can lead to intentionality at the level of a human being in the same way that the compulsion of these processes can lead to free will, as long as intentionality and free will are understood correctly. You refer to these processes as blind. Such a statement does not merely stick to the facts but is inclined to imply a behavioural characteristic, which doesn’t even make sense in the context of a robot that has a form of sight and operates on the basis of software that takes into account visual images in determining the robot’s behaviour. The robot isn’t blind even though the processes are blind, in a limited sense of the word ‘blind’. This goes back to what I was saying earlier. In and of themselves, considered in isolation, so-called inanimate processes are indeed inanimate, but considered in the context of life-forms they are animate-neutral, not inanimate, so the word ‘inanimate’ can give the wrong impression.

This is why I had a difficulty with the word ‘compulsion’ that I used, because it can so easily carry with it the feeling of compulsion, and that’s entirely wrong in the context of free will. I wish I could find better words. How about ‘unalterability’ instead of ‘compulsion’? There is an utter unalterability that is intrinsic to (God as) the fundamental nature of existence, which is reflected in the unalterability of necessity and chance. This unalterability (this God) lures us toward insight, despite the interference from incompletely understood elements within ourselves in the form of other lures or impulses. Insofar as we have a full insight into something, we automatically act on the basis of this insight, because it would be foolish to do otherwise. Insight simply acts according to the nature of the insight, and this action is choiceless. It is the choiceless freedom from the compulsions of ignorance. In that freedom is the choiceless beauty of a flower, a sunset and the night sky, and perhaps also the great beauty of a fundamental destiny we have yet to realise.

In one sense of the word ‘free’, I see no reason to believe that a human being is any more free from the compulsions of necessity and chance than a river. I hesitate to say that a human being or river is utterly compelled by necessity and chance in every aspect of their existence, because I don’t think there is sufficient evidence to say this, even though it reflects the way I feel about it.

Why the hesitation? I think it’s because humans would loathe the idea that they have no freedom and become fatalistic about it. William James once felt suicidal when he accepted the conventional wisdom of the day that there is no such thing as free will. Some one (I forget who) talked him out of it and he went to do the great work he did.

I’m not sure it is possible to completely and wholeheartedly forgive others unless one perceives that at the fundamental level they really have no choice, that they really “know not what they do”. Conversely, if one fully perceives that at the fundamental level there is really no choice, and that the actions that derive from what is felt to be choice are a form of ignorance, then how can one not forgive?

Ok, let me explain in more detail why I said “why bother?”. Let’s look at an example. In the human brain there are chemical and electrical processes going on that create thought, emotion, and consciousness. If we zoom in to a synapse gap we see these processes going on. Then imagine stepping through all these steps to create a thought or action. If all these processes are determined strictly by chance and necessity, then what emerges from them at the macroscopic level is also the result of non-intentional chance and necessity. So if you’ll agree that there is no freedom in these causal factors then they (and we) just do what they (and we) non-intentionally do. So even the theology we might create to promote forgivenness is non-intentional and unfree as well. Theology is then just another example of what these processes non-intentionally do. Stuff just blindly happens. Under this scenario even these words you and I are saying just happen because of prior non-intentional and unfree events and the current state of affairs. If this wouldn’t promote a fatalistic attitude (which would also be non-intentional) then I don’t know what would.

In providing a dictionary definition of ‘agency’ and the example of a canal, I wasn’t intending to address the way I understood you to be using the term. I just felt it would be easier get to the nub of the question by focusing on the ‘free’ in free will, and the way freedom is implicitly understood in choice. I didn’t find agency to be a useful term for the sake of this question, though I do think it usefully refers to a relatively distinct source of activity that is solely responsible for a distinct effect.

In one sense of the word ‘free’, I see no reason to believe that a human being is any more free from the compulsions of necessity and chance than a river. I hesitate to say that a human being or river is utterly compelled by necessity and chance in every aspect of their existence, because I don’t think there is sufficient evidence to say this, even though it reflects the way I feel about it. However, I would say that both the human being and the river are totally compelled for all practical intents and purposes, and insofar as it is relevant to the question at hand. In this sense, I would say that we don’t have the kind of freedom of choice we often think we have, and neither does a river have any freedom. At the same time, referring to the choice to act otherwise has a terminological convenience that conveys a real meaning, despite the reality of total compulsion. I hope that what I wrote in my last post indicates, at the very least, that we are vastly more compelled than we are inclined to realise, even though many of these factual compulsions are not experienced as compulsions at all.

