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This is one atheist's and one theist's perspective.
The atheist in the original post assumes that a god exists for the sake of his argument.
How can the brain/soul/will be free from its own design? Really, the argument in the original post looks valid to me. Can you explain how it's not?
That's an argument for another thread.
Can you explain what you believe a free agent is, exactly? If a free agent's choices follow from his will, and his will was designed by a god, how is the god not responsible for the agent's choices? If you wish to say the free agent's will is a "blank slate" and therefore the god is not responsible, then how could a free agent make choices if he was not designed with preferences and tendencies?
Hmm, it sounds like your argument is against free will. You say we're designed with vices and sometimes we give in to them. Wouldn't the act of succumbing to a vice be, itself, the result of another vice?
If I may butt in... Free from the agency of "God", i.e. "separate from God". From this perspective, our will is not "designed," else it couldn't be will, and it couldn't be ours.
I am an atheist and I often, for the sake of argument, hypothetically suppose that a Theist's statments are true. I do this so that I can point out inconsistencies in their argument or unconsidered consequences to their propositions. For example, many theists say that there is a God who knows everything and they also say that humans have free will. I will often respond by saying "OK, let's assume there's a God who knows your every future action with 100% certainty. If such a God existed, how would you be able to "choose" anything God did not already foreknow?"
Assuming Theists' statements is not the same as assuming God.
The god creates the will but doesn't design it?
As long as you have "the faculty of conscious and especially of deliberate action; the power of control the mind has over its own action" (dictionary.com), you have will. You couldn't call it "free will" in the philosophical sense, and you might argue that it's not truly yours in some deep spiritual way, but it's yours in the same way that a PC's operating system is the PC's.
How could you decide to do something if you have no preference for what to do? How could you act if you have no - I want to say programming - for how to act?
What does it mean to you "to create"? Is thought created? Is thought designed?
Is the PC's operating system the PC's operating system's, though? It's a matter of who (or what) owns what.
Programming is the antithesis of the image of "free will" presented above --the separation from "God". That is an image of total and complete responsibility for one's choices.
To me, "to create" means what the dictionary says it means: "to cause to come into being, as something unique that would not naturally evolve or that is not made by ordinary processes" (dictionary.com). We were discussing this from a theist's perspective, so a god causes the will to come into being, yes? As I asked, how does he do that without designing it?
Right, so the PC has an operating system (as we have will) but not necessarily a "free operating system".
Indeed, and that image of free will is incoherent. How do you decide to do something if you have no preferences for what to do?
Correct. I should have said monotheists.
With a thought. He wills it. (More below.)
Are you a PC with an operating system, or are you the operating system? Are you the owner and possessor of will, or are you exercising will? That's the significant difference. "God" is present in all of creation. What "God" wills with but a thought is what is at any (and every) given moment. Every moment is the present to the "God" that is present in every moment.Right, so the PC has an operating system (as we have will) but not necessarily a "free operating system".
It is incoherent in the framework of determinism, but it didn't come from there; it came from "now", from the person present in the current moment exercising will.
A free agent is one who is separated from external determinism, one who determines for itself.
Through experience. If a man who has never tasted potato before is offered various different ways of serving them, how is he to order his preference of dishes? By tasting them.
Both. What's the significance?
When he creates something with a thought, he conceives what it is that he's creating, yes? If he thinks, as he creates it, about what it is and how it works (and this is all somehow happening in the present moment), he designs it, does he not? So bringing this full circle...
...I'm having a hard time understanding why: if this god conceives of and creates our will (with a thought, in the present moment), then our will belongs to us, but if he puts some forethought into creating it, then it's not ours.
Still, I ask, how does the person present in the current moment decide to do something if he has no preferences for what to do? Or are his preferences suddenly materializing, completely unrelated to the past?
ok
So the will was constructed by an "I", and the "I" was created by this god. Then basically just switch "will" with "I" and my questions remain the same: If a free agent's choices follow from his will which follows from his "I", and his "I" was designed by a god, how is the god not responsible for the agent's choices?
So you're saying he develops preferences and tendencies through experience. How did he make choices during his very first experience? He must have started with some preferences and tendencies, then had some experiences, which led to him developing new preferences and tendencies, and so on, yes? If a god designed his first preferences and tendencies, which eventually led to those that he currently has, is the god not responsible for them?
He assumes a god's existence for the sake of his argument.Woah. Why would an Atheist think God is responsible for something...?
Unless given instruction in the construction of the will, that is the what and not the how, the construction is free from the will of the first agent.
What do you mean? Hopefully, nothing like the absurdity of the donkey who starves because he can't choose between two equal and equidistant piles of food? That without preference when confronted with a choice we would be incapable of response?
Do you mean to say that a god creates an "I" (a soul?), and the "I" creates his own will, free from instruction of the god? My question is: how does the "I" do anything if it has no will? You say the "I" constructs its own will, how does it do that without "the faculty of conscious and especially of deliberate action; the power of control the mind has over its own actions" (definition of "will" from dictionary.com"). Is the "I" mindless, sort of a random number generator designed by this god?
Hmm, well I'm sure the donkey would prefer to eat rather than to starve. He would prefer to walk to a pile of food rather than to roll there. He might choose to walk to the left pile or to the right pile based on plenty of other preferences; maybe his right leg is stronger than his left so he favors his right side, maybe he prefers to walk away from the sun and over the smoother terrain, etc.
Yes, unless the response is random.