Our feeling of freedom from compulsion is not solely a feeling, Externally, there is a real difference between the compulsion of being held captive by terrorists and the compulsion of gravity. Internally, there is a real difference between the compulsion of not feeling able to shake off a heroin addiction and the compulsion of being a human being, with all that this entails. Although we may be totally compelled, the forms this compulsion takes are very different and relate to the accuracy of the external and internal alignments I referred to.

I don’t say that our sense of free will and self are illusions, just that there is often an illusory quality in the way we conceive them. The freedom in free will is very real but it is a freedom from the experience of compulsion, and from certain forms of compulsion, not a freedom from compulsion per se, nor a freedom to act otherwise in a factual sense. I don’t see how consciousness can be separated from phenomenal consciousness. The measurements point to a discrepancy between our experience of consciousness and the actuality.

The thought of total compulsion can lead to a fatalistic “why bother?”, but there is every reason to bother. Our freedom from the feeling of compulsion, and from unpleasant types of compulsion, rests on the accuracy of our inner and outer alignments. This accuracy is undermined by fatalism, and is dependent on the degree of insight, attentiveness and clarity of thought and feeling with which we act. All of this may well be fundamentally compelled, including an inclination to say “why bother?”, but if we have the insight to see that an attitude of “why bother?” is directly counterproductive, and results from a misunderstanding of the source of the different types of compulsion, then we will be compelled by our insight to discard fatalism, and we will experience the compulsion of this insight as freedom. In this case, it will be freedom from a misunderstanding that readily leads to the type of compulsion that we experience as compulsion! I realise it can be difficult to think of two extraordinarily different forms that compulsion can take, but I can’t see a better way of expressing it at the moment.

I indicated the way that what I’m suggesting may be directly linked to religious teachings earlier on this page, but I’ll open it up a bit more. Muhammad referred to surrendering our will to the will of God, and the prayer Jesus suggested refers to “Thy will be done on earth…”. There are different ways this can be interpreted, but here’s my interpretation. First, I don’t think the person praying to God, as the intrinsic nature of existence (whether seen as a mind literally or metaphorically), is suggesting to the nature of existence that the nature of existence should exert its will, its nature, here on earth. That wouldn’t make sense, because it’s going to happen anyway. I suggest that the person praying is acknowledging the inescapable reality that the nature of existence is going to be manifested on earth. In so doing, they are aligning themselves with the nature of existence, rather than setting their own sense of will as distinct from the nature of existence, from the “will” of existence. They are relinquishing, surrendering, the kind of control implicit in the idea of their own free will, the idea that they can really do whatever they want.

This can sometimes lead to fatalism, perhaps especially in Islam, but I think it is referring to the kind of alignment I’m discussing, so that we no longer think of “my” will but of aligning, communing, with the nature of existence, so that it is this alignment with, this insight into, the nature of existence that is flowing through us. It seems to me that this is closely related to mercy, the forgiveness of trespasses. I’m not sure it is possible to completely and wholeheartedly forgive others unless one perceives that at the fundamental level they really have no choice, that they really “know not what they do”. Conversely, if one fully perceives that at the fundamental level there is really no choice, and that the actions that derive from what is felt to be choice are a form of ignorance, then how can one not forgive?

Here are some further thoughts to expand on my take that necessity and chance are sufficient to account for agency, choice and free will. A dictionary defines agency as “action or intervention producing a particular effect”, and includes the example of “canals carved by the agency of running water”, which are clearly the result of necessity and chance.

One of the problems in discussing issues like this is terminology. For instance under the definition you cited the phrase “an agent of change” is a tautology. Since everything produces an “action or intervention producing a particular effect” then to say something is an agent is a meaningless distinction. Perhaps I should have used the term “intent”, but even that term can be morphed to something different from the rough-and-ready common understanding.

Our feeling of freedom is illusory only insofar as we think we really could have acted otherwise in any absolute sense. Our feeling is real insofar as we experience an absence of compulsion.

While our feelings about freedom are important, the question is are we really free in some sense. If the fundamental and total causal factors in our choices are necessity and chance then where is there any real freedom? Freedom is the antithesis of necessity and while chance my may be unconstrained in some sense, its hard from me to assign any personal freedom to a chance occurrence. Our neural networks operated under the same fundamental processes as water. Does water have any freedom in carving a canal? If not why do we?

In a sense, there is nothing new about what I’m saying. Neuroscientific research has clearly demonstrated that whatever we experience in consciousness has already been produced in the unconscious, at a level we are unaware of, and neuroscientists have long known that there is an illusory quality about our concepts of self and free will.

Right, some say our sense of self and free will are illusionary but when they do so they are not speaking as scientists but as speculative metaphysicians. Personally, I don’t pin freedom on consciousness partly because of the scientific experiments on delayed conscious experience you mentioned. In my view phenomenal consciousness is our experience of our lives including our freedom.

as far as I can see, the same thing was said in different words by religious leaders millennia ago.

How so?

It seems to me that all this is a critical component of any theology that reflects reality, and not just common perceptions of reality.

I agree but if there isn’t any real freedom to our actions then why bother?

Here are some further thoughts to expand on my take that necessity and chance are sufficient to account for agency, choice and free will. A dictionary defines agency as “action or intervention producing a particular effect”, and includes the example of “canals carved by the agency of running water”, which are clearly the result of necessity and chance. Agency itself implies no more than an active, causative source and an effect, so I’ll move on to choice, free will and the question of whether we “could have done otherwise”.

We refer to our choices as free insofar as we experience no absolute compulsion about them. Choice involves acting on one internal impulse or another, and also considers the likely outcomes of various actions, either consciously or unconsciously, or both. To achieve an outcome, we take into account the factors of both necessity and chance in the external world. When we take into account principles of necessity such as gravity, we do not experience their unalterable, predetermined inflexibility as a compulsion, despite the fact that their operation enforces a total compulsion. This is because our consciousness has adjusted to them, aligned itself with them, and so we take them for granted. Likewise, we align our model of the world, and our actions, to the elements of chance that operate in the external world, and what amounts to the compulsion of their unpredictability.

The same factors apply internally. Our internal impulses to action are predetermined by, for example, the absolute compulsion of the fact that we are human beings and therefore we need a certain amount of food and sleep, yet we generally don’t experience hunger and tiredness as compulsions because we have an inner alignment to them, and to the factors of necessity and chance that have given rise to all our impulses. So we have an inner alignment and also an outer alignment to the external world. Whether accurately aligned or otherwise, we have formed beliefs about these factors, and values that incorporate our priorities of action.

What we call free choice or free will is really this inner alignment flowing through consciousness, which is taking account of this outer alignment. Our choice is free to the extent that it is not experienced as constrained and compelled, inwardly or outwardly, or in terms of time. We are implicitly taking for granted these inner and outer alignments, and we tend to forget about them, and the fact that they already comprise the compulsions of necessity and chance. The more insightful and accurate our alignments are, the more free we experience our choice to be. Our feeling of freedom is illusory only insofar as we think we really could have acted otherwise in any absolute sense. Our feeling is real insofar as we experience an absence of compulsion. If we don’t pick up the opportunities for insight that come along, then we will certainly experience compulsion, either from the inanimate world or from the responsibility that other people require of us. For the sake of everyday conversation, we can say that a great deal of the time we do have the choice to act otherwise, because the opportunities for insight exist for all of us, and it is a matter of convenience to think of ourselves as fully independent, active, causative agents, even though the reality is that we are agents only in the sense that a river is an agent when it forms a canal, and independent only insofar as a river is independent.

In a sense, there is nothing new about what I’m saying. Neuroscientific research has clearly demonstrated that whatever we experience in consciousness has already been produced in the unconscious, at a level we are unaware of, and neuroscientists have long known that there is an illusory quality about our concepts of self and free will. I’m just looking for my own words to convey my understanding of it, and as far as I can see, the same thing was said in different words by religious leaders millennia ago. It seems to me that all this is a critical component of any theology that reflects reality, and not just common perceptions of reality.

As far as I can see, the causal chain, insofar as it is known, and to the extent that it addresses some though not all questions, led from various inanimate processes to the emergence and evolution of life-forms, which still fully embody these processes. These processes do not appear to operate differently inside or outside life-forms, so their characterisation as inanimate should not be taken as excluding or undermining the reality of life, or being empty of meaning and significance, in the way they are sometimes visualised. Their description as “inanimate” is merely a terminological convenience. Really, they are animate-neutral.

I don’t see that there is such a thing as a factor that occupies a primary, privileged position in any final, absolute sense, only in the limited sense that such a factor may be the most relevant one in providing an explanation within the context of a specific, circumscribed question with a knowable answer. As to the question of why there is a directionality in the evolution of the cosmos, it seems to me that the honest answer, both theologically and scientifically, is that we do not know, and do not even know if the question can have an answer. Perhaps the directionality of existence simply is what it is (as in Yahweh, “I am that I am”, metaphorically speaking).

When it comes to the broader question of what is the fundamental nature of existence as whole, I would say that not only do we not know, but we cannot know intellectually, by the very nature of the words and concepts we think with, and the uncircumscribable nature of existence as a whole. The difficulty is that the meanings of words, and the concepts we think with, are the result of comparing and contrasting one thing with another, or one process with another, or one category of things with another, and there is nothing tangible with which to compare or contrast the nature of existence as a whole.

We can take one category of existence and impose it on all of existence, by saying all is fundamentally animate or all is fundamentally inanimate, but this seems to me to be an avoidance of the intellectual impossibility of grasping the nature of existence as a whole. Naturally, what I’m saying here sits easily with the apophatic strands in various theologies, and if this intellectual impossibility is perceived, it has the advantage of not limiting the magnitude of the nature of existence as a whole (which can be called God) with any preconceived notions. It also does not deny the possibility of a silent communion with the nature of existence, and one that carries with it a kind of unspoken participation and comprehension. Indeed, the very perception of intellectual impossibility itself silences the mind and opens up the possibility of communion.

When it comes to the question of biblical and other references to the personhood of God, it seems to me a relatively modern theological fashion to focus in on this apparent personhood, and to structure its possible nature and give it an importance that it may never have had in ancient days. It may have been no more than a convenient metaphor. Having said this, I can speculate that perhaps visualising the nature of existence in terms of a person does provide a kind of focus and an apparent relationship. From here, the bodily presence of God can be stripped away, leaving a disembodied mind. Then, if one finds it mentally possible, the specificity of this mind can be stripped away, leaving a layer of reality and the nature of a mind but not an actual mind. Then mind-like attributes can be stripped away as one enters the cloud of unknowing.

I realise I haven’t re-addressed the question of the role of chance and necessity in agency/free-will, which I discussed a bit earlier. I probably haven’t made my sense of it fully clear, and may or may not be able to do so.

For my part, I don’t see the emergence of the intentionality of human beings, and other life-forms, from non-intentional matter and processes as implying that non-intentional processes occupy some kind of privileged position or primary reality, of which we life-forms are a secondary reality or some kind of serendipitous outcome, as so very many people seem to believe.

So what does occupy the “privileged position or primary reality”? Is there any causal chain responsible for this emergence?

I fully agree that the emergence of life was inevitable in our universe and that evolution has a direction to it. The question is why this is so. Seems there at two popular options on the table right now. One is that there is an inherent purpose or intentionality to the processes of reality. Or two, we are in only one of an infinite number of universes (multiverse theory) and that as chance would have it conditions just turned out right for life in our universe. Since multiverse theory is ultimately untestable, it seems to me the most reasonable choice is for an intentional and purposeful structure and/or process to our reality.

So I think in this dialog we end up back to where we began. Can the non-intentional processes of chance and necessity beget agency and intentionality? The answer to that question, I think, hinges on what is considered an agent. Is a rock an agent with intentionality? Is an atom? If not then when do we start characterizing something as an agent? Is there a threshold when agency occurs? After all in the chance and necessity to agency scenario the very same non-intentional processes occur both in the rock, the atom, and the human or animal mind. There are just different levels of complexity going on in these.

I don’t see communion requiring distinctions, at least not on any level other than the practical, such as you, me, the tree, the mountain. Beyond this purely practical level, is there not an identity of all things on the fundamental level, which can be called existence? Insofar as we do not set ourselves apart from existence as a whole, which it seems that thinking and short-term self-interest is so very often inclined to do, are we not in communion with existence? And is not that communion a form of relationship, in the deepest sense of the word ‘relationship’? I may be misunderstanding you here, and not addressing what you meant; I’m not sure.

For my part, I don’t see the emergence of the intentionality of human beings, and other life-forms, from non-intentional matter and processes as implying that non-intentional processes occupy some kind of privileged position or primary reality, of which we life-forms are a secondary reality or some kind of serendipitous outcome, as so very many people seem to believe.

Non-intentional processes seem to me to be deeply embedded in existence, and are prior to life-forms in evolutionary time, and gave rise to life-forms as a result of their mechanisms, but the fact that life did emerge (and almost inevitably emerged, as did human life) clearly indicates to me that the nature of life and human beings is an integral, intrinsic part of the nature of existence as a whole, and always has been.

I think most cosmologists and biologists today see the emergence of life as the more or less inevitable outcome of certain conditions being met, and they estimate that these conditions occur so frequently throughout the universe that it’s almost inevitable that life has independently arisen on numerous occasions. I use the word ‘almost’ because chance is an intrinsic part of the process, but in terms of the emergence of life, this may be like saying that if one keeps on throwing a dice indefinitely, and if one has thrown it a million times already, then the chances of having thrown a six at least once already, or of throwing a six in the future if one hasn’t already, are so high that one might as well refer to the throwing of a six as inevitable. I just add the “more or less” by way of pedantic precision.

The same (more or less) inevitability may well have applied to the emergence of human beings from early life-forms. Check out The Deep Structure of Biology on Amazon. The primary author and editor is overtly Christian, and some scientists have regarded his ideas about the directionality of biological evolution as the result of a Christian agenda, but I don’t and neither, for that matter, does Richard Dawkins, who agrees with him. I don’t doubt that the directionality of biological evolution will become accepted fact. I also suspect that the directionality of evolution within human beings has not reached a stopping point, and that Buddha, Jesus et al may well be simply the forerunners of our (more or less) inevitable destiny as a species. Also, I suspect, Jesus and others intuited the same thing. However, given what to me is the unfortunate aspects of our so-called free will, and other unfortunate inclinations, I imagine we may well put off this (more or less) inevitable destiny for quite some time to come.

As far as I can see, both intentionality and non-intentionality, and life-forms and the inanimate, are subsets and outcomes of the nature of existence as a whole, which is neither one nor the other, and encompasses both the one and the other, and for all I know, quite possibly more.

Very nice post. Thank you.

I appreciate your position very much. We all have our intuitions about the nature of things and such intuitions stem from many factors both in our experiences, interpretations of experience, and how our own personal psychology relates to them. My personal religious experiences and psychology have inclined me toward a theistic framework where there is a personal God. Others are inclined otherwise. Given our limitations and our incomplete and tentative knowledge, I suppose the best one can strive for is to be systematic in one’s opinions and assertions.

For me the communion is embedded in the Divine Life. For there to be communion there must be some sort of distinctions in its members. Otherwise there is only an identity of all things. No relationships. However, a communion need not be grounded in a personal God. Having affirmed that though, I find it difficult to see how the intentionality we see everywhere could emerge from a non-intentional basis of reality. Is it just serendipity? Perhaps. Although I could see relating to others in the communion, I would have difficulty relating to a non-intentional basis of reality (nature). I suppose I could try a mind trick (as the Sea of Faith members may be doing) but to do so would violate my attempts at intellectual and psychological honesty. On the other hand, if there is intentionality in the very fabric of existence, where did it come from?

Thanks for being more specific about your theological inclinations. I had already read the post of yours that you linked to, but I read it again. (I’ve read most, if not all, your posts and their comments.) I don’t have any difficulty with the idea of one existence, or with the possibility of existence bearing underlying characteristics like those of a mind, but it still seems like a jump from there to the idea of one mind, and the panentheist Author/Story analogy doesn’t resonate with me unless I see the Author purely as metaphor.

As to the process of coming to know something metaphysically, I agree that this is a matter of intuition, and that careful speculation can play a role here. I see speculation as a form of conscious guesswork that includes logic and rigour, and that may or may not resonate with one’s intuitive sense of things, and may sometimes serve to clarify one’s sense of things, especially in the absence of a strong enough sense of things. If this intuitive sense is strong enough, it can perhaps sometimes reveal itself consciously without speculation, and can then perhaps be called revelation, which may or may not be recognised as logical enough and resonant enough with the thoughts and the sense of things of other people.

I am inclined to see this intuitive sense as deriving from one’s (current and/or residual) communion with existence or, in a non-metaphysical sense, with aspects of existence. I’m using the word ‘communion’ to mean neutrality in terms of whether that with which is communed is personal or impersonal. It could be a person, a tree, a mountain, or existence as whole. I’m also using ‘communion’, in its strongest sense, to refer to the complete absence of any sense of distinction between the person and that with which is communed. Tillich refers to an “existential relationship”, but I think the term ‘relationship’ tends to imply a sense of psychological distinction as well as a physical distinction, and as such it implies a lack of full communion. Also, ‘relationship’ rather tends to imply that that with which is communed is conscious of the person communing and directly responds to the person. To me, communion can be much stronger than what is usually meant by relationship, and what could have been implied by “existential relationship”.

Prayer, if the word is not used purely in the sense of silent contemplation and/or communion, implies a conscious disconnection from a sense of communion with existence, and I guess it usually implies at least some degree of visualisation of existence as a person or mind, though this visualisation can perhaps sometimes be very slight. I’m not at all sure about this, not being inside other people’s minds when they pray. Apparently, members of The Sea of Faith network engage in what they call prayer, rather than meditation, and yet they don’t visualise God as a reality outside their own mind. (I guess in their case they visualise God as an imagined mind rather than God as a synonym for the nature of existence.)

It seems to me that asking a serious question, or articulating a fervent hope, of no-one and nothing in particular can call forth a kind of response, and can catalyse change in the questioner. I would be inclined to speculate that this response emerges from the unconscious, and that, insofar as this response is experienced as personal, it either results from the personal-ness of the unconscious, or from a conscious interpretation as a result of the conscious visualisation. Insofar as it catalyses change, without the change being interpreted as a separate response, this may result from a stronger connection with one’s sense of communion with existence on a conscious level, or directly from communion with existence itself. I would be inclined to see the silence in, around and immediately after prayer, and the wholeheartedness and authenticity of the question or hope, as facilitative of communion.

Speculation is fine, and often a part of the process of coming to a new understanding, but I don’t see that it is necessary for theology to offer definite answers that go beyond what is knowable and known, any more than science, in its pure form, goes beyond what knowable and known.

OK, so what types of knowing are you talking about? What is the process of coming to know something? In my view, theology is ultimately a metaphysical enterprise. Since it endeavors to characterize the fundamental basis of reality how could it be otherwise? Now, I don’t think wild speculation serves well for theology but theology has been constantly shaped by informed speculations based on observations and experiences throughout millennia. Observations and experiences occur and inferences regarding ultimate reality are made. Now some put sacred texts in a special category of revelation but that ultimately leads to circular reasoning.

My view is that an informed intuition based on religious experience informed by all observations and explanations available is the best we can do to form theological opinions. Nothing is ever absolutely definitive. But if theology is to have any practical application in people’s lives it must bravely offer its best guess.

In general, science and theology appear to be coming closer together, and I’m glad to see it. In respect to what I understand of your views, I don’t currently see how you move from the relational, event-driven nature of existence, and the way it may seem to reflect some characteristics of consciousness, to the question of intention, which seems to imply a fully integrated consciousness, a specific mind, and a specific mind seems to imply a specific person.

The ontology I find most appealing is a form of absolute idealism. There is one Mind and our minds are included in it. This has a decidedly Eastern flavor to it as found in Vishishtadvaita religious philosophy but also in Western forms of idealism. Apparently even Berkeley moved toward this after he found problems with his subjective idealism. I outline my monistic thinking this post: http://theology3m.blogsome.com/2006/10/21/aspect-monism/ In that post I offer the metaphor of Author/Story to illustrate.

When it comes to God as person, I like what Tillich said “God is not a person, but includes the personal”. This sentiment dispels the “Gray haired old man in the sky” thinking and includes the abysmal character of God but also attributes personalness to God. He also said something to the effect that “One cannot form an existential relationship with something that is less than personal”. While academic Buddhists will claim that ultimate reality is not personal, adherents almost always include something personal (i.e. the Buddha) in their devotions.

The acid test to me, regarding the practical applicability of a theological system is how it handles prayer. For instance Process Theology has a problem with prayer. In my view any religious system that does not affirm a personal relationship of some sort with ultimate reality, short changes both the personal religious intuition of adherents as well as their existential and devotional needs.

In the way I intended the terms ‘chance’ and ‘necessity’, I don’t see them as necessarily deriving from, or relying on, a materialist, atomist view of reality. Precisely predictable regularity, which can be called necessity, is readily observable in the world around us. Likewise, a diversity that encompasses a range within which we cannot predict an outcome — and which can be called chance or contingency — is also readily observable, and the circumstances under which this diversity is evident are often precisely predictable. In referring to chance and necessity, I’m referring only to what I see as the readily evident features of precise predictability and of (often predictably) unpredictable diversity. It’s another matter as to whether, underlying this regularity/necessity and diversity/chance, there is a precise predictability (a clockwork universe), or an utter unpredictability, or a dependence on the observer (under at least some circumstances), or the intention of a mind at the heart of existence, or some combination of these and/or other factors. (I simply don’t know about these underlying factors, though I’m interested in speculations as to their nature, and in my unknowing I more readily attune to apophatic theologies.)

I just don’t see that what we regard as agency needs to rely on more than the readily observable aspects of chance and necessity, either scientifically or theologically. This is not to discount novelty, or emergence, or “dependent co-arising” (and “A Different Universe” looks interesting). Speculation is fine, and often a part of the process of coming to a new understanding, but I don’t see that it is necessary for theology to offer definite answers that go beyond what is knowable and known, any more than science, in its pure form, goes beyond what knowable and known. (The theoretical interpretations and worldviews of some scientists go well beyond what I’m referring to as pure science.)

In general, science and theology appear to be coming closer together, and I’m glad to see it. In respect to what I understand of your views, I don’t currently see how you move from the relational, event-driven nature of existence, and the way it may seem to reflect some characteristics of consciousness, to the question of intention, which seems to imply a fully integrated consciousness, a specific mind, and a specific mind seems to imply a specific person. As you discuss, Marcus Borg, and other panentheists, seem to be moving away from a literal interpretation of this idea, at least in part. Borg writes of God as “a non-material layer or level of reality that’s all around us, as well as within us, not God as a person out there”. Nonetheless, it seems very possible to me that Borg visualises a mind, if not a person that goes along with this mind, within which our minds, and (apparently) inanimate matter exists. It’s hard to be clear on this, because many panentheists don’t spell out what they do actually visualise, and how it all ties together. In particular, I don’t follow how you tie things together, particularly what seems to me a baffling leap to a specific mind underlying existence, which is something I find it almost impossible to even imaginatively encompass.

At the same time, I don’t see that either biblical or current theology needs to rely on the idea of a mind underlying existence. For example, the references to God as a person in the Bible can be read as metaphor for the largely unspecified nature of existence. In this interpretation, relinquishing one’s will to the will of God can be read as relinquishing the idea of one’s own free will and the alignment of one’s thoughts and behaviour to a sense of communion with the nature of existence, of which we are all a part, even if we do not understand its underlying nature, and — for all I know — never will.

I wonder whether we see chance and necessity as they actually are, or whether we tend to form simplistic notions of them. I know I’m sometimes inclined to do the latter. Can we mentally grasp chance and necessity when they operate in a deeply interwoven combination, and in an extraordinarily complex combination? Personally, I find it difficult or impossible to grasp this on any really tangible level, let alone coming to the point of saying that there is more than chance and necessity involved in human life, even though it is easy enough to attribute agency on the everyday, practical level.

While my argument is that “chance and necessity” can’t create agency in the common sense of the term, I don’t subscribe to the characterization of reality that they offer. In my view, the “chance and necessity” model is derived from a materialistic ontology. This stems from early Indian and Greek atomism which was adopted in the West and the scientific community but has detractors particularly in Eastern thought. I write about this here in What Constitutes Reality

Basically what I am say there is that the fundamental fabric of reality is Mind and so what we characterize by the chance and necessity terms are really just mind processes not some “self natures” of itty bitty things. In these mind processes there is order and there is novelty intertwined in a complex web of relationships. The necessity characterization is the order part but that order is created by intent and can be “adjusted” as needed within the intended constraints. The chance part just refers to the novelty that can arise within this mindful dialog between order and novelty. Now this is speculative metaphysics but it is also finding support within science particularly in the fields of physics and emergence. Nobel Laureate physicist Robert Laughlin has a fascinating book “A Different Universe” on this subject.

Now granted, it is difficult to grasp all this at the tangible level, but one of the tasks of theology is to form ontological schemes and try to support them in some way. And a large part of theological ontology is how to characterize the self and its relationship with other selves, whether they be human, animal, plant or even elemental. So I think it is imperative for those interesting in theology to form metaphysical speculations concerning the fundamental basis of reality and see how they would fit into a systematic theology. Detractors of religious systems claim that things like agency and free will can be attributed simply to the materialistic framework where there is stuff that nonintentionally just does what it does. My argument is that this doesn’t work unless one redefines terms significantly from their common use.

I agree that we do tend to have a sense of mental identity, an ‘I’, though some Eastern theologies question the reality of this sense of ‘I’, and perhaps all theologies suggest the possibility of transcending the sense of a distinct ‘I’. Does this ‘I’, this identity, make choices that are not totally bound by chance and necessity? I wonder whether we see chance and necessity as they actually are, or whether we tend to form simplistic notions of them. I know I’m sometimes inclined to do the latter. Can we mentally grasp chance and necessity when they operate in a deeply interwoven combination, and in an extraordinarily complex combination? Personally, I find it difficult or impossible to grasp this on any really tangible level, let alone coming to the point of saying that there is more than chance and necessity involved in human life, even though it is easy enough to attribute agency on the everyday, practical level.

For my part, I would see a distinction between an AI system and a human being, and a vastly greater distinction than there is between an AI system and a lump of rock. I also doubt whether we’ll ever be able to design an AI system that mirrors the complexity of a human being. However, I don’t think it makes the word ‘agency’ meaningless to say that a rock has no agency, an AI system and an amoeba have some degree of agency, and a human being definitely has agency. I just don’t see that there is necessarily an ontological distinction here, just something we only partially grasp and call agency.

Could Jesus, Muhammad or Buddha “have done otherwise” in the situations they found themselves in? When Jesus or Muhammad refers to the will of God being done, rather than an individual human’s will being done, perhaps they are referring to their awareness of the choicelessness of their actions. In other words, they are no longer operating from their own will. Isn’t the idea of choice intimately connected with a sense that we have a distinct will that is our very own? Without having our own will, is there any choice?

When someone is considered to have been unable to determine the difference between right and wrong, which we refer to as being mentally ill, we do tend to see them as some kind of malfunctioning system, so society is perhaps moving in the direction of seeing human beings as systems, albeit very complex ones. We are also becoming more and more aware of the profound effect that dietary and other physical factors have on the operation of our minds and therefore on what we perceive to be our distinct identities, which can undergo changes that seem to make a mockery of the kind of real continuity and definiteness that we tend to associate with ‘I’.

What is your own view? Is it undecided? As far as I can see, chance and necessity are sufficient to account for agency, for free will and responsibility for our actions.

A lot depends on the definition of terms. As with a lot of terms “agency” is something we may find difficult to define but “we know it when we see it”. However, I think inherent in the term is the sense that there is an identity that makes choices that are not totally bound by chance and necessity. If there is no such thing as this type of identity then as I said in the blog, every thing could be considered an agent. Just some agents would be more complex than others. For instance, an artificial intelligence program can learn and make decisions based on rules and new information. Is it an agent? Perhaps, but I think most people would see some sort of categorical distinction between the software and a person.

As for free will, I think the phrase “could have done otherwise” strikes to the heart of the issue. If everything is driven by chance and necessity *could* the something done otherwise? I wouldn’t think so.

Society can hold someone responsible for their actions but if they are the result of only chance and necessity then that decision is not based on a person being a free moral agent but more of a malfunctioning system, relative to societal norms.

What is your own view? Is it undecided? As far as I can see, chance and necessity are sufficient to account for agency, for free will and responsibility for our actions. I see free will and choice arising from the necessarily limited nature of both our minds and our knowledge and experience. When it comes to things that we perceive relatively clearly, such as the way gravity operates in our lives, we automatically take this perception of gravity’s operation into account. Insofar as we do this, we have no choice in the matter. This does not need to be seen as limiting our freedom, but simply as exercising intelligence. I think the same principle applies to morality,

Perhaps the Fall can be seen as the point when our relatively limited minds developed sufficient awareness to act in what we perceive to be our own immediate interests, and often against our own long-term interests, and against the short-term and long-term interests of others, and of the natural environment that gave rise to us. Activities that take all these factors fully into account can be seen as moral, though this is a morality that is intrinsically fallible, given our limitations. Acting morally severely limits choice, and in some situations, eliminates choice altogether, though this doesn’t have to experienced as limiting.

In other words, cannot what we call choice be a matter of balancing various priorities in the face of our relatively limited, fallible nature and knowledge, and the less limited this becomes, the less choice there is and the more intelligence there is (an intelligence that incorporates moral sensibility)? Along with this intelligence, there is the freedom from foolishness and unnecessary discord, though not the freedom of choice that derives from lack of perception.

All this implies that what we call free will is really inextricably linked to our ignorance and fallibility. What we normally consider freedom of choice may really be a form of pre-programming mixed with randomness, and combined with limitation, that is built in to the human organism, and varies according to inheritance, environment and the degree of insight and moral sensibility that these factors have given rise to, both in the past and in the present.

I would agree that this doesn’t tend to be the way we experience things, and seeing things this way can lead to a form of fatalism, but I don’t see this as implicit in this perspective at all, and nor do I see any of this as relieving us of the responsibility to act morally and intelligently. Naturally, however intelligent, moral and experienced we become, this will not limit freedom of choice in simple, practical matters that are not foreclosed by our insight and moral sensibility, but such a freedom of choice can be seen as a form of random exploration. Does all this make sense to you? What do you think?

On a different topic, I feel sympathetic toward your overall project but tend to think that the current direction of history indicates that theology and religious practice will become more diverse and fragmented, which tends to lead away from communal, organised religious activity